Chapter Two
Riley Garrett stretched, rotated her tight shoulders, and gratefully got up from her desk and the computer.
The bookkeeping was done for October, so she could ignore the hated chore for a while.
Now she could get to the chores she loved.
She’d take working outside on the ranch over being buried in numbers and computer screens any day.
She had a few routine things to do, the first being checking inventory on supplies before winter really set in.
They were predicting an El Nino winter, which would mean more rainfall, but given they’d said this week would be in the upper sixties to low seventies and now at two in the afternoon it was only sixty-one degrees out, she had belief problems. So she stuck to her usual strategy, which was prepare for the worst and plan for disaster.
She supposed she should feel good that she’d gotten that pile of work done, and only a week into November, but she only felt tired.
She’d perk up once she got outside, she was certain.
She always did. She put on her watch and automatically verified the time against her phone screen.
She wasn’t one to rely on that screen every time she needed to know what time it was, because too often her hands were full and having to pull it out would be beyond annoying.
She tugged her dark hair up into its usual ponytail, stuffed it through the back of her Texas Rangers cap, smiling to herself as she avoided anything more complicated than that.
She wanted to get done with the inventory quickly, because what she wanted even more was another arena session with the agile bay gelding she’d intended to train.
But early on it seemed doomed. Training a barrel horse that was apparently terrified of barrels did not seem logical.
But there was no denying the horse was quick on his feet and agile, and he was young enough to learn, but she didn’t like the idea of forcing a horse to get past a fear he must have reason for.
Especially not in a sport where every second counted and hesitation could be the difference between winning and losing.
She was thinking of having Sage Highwater take a look at him as a reining prospect.
Sage Parrish, she corrected. She’d known Sage all her life, and it was hard to break an almost three-decades-long habit, even if she did really like and admire the man she’d married.
Their story had become part of the folklore of Last Stand and made more than one person sigh at the romance of it, or nod knowingly at the inevitability of it.
“Heading out?”
She turned to smile at her father. James Garrett still stood tall at seventy, and her goal in life was to be as fit and active as he was when she was that old.
Right now he was sidelined, however, because a young steer had proved a bit more active and had knocked his right knee hard enough to tear his ACL.
They’d suggested at his age he might want to forego surgery and just do rehab and live with the results, but he’d laughed at them.
“My parents are living it up in Florida at eighty-nine and ninety-one. They play golf and some new-fangled thing called pickleball. I’m not going to embarrass them by giving up at seventy.”
And it had been an inspiration, watching him sail through the surgery—it had fortunately been only a grade 1 injury, a partial tear—reminding her yet again that she had a good example to live up to.
But then, her father had been a good example to live up to in every area, except perhaps that of selecting a mate.
Her grandparents, who had now been married for seventy-one years, had obviously had it down.
But her mother had bailed for parts unknown when Riley was five years old, wanting city life more than she’d wanted her own daughter.
“It’s an addiction,” her father had muttered, and it was the closest thing to a bad word he’d ever said about her.
And she was forever grateful he hadn’t buckled and moved them all to some hideous big city.
She loved life here on the ranch, and Gran had stepped up in a big way, giving her all the feminine influence she needed or wanted.
Well, more than she’d wanted as a kid, but Gran had just laughingly said she’d want it someday.
“—pony out to the Baylor place?”
With a snap she tuned back in to Dad’s words. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll trailer him out there this afternoon.” She smiled. “I’m sure they want to be as certain as I am that he’s a sweetheart, perfect for the younger kids.”
Dad nodded. “I’m glad you’re helping them.”
“They’re doing a really good thing there.”
“Yes,” he agreed. He tilted his head sideways as he looked at her, and she braced herself for an unpleasant question. “It’s different, isn’t it? When kids lose a parent…that way?”
“Very different,” she assured him, stepping in close to hug him tightly, dodging the crutches his doctor had insisted on. “There’s a huge difference between a parent being taken away and one who voluntarily walks away.”
She thought about his question again, after she had the little brown-and-white pinto pony loaded up and was on her way out to the Baylors’ place.
She’d thought about riding over with him on a lead, but since it would involve trekking to the far northern end of their place then back down the full length of the Baylors’, and with the pony’s shorter stride, she’d decided to save the time and use the truck and trailer.
It concerned her a little that her father had even had to ask if it was different. He knew it was—he had to know.
The biggest mistake of my life gave me the biggest prize of my life.
She remembered the first time, as a child, she’d overheard him saying that to someone. It had taken her, at about age six, a while to realize that the prize was her. She had hugged that thought close to her heart forever after.
But then she’d gone and made the same mistake he had herself.
Twice. The guy she’d fallen for in college, who had expected her to move to New York with him after graduation.
And when she’d ended it, he’d found someone else delighted with the idea in about a week, leaving her relieved but also singed.
Then she’d nearly married a guy who had somehow convinced himself that she’d be delighted to get out of Dodge, as he’d laughingly put it.
She wasn’t quite sure how he’d interpreted her devotion to the ranch as something she’d be willing to give up for concrete canyons, people piled on top of each other, and noise that never stopped.
But somehow Derek had assumed she was only here because she’d grown up here and hadn’t had the chance to escape.
And when he’d talked about the life they’d build together, they had apparently been not just on different pages, but in entirely different books.
That he hadn’t dropped his assumptions about their future life on her until an hour before the wedding was just one more thing that made her grateful for her narrow escape.
But she’d thought she loved him. And that he’d loved her, the real her.
And that mistake, a mistake that could have been much bigger if the realization hadn’t come before the wedding, hovered in her thoughts ever after.
It was bad enough that it had happened, but the timing—that the wedding guests had already begun to arrive, and she’d had that humiliating situation to deal with—had been the capper.
Or she thought it had been. Until she’d later found out his business was in financial trouble, and she had been his last-ditch effort to salvage things. That had been the real capper. What he’d really wanted was her checkbook. She couldn’t help the bitterness of the thought.
She wasn’t just wary, she had mentally shut down that part of her life. Twice burned, forever shy.
She supposed that was how she’d acquired the designation of unobtainable.
And since she’d broken the forty-year mark a couple of years ago, she was headed into undesirable anyway, she guessed.
Although Gran kept threatening to come back and get her settled on that front.
And pushing ninety or not, Geraldine Garrett was a dynamo, and if she had a goal, chances were it would get done.
Back in school, Gran’s first choice would have been one of the Highwater boys, or the Raffertys. “We founding families have to stick together,” she always said. But she’d grudgingly admitted even the oldest of all of them, Keller Rafferty had been a bit young for her.
Besides, all of them were settled in now, and anyone who saw them with the women they’d chosen to complete their lives would know better than to think anything would tear them apart.
But she couldn’t deny she felt a tug of longing when she saw them. Any of them. She’d hoped for the same herself, but she didn’t trust her own judgment anymore. Not on that front, anyway.
I’ll stick to ranching. At least I know a good horse when I see one.
When she got to the Baylor ranch, she first saw the familiar signs at the first driveway, saying simply Baylor Black Angus, and Nicole Baylor Horse Training. In Last Stand, in the entire county and beyond, that was all the promotion needed. The Baylor name alone was enough.
She continued on to the next driveway about a half-mile farther down, which now bore a sign saying Thorpe’s Therapy Horses.
She knew Nic had come up with the name, because to many people’s surprise, Jackson Thorpe was not big on having his famous name on everything.
But this project was so important to him he’d gone along.
And to Riley, the fact that helping kids who were suffering through what he and Jeremy had gone through was that important to him, told her all she needed to know about Jackson Thorpe.
Mainly, that he was good enough for her friend.
Nic was working a young bay in the pasture between the two driveways. Riley slowed so she could watch for a moment. No matter what plans you had for a horse long term—working horse, competing horse, or show horse—there was no one better to break them in than Nic Baylor.
Of course it didn’t hurt that she had Logan Fox to call on.
The local blacksmith and horse whisperer could calm a fractious youngster faster than anyone she’d ever seen.
And sooner rather than later, he was going to be Nic’s relative.
With Jackson and Nic’s wedding coming up—leave it to Nic to have a Christmas season wedding—and she assumed Logan and Jackson’s sister Trista would soon follow.
He’d be Nic’s…brother-in-law? Was that how it worked?
She tried to focus on that question, the intricacies of relationships that weren’t by blood, rather than the ache that wanted to rise inside her. She liked them all, so much, she hated to think that she might let envy creep in.
So don’t.
It was a silent but vehement order to herself. She stiffened her spine—physically as well as mentally—and gave Nic a cheerful wave when she spotted her.
“I’ll be back at the barn in a few,” Nic called out.
Riley nodded and continued up the long drive. Jackson met her up by the main corral where they first mounted up the children who came seeking what his son had found—some sort of peace with the tragedy their lives had become.
“Thanks for waiting until today, when Jeremy could be here,” he said to her as she slid out of the truck. “He still doesn’t know.”
She smiled at him. There had been a time not so long ago when she’d felt a bit awkward realizing she was standing here with the man millions admired, or lusted after.
But it wasn’t long before he became something else to her, the man who had made one of her best friends so darn happy she was almost unrecognizable.
“Glad to,” she said. “I wanted to see him see this guy—” she gestured back at the trailer “—for the first time.”
The pony was hidden behind the high sides of the horse trailer, so Jackson walked around to the back to take a look.
Riley looked around and saw Jeremy over by the barn about twenty feet away, talking to a man standing there with his back to her, his happy golden retriever Maverick at their feet.
Jeremy must have spotted them because he waved.
She heard Jackson say from the back of the trailer, almost with glee, “He’s perfect. This is gonna be good.”
She started to turn, to go and start unloading the little horse. In the same moment the man Jeremy was talking to turned around and she automatically looked back that way. Their gazes connected.
And she stumbled, almost ending up on her butt in the dirt.