Chapter 21
twenty-one
K ristie stood right at Lady’s right side and clicked her tongue. “Come on, sweet girl. You can come out.”
She hadn’t put anything on the horse. No saddle. No rope. She just wanted to get Lady out of the medical stall where she’d been for a month now, with limited and supervised visits to a closed, small pasture without any other equines.
Today, though, Kristie wanted to see how Lady’s month of stall rest and medical care had helped her heal. Her wound had looked good all week, and Kristie had some news for the horse she wanted Lady to know.
Finally, Lady moved forward slowly, her big head making it out of the stall ahead of her strong shoulders and body.
“Lookin’ good, Lady,” Mission said, and Kristie moved her attention to her boyfriend for a moment. “Hardly a limp at all.”
Lady still limped plenty, but Kristie had her in a padded support boot, and as long as they moved slowly and kept her calm, she should be fine.
Lady shook her head and huffed at Mission, but she veered toward him all the same.
He chuckled as he ran his hands down both sides of her face.
“Yeah, you’re out, girl. Lookin’ so good too. ”
Kristie wanted to observe Lady from various positions, so she nodded at Mission, who started along their predetermined path. Apparently, a bunkhouse sat a couple hundred yards away from the back of these buildings, and Mission had suggested they could walk Lady there and come back.
Good grass back there too , he’d said. She’ll be so spoiled, she won’t eat anything we give her again.
Kristie trailed behind, watching Lady find her gait and stay at Mission’s shoulder. He didn’t talk to her, and Kristie dictated some notes on Lady’s progress, then tucked her phone away and moved to join Mission.
She caught his hand as she matched her step to his, and he glanced at her. “Satisfied?”
“She’s doing really well,” Kristie said. “I’m a little surprised, actually. I thought the wound was far worse than it seems to be.”
“Maybe she just has a really great vet.” He kicked her a grin, and Kristie shook her head.
She believed any vet would do for Lady what she’d done, but she accepted the compliment. “I turned in my application today.”
“I was just going to ask.”
She bumped him with her hip. “You were not.”
Mission laughed, something he didn’t let loose and do very often. “The deadline is tomorrow, though, and I would’ve definitely asked before the day ended.”
“Well, now you won’t have to,” Kristie said. “I wanted you—and Lady—to know.”
“What did you decide to bake?”
“The apple crumble.”
“But it’s not called a crumble.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “It’s a spiced apple chai crumble tart with maple glaze.”
“Oh, holy horses,” Mission said between chortles.
“I’m going to practice tonight, and you should come try it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Satisfaction drove through Kristie, because she’d love to have Mission taste-test her desserts. “Lennie, Jocelyn, and Harper all confirmed they entered, and there’s no way I can beat them. But it’s okay. They give out a lot of blue ribbons.”
“I’ll make you a blue ribbon any day you want, kitten.”
Warmth and love tugged through Kristie, because Mission didn’t say idle words. “I might take you up on that if I don’t get anything.”
“You’ll get the biggest, most ribboniest ribbon at the fair.” He grinned over to her, and Kristie wished she had his confidence. “Whose recipe are you using?”
Kristie had told him once— once —that she loved looking through old recipe books and using family recipes.
They didn’t have to be her family recipes either.
She just liked thinking she was using a well-loved, well-tested recipe that another human being had once labored over.
She really liked thinking of these faceless, nameless people as she baked.
Then it wasn’t just an apple crumble tart, but so much more.
“This one came from my aunt’s husband’s mother.”
“That’s quite the branch in the family tree,” he said.
Kristie smiled into the sky, though big, puffy clouds filled it from side to side. She wasn’t one who checked the weather before she left the house. She figured she’d find out if she needed a jacket or an umbrella when she stepped out onto the front porch.
So she didn’t know if those clouds were supposed to turn gray and dump rain, as they sometimes did in the summer, especially later in the day.
Right now, it didn’t matter, because right now, she’d turned in her application to compete in the King Arthur Baking Company contest, Lady was walking decently well, and Mission held her hand.
After fifteen or twenty minutes of slow, plodding walking, the bunk house came into view. Tall trees towered over it, casting the area in shade.
“This is beautiful,” she said. “And not the same house where we watched the sunset.”
“I guess they do some summer camps here,” Mission said. “Or did once-upon-a-time. It’s not used for much anymore.”
“What a shame,” Kristie said. “This is a great place.” She moved Lady into the shade, where the horse started to snack on the cool grass there, and Mission took her hand again and they settled against the trunk of a nearby tree.
“I love summertime,” he said.
“But you live in Colorado.”
“I don’t mind all four seasons,” he said. “It’s different than where I grew up.”
“It can get cold in the high desert,” she said.
“It can,” he agreed, saying nothing more.
Sometimes, Kristie would like him to continue to debate with her, and sometimes it didn’t bother her. This time, she simply wanted more of an explanation as to why he liked summer…so she asked.
“It feels like nothing can go wrong, I guess,” he said. “It’s warm, so I know even if my truck breaks down, I won’t be stranded on the side of the road in conditions I won’t survive.”
Kristie snuggled further into his side. “Mm, I don’t know about that. I’ve seen you when you’re hungry, and it’s not pretty.”
Another round of laughter burst from his mouth, and pure happiness filled Kristie. She’d never imagined she’d be in this moment when she’d left Arizona a few years ago.
She’d dated here and there while in Ivory Peaks, but nothing felt as sparkly and wonderful as getting a text from him, or seeing his handsome face, or being fed by him.
Mission simply possessed something that spoke to Kristie’s soul, as he saw her and heard her, and seemed to want to go out of his way to make sure she had what she wanted. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her mind drifted, and Kristie let herself float with the warmth around her.
Sometime later, she wasn’t sure when, Mission’s voice said, “Kitten, we should get back.”
Her eyelids fluttered open as she woke up, her awareness coming back in a jolt. “I fell asleep.” She looked over to find Lady laying down in the grass several yards away.
“Yep.” Mission pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“How long?”
“Forty-five minutes or so.”
Kristie frantically tried to piece together what else she needed to do that day—shopping for crumble ingredients, baking…and this. Her adrenaline started to calm just as the wind kicked up.
Mission tipped his head back and looked up, though they couldn’t see the sky through the branches and leaves. “It’s going to rain.”
“It is?”
“Feels like it to me.” He groaned as he got to his feet. He turned back to her and offered her his hand. She took it and let him help her up.
“The clouds were white earlier,” she said.
“Well, they’re not anymore,” he said. “And Lady doesn’t move very fast.”
Kristie’s pulse rebounded from the front of her body to the back. No, she didn’t want to rush or push Lady. That would undo all the hard work and care they’d put into her treatment.
“Let’s go, then,” she said, and she let Mission go get Lady to her feet. The horse lumbered, and Kristie regretted not bringing a rope to help the horse gain her hooves. But she managed, and she moved with Mission easily.
Kristie shook off the last dregs of sleep as she reentered the sunshine that wasn’t really sunshine anymore. One glance up confirmed what Mission had said—it was going to rain. Really, really soon.
“Fun fact about me,” she said as she caught up to Mission. “I don’t like having water on my skin.”
He looked over to her. “Really? How do you shower?”
“That’s different.”
He chuckled. “It’s summer rain. It’ll be warm.”
The wind blew across them, moving from west to east, and it didn’t feel that warm. “Lady’s clean-up will be murder,” she said. “I really don’t want her to get wet.”
“I should’ve woken you sooner,” he said as thunder cracked through the sky.
Kristie didn’t dare tell Mission to hurry, though she really wanted him to hurry. But he kept on at the same slow pace they’d used to come out to the bunkhouse. She turned and looked behind her, and it didn’t seem like they’d put any space between them and her afternoon napping spot.
Nothing can be done , she told herself, but she hated feeling this powerless, this out of control of a situation.
“We’ll be okay,” Mission said as Lady tossed her head. “All right, Kris? I’ll help with whatever Lady needs, but I don’t dare push her faster than this.”
She grabbed onto his hand as the light changed above them, the clouds shifting and moving in a new pattern that only made Kristie’s nerves swirl too. Mission looked over to her as a gust of wind tried to steal his cowboy hat.
“It’s a summer thunderstorm,” he said. “Not a tornado.”
She nodded, and she trained her eyes on the structures in the distance. Thunder growled again, and she watched the sky for lightning but didn’t see any. Wind whistled past her ears, tugging on her hair and forcing Mission to remove his cowboy hat completely.
With her head bent, Kristie simply put one foot in front of the other, feeling very much like she and Mission and Lady were the last living creatures on the planet.
When the first raindrops touched her forearm, she flinched.
“Almost there,” Mission said. “Come on, Lady, it’s just right there.”