Chapter Ten
Dana
D ana had nothing with her to wear to a funeral, so she drove to Billings to pick up a few things from home.
She stopped at her dad’s stable first.
Robert Barrett operated a small riding facility on forty acres of land that edged against the subdivision where they lived, catering mostly to neighbors. Cottonwoods and pine dappled the pastures surrounding the outdoor training arena, providing shade for equine boarders.
This was where she stabled her horses when she wasn’t competing with them, and now that Lady was bred, she was out of competition for good. It wasn’t safe to move her for at least thirty days and they were confident the pregnancy took, but this stable was about to become her permanent home. A pregnant mare shouldn’t be ridden in her first trimester, and as an older horse, with arthritis settling in, Lady shouldn’t be ridden throughout her pregnancy at all.
Crackerjack was getting a workout this morning when she arrived. One of the neighbors rode him around the arena, coaxing the gorgeous palomino gelding into a trot. Dana slammed the truck door and walked to the wooden fence so she could watch.
She didn’t want to rush Tanoa’s training, so she’d have to finish the season on Crackerjack. Her dad made sure he stayed in practice—Crackerjack was good with experienced riders—but he hadn’t gotten past his skittishness with crowds, and she hadn’t ridden him in several years.
She was a big part of his problem. She hadn’t gotten over how easily she’d lost him on a turn, or the results of their fall, and he picked up on her uneasiness with him. He didn’t trust her either. As much as she loved him, they’d never had the same bond as the one she had with Lady, or the one developing with Tanoa. And she felt guilty about it.
Much the same way she felt guilty about Levi. The sex was good. Excellent, in fact. They both got satisfaction from it, so she had no qualms in that regard. She hadn’t misled him. He was a grown man who knew she had limitations. He’d held her hair in a motel bathroom while she’d hugged a toilet, so he’d seen her at her worst. Also saved her from it.
She also knew he had deeper feelings for her than she could return. She’d done Tanner wrong by staying with him when she’d known things were over, and she’d treat Levi better than that. She’d rather leave him on a high note than end on a low one. She was going to take Tanoa to Billings as soon as George Cooper confirmed the horse was hers.
Lady posed more of a problem, but hopefully, the new owners wouldn’t mind stabling her for the next month. She shouldn’t be moved until pregnancy was confirmed.
“Dora.”
As in, Dora the Explorer .
She turned from the fence at the sound of her dad’s voice.
“Sponge Bob,” she cried, throwing herself into his arms for the bearhug waiting for her. They used to watch cartoons together, weighing the merits of the girl shows she’d liked against the old Bugs Bunny reruns he’d favored.
She was a daddy’s girl and unapologetic about it. He’d gotten her out of ballet and into barrel racing, instead. Her mom still pretended she was mad.
He was also the only one who suspected what the repercussions of the fall she and Crackerjack had taken had been. He’d likely discussed it with her mother, but that was okay, because if Dana didn’t bring it up, then neither would they.
“Where’s Lady?” he asked, noting her truck without the attached trailer.
“I had to leave her in Grand.”
She filled him in on the situation, without mentioning Levi.
“Two of Otto Hart’s horses… Assuming Lady hangs onto a foal,” her dad mused. He eyed Crackerjack in the arena, where the rider had him starting and stopping, then pivoting on his hind end, giving his engine a tune-up. “It doesn’t do a thing to help you finish out this season.”
“I’ll ride Crackerjack,” she said.
She could do this. If she didn’t do it now, then she might as well sell him. He was a good horse. She shouldn’t make her problems his.
“He’s your horse.” But her dad frowned as he said it.
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”
“You know I don’t. He hasn’t competed in a long time, and it’s unlikely he’s gotten over his anxiety around crowds. You should have sold him after your fall. He handles better for men.”
Meaning Crackerjack trusted a firmer hand than she used. He preferred a heavier weight in the saddle. He liked knowing a boss was in charge and not just along for the ride. He’d do well with someone solid and steady and patient, like Levi—whose confidence ran deep, rather than swirled on the surface.
She’d never accept that. Crackerjack was her horse and her responsibility. She should have worked harder to help him get over his anxiety. “We aren’t going to fall twice.”
“What makes you so sure? You’re afraid of him, Dana.” Dana , not Dora , meaning her dad wasn’t messing around. “Riding him won’t do either one of you any favors.”
She got her stubborn streak from her dad. “I’m not afraid.”
“Prove it to me.” He leaned slightly forward, with one elbow hooked on the fence. Challenge shone from eyes the same shade of blue as her own. “He’s warmed up. Let’s set up some barrels and see how you work as a team.”
She refused to concede that her dad might be right. That he might know her, and her horse, better than she did. He hailed Crackerjack’s rider, who rode over. The man dismounted, then sat on the fence to watch while they adjusted the saddle. He offered some friendly advice, which she didn’t need.
“Thank you. I know my own horse,” she said, Lady Dana gifting him with a smile to negate any rudeness, while she focused on proving her father wrong.
She rubbed Crackerjack’s nose, puffing short breaths of air into his nostrils until he sneezed, then snuffled her chest. He shied when she put her foot in the stirrup but steadied after she swung into the saddle.
He was bigger than Lady. He had a whole lot more power too, but also less raw, untapped energy than Tanoa. Dana rode him around the arena a few laps, getting reacquainted with his gait while her dad set up the barrels and her heart settled down. She was nervous. Judging by the twitching muscles between her thighs, Crackerjack was, too.
But this wasn’t a race. They didn’t have to beat anyone’s time or set any personal bests. There was no prize money riding on it, only pride. She guided him out of the arena, and they waited at the gate until her dad gave her the signal. He’d pulled a stopwatch from somewhere. Dana ignored it.
Her dad dropped his arm. Dana spurred Crackerjack into action with the smooth heels of her sneakers and they shot into the arena. Crackerjack’s speed on the turns wasn’t what it should be, but as he rounded the last barrel and sprang for the gate, he ran like the demon possessed.
She swung him around and trotted back into the arena.
Her dad stared at the stopwatch in his hand, shaking his head. “Your grandma could ride faster than that,” he said, but his smile was so broad, the corners stretched to his ears.
“Still think we can’t do it?” Dana demanded, pretty sure her own smile was as wide, because she’d had her own doubts.
“This is hardly a crowd.” Her dad indicated several spectators who’d gathered at the rail to watch Billings’s best barrel racer take her second-best horse for a run. “But, baby,” he said, patting her leg and looking up at her with pride shining bright in his eyes, “I think you can do whatever you set your mind to. Let’s see how the two of you make out in McCone County.”
She hadn’t withdrawn from McCone. She knew she should go. It was a long road to Las Vegas, and even without the lure of finals, career-wise, she needed the points and the money if she planned to continue.
All she had to do was tell Levi that she’d had fun, but it was time for her to get back to work and earn her living.
But not yet.
*
Levi
While Dana drove to Billings to pick up clothes from her parents’ house for the funeral, Levi made a similar stop at his parents’ place in Grand. His mom kept a few suits in a closet that he and his brothers all tended to borrow when short notice required one. She made sure they were always dry-cleaned and pressed and ready to wear.
From the outside, the 1930s-era Harrington family home wasn’t anything extraordinary. It was boxy and sturdy, built for functionality and not curb appeal. Outside appearances, however, weren’t what made it a home.
The two-story house and attached two-car garage sat on a corner lot, giving it extra yard space that the Harringtons put to good use. Cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, had all seen repairs here. Abandoned spare parts leaned drunkenly against the brown wooden siding. Street hockey, football, and basketball continued to be favorite pastimes for grandparents, parents, and grandchildren, although his mom’s layups weren’t what they used to be.
Four bedrooms might seem like a lot from the curb, but seven kids had been crammed into three. A second bathroom had been added at his mother’s insistence because getting ready for work with all those kids also getting ready for school had put a serious strain on her time management skills. Thanks to grandchildren—and Levi—those bedrooms were never empty for long, even though the original seven occupants had grown up and moved on.
He entered the house through the garage door that opened into the kitchen. His dad and two older brothers had made some renovations fifteen years or so ago, combining it with the family room to make a bright, open space for people to gather.
Right now, his mom was alone at the enormous round kitchen table where countless family meals had been served, an e-reader in her hand and cup of coffee within reach. He smelled gingerbread. His favorite.
She got up to hug him when he walked in. “Sweetheart. What brings you to town?”
“I need a suit for the funeral.”
Word was out about Otto’s passing and he’d already called her so she wouldn’t have to hear about it in church first. There were a few more details about his current living conditions that he should probably fill her in on before someone else did, but he didn’t know how to explain a situation he wasn’t sure of himself.
He took a seat at the table. His mom poured him a cup of coffee and loaded it down with cream the way she knew he liked it. She sliced a large hunk of gingerbread and passed him a plate and a fork.
They chatted about his work at the Endeavour for a while before she raised the area of genetic research that interested her most.
“It’s a shame you had to rush off the other day,” she said. “Shauna is such a nice girl.”
He’d known this discussion was coming and was careful to stick to the facts so as not to sway the conclusions. “Seems to be.”
“Pretty, smart, and she’s got a good job, too. What’s wrong with her, then?”
“Nothing.” The timing, perhaps.
“Then why aren’t you interested? She seemed to like you well enough.”
“I liked her, too. But twenty minutes talking to each other while my mother and sister listen in on the conversation isn’t a great way to judge how compatible we’d be.” He tossed around for something his mom would view as a dealbreaker as far as potential daughters-in-law were concerned. “What if she decides Montana isn’t for her and she heads back to New York? What if I felt obliged to go with her?”
“That’s a good point.” His mom threw him a side-eye that said she wasn’t fooled for a minute. “I’m so glad you take my feelings into consideration when you ask a girl out.”
“I’m a good son,” he said, nodding, which earned him a laugh.
They sipped their coffee in silence after that, but only for a very short while, because this was his mom, and pumping her children for information was what she did best.
“Is it true Otto had a woman living with him?”
Levi choked on the mouthful of coffee he’d taken. He grabbed a paper napkin from the stack on the table and wiped at his shirt. Where had she heard that? Likely Dan McKillop, he decided. Ryan and Ford weren’t talkers. Although he supposed it might have come from the supermarket, or one of the ranch hands, or even George’s receptionist, for that matter. There was no such thing as a secret in Grand.
“So, it is true,” she said.
“Jesus, Mom. No.”
“Don’t swear.” The correction came automatically and without any real hope of effect. She had four sons, a husband, and she taught in public school. She’d heard a lot worse, but liked to remind them they had wider vocabularies. “Then who’s the woman staying at his place? I know you’ve met her, because Sue Anne Nyland said you’ve been staying at Otto’s place too.”
Sweat slickened his spine. Sue Anne was the elementary school’s secretary and chief gossip monger. If she didn’t know something, then it wasn’t worth knowing. She’d given Wren Harrington information about her own son that she hadn’t already known, and she wasn’t about to let him forget it.
She sipped at her coffee before going in for the kill. “Whoever she is, she was seen coming out of Meredith Quinn’s store.”
Levi had never been inside Mayhem’s Private Moments himself, but he’d heard good things about it. One of the guys in his bunkhouse had a girlfriend who shopped there. So that was where Dana’s fancy panties came from.
The smile on his face at the thought of her buying those panties for him must have tipped his mom off that there was more to the story.
“Oh my God , Levi. I hoped you used protection.”
The turn this conversation had now taken was one of the hazards of having a mother who taught teenagers in the public school system. She’d never believe him if he tried to deny it, so he opted to go with the truth, make a slight attempt at diversion by not directly answering her question, and let her draw her own conclusions.
“It’s Dana Barrett, Mom.”
She looked blank, then confused. “How did Tanner’s girlfriend end up living with Otto Hart?”
Tanner’s girlfriend. He could see why Dana found that annoying. He rubbed his eyebrow, trying to erase the headache suddenly brewing behind it.
“They weren’t living together.” He explained the situation as best he could, leaving out the part where her concern about the use of protection became valid. “She’s going to stay on for the funeral, and it isn’t safe to leave a woman out there all alone. Besides, someone needs to take care of Otto’s horses until the new owners get settled in, so I offered.”
Clouds blocked the light flowing into the kitchen through the window over the sink. The frown puckering his mother’s brow highlighted her suspicion that there was more to his story than what he would have her believe.
She circled back to what she saw as the problem. “It’s got to be closing in on three years since the accident… I suppose she isn’t Tanner’s girlfriend anymore, is she?”
“No.” No, she was not.
The frown vanished. She leaned toward him, folded forearms on the table from elbow to wrist. “Do you remember the story about the dancer whose husband and dance partner died suddenly, and then she married another dancer they’d both been friends with, and how everyone thought it was so sad and tragic because it looked as if she was trying too hard to hang on to the past, and she’d never love her second husband as much as the first?”
“Never heard it,” Levi said.
But it wasn’t hard to see where she was going with this. He’d always be the consolation prize. The stand-in. Second best.
But his mom wasn’t finished. “Who cares how their relationship looks to outsiders? Nobody asked her how she feels. They judged her based on the public’s perception of her. My advice to you? Don’t pay attention to what other people might think, especially when it’s none of their business.”
Sunshine reemerged. He hadn’t given his mother enough credit. That he would always be second best hadn’t been the message she was trying to send him with her story at all.
She kissed his cheek, then patted his hand. “Now finish your gingerbread and let’s go find you a suit.”
*
Dana
Dana hung her dress in Otto’s cabin next to Levi’s suit. There was no room for their clothes in the ten-foot living space of her trailer and she didn’t want them to wrinkle.
That night, they faced each other across her small, drop-down kitchenette table. Levi was wedged into one of the narrow bench seats that at night, unfolded into her bed, wearing nothing but jeans with a button he hadn’t bothered to fasten. He’d stretched his long legs across the short space between them, and the soles of his bare feet warmed her hips. She wore a T-shirt and panties and had her feet propped in his lap.
They each nursed a beer while they played Scrabble. They were both cheating. Whoever won got to decide the next game they played, and while she wanted to win, it was no big deal if she lost, because she gave him full credit. When it came to sex, he was as creative as he was considerate.
But they couldn’t remain isolated and naked forever, and while this had been nice, they ran the risk of discovery. She didn’t need her name linked with another cowboy, especially one connected to Tanner.
“I’ve only ever seen you drink beer from a glass,” Levi said.
She paused, the beer bottle grazing her lip. “When I’m with other people, yes. Not alone.”
“I’m here. I’m people.”
She shrugged, cocked her eyebrows at him, and cast him her sweetest smile. “I don’t drink beer half-naked in public, but if it will make you happy, we can put our clothes on, pretend there’s a crowd, and I’ll pour my beer in a glass.”
His eyes carried those promises that always made her thoughts tumble toward the bedroom. “Keep your bottle. We’re good. And it’s your turn.”
She glanced at the board where he’d laid down fresh tiles. “That’s not a word.”
“Yes, it is. It’s Latin.”
“Use it in a sentence.”
“The arctodus is an extinct genus of short-faced bear that outweighs the grizzly.”
“Don’t try to use your fancy degree against me, mister,” she said. “That’s cheating.”
His hand went to his heart. “How is it cheating?”
“I have no way of knowing if arctodus is really a word. I can’t look it up. We don’t have any internet connection, remember?”
“I just told you it’s a word. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“You expect me to take your word for it?”
“I took your word for it when you used zlerbeg and said it’s a type of ladies’ handbag. I have two sisters, six female cousins, a niece, a mother, and three aunts. Not one of them has ever carried a zlerbeg .”
“That you know of.” Dana wriggled her toes in his lap, just to torment him, determined to make him work for it before she gave in—which they both knew would happen.
“I—”
Levi stopped talking and turned his face to the door, slanting his head as if listening, but with the generator running inside the barn right next to the trailer, whatever he thought he heard was a mystery to her. Still worrisome, though.
His feet hit the floor and he zipped up his jeans, all in one, fluid motion. He put out the lights and got Otto’s rifle out of the skinny broom closet next to the door.
“Stay here,” he said. The door opened and closed.
She fumbled in the dark, found her own clothes, and quickly got dressed in case she was needed. They had hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of horses to worry about. With Otto gone, and before the new owners took charge, this was the perfect opportunity for someone to help themselves.
Grizzlies were a much bigger worry than thieves. While sightings were rare, and word quickly spread amongst ranchers when one moved into new territory, beyond the threat to the horses, she and Levi were sleeping in what amounted to a tin can.
She knelt on the bench and peered through the small window crowning the table, but there was nothing to see except black shadows and the blurred, shifting mounds of the horses. The horses weren’t restless, which they would be if a grizzly had wandered out of the mountains, or if something—or someone—unfamiliar approached too close to the herd.
Levi had told her to stay put, so she did—waiting and watching and listening, although there was nothing in the night for her to see or hear. He could take care of himself, and he’d take care of her, too. She had complete confidence in him.
“This can go one of two ways…”
She had a fuzzy recollection of those quiet, matter-of-fact words he’d spoken the night of the street dance, when she’d stupidly accepted a drink from a stranger. There was no showmanship to Levi. No macho pounding of chest. No attempt to impress. He saw what needed to be done and he did it. Including holding her hair.
He returned a few moments later.
“Raccoons,” he reported, stowing the rifle away. “It didn’t take them long to figure out Otto’s cabin is empty and there’s food inside. The little thieves were trying to break in.”
She stepped into his arms and held him tight. Relief left her weak-kneed and light-headed. It was fine to have confidence in him. It was much, much better to have that confidence confirmed.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, rubbing her back in small circles, sounding surprised, somewhat sheepish, and so… Levi about her unexpected reaction.
“I’m not scared.”
Not about him rushing off into the night.
She didn’t know how to put what she felt into words, so instead, she reached for the button on the waistband of his jeans and whispered what she wanted from him, and what she planned to do for him in return.