Chapter 18
Ellyn
“Ellyn, Ellyn!” Joel’s excited whisper draws me out of my sleep.
I blink my eyes open, realizing that I’ve fallen asleep against his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
I glance around the barn, attempting to reorient myself.
“It’s happening,” Joel says, his voice low but full of emotion.
He secures the blanket around me before rising to his feet. “Ol’ Girl’s about to deliver her foal.”
That’s when it all comes back to me. I must’ve fallen asleep as Joel and I talked and watched and waited for Ol’ Girl to deliver. It likely wasn’t more than an hour or so that I was asleep.
Excitement overcomes me as I rip the blanket away from my body.
“Can I approach?” I ask Joel.
He holds out his hand for me, and I go to him, approaching the stall where Ol’ Girl’s now lying on the blanket of hay that lines the wooden floor.
“I’ve texted Randy to come out to help. He lives on the ranch, so he’s not too far out. It’ll be messy so you can’t go in, but from this distance you’re safe,” he tells me, eyeing my dress.
I nod in agreement, then look over at the mare who’s obviously in the latter stages of this process. Her swollen belly draws my attention, and I try to visualize the life inside.
“How long are horses pregnant?” I ask.
“About eleven months,” he answers in a low voice.
I ask a few more questions, but stop when I see the first signs of what looks a lot like a placenta poking through the horse’s canal.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, covering my mouth to keep my voice moderated.
By this time, Randy has returned and is ready to assist. He enters the stall, taking tentative steps toward the mare to spread out the hay that’s become bunched up, under Joel’s direction.
I move back and watch Joel as he gives Randy a few directions and also focuses his attention on Ol’ Girl. My eyes widen in surprise when Ol’ Girl actually rises to her feet again. By this time, one foot and a part of the foal’s nose protrude out.
Joel moves to the stall’s door to comfort Ol’ Girl, stroking his hand down the length of her nose and murmuring to her that she’s doing a great job.
“You’ve got this, girl,” he tells her.
About twenty minutes later, Randy’s inside of the stall, catching the foal that Ol’ Girl pushes out.
I watch as Joel checks over the foal from a distance and gives Randy more instructions, though neither one of them touch the new horse or its mother.
“We want them to do this as natural as possible,” Joel tells me when I ask why they’re not intervening.
This is my first time attending the birth of anything besides my own children and that of my grandchildren. I’ve never witnessed an animal giving birth.
“She should be on her feet within the hour,” he says of the foal they’ve determined is a girl. “She should feed within two hours, and the afterbirth passed within three,” he explains.
Then he looks over at me, guilt shining in his hazel eyes. “I usually wait with them until the placenta’s passed, at least. I can—”
“We’ll stay,” I say. There’s no way I want to miss any of this. It’s all so miraculous and beautiful to witness.
It ends up taking the foal forty-five minutes before she’s on her feet, and within another thirty minutes she’s steady enough to feed from Ol’ Girl. About an hour later, while the foal is snoring during her nap, after her first feeding, Ol’ Girl passes the placenta.
“We’ve got it from here, boss,” Randy and another ranch hand that’s arrived tells him.
Joel nods, gives them a few more instructions, and then heads over to Ol’ Girl, murmuring to her about what a good job she’s done and how proud he is of her.
Watching him, I envision what type of father he must’ve been to his boys. I’m certain though tough, he had a soft spot for all of them. They probably got away with a lot more than he likes to admit.
“I have a change of clothes in my office and an extra jacket that’s not covered in … well …” He gestures the length of his body, noting the stains of what I can only presume are fluids from Ol’ Girl’s birth.
“Do you always smell like this after the birth of a new foal?” I tease as we walk the distance to Joel’s office trailer.
He tuts. “Worse, darlin’.”
We laugh and walk, and I delight in recollecting everything I felt as I watched Ol’ Girl give birth.
I talk almost the entire drive back to our neighborhood, feeling energized despite the fact that it’s almost five in the morning.
“It never gets old,” Joel says the moment we pull into my driveway.
Sighing, I watch him with a giddy smile playing on my lips as he rounds the front of the truck to the passenger side. I place my hand in the one he holds out for me, not minding for one second the rough and calloused pads of his fingers.
Every callus came directly from a hard day’s work.
“Thank you,” I say just above a whisper as he closes the passenger door behind me.
“Tonight was …” I sigh and look upward, standing with my back to my front door on my porch. Joel stands a few inches away, hovering over me. “The best date I’ve ever been on,” I tell him honestly.
The smile Joel gives me makes my heart sing. “This is the first time I’ve been out all night long with a woman in a very long time.”
“And it ended with the birth of a baby.”
We both chuckle at my silly joke.
“I’m glad I didn’t go with my first mind of dropping you off back home before going out to the ranch.”
I step closer, moving my hand up and down the length of his front. “Me either. I’ll never forget tonight,” I admit.
My gaze floats up to the cowboy hat he’s wearing. He changed out of the one he wore on our date for one that was in his office when he changed clothes. This also happens to be the black hat that he left over my place a week ago.
“Nice hat,” I tease.
He glances upward before removing the hat by its top. “It’s my favorite,” he says, stunning me into silence when he places it on my head.
My daughter’s words about cowboys and their hats come to mind but I don’t say them out loud.
Instead, I raise my face to meet Joel as he lowers to kiss me. A soft sigh pushes through my mouth, before his fingers wrap around my chin, holding me in place.
Every kiss with this man feels like stepping into a new dimension of this relationship. He pulls me in deeper and deeper with every pass of his tongue across my bottom lip.
Before I get pulled too deeply, however, Joel pulls back.
“You should get inside.”
I nod and then twist the door handle, having already unlocked it. “Hey, Joel,” I call, even though he hasn’t moved an inch.
“Yeah?”
I cut my gaze in the direction of his house before looking at him again. “I might not be one of your boys, but I’ve been known to do an alright job when it comes to house decorating.”
He raises an eyebrow, silently asking me to elaborate.
“I’m still not ready to decorate my own house for Christmas, but I wouldn’t say no if you asked for some help with yours.” I hold up my hands. “I promise to help make it the best this neighborhood has ever seen.”
Man, if I thought the smile he’d given me earlier was special, I hadn’t seen anything. The sparkle in his eyes reminds me of the time we took the kids to see the Christmas tree lighting in Times Square.
It’s that bright.
“I’m holdin’ you to that,” he answers.
“Good.”
I watch as he heads down the stairs of the porch before turning to go inside.
“Hey, Ellyn?” he calls, making me stop halfway inside of my door.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing wrong with being too much like you,” he says.
I wrinkle my brows.
“Earlier tonight, you said your oldest is too much like you. You said it like it was something negative,” he adds.
“From what I can tell she’s blessed to be just like her mama.
Because the woman standing in front of me has the heart of a lioness and the will of a winner.
Your daughter will come out on top just like you. ”
My eyes instantly gloss over while my bottom lip starts to tremble. I remain frozen too touched by his words to move a muscle.
“Go inside,” Joel encourages softly after almost a minute of silence.
I force my feet to move. The second I close my door behind me, I press my back against it, closing my eyes.
I had no idea, and I certainly didn’t see it coming.
But this is the exact moment that I know for certain that I’ve fallen in love with my next-door neighbor.