Summer at Mustang Ridge (9 page)

“Is it really Friday?”

“All day.”

“Jeez. Guess I must be having fun.” And she was, really, but just not in the way she’d expected. She liked riding Loco, liked having the huge outdoors to wander with Lizzie, seeing everything from purple flower-filled fields to the neighboring ranch’s buffalo and ostrich, and the occasional tantalizing glimpse of the free-ranging horses that gave the ranch its name. She hadn’t seen any predators yet, but Krista had mentioned finding mountain lion prints the other day. In a weird way, though, it didn’t feel all that different from the city. Shelby carried her pepper spray, stayed aware of her and Lizzie’s surroundings, and made sure someone back at the main house knew where they had gone on their rambles. And even though Lizzie hadn’t made the big breakthrough they both wanted, Shelby thought she was making more eye contact, smiling more.

Maybe. Hopefully.

“So,” she said to Herman. “I guess that means it’s barbecue day?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gran said in her Herman voice.

Thinking it sounded like Cookie Monster after he’d been kicked in the nuts, Shelby stifled a grin. “Want me to get started on the wings?”

“Sounds good. We’ll work on the corn bread.” Gran tucked Herman under her arm. “And don’t forget the bonfire later tonight. Marshmallows and gossip, be there or be square.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for all the s’mores in the world. We’ll be there.”

But by the time the stars came out and the bonfire was under way, Lizzie was tired and withdrawn, and after a brief debate with herself, Shelby left her daughter with her phone close at hand and a horse movie on her iPad, and went down to the party alone for the second week in a row.

And, for the second week in a row, she found herself hesitating at the edge of the lake. This time, though, it wasn’t because she was ducking Krista and the others. It was because she wanted to see someone else more.

She wasn’t sure if Foster had been avoiding her, or if he’d just been busy with his normal duties and hadn’t had the time to find her and say hi. Not that he would’ve had any real reason to come find her. Unless he’d wanted to, in which case he would have.

Right?

“Note to self,” she said. “Get a grip.” She wasn’t the silly sixteen-year-old version of herself who’d fallen stupid in love with the captain of the football team two towns over, only to find out too late that he had girlfriends in three different high schools. And she wasn’t the starry-eyed romantic she’d been at twenty, when she’d fallen for Patrick because he’d been everything her father wasn’t, or so she’d thought. No, she was a grown-up and a mom who had learned that her hormones had some seriously bad judgment in the guy department. Or maybe they had wised up, too, because there was no arguing that Foster was a good man. He was quietly thoughtful, good with animals and kids, and responsible as the day was long. But even if she was interested in more than a “what if” sort of way, she didn’t have any reason to think he felt the same sort of
va-voom
she did. He’d been nothing but professional.

Which made him a safe crush, come to think.

Hello, head case
.

Laughing at herself, she headed for the dock, shucked off her boots, and stuck her feet into the water, shivering as the cold bit in. It felt more refreshing than painful this week. Did that mean it was getting warmer, or was she cowboying up?

“Ready for a swim?” Foster asked from close behind her.

This time she managed not to jump out of her skin, barely. Hoping he couldn’t see her blush, she twisted back to grin up at him. “Not unless this pond comes with a heater. I like my creature comforts.”

Don’t babble,
she told herself, and stifled an inner laugh. When was the last time she’d gotten flustered talking to a guy? She worked with men all the time, from the hot UPS guy all the girls in the office drooled over to the high-rolling creative directors of huge companies, and they didn’t get to her one bit. This guy, though—this cowboy—had her tripping over her words.

It’s the atmosphere,
she told herself,
and the fact that there’s a limited pool of Y chromosomes here
. If she had met him in the city, he would’ve blended into the crowd.

Okay, maybe not.

The silence had stretched out long enough to get a little awkward, so she added, “I didn’t hear you this time, either.”

“I invoked my supersecret ninja mode.” He gestured down.

There was the humor she’d suspected, thought she’d seen, only to have him hide it, as if he didn’t want her to notice. “Ah,” she said, following his gesture, “no boots. Ninja, indeed.” And darned if she didn’t get a little charge out of seeing his bare feet and rolled-up jeans. One of his big toes was crooked, and his ankles and the tops of his feet were lightly dusted with short, wiry hairs and a few surprising freckles, just visible in the muted moonlight. “I, um, guess that means you’re ready for a swim?”

“Not so much, but if a city girl can hack it, so can I.” He sat down and swung his feet around to drop them into the water with a sigh. “Ah. Balmy.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Sort of, only she wasn’t feeling the lake’s chill anymore. He’d left a good distance between them, so it didn’t make any sense that she could feel the heat from his body. Or that when he shifted to brace one hand between them at the edge of the dock, it was as if he’d touched her, even though he was still several inches away.

Hello? A grip. Get one.
It wasn’t even like he’d come to see her, not really. Like any good trainer, he was checking in on the week’s progress.

“I should thank you again for letting me ride Loco. He’s been incredibly patient with me. I’ve gotten to where I can just about complete the pattern at the trot—um, I mean ‘jog’—and I can sort of fumble through it at the lope, though it’s not pretty.”

Foster just nodded. “And Lizzie?”

She squelched the ingrained instinct to give him the standard
she’s fine, everything’s fine
. “Not much progress to report, I’m afraid. She’ll sit outside the stalls all day with the guards up, feeding wisps of hay one at a time, but she won’t set foot inside the barn if there’s a horse on the cross ties.”

“It’ll come.”

She wished she had his confidence, but while he knew horses, she knew her kid. “Stace has been great—she’s swapped over to unmounted lessons, teaching her about the parts of the horse and all the equipment, and explaining some of the theory of riding, and especially how to read their body language and stay safe around them.” And Lizzie, in her own way, was eating up the lessons. She stayed focused and quiet, even nodding to herself from time to time. But when Shelby brought up the idea of her riding, or even helping brush the saintly Loco, she shut right back down.

“Stace knows her stuff. And she knows when to push, when to lay off. You’ve got plenty of time yet, Mama Bear. Don’t let it get you down.”

She blew out a breath, trying to stem the prickles of irritation. “I know you’re right, and that’s what I keep telling myself. Only it’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past two years.” Longer, really, because before Lizzie’s problems, things had been going from bad to worse with Patrick, with her waiting it out and telling herself to be patient, that things would get better. Only they hadn’t, not on either front. “I just wish—” She broke off, suddenly aware that her pulse was too quick, her fingers wrapped around the edge of the dock hard enough to hurt. “I wish it could be different, that’s all.”

“Getting frustrated’ll just make things worse.”

The blush got a thousand times worse. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re—” She bit it off and made herself count to ten, concentrating on the chill of the water . . . and, after a moment, the knowledge that she was only annoyed because he was right. This wasn’t about Patrick or the past two years. She needed to focus on today, and the knowledge that Lizzie had made some progress since they’d come here. “Darn it. I’m not mad at her. It’s just . . .” She sighed. “I’m not. I love her like crazy, no matter what.”

Had she said that enough recently?

He nudged her with his arm. “Don’t beat yourself up. We all have those days. It’s not about never getting frustrated, whether it’s with a kid, yourself, a horse, a job, or whatever. It’s about holding it together until you get someplace where you can blow off some steam without it setting things back.”

She looked over, expecting to see his profile as he stared across the lake to the fire, where Ty strummed his guitar and several couples were swaying in a slow dance.

Instead, he was staring straight at her.

The flush came back with a vengeance, this time starting in her chest and warming her there for a second before it spread up her throat to her face. “Um.”

“How do you blow off steam, Shelby?”

Had he called her by name before? Maybe once or twice, but never before while looking at her as if she was his entire focus. No horses, no Lizzie, just her. Heat prickled along her nerve endings and gathered in her belly, and she had a sudden crazy image of reaching for him, touching him. His denim jacket would be faintly rough, the leather-lined collar smooth, and then his skin would go from soft to raspy where beard stubble roughened the skin, making textures in the reflected firelight. He wasn’t wearing his hat—was that in the Ninja Code?—and his hair swept back from his forehead in thick, inviting waves that made her itch to touch, to explore.

Don’t do it,
she told herself. Either things would get real awkward real fast, or else they wouldn’t, and she’d be going down a path that didn’t make any sense. Sex—or any sort of romantic entanglement, really—wasn’t recreational for her. It was . . . well, she didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t recreational.

“Seriously,” he pressed. “What do you do to decompress?”

“I, um . . .” She scrambled to reassemble her thoughts, wondering if Krista had said something to him, or if everyone looked at her and wondered what she did for fun, if anything. Did she have an invisible
I Seriously Need to Get a Life
tattoo on her forehead? “I don’t know. I just hold it together, I guess.” Most of the time, anyway. And when things built up to the point that she couldn’t hack it anymore, she waited until Lizzie was asleep, shut herself in the bathroom, and had a good shower cry. And she so wasn’t telling him that.

“Better to give yourself an outlet. Take it from someone who knows. Things can build up without you realizing it, and then you’ll make mistakes that can echo on for longer than you think.”

It was the closest he’d come to saying anything personal to her, and the regret in his voice was palpable. A little shimmer went through her, a tightening of the heat inside. “Like what kind of mistakes?”

“Not the kind you’d make with your little one, not in a million years.”

In other words, MYOB. She frowned, but didn’t let herself push. “Okay, so what do you do to blow off steam?” That shouldn’t have felt like a cheesy pickup line, not when they were talking about her daughter. Except they weren’t exactly talking about Lizzie anymore, and it was starting to feel more like getting-to-know-you conversation than planning strategy.

Maybe. Possibly.

He shrugged. “These days, I play the guitar a little, ride out by myself a lot, watch a movie now and then. When I was younger, I would’ve gone up into the high country and wasted some bullets. Maybe gotten drunk and picked a fight. Didn’t take me too long to figure out that didn’t fix anything, and I didn’t much enjoy it, so I went in another direction.”

She looked away, to where the dancers had made a ring around the bonfire, and seemed to be doing the chicken dance. “Yeah. I get how that is.”

Silence descended. It didn’t feel awkward this time, but it wasn’t quite comfortable, either. More like they were both waiting for something. After a moment, he said, “You want to tell me about when she went quiet?”

And there it was, the question everybody wanted to ask, but few ever did except the doctors. It wasn’t hard to answer, though—not when she’d been over it a million times in her head, trying to find the missing piece, the “aha” moment that would fix everything. Except there wasn’t an “aha,” wasn’t any magic cure.

“It started when she was six and a half, in first grade,” she said, staring out over the water. “Her teacher let me know she was having trouble reading, and getting flustered about it. We worked on it, and she was getting better, but there was this bully . . .” She shrugged. “Anyway, SM usually grows out of a combination of things—perfectionism, shyness, sensitivity, sometimes a learning disability and the shame that comes with it . . . It all goes into robbing a kid of her voice, a little bit at a time, until one day she’s not talking at all, not even at home.”

“And her father?”

“That was part of it. Patrick and I had been struggling for a while, holding it together for Lizzie’s sake, and because we kept hoping it would get better.” At least she had kept hoping it would, telling herself that all he needed was a couple of new jobs for his company, a little less pressure from his boss, fewer boozy nights out with his coworkers. “When she started having trouble, he . . . checked out, I guess you could say. He didn’t want to deal with a learning-disabled kid on top of everything else.”

“She seems plenty bright to me.” Foster’s expression stayed mild, but his voice gained an edge.