If he never had to be responsible for anything ever again…it would be too soon for him

Jake Thompson never realized how many decisions he used to make in a day until he lost the nerve to make any and was forced to leave the army. But he’s starting to believe this horse therapy program they’ve put him in might actually help to get past the nightmare of indecision he’s faced since losing his troop. And it’s all because of instructor Charlotte Nicholson.

As if the recently widowed single mom in charge of the rehab farm doesn’t have enough on her plate without Jake adding his problems to hers. But being with Charlie makes him think beyond his pain to the future. If seems as if he’s being offered a second chance at happiness…and all he needs to do is make the decision to take it. Something far easier said than done.

I could drive like this forever.

Jake’s shoulders touched hers as they sat behind the horses, and she felt a wave of guilty pleasure.

Remember, he’s still a warrior even if his smile and his hands are gentle at the moment. Whatever terrible event had broken this man, he showed signs that with time he might heal. The colonel wouldn’t have included him in group therapy if he hadn’t believed Jake could be healthy eventually.

Who knew what he would become once he pushed himself?

He was used to being alone, used to moving to the ends of the earth at a moment’s notice, just like Steve. Steve, the husband she was supposed to be mourning.

Were they so different, Jake and Steve?

Yes, Charlie thought, answering her own question. Here, in this carriage in this twilight, the two men were different. How deep the difference went, she had no way of knowing. Yet.

But she intended to find out.

Dear Reader,

This is a story about five wounded army vets who come to a draft-horse farm in west Tennessee to learn to drive carriages and build new careers. When I read about a group in Virginia that does just that, I knew I had to write Taking the Reins. I’ve been married to a retired army officer for over forty years, so I know firsthand the terrible strain military life puts on the men and women who serve, and their families, as well. Sometimes the wounds don’t show. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

If she teaches them to drive successfully, Charlotte (Charlie), the widow of a soldier, will prove she’s capable of running her father’s farm and providing a permanent home for her daughter, Sarah. She’s not interested in love. No more warriors. And her students are definitely off-limits. But then there’s Jake Thompson.…

Not only is Jake Thompson her student, he’s a soldier who is so psychologically damaged he refuses to make the smallest decision. But he can’t deny his feelings for Charlie, no matter how much he wants to. Can he take the chance of hurting her and her daughter? How can he learn to trust himself again?

Can these two damaged people find the strength to grow and heal so that they are worthy of lifelong love? What do you think?

I hope you like Jake and Charlie.

Carolyn

Taking the Reins

Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CAROLYN McSPARREN

This is Carolyn McSparren’s first Mills & Boon Heartwarming novel and her fourteenth book for Mills & Boon. Animals are important in all of her books. She has bred, birthed, trained, ridden and driven horses most of her life. At the moment she rides her dressage horse, a 17.2-hand half Clydesdale, and drives her carriage horse, a 16.2-hand half-Shire mare. A RITA® Award nominee and Maggie winner, Carolyn has lived in Germany, France, Italy and “too many cities in the U.S. to count.” She teaches writing seminars to romance and mystery writers, and writes mystery and women’s fiction, as well as romances. Carolyn lives in the country outside Memphis, Tennessee, in an old house with three indoor and half a dozen barn cats, three horses and one husband, not necessarily in order of importance.

Taking the Reins is dedicated to Joanna Wilburn, Bob Martin and the wonderful clinicians who teach me to drive my big half-Shire mare, Zoe. Thanks to the Nashoba Carriage Driving Association, my local driving club, for their stories, and their comradeship. Thanks for Meredith Giere, who makes sure I do things right on my harness and carriage, and to Sam Garner, who taught me to drive in the first place. Thanks to Pam Gamble, who drives a big carriage in downtown Memphis and showed me how to run a stable for very large horses in a very small city space. Finally, thanks to Beverly Hollingsworth, who conned me into my first carriage ride behind a nasty little Welsh pony named Picadilly. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTTE NICHOLSON, known as Charlie, slewed the elderly pickup through the farm’s front gate in a cloud of dust. She slammed on her brakes, slid to a stop five feet behind the Veterans Administration van, climbed out and ran to meet her class. She was late. Her father, the colonel, would kill her.

“Sorry, Daddy,” she said as she raced up to him. “I had to wait while they loaded the oats into the truck, and then they could only find three of the big trace mineral blocks I need for the pasture.”

Her father stood straight and tall, eyes on the van doors. “Charlotte Abigail, you are ten minutes late. You should learn to budget your time better, if you expect to teach this class.”

“You hired me to run the farm. You blackmailed me into teaching. Anyway, I didn’t miss anything. The van just got here.”

“That’s hardly the point. They were late. You should not have been.” He didn’t turn his head to look at her but continued to smile at the van doors as they soughed open. “I’m not blackmailing you. Call it other duties as assigned.”

Right. Maybe not blackmail, but he’d implied that this class was her baptism by fire. If she could train this small group of wounded vets to drive the draft horses the farm bred, all the while managing the daily operation of the place, she’d prove she was competent to take over the draft horse operation on her own without her father’s constant oversight.

He’d never cared about the farm, but it had always been her paradise. The place where her grandfather taught her to love horses.

Since the colonel owned the farm until his death, when it would pass to Charlie, she didn’t have much choice but to follow his orders. She loved the colonel in spite of what he called their issues, but she’d have preferred to love him from afar after he moved to a luxury condominium in Outer Mongolia. Harder to micromanage her from there.

Teaching this group couldn’t be tougher than teaching her seventh-grade English class at their last post. These veterans actually wanted to learn. Her seventh-graders definitely hadn’t. Thank heaven, her daughter, Sarah, had been in the eighth grade. No teenager liked to be taught by her mother. Sarah would have died of embarrassment.

Except for the vacations Charlie had spent with Granddad, she’d never lived in a house that didn’t belong to the United States Army. She swore she and Sarah would have a real home. Even if it killed her.

Her father hadn’t expected his grant to teach wounded veterans to drive draft horses with an aim of future employment would be approved so soon. I had planned to hire someone to teach while DeMarcus and Maurice continued to handle the barn and the horses, he’d told her. Now that you and Sarah are living here, it’s the perfect opportunity for you to show me what you can do.

Asking her father to provide a home for her and Sarah after Charlie’s husband was killed had been the toughest thing she had ever done, but she had no money until Steve’s death benefits kicked in. That might take a year. In the meantime, it was go home to daddy or live in her truck.

The colonel’s invitation was gracious. Once she got his attention he was always gracious. He refused to admit, though, that so long as he controlled the purse strings, he controlled her.

Now that Steve was dead, any man who tried to control her was in for the fight of his life and that included dear old Dad. She intended to be her own boss from here on. No more men telling her what to do. Definitely no more warriors.

Being back with the horses was heaven. Living as a hired hand in the old home was not. She simply had to convince the colonel she could run it alone. This was her chance.

“Come on, Charlie girl, let’s greet our guests,” he said, taking her arm.

What little confidence she had fled, and if she didn’t already have ulcers, she was about to develop them. But she had to continue to talk a good game. Otherwise, the vets would never trust her to train them.

What if she messed up? What if she made them worse? She shivered despite the ninety-five-degree temperature. “Remember, Charlie, Don’t teach the disabilities. Teach the people.” Her father waved to the van and whispered back, “Of course, if you don’t think you can manage...”

Talk about fighting words. Shoot, yeah, she could do it. “There are times I hate you.” She smiled as she said it, but he knew she was only half kidding.

“Most children hate their parents when they act like parents.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?”

“Absolutely.” The colonel stepped forward with his hand outstretched. His worn jeans and red polo shirt couldn’t conceal his military posture. His short hair might be gray, but his belly was still flat. He would always look like Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken front man, as he had before he retired. Well, semiretired. Technically, he was a civilian psychologist volunteering at the VA hospital in Memphis. This whole project was his baby. He’d written the grant that paid for it.

He had as much an investment in the success of this program as she did. And it had been a long time since she’d made a success of anything. She squared her shoulders and pasted a smile on her face. She’d pull this off if it killed her.

“Welcome to Great Horse Farm. Come on down,” the colonel said as the first figure appeared in the doorway. The woman inside didn’t take the hand he offered but scrambled down the few steps, carrying a duffel bag almost as big as she was.

“Colonel Vining, sir,” she said. She was only about five foot two and weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds. She wore huge wraparound sunglasses and kept her face turned to the right. Her voice was unexpectedly deep, and for a moment Charlie thought she might salute, but she caught herself. After all, none of them was officially in the military any longer.

“Welcome, Mary Anne,” the colonel said. He didn’t offer to shake her hand; nor did she offer it. Despite the August heat, she wore a long-sleeved plaid cotton shirt over tight jeans, and had tied a plain blue silk scarf over her ears and knotted it at the nape of her neck. A khaki leather glove covered her right hand.

“Mary Anne Howell, may I introduce my daughter, your instructor, Charlie Nicholson. Charlie, this is Mary Anne.”

“Ma’am,” Mary Anne said. No smile. No handshake. She picked up her duffel and stepped aside as a grizzled man with sun-roughened skin and close-cropped gray hair backed down the stairs.

“Come on, Major,” he said, “time to get out. Bring your gear with you.” He might have been coaxing a puppy out of a crate.

As he backed away, a tall, thin man stepped off the bus. Hatless, he blinked in the sunlight. His hair hadn’t been cut in a while, and whoever had done it last hadn’t so much barbered as butchered it. He might even have whacked at it himself. It must have been corn-gold when he was younger. Now the gray had muted it to pewter. His face bore the creases and wrinkles that came from living under a fierce sun.

“Afternoon, Colonel, ma’am,” said the shorter man with a broad grin. “Retired Master Sergeant Sean O’Riley at your service. I won’t shake hands if you don’t mind.” He lifted his right arm. “I don’t have the hang of this danged mechanical gadget yet. I could crush your fingers.”

At first glance the sergeant’s prosthetic hand looked remarkably natural. The skin tone matched O’Riley’s tan, but the skin itself was too perfect. Charlie thought a couple of freckles or liver spots would make it more lifelike.

O’Riley indicated the man beside him, who had neither moved nor spoken. “This is Major Jacob Thompson. Jake, come on over and meet these good folks.”

The man took two steps forward, shook hands with the colonel and nodded to Charlie.

He then took two steps back and waited patiently.

As the daughter of an army psychologist, Charlie had grown up watching her father’s patients come and go. She recognized at once that this man had hit the disconnect switch.

“Hey, get me down off this thing before I fall on my face!”

The tenor voice came from behind the van.

“Hang on,” grumbled a baritone. “Or I’ll shoot you off this lift and onto the road!”

Charlie heard a whir, and a moment later a young man—a very young man—barreled around the end of the bus in his wheelchair like an Indy racer. “Hey. I’m Mickey Peterson. Bet you didn’t expect to have to teach me to drive a carriage, did you?”

The colonel smiled broadly. “Actually, Mickey, we have a carriage set up for your wheelchair.”

“I’m not spending the rest of my life in this thing,” Mickey said. “Soon as I get strong enough on my braces, I’ll race you and your carriage.” He pumped the air. “Hey, Hank,” he called over his shoulder. “Bring me my gear, will ya?”

“You got it.” The man in question walked up behind Mickey and dumped the duffel onto Mickey’s lap.

“Hey, man, not so hard!”

“Why? You can’t feel it.”

“Wanna bet?” Mickey whispered, “Jerk.”

“So you must be Hank,” the colonel said.

“Second Lieutenant Hank Ames.” He shook the colonel’s hand and tossed a dazzling smile at Charlie. “Ma’am?”

“Charlotte Nicholson,” she said. “Everyone calls me Charlie.”

Hank’s hand was rough and strong, like the rest of him, but his nails were manicured. He had the broad shoulders and slim hips of an athlete, and stood eye to eye with her own five-ten. He was also one of the handsomest men Charlie had ever seen outside a Ralph Lauren ad. His too-long mop of black curly hair had been razor cut and he boasted incredible chocolate eyes, and teeth that looked as though every one had been professionally capped and bleached. His Levi’s were starched and pressed, and his plaid rodeo shirt had snaps down the front instead of buttons.

She glanced at his feet. Yep. The boot-cut jeans were too long and bunched at the ankle over cowboy boots, the way real cowboys wore them. Expensive boots, from the look of them. Ostrich, maybe.

“You’re the rodeo rider,” the colonel said.

Instantly the man’s handsome face clouded. “Used to be. Need two feet in the stirrups to ride saddle broncs.”

* * *

MAJOR JAKE THOMPSON considered climbing back in the van and returning to Memphis, but while he hesitated, the doors closed and the engine started.

He turned to follow the others and met the woman’s eyes. Charlie?

She smiled at him. He surprised himself by smiling back, then felt his face flush. She wasn’t beautiful, but her gray eyes were warm and her mouth was generous. He dropped his gaze, surprised that he had responded to her.

She was tall and straight and strong, the way he remembered his sisters being.

Don’t think about your sisters.

Sean grabbed his arm and propelled him forward to join the group. “Come on, Jake, my bucko. You’re going to love it here. You’ll be better in no time.”

He doubted that, but he didn’t argue. He smelled the dry summer Bermuda grass, closed his eyes and heard the breeze whispering through the big oak trees. What would it feel like to lie in the grass again and stare at the stars the way he had as a kid? When everything seemed possible. When his family was still permitted to speak to him. Before he had all those lives on his conscience.

When he’d dreamed of all the places he’d go after he left the farm behind, he hadn’t included Iraq and Afghanistan on his wish list.

“Man, smell that manure,” Hank said. “I do love the smell of horse.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mickey turned in his chair. “Manure? Really?”

“Really,” Jake said, butting into the conversation. Better than the garbage Dumpsters in downtown Memphis. Better than the crowds and noise that never seemed to stop, even at four in the morning when he walked to escape the nightmares. When he saw all those faces. Even after the colonel took charge and rented him a room in a halfway house, he’d stayed only long enough for meals before he began those lone walks again.

Most of the men who hung out on the street and under the overpasses in the downtown badlands had problems with alcohol or drugs. Once they discovered he hardly carried any money, they didn’t hassle him. Everyone left him alone. He was sober and clean, and he didn’t beg.

In any case, even if he’d had the money to dull the pain, he wouldn’t have been able to choose between all the various substances. Since the very, very bad early days after leaving the military, he hadn’t been able to make a decision about anything.

His rational mind knew that wearing mismatched socks would not cause a meteor to fall on Tennessee. But the voice in his head whispered, But if it did, it would be your fault.

You give yourself too much power, the colonel had said in one of their sessions.

Okay, so I choose the wrong pair of socks and get some poor old lady hit by a truck because she’s staring at my ankles. Same difference.

He knew it wasn’t. Why did he keep feeling it was?

He might get better if he could go back in time and change some of the disastrous decisions he’d made. As it was, his safest course was not to make any more. How did he atone for disasters everyone else told him weren’t his fault?

Sean dropped back a stride. “Keep up, Jake.”

“Hey, look at the size of those suckers,” Hank said and pointed toward the pasture, where a half-dozen giant horses lifted their heads and watched the newcomers before continuing to graze. “When do we get to drive ’em?”

“Soon enough,” the colonel said. “Orientation and house rules first. Come on, everybody.” He opened a door into the stable and waited while the group walked inside. “This is the common room. It’s where you’ll meet and eat while you’re here. Mickey, will your chair fit through the entrance?”

“Yeah, if I aim right. Boy, this is some kind of plush for a stable.”

“The living quarters are for visiting clinicians and people interested in the horses,” the colonel said. “The bedrooms are through there.”

“The nearest motel is ten miles away,” Charlie added. “You would not want to stay there. This way, you’re with the horses twenty-four/seven.”

“We’ve got a room and bath set up on the first floor for you, Mickey,” the colonel said, heading in that direction. The others took a quick look and drifted back to the common room, but Charlie stayed with her father and Mickey.

The pocket door to Mickey’s room was extra wide to accommodate his wheelchair. Once inside, the colonel waved around the room. “Lift for the bed, shower and john set up for you. Dr. Steadman vetted it before he signed off to let you come out here. You and Mary Anne will be on the main floor. Sean, Jake and Hank all have rooms upstairs.”

“May need some help with the lifts and stuff,” Mickey said with a grimace. “Call me Tin Man. My braces don’t take to showers real well.” Charlie sensed how much he hated asking for assistance. He cocked an eyebrow at her and leered, “Want to help me?”

She laughed. “Good try. The colonel swears you can manage fine on your own.”

“Oh, well, if I have to. Just keep Li’l Buckaroo Hank away from me. He thinks because he was an officer he’s too good to help an enlisted man.”

“He’s not in the army any longer,” Charlie said. “I’m the only one with rank in this organization.”

“I thought the colonel was in charge here.”

“I’m officially retired,” her father said, “although this program is my idea.” He leaned a hip against the corner of the wheelchair-height dresser and folded his arms. “Charlie is actually responsible for training you guys.” He walked back into the hall. “When you’ve finished exploring, join us in the common room.”

“Excellent,” Mickey said, spinning his chair and rolling over to Charlie. “I can plug my battery in beside the bed. I don’t really need the hoist. I can make it from my chair to the bed and back without hydraulics. This should work.”

“How often do you wear your braces?”

“Not often enough right now, but I’m getting stronger. I’m supposed to walk every day.”

“Don’t you?”

He shrugged. “The braces are a pain to put on and a pain to wear. Sometimes I let it slide, you know? You do have Wi-Fi, right?”

“Yes, Mickey, even here in the outer reaches of space we have Wi-Fi. See you in the common room in fifteen minutes.” She shut his door behind her.

The other trainee room on the first floor had been given to Mary Anne Howell, since she was the only female. Charlie knocked on her door, which stood ajar.

“Settling in all right?” she asked.

Mary Ann turned away and pulled down the sleeve of her shirt to cover the edge of her glove. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

“It’s Charlie, not ma’am, okay?” Charlie wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to cover up, that nobody cared about her scars. Not quite true. Mary Anne cared. Charlie didn’t know the extent of her disfigurement. The others might not, either.

Upstairs, Sean and Hank had rooms across the hall from one another. Charlie reminded them both about the meeting in the common room. “Short orientation, then lunch.”

O’Riley followed her down the hall, caught her arm and said, “Ma’am, better let me bring the major.”

By that time she’d reached Jake’s room. The door stood wide open, and she could see him sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands loose in his lap, while he stared out the window. What was he seeing? The trees and fields, or something else?

“Hey, Jake, buddy, we’ve got to go downstairs for a meeting,” O’Riley said. “You gotta be hungry.”

Without a word, Jake stood. As he passed Charlie in the doorway, he flashed her a smile so sweet it took her breath away. Watching him walk down the hall and start down the steps, she noticed the limp. She pointed to Sean’s room, followed him in and shut the door.

“Okay, what’s with Major Thompson?”

“He’s a good man.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“He took shrapnel in his knee. Knees don’t ever heal right, so he’ll always limp.”

“Sean, that’s not all. I need to know, if I’m going to train him to drive a horse-drawn carriage and take care of draft horses.”

Sean sank onto his bed. Charlie leaned against the wall.

“All I know, he was wounded in an ambush in Iraq. He got out with a bum knee. Nobody else did. Since then he can’t make decisions.” O’Riley shrugged. “Hard to hold a job.”

“I’ll bet.”

“He was my roommate at our halfway house, so I’ve been kind of looking after him since I went there to learn to use my hand.”

Great. So far, the kid in the wheelchair showed the most potential of the lot.

Sean could crush a carriage shaft with his prosthetic hand. Mary Ann wouldn’t look straight ahead, take off her glove or wear a short-sleeved shirt in Memphis heat because of what must be burn scars on her arm. The handsome rodeo rider with one foot gave every impression of being both bad-tempered and bitter.

And finally, Jake Thompson wouldn’t be able to take the reins on a carriage because he couldn’t make a decision about which way to go.

Lovely.

If she could train these people to drive well enough to land them jobs with carriage outfits after they finished the course, she deserved a medal—she just hoped it wouldn’t be a Purple Heart.

CHAPTER TWO

THE COLONEL LEANED one arm along the rough wood mantel in the big common room while he waited for the others to find places to sit. He was always relaxed with patients and strangers. Not so much with his family. When he noticed them.

“Where’s the major?” Charlie asked. “He came down just before us.”

“I’ll go find him,” Sean said, and started for the door to the stable.

Charlie touched his arm. “You need to listen to this. I’ll find him.”

“But...”

She was already out the door. Maybe Major Thompson had decided he couldn’t endure being so close to other people. Had he walked to the road to hitchhike back to Memphis?

According to Sean, he didn’t have that much gumption.

Several of the horses that weren’t out in pasture were taking midmorning naps in their stalls. A couple snored. Over their snuffles she heard a soft male voice. As she stood listening, her cell phone rang. She snatched it out of her jeans and answered quietly.

“Charlie, it’s DeMarcus. They there yet?”

“Half an hour ago,” she told the farmhand.

“You know I’m not happy the colonel gave me and Maurice two weeks’ vacation, even if he is paying us. You gonna be able to do it all with just those folks to help?”

“I have to try.”

DeMarcus snorted. “Huh. He’s got no kinda idea how much work goes into keeping the pastures cut and the barn clean. You want us to come back? Give you a hand?”

“Give me a couple of days to see if I can manage. I may call you screaming for help.”

“You know you got shavings coming first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ve also got three trace mineral blocks and a dozen fifty-pound bags of oats in the back of the truck.”

“Don’t you unload ’em by yourself!”

“I promise I won’t. Bye, DeMarcus. Have fun on your vacation.” She sighed as she stuck her cell phone back into her jeans. Hank, Jake and Sean all looked capable of stacking bags of oats and shoveling shavings. She had argued and argued with her father about giving the regular grooms time off, but he wanted the students to learn to do everything themselves.

“They’ll have to know the basics if they’re going to work with horses,” he had said.

Actually, it wasn’t that big an operation. The new arrivals should be able to handle things with her to straw boss them. Jake was still talking. Sounded as though he was down by the double stall where the stallion Picard held court.

The nineteen-hand black shire was usually a good guy unless you tried to get between him and a mare in heat, but he was still a stallion, given to mood swings from loving to irascible. Always arrogant. For safety’s sake, the rule was that nobody messed with him without backup.

Jake hadn’t gotten the word. She found him inside the stall running a dandy brush over Picard’s shining black pelt, while the big horse leaned into him and sighed in ecstasy. “Who’s a good boy, then?” Jake crooned. “You’re a fine old boy, aren’t you?” His gentle voice warmed something deep inside her.

She held her breath so that she wouldn’t spook either man or horse and waited for Jake to notice her. It was like watching your child play in the gorilla cage at the zoo.

“Uh, Major? Jake?” Charlie whispered.

Jake’s shoulders stiffened, and he dug the brush into Picard’s shoulder so hard the stallion gave an annoyed “harrumph.”

“We’re late for the orientation meeting,” she said, emphasizing the we. “I came to get you.” She held her hand out to him. He opened the stall door and laid the brush on her outstretched palm.

“I broke the rules?” he asked.

Working alone with Picard was definitely against the rules, but nothing had happened. “We don’t generally go into his stall without someone outside in case there’s a mare in season he wants to get to. He can be a handful, but he obviously appreciates what you’re doing.”

“I like the big guys,” Jake said. “I’d forgotten how good clean horse and fresh hay smell.” He grinned. “Yeah, even manure. I’m sorry if I worried you.” Picard leaned his head over his stall door and bopped Jake on the shoulder. Jake reached up and scratched between the stallion’s eyes, then gave that angelic smile again. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a mix of joy and loss in one expression.

“Picard was obviously pleased, so don’t worry about it.” She walked beside him back toward the common room. “The colonel mentioned you grew up on a farm. Did you drive draft horses?”

He looked away, the smile replaced by a rictus of pain. “I plowed my first furrow behind a Percheron when I was seven. By the time I left home, I could plow all day with a six-across team of Belgians.”

Charlie blinked. The idea of driving six draft horses across a single line was mind-boggling. She laughed. “Maybe you should be teaching this course.” She knew the minute the words left her mouth she’d said the wrong thing.

He froze. “No,” he said, and walked ahead of her into the den.

Ms. Big Mouth, Charlie thought. He might not have driven any kind of equine for years, but driving draft horses was like riding a bicycle. Hadn’t taken Charlie long to get her skills back after she and Sarah moved in.

He was probably a better driver than she was, and a better horseman, as well, considering Picard’s reaction. He’d be a great second in command if she could convince him to come out of his shell.

How could she get through to him? She’d do anything to see that smile again and hear the gentle voice he used with Picard. She intended to know the officer he must have been, even if she had to drag him kicking out of the shadows.

* * *

SEAN SETTLED JAKE in an empty seat on the banquette under the windows.

“Okay,” the colonel said, “here’s the deal. You five signed up to be test cases in a pilot program.” He held up a hand. “Sounds better than guinea pigs, doesn’t it? A similar program to train veterans to drive carriages has been a success in northern Virginia, and I think it can work down here. If you succeed, we already have jobs lined up for you.”

“What kind of jobs?” Hank asked.

Mary Ann’s hand went up. “How can we make a living driving horses? Who even does that anymore?”

“Can you say weddings, girl?” Mickey said. “Don’t see how you can fit a wheelchair on one of those Cinderella carriages, though.” He grinned at her. “Can’t you just see me hauling the bride’s train up to the church? Get that net stuff wound around my wheels and she’d wind up on her butt.”

“Shut up, Mickey,” Sean said without heat.

“We’ll talk about the opportunities over the next few weeks as we figure out your particular skill set,” the colonel continued. “Take the rest of the day to unpack, settle in and learn your way around. This wing of the stable contains your living, dining and cooking area.”

Mickey raised a hand. “How come you have a dormitory in your barn?”

The colonel smiled. “My father ran training courses where people could learn to farm with draft horses. This is our first course since his death some years ago.”

“We’ll set up a roster of chores both for the living areas and the stable,” Charlie said. “Or you can make your own. You’re not simply going to be driving. You’ll be mucking stalls, cleaning tack—maybe even a little farriery. Learning everything it takes to become a horseman. For the first few weeks, you will be the only people working with the horses. After that, our regular grooms come back.”

“How about food?” Mickey asked. He had that perpetually famished teenage look. Charlie guessed that no matter how much he ate, he’d always be hungry and skinny.

“There’ll be breakfast makings sent over from the main house every morning,” the colonel said. “Cereal, juices, bagels, rolls. If you want to cook, there are eggs and bacon in the refrigerator.” He gestured to the doublewide steel refrigerator in the small but well-equipped kitchen area open to the main room. “Make your own coffee. Clean up after yourselves. There’s a dishwasher. The lunch and dinner dishes will be sent over from the kitchen in my house on a trolley. They’ll either be picked up after dinner, or one of you can take the trolley back. There’s a bigger dishwasher at the house. Anything special you want, there’s a whiteboard beside the refrigerator you can write on. We’ll try to accommodate you as much as possible.”

“Beer?” Hank asked.

“Within reason,” the colonel said. “I don’t recommend wine or liquor. And don’t overdo it. Working in the hot sun long-lining a seventeen-hand Percheron while nursing a hangover will be plenty of punishment for getting drunk.”

“So how do we get it?” Hank asked. “We’re prisoners out here working our rear ends off to run your operation and all we get is room and board.”

“Plus a small weekly stipend,” the colonel said. “You all knew the rules going in. It’s not much, but it’ll give you spending money in town.”

“Do we have to hitchhike?” Hank seemed intent on being belligerent, and Charlie wondered where his anger came from.

“There’s a couple of pickup trucks for farm use,” Charlie said. “I see no reason why we can’t have a weekly pizza run. Maybe Chinese or sushi.”

“Our cook, Vittorio, will provide lunch and dinner over here six nights a week,” the colonel added. “Saturday night you’re on your own. I’ll join you for the occasional meal, but this is Charlie’s baby, not mine. It is imperative that you all have lunch and dinner together. That’s when you’ll discuss the day’s instruction, get assignments and handle problems. Now, there should be sandwiches for lunch today already in the refrigerator.”

“We can set stuff out on the counter,” Charlie said. “I’m starved.” She turned to ask Mary Anne to help, then realized she had chosen her because she was a woman. “Hank, give me a hand, will you?”

“Sure.” He flashed her a smile. Huh. So he argued with male authority figures and charmed the females. She could use that.

“Silverware’s in that drawer, place mats in the one under it.”

Hank was already pulling glasses and plates out of the cabinets above the sink. He was apparently over his pet for the moment. Maybe it was only the colonel who annoyed him. If he had a problem with authority figures—and many rodeo cowboys did—why did he join the military? And how on earth did he get to be an officer?

By now everyone was helping to set out lunch. Everyone except Jake. He sat with his hands loose in his lap and his face turned toward the window and the pasture beyond. It wasn’t that he was avoiding the job. He simply didn’t seem to be aware it needed doing.

When the food was ready, everybody sat down except Jake, who didn’t look up. Charlie gave a slight shake of her head at Sean, who was about to call him over. “Let me,” she whispered. Jake didn’t react as her shadow fell across him. “Time to eat, Jake. Aren’t you hungry?”

He made no move toward the table.

“Come on, join us,” she said.

As the platters of sandwiches were passed around, he ignored them.

Charlie took a sandwich from each platter, put them on his plate, poured his diet soda into his glass and asked, “Would you like mayo and mustard?”

He didn’t respond.

“Yeah. And pickles and potato chips.” Sean took the plate. “I’ll do it for him.” When Charlie raised her eyebrows, Sean added in a whisper, “He doesn’t eat with people.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’ll go outside on the patio or up to his room, but he won’t sit at the table with us.”

“But he has to. It’s one of the few hard and fast rules the colonel’s set up for this group.”

Sean added condiments to Jake’s sandwiches and picked up a soda with his prosthetic hand. “Hey, look at that. I didn’t crush the can. I’m actually getting the hang of this thing.”

Charlie decided not to push Jake at this meal. She’d stand back and watch what he did. But he would have dinner with them.

Jake took the plate and drink from Sean, walked out onto the patio, sat in the swing and wolfed down his sandwiches.

Nothing wrong with his appetite. He’d chosen to groom the stallion, although he might not think of it as a choice. Maybe horses were the key to getting him to reconnect with the world.

Charlie would start by cajoling him into making small decisions with the horses. Could other animals help, as well? She’d try him out on the barn cats.

If he could actually touch one without getting himself raked to the bone, he was a true animal whisperer.

But even felines made allowances for damaged human beings. Usually. The big brindle tomcat regarded man as a lesser species created only to provide for his comfort. He wouldn’t cut the president any slack.

Jake brought his empty plate and soda can back into the kitchen but didn’t seem to know what to do with them.

“Put the can in the trash and the plate in the dishwasher,” Sean said.

Charlie added, “We have brownies in the microwave for dessert. Jake, why don’t you get them?”

That apparently counted as a command, because he took them from the microwave and carried them to the table, then looked uncertain where to put them. Charlie took the plate. “Thanks.”

She was passing the brownies to Mary Anne when the door from the stable burst open and Sarah burst in, then came to an abrupt halt. “Oh!” she said. “They’re here already. I didn’t see the van.” She turned to flee.

“Been and gone. Lunch was scheduled for noon,” Charlie said with a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. It read twelve thirty-five.

“You could have called me. Did you leave me anything to eat?”

“Sarah, we have guests.”

She pivoted toward the table. From her vantage point, Charlie caught the precise moment her daughter spotted Mickey and Hank. “Uh, hi,” she said, but her words, like her eyes, took in no one except the two young men.

“This is my daughter, Sarah,” Charlie said. At fourteen, Sarah was already six feet, a tall colt of a girl. She’d cried for days when one of the boys she liked at school called her the Jolly Pink Giant.

When Charlie heard about that, she wanted to complain to the guidance counselor. Actually, she wanted to drop the boy down the nearest volcano, but Sarah begged her to let it go.

The vets would read Sarah’s toss of her head and peremptory tone as arrogance, but Charlie knew it masked terminal shyness.

She put the last two sandwiches on a plate and handed them to her daughter. “Soda’s in the fridge. What have you been up to all morning?”

Sarah bristled. “I’ve been answering my emails, okay? There’s nothing to do around here.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Nothing to do?” Hank gaped and pointed out the window. “Girl, you got horses!”

“They’re just driving horses,” Sarah said. “You can’t ride ’em or anything.”

Hank laughed, showing every one of his perfect teeth. “If you can drive ’em, you can ride ’em.”

“Mom was the only one who ever hung around the post stables.” Sarah eyed Charlie. “But then there was tons of other stuff to do. Actual humans and the post exchange and a pool and stuff.”

“You’ll make new friends once school starts,” Hank said. “Hey, you must be good at it, right? Army brats are.”

“They’ll hate me.”

“Why would they hate a foxy chick like you?” Hank said.

Charlie cleared her throat and caught Hank’s eye. This was her daughter he was calling a foxy chick. He had the grace to look away.

“Right. As if.” Sarah picked up the sandwiches, added a couple of brownies to the pile, stuck a diet soda under her arm and headed for the door.

“Lay off the computer for the rest of the day,” Charlie said.

“Mom!”

“Show us around this afternoon,” Mickey said, looking to Charlie to make sure that was okay. She nodded. “You can wheel the crip.” His chair whirred as it backed away from the table.

Sarah’s eyes widened. Apparently she hadn’t realized he was in a wheelchair. She recovered instantly and flashed him a grin of her own, the first real smile Charlie had seen on her face in days. “I’m up for that, just not right now.” She flipped her long, light-brown hair over her shoulder. “I suppose I’ll go read an actual b-o-o-k. Is that all right with you, Mother dear?”

“Sarah—” Charlie began. Without waiting for an answer her daughter went out and shut the door firmly behind her.

“She hated having to move down here,” Charlie explained. “She’s lived on post since she was born. Out here she’s lonely and bored.” There was no reason to tell them that Sarah had lost her father less than a year ago. She might not act as though she was still grieving, but Charlie knew she was and ached for her. She wanted so much to help, but Sarah wasn’t interested. She blamed her mother for her father’s defection and death and didn’t hesitate to tell her.

Nobody said anything. Men. They probably had no idea what to say.

“I haven’t helped much,” Charlie added. Big understatement. Why couldn’t she simply tell Sarah she loved her and keep on telling her until she believed it? Charlie asked herself for the hundredth time. Heaven knew she wanted to, but she didn’t know how.

One thing she’d learned from her father very early—don’t show your heart to anybody, especially the people you love. You do, you get zapped.

“At her age she’d find fault with Paradise,” Sean finally said. “I’ve got two daughters of my own. One’s majoring in engineering in St. Louis and is relatively civilized. The other—not so much.” After lunch, everyone went off to unpack, then reassembled to explore the farm. All except Sean and Jake, who was staring out his window again.

“Hey, Jake, how about I show you around?” Charlie said. Sean appeared grateful for the break. “Unless you’re tired and want to unpack.” She watched him weigh his choices and was prepared to choose for him if he couldn’t or wouldn’t. He needed an opportunity to make small decisions and build up to larger ones.

Sean started to speak, but Charlie wiggled her fingers behind her back to stop him.

She caught Jake’s panicked glance at his friend.

“I’ll introduce you to the other horses,” she said. “Come on.”

“Okay.”

She heard Sean release his breath behind her.

She handed Jake a baseball cap off the rack in the corner. “Down here the sun is dangerous to your skin all year round.”

He nodded. “Like Iraq.”

He put on the cap. She plopped her battered khaki safari hat on her head and started out into the stable. As she passed Sean, he touched her arm and winked at her.

CHAPTER THREE

JAKE MUSTN’T THINK she was watching him. All the students had emotional as well as physical problems, but Charlie suspected Jake would be the most difficult to deal with.

She needed to figure out the hot buttons for the others, too. She heard Hank’s boots click on the staircase and realized he also limped, though less than Jake.

Without the front half of his of his right foot, Hank would never be able to balance on a saddle bronc. He’d probably be able to ride bareback, but not on a bucking horse.

He could drive draft horses. No balance required.

And he obviously loved horses. Carriage driving didn’t involve as much adrenaline as rodeo, but there were still moments of terror. Vic Piper, the farrier, said that carriage wrecks were less frequent than riding accidents, but were usually worse, especially when the horse in question was a big old Belgian or shire.

She looked around and realized that Jake was no longer walking beside her.

“Jake?” she called.

“Down here,” he answered.

In the hay-storage room the bales were stacked in stair steps all the way to the roof of the barn some twenty feet above.

Charlie found Jake sitting cross-legged on one of the lower bales. Two feet away stood big Mama Cat, twenty pounds of yellow tabby with orange eyes that could shoot fire. Her tail had swelled to twice normal size, and the tip flicked back and forth an inch in either direction.

Usually by this time she’d disappeared up to the top of one of the rafters or gone for the nearest jugular. Charlie was afraid to move. It was another one of those “child in the gorilla cage” moments.

She held her breath as he reached two fingers toward the big tabby. The world stopped while man and cat stared deep into each other’s eyes.

Jake’s eyes were the color of the Aegean Sea in high summer. She still remembered that blue from the vacation she and her parents took to Crete during one of her father’s tours of duty. She’d felt that if she looked over the side of the little boat, the mermaids would pull her down. She felt the same drowning sensation now as she stared into Jake’s eyes.

Good grief!

She’d sworn off men! Definitely no more soldiers. Celibacy was the order of the day. Men wanted to own you, to make you go where they wanted you to go, be what they wanted you to be. Military men, especially. And you better not make any changes in your life while they were off fighting the bad guys. Steve would have preferred she go into suspended animation while he was away.

She turned before Jake could catch sight of the blood suffusing her face. She suspected if he took her temperature, she’d blow the lid off the mercury.

This would not do. One did not get turned on by a student. And a soldier. And a loner with psychological problems. He could have a wife and sixteen kids for all she knew.

Why not react to Sean? He wasn’t that much older, and his hand couldn’t be called a handicap. Or even Hank, the gorgeous macho guy. But neither of them pushed her hot buttons. Actually, she was kind of surprised she still had hot buttons. She hadn’t felt physically attracted to Steve since before his last tour, and he had definitely not been attracted to her.

Jake was holding something between his slim fingers. How long could he maintain his position with his arm extended that way? Would cat or man break first?

Then Mama took a single step, flattened her ears, stuck out her neck and snatched something—a bit of chicken saved from lunch?—from Jake’s fingers. A moment later she was gone in a honey-colored blur.

“That cat is a killer,” she said. “How did you do that?”

“You know she’s pregnant?”

Charlie nodded. “We’ve tried every trick in the book to catch her so we can have her neutered. She’s much smarter than we are. She showed up here a couple of years ago all skin and bones with more battle scars than Galactica. She’s a Tennessee feral cat.”

He unfolded himself from the bale of hay. “Man, is she ever!”

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to offer him her hand to pull him up.

Not so natural to stand closer than she’d intended. She caught her breath and heard his catch, as well. She looked away from those blue eyes, but not before they’d held hers a moment too long for comfort. Aware of her quickened breathing, she turned away and walked down the aisle. She heard him following her, the slight hitch in his step already familiar.

“Tennessee feral cats are an actual breed,” she babbled. “There’s a stuffed one in the local museum. Probably descendants from the cats the Scots traders brought with them in the eighteen hundreds. I’ve no idea whether it’s feasible for a domestic cat to interbreed with a bobcat, but I do know the few remaining representatives of the feral cat breed are all that big, all that beige yellow tabby color and all fierce fighters.”

“Feral cats always regress to that beige tabby color within five generations in the wild.”

“How would you know that?”

He shrugged. “I grew up on a farm where all the barn cats were feral. We never had a problem with field mice or even the pink-eared rats. Everybody worked on my family’s farm, even the snakes.”

“I beg your pardon?” This time she stopped to stare at him.

He grinned at her. “This place is bound to have a couple of resident king snakes to keep the poisonous snakes down.”

“I’d rather not know, thank you.”

“If you meet one, tip your cap, thank him for his good work, and send him on his way.”

“How will I know the difference? What’s more important, how do you?”

“You weren’t born a country girl, were you?”

“No.” She didn’t offer him any further explanation.

“Hey, want company?” Hank, Sean and Mary Anne came down the aisle to join them.

“Where’s Mickey?” Charlie asked.

“Said he was tired,” Hank said. Charlie picked up the faintest trace of a sneer.

“He was,” Mary Anne snapped. “You have any idea how hard it is trying to be upbeat and funny all the time you’re driving a wheelchair?”

Hank held his hands up in front of him, palms out. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m not used to him is all.”

“Get used to this, too, why don’t you?” She yanked off her scarf and glared at them.

Charlie managed not to gasp. The colonel had warned her that Mary Anne needed more reconstructive surgery, more skin grafts on the side of her face and her arms. Most of her scars would eventually be gone or less evident. She had to go through a period of healing both physically and emotionally before her next round of surgeries.

The doctors hadn’t yet reconstructed her right ear. A patch of skin the size of two dollar bills ran red, puckered and hairless down her scalp and along the side of her jaw, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. “Get used to it, people. I did.” She turned on her heel.

“Hey, Mary Anne,” Hank called after her. “The horses don’t care and neither do we.”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Too hot for those long sleeves anyway. Come on back.” He held out his right hand to her.

When she turned, Charlie could see she was fighting tears but she reached out to Sean with her left hand, hesitated, then held out her right, as well. The scars covered only the pinkie side. Without looking down, Sean took the injured hand gingerly in his latex-covered one.

For a moment, no one breathed, then Hank said, “Come on, girl. Time’s awastin’. I want to get my hands on some horse.”

Charlie’s throat tightened. She caught Jake’s eye, and knew he got it.

We’re all damaged. Maybe together we can heal one another.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY HEARD MICKEY’S whir before his wheelchair whipped out the door to the common room and down the aisle toward them. “Hey! Yous guys taking a trip without me?”

“You snooze, you lose,” Hank said. He stopped at the first stall. “Would you look at the size of him? That’s not a horse, that’s a hippopotamus.”

“Hippos are short,” Sean said. “That’s more moose size. Y’all got mooses in Wyoming, don’t you?”

Mary Anne pulled away from him and backed across the aisle.

“Hey, did I grab you too tight?” Sean called.

Mary Anne shook her head, her dark eyes the size of eight balls. “I...I didn’t think they’d be so big.”

The gray Percheron gelding poked his head over the top of his stall gate, delighted by the attention. He looked straight at Mary Anne and snorted—a big, wet, huffy snort.

She yelped.

“He’s a real sweetie,” Charlie said, and scratched his nose.

“Don’t you have anything smaller?” Mary Anne asked. “Like maybe a pony?”

“Our newborn foals are bigger than the average pony,” Charlie said.

Mary Anne turned paler.

“Are you all right?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said I’d do this.” Mary Anne dropped her face into her hands. “But I wanted to get out of that place so bad....” She stared around at all of them. “I lied on the forms. I’m so sorry...I’m terrified of horses.”

* * *

“AND THAT PRETTY much put an end to the Great Horse tour,” Charlie said.

She slipped off her paddock boots and propped her stocking feet on the coffee table in her father’s study. He handed her a cold can of diet soda from the small refrigerator under the wet bar in the corner. She rolled it against her forehead, popped the top and drank half of it in one pull before continuing.

“I turned the tour over to Hank, since he knows the most about horses and stables. Meanwhile, Mary Anne flew back to the dorm with me at her heels, and locked herself in her room. I knocked and tried to reassure her, but she sounded as though she was throwing stuff around, probably packing. She told me to go away.”

“You carry a master key.”

“I didn’t sign on to be a prison warden.” She scowled at her father. “I only met them a few hours ago. You’re the big psychologist. What should I have done?”

“What did you do?”

She set her soda onto the end table beside her. “Daddy, sometimes this answering a question with a question is pretty annoying. I spoke to her the way I’d speak to a spooked horse. Gentle, quiet. I kept reassuring her that we’d deal with it, that we’d all help her, that of course we wanted her to stay....”

“Successful?”

“If I’d kept trying to talk to her through the door, she’d have sneaked out the window and hitchhiked to town by now.” She sighed. “No, Jake did it. I already knew he had a thing with animals. Seems people like him, too.”

“People are animals.”

Charlie struck her forehead. “Wow! What a concept! Why didn’t I think of that?” She tossed her soda can into the big wastebasket beside her father’s desk. “Three points.”

Jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans, she started to pace. “The others were pretty upset about Mary Anne. Were we going to toss her out on her rear? If we did that, they’d all leave.... I had to do some fine tap dancing. Then, she and Jake came walking down the aisle like nothing had happened. She’d obviously been crying, but she hadn’t tied that scarf back around her head or rolled her sleeves down.” She braced herself against the edge of her father’s desk. “She was trembling, she was so scared, but she faced us all down. She’s got guts. I like her.”

“What did Jake say to her in there?”

“No idea. Maybe he just witched her through the closed door.” She chuckled. “You should have seen him feeding Mama Cat chicken. It’s like he gave up part of what he was when he gave up making decisions, but maybe he got something else in return.”

“No matter how hard he tries not to, my dear Charlie, he’s forced to make decisions. If he starts with small ones and nothing bad happens, maybe he’ll learn to make larger ones.”

“You’ve worked with all of them....”

He shrugged. “Some more than others.”

“But all you’ll give me is name, age and rank. What’s Jake’s story?”

He shook his finger at her. “I can only give you the bare outline without contravening the Privacy Act. I can’t, for instance, show you Jake’s file—or any of their files.”

“So Jake made a decision that caused havoc. Are we talking a full-blown case of PTSD here? I am not competent to deal with that.”

“He has a bad case of survivor guilt, Charlie. He feels that his decisions resulted in suffering for other people and left him unscathed.”

“Did they?”

“Not in the sense he means. It’s a form of magical thinking. Not much different from ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back.’ Except in degree, of course.”

Can you at least tell me what he did in the army before he was wounded?”

“He was G-2.”

“Intelligence. A spook.”

The colonel nodded.

“What about his family?”

“Never been married.”

“Can you at least tell me whether or not he’s gay?”

“From what I can gather, he had an extremely healthy heterosexual sex life.”

She blew out her breath. “Not that it matters.”

“Of course not.” The colonel smiled the infuriating “I see all” smile that drove her crazy. “I’ll be down at the hospital at least four days a week, but I suggest we talk every night after dinner. Completely up to you.”

“Uh-huh.” As if. She was surprised he hadn’t asked her to write him case notes.

“If you have time, you might prepare case notes to jog your memory.”

She threw back her head and roared with laughter.

“What?”

“No case notes. I am not one of your worshipful acolytes.”

“This class is a huge responsibility for someone with your limited experience.”

“Then why the heck did you stick me with it?” She didn’t wait for his answer, but grabbed her paddock boots and started out of the library in her stocking feet.

“Charlie girl, I’m selfish enough to want to keep you and Sarah around. The way to do that is to keep you interested, involved and employed. Is it wrong to want to get to know my adult daughter and my grandchild? Besides, you must see that I can’t simply turn this place over to you without any supervision. You have no prior experience running an operation this size.”

“Granddad taught me more in my vacations here than he ever taught you, and I’ve been working my tail off to learn everything I can since we came back. I’m thinking of all those classes and clinics I should be taking instead of teaching these people to drive.”

“Dad was aware I would never be a farmer or a horseman,” the colonel said. “As a matter of fact, until I came home to look after him when he got so sick, he didn’t believe I’d ever live here after I left for college. He expected me to hire a manager to handle the place after he died until Steve retired and you two came back here to take over.” He shrugged. “I thought then he was living a fantasy. You would never have been able to convince Steve to retire from the army and move to a horse farm. He was an adrenaline junkie, Charlie. They don’t change.”

“We don’t have to worry about that any longer, do we?” She padded out of the library, shut the door and fought back tears. He was doing the same thing he’d always done when she was growing up. The absentee father shows up, issues orders for her own good and then leaves again. The gospel according to Colonel Vining. Most of the time she disobeyed just to prove she could. She must have driven her mother nuts.

If he hadn’t made her leave her horse when she was thirteen, her whole life might have been different. If her mother hadn’t died and left her without a buffer, if her father hadn’t forbidden her to see Steve, she’d never have run away and married him. The colonel always tried to control her and she always fought him, even when he was right.

Especially when he was right.

Carrying her boots, she took the stairs to the bedrooms two at a time. As she reached the top she heard Sarah clicking away on their shared computer.

Time to close down so they could go help Vittorio with dinner. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Wasn’t she trying to control Sarah the way the colonel tried to control her? She wanted Sarah to be happy, but her idea of what constituted happiness might not mesh with Sarah’s any more than the colonel’s had meshed with hers.

Should she let Sarah have her head a little bit? She was a good kid who was lonely and grieving. She’d never betrayed Charlie’s trust. She ought to be able to make her own mistakes.

And wind up pregnant and married? No way. If that meant controlling her, then so be it. Wasn’t that what the colonel said? Kids at this age hate their parents when they act like parents. Tough.

For all practical purposes Charlie had been a single parent most of Sarah’s fourteen years, but while he was home between deployments, Steve was always better with their daughter than she was. He was the good guy, Charlie was the ogre. No wonder Sarah missed him so much. No wonder when she had to blame someone for his death, Charlie was elected.

Why am I so uptight? Why don’t I just go in there and hug her? Because if she went stiff and backed away, I’d cry.

One of the four bedrooms on the second floor of the main house had been fitted out with Sarah’s shabby furniture brought from their base housing, and another had been given over to a home office that she was supposed to share with Charlie. In reality, however, Sarah spread out like kudzu vine, overrunning every flat surface in her own room and threatening to engulf the office.

The computer keys kept popping like soggy popcorn. Sarah couldn’t touch-type yet. She planned to take typing in the fall at her new private school. She could, however, race the wind with her two-finger technique. And texting? Did anyone over twenty have thumbs that small or nimble?

Charlie walked by the computer room and went into her own bedroom instead. She longed to lie down for a few minutes before she plunged back into her job, but she didn’t dare. She’d fall asleep and not get up until tomorrow.

Every piece of furniture in the room was new. Most of the things in their army quarters, except for Sarah’s bed and dresser, belonged to the quartermaster and had to be returned to stores every time they moved. Each new post meant another requisition of boring quartermaster offerings. The cheap furniture she and Steve had accumulated during their fifteen years of marriage had grown shabbier with every move. After he died, she’d sold everything except the photo albums, keepsakes, personal papers and Sarah’s furniture in a garage sale. Sarah had wanted her own bedroom furniture and other familiar objects around her, so she could have the illusion of home wherever the family landed. Charlie, on the other hand, wanted to slam the door on her life with Steve. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt that way, but that was before Steve came home from his second tour in Afghanistan and asked for a divorce.

Even combat widows were not welcome in post housing for very long. She’d had to beg to keep her quarters until school let out in mid-May. So here she was with the colonel. His house, his rules.

She stood under the shower for five minutes to wash the dust and sweat off, washed her hair for the second time that day, then redid her makeup and put on a clean polo shirt and jeans. Her mother had always taken an afternoon shower and changed into fresh clothes. She said it was a carryover from the days before air-conditioning. Charlie had picked up the habit from her. “Sarah?” Charlie opened the office door and stood in the doorway with her hand on the knob. Sarah jumped and hit the escape key in one motion. Whoever she was on line with disappeared.

“Mother! You scared me spitless.” She wheeled in her chair and glared at Charlie. “You ooze around like a fungus.”

“Green and soggy, that’s me. Thought you were cutting down on the social networking.”

Sarah avoided her eyes and did that flouncy, hair-swinging thing. “I am trying to help you. I looked up all those people on Google and Facebook. Don’t you want to know what all I found out?”

“I would love to know what you found out,” Charlie said. “Thank you. But you ought to be outside, not sitting in here over a hot keyboard.”

“What else is there to do out here? Go to the mall or the movies with my BFFs? Last time I checked they were in Kansas.”

“Once school starts you’ll make plenty of friends.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Most of them have been together since kindergarten. They’re going to fall over to welcome the outsider. We should have stayed in Kansas.”

“Ah, Kansas, the center for sophistication in the known universe.”

Sarah opened her mouth to make another snappy comeback, then giggled. “Good one, Mom.”

Charlie pulled her up from her chair and Sarah hugged her. Charlie felt a surge of joy. She lived for these moments. She hugged Sarah back hard. Then she whispered, “I love you.”

The moment passed in a flash as Sarah slipped past her and down the stairs. Charlie followed more slowly. At least she’d said the words.

An hour later, Charlie helped the students set the food dishes on the table in the common room, and watched everyone find seats. All except Jake.

“Sean, where’s Jake?” she asked.

“I’ll take him a plate.”

“No, you won’t. He needs to join us at the table. That’s the rule. I thought he obeyed rules. No decisions necessary.”

“Charlie, he’ll starve before he comes down here. Don’t ask me why. I just know it.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to get into a battle tonight I will probably lose, but Sean, would you talk to him? Convince him that sitting at the table with you all is not going to cause the end of Western civilization as we know it?”

Sean shrugged. “I’ll sure try, but I’m not guaranteeing it’ll do any good.”

They’d already worked out an informal seating arrangement. Jake at the far end, then Sean, Mary Anne. Mickey’s wheelchair at the other end, then Hank.

“I’m not joining you for dinner tonight anyway,” Charlie said. “Give you a chance to talk things over, get to know one another without either the colonel or me eavesdropping.”

“No bugs in the light fixtures?” Mickey said.

“Nope. Not yet, at any rate. If you’d load the serving dishes onto the trolley, Vittorio or I will come get it and put everything into the dishwasher in the house. Anybody need something or just want to talk to me or the colonel, push the button on the intercom and leave a message. I suggest you get to bed early. Tomorrow morning I’ll be rousting you all out at six o’clock.”

“No way!” Mickey groaned.

“You need help getting to bed?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not helpless.”

“If you do, push the button beside your bed.”

“Or holler,” Sean said.

Mickey rolled his eyes. “I can stand. I just can’t walk far yet.”

“Yeah, and when you fall, you flop around like a turtle on its back,” Hank said.

“Flopping around on your back in the dirt ought to be a real familiar sensation for you,” Mickey said. “At least I can stay on my feet for more than eight seconds.”

Hank flushed and opened his mouth to retort. Charlie was about to lambaste him when Mary Anne snapped, “Stop it! What is the matter with you, Hank?” She turned to Mickey. “You’re no better. Knock it off.”

“It’s a miracle, Hank,” Charlie said. “You’re missing half a foot and still manage to stuff a whole one into your mouth. Mary Anne’s right. Both of you, knock it off.”

Jake might have a point in not wanting to join the group for dinner.

“Sean, so you will take Jake a plate?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Sure better than at the halfway house.”

“Or the hospital,” Mary Anne said. “I love gazpacho.”

“The tomatoes and corn on the cob are from the farmer’s market in Collierville,” Charlie said. “The corn’s Silver Queen.” Her stomach rumbled. That sandwich at lunch had been years ago.

“Have one,” Sean said. “There’s plenty.”

“Thanks, but the colonel expects me for dinner.” She could see the lights of the big kitchen in the main house across the patio. Vittorio would be furious if she came in late. Charlie had come close to snatching an ear from the students’ platter, but managed to quiet the rumblings of her stomach. That sandwich at lunch seemed a long ago memory. The heat of the day was finally beginning to diminish as much as it ever did between Memorial Day and the end of September. It wouldn’t get cool enough to manage without air-conditioning even in the middle of the night, of course, but it was still cooler than daytime.

The heat flat wore everybody out and increased appetites at dinnertime. The colonel demanded the family sit down together and was adamant that the students do the same thing. Even after her mother died, he kept up the custom, although he and Charlie sometimes didn’t speak to each other from entrée through dessert. Of course, when he wasn’t around, which was often, Charlie could con whoever was looking after her into letting her grab a sandwich and leave.

For Sarah, used to running in and out between sport practices or hanging out with BFFs, the formality of evening dinner was a new experience. She endured it because she was eating Vittorio’s cooking and not Charlie’s. And at the moment she had nothing better to do than fool with the computer in the evenings.

Charlie’s mind hovered at the other dining table tonight and she only half listened to Sarah and her father bicker. As soon as she could, she escaped to check on her students.

She worried about Mickey. He might give Hank as good as he got, but Hank didn’t tease—he went for the jugular. Seeing Mickey must be a constant reminder of how close he had come to losing his ability to walk as well as ride.

In any case, it wasn’t acceptable.

Her father had explained to her her that Mickey wasn’t actually paralyzed, although the nerve damage to his back and hips was extensive. He had rods and pins in his legs where the bones had been fragmented, as well. Still, if Mickey kept at his strength training, he might eventually be able to dispense with the wheelchair and use braces and a cane full-time. Maybe giving Hank the task of getting Mickey on his feet would provide him with a vested interest in Mickey’s success.

According to the colonel, once he took his leg braces off, Mickey could pull himself up, stand and swing around to get into bed. He could handle bathroom chores and dress himself. But could he actually walk unaided for any distance with his braces? Charlie knew what his enrolment forms said, but then, Mary Anne had sworn she’d ridden horses, so who knew?

Charlie found the students’ dishes neatly stacked on the rolling cart in the common room, the kitchen clean and the table scoured. She rolled the cart back to the kitchen, where Vittorio and Sarah were loading the dishes from the colonel’s table into the dishwasher.

Vittorio, who seldom spoke even when he was happy, merely rolled his eyes at her, sighed deeply and began to unload the trolley.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “We’ll work something out so you don’t have to stay late to clean up this mess.”

“Good,” he said. “Go.” Sarah started to strip off her apron. Vittorio pointed a stubby index finger at her. “Not you. You eat, you clean.”

“Mom...”

“Hey, it’s his kitchen. Thanks, Vittorio. Leave the sweet rolls out. I’ll heat them up tomorrow morning for the students.”

“Huh.” He turned away with an empty platter in his hands. “These people—they eat. Even that skinny girl with the scars.” Eating his food was the biggest compliment anyone could give Vittorio.

“Wait until I start teaching them. Then they’ll eat us out of house and home.”

She walked back to the stable, knocked on Mickey’s door and found him tucked up in bed with a graphic novel. “You manage okay?” she asked, then immediately regretted her words. “I mean...”

“I managed,” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t break my neck.”

“What’s with you and Hank?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. She had started to turn away, when he said, “The colonel says he’s jealous. I may be messed up, but at least I’m physically whole.”

“So he undercuts you and tries to make you fail?” Charlie said.

“Hey, Charlie, it’s his problem. Don’t sweat it, okay? I can take care of myself.”

After she said good-night to Mickey, she stopped by Mary Anne’s door, heard her moving around, but didn’t disturb her.

She figured Sean would check on Jake. She really didn’t want to tackle Hank at the moment. But she would soon. He needed an attitude adjustment bad.

She walked back to the house. Man, she was tired. She really hadn’t worked that hard physically today. Starting tomorrow, when she had to teach her students, she’d be totally exhausted by lunch.

So why did she feel as if she’d been dragged backward through a knothole?

Because emotional labor was harder than physical labor. Because she already cared about these people as people, not just students. Especially Jake. Now where had that come from?

She was too keyed up to sleep, no matter how badly she wanted to. She needed some quiet time without anybody asking her for decisions or direction. She wanted to think about her students.

One of them, at any rate.

She walked out onto the dark patio behind the den and sank onto the glider. She stretched her legs in front of her and rested her head on the back. If she weren’t careful, she’d fall asleep out here and wake up unable to straighten her spine.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was right—nights like this couldn’t be called anything except tender. A cool zephyr toyed with the hair at the nape of her neck and played across the skin of her throat and arms as gently as a lover’s caress.

She closed her eyes and listened to the soft sounds of the evening. In mid-August such breezes were an unusual blessing. Normally, the temperature wouldn’t drop more than five degrees after the sun went down. The nights were steamy, the air a mosquito-laden miasma that wouldn’t relent until late September.

But on a clear night like tonight, so many stars shimmered in the Milky Way that they tumbled like celestial milk poured from a pitcher. Charlie sighed deeply, and let the beauty seep into her bones.

* * *

UNABLE TO DECIDE whether to slip silently back into the common room or speak to her, Jake stood in the small stand of oaks and maples behind the patio and watched Charlie. He’d come out to see if he could recapture that peace he’d felt gazing at the stars at home when he was a kid. Instead, he was troubled by the same memories of those that hadn’t survived.

He hadn’t expected to see anyone else.

He could either melt back into the trees or say something to Charlie. If he didn’t choose one or the other, he might stand here until morning when Sean found him.

The colonel kept reminding him that he couldn’t avoid choice, and that he should make small ones that didn’t matter. He wasn’t crazy enough to believe that if he killed a butterfly in Mexico, he could trigger a tsunami in Samoa, but something warned him that where Charlie was concerned, his smallest decision might cause a personal earthquake for both of them. His decisions hurt people and left him alone. She had enough on her plate without adding him to the mix.

She straightened and looked into the dark. “Is somebody there?”

She’d made his decision for him. “Just Jake,” he said. He came out and walked up to the patio. When she motioned to the glider, he sat down beside her. The roses around the patio smelled sweet, but the scent of pure woman was headier by far.

Where his thigh lay along hers he felt his skin tingle. How long had it been since he’d reacted to the nearness of an attractive woman? After the attack, his body had shut down along with his mind. The doctors told him it was his way to heal faster by pulling whatever energy he had into his core. He didn’t believe them.

He was used to being numb, but if he allowed himself to feel, could he control the intensity of his emotions? Or would they wake hungry for sensation like a newly wakened grizzly starved for blackberries?

Charlie had caught her breath when he sat beside her, and her shoulders tensed. Even though she’d invited him to sit with her, she might be afraid of him. That would be funny if it weren’t so disturbing.

Her hand lay on her thigh. He could reach over and take it. If he chose. She wouldn’t make that decision for him.

She’d probably slap his hand away and bolt for the house. He wouldn’t be able to stay here if that happened, and he admitted he wanted to stay. A small choice but a choice all the same. This woman, this place, were already beginning to smooth out his soul.

When she realized he didn’t intend to touch her, she relaxed and asked, “Where did you learn to drive draft horses?”

“In Missouri. On my father’s farm.” Simple question, simple answer. “Where did you?”

“Here. On my grandfather’s farm.” She waved a hand. “I spent every moment I could here—vacations, school holidays. I spent a whole year on the farm while my parents were stationed in Belgium. I wanted to graduate here, but the colonel said I had to join them after they came home.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

“Try furious. Granddad fought to keep me, but nobody fights the colonel and wins. Oh, he thought he was doing the best thing for all of us. He always does.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that.” She touched his hand. “The colonel really is an excellent psychologist. I mustn’t undermine him in your eyes.”

She removed her hand, but he could feel the lingering warmth of her fingers. “Not so expert with his own family?” He’d assumed the colonel was a genius with everyone, not just his patients. Thanks to him, Jake could at least acknowledge that most of his problem with decisions arose from his survivor guilt.

Actually, to discover the colonel had feet of good Tennessee clay was somehow reassuring. “Haven’t you heard that old cliché that psychologists and psychiatrists raise bratty kids?” Charlie said. “You’ve plowed with horses, so you know the difference between telling a horse to ‘gee’ or ‘haw,’ don’t you?”

He nodded although she couldn’t see him. “Go right or left.”

“When I was twelve, I hung out at the post stables in Maryland after school nearly every day. I didn’t own my own horse, but there was a big half Percheron that I rode whenever I could. Daddy hated that I didn’t go in for golf or tennis or some team sport that would—and I quote—serve me in later life. When we moved, I wanted to buy Doyle and bring him down to Granddad’s, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. Mom, as usual, backed him up. He said I already had horses to ride during my vacations, and we certainly couldn’t ship a horse to the District of Columbia and pay expensive board. He just didn’t get it. Leaving Doyle for the next kid to ride nearly killed me.”

He felt his heart go out to her. When he left home, he’d missed the horses almost as much as he missed his family, even though leaving them behind had been his choice. “I’m sorry.”

“He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.” She spread her arms wide. “What was the big deal? I could ride when I came down here. After Mom got sick, I didn’t have time for extracurricular activities anyway. We declared a truce for her sake, but I’ve never forgotten.”

She turned to him, and even in the dark he could see the glint of tears in her eyes. “After she died, when he said gee, I went haw.”

He longed to take her in his arms, but she might mistake his comfort for something else. Besides, if the colonel walked out to the patio, he might deck Jake. How could the man be so empathetic toward his patients and so blind to his daughter? “He does miraculous things as a psychologist,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll help you. I can’t believe you let me run my mouth like that.”

“I’m honored you told me.”

He expected she’d bolt, but she stayed quiet and moved the glider with her toe.

Maybe he could lighten the atmosphere between them. In the distance the sound of a bullfrog filled the silence. Jake took that as his cue. “Well, Mr. Bullfrog, I hope the lady you’re courting appreciates your fine bass baritone.”

Charlie sighed and relaxed. “I wonder what he did to shut down his rivals.”

An answering chorus settled that question.

“They sound like one of those Russian army choruses,” Jake said. “No tenors need apply.”

“The peepers have their own choir,” Charlie said. “And then there are the cicadas—they remind me of fingernails on a blackboard.”

“Not this late in the summer.”

Sitting beside him, Charlie felt grateful that he’d directed the subject away from her and her life. It was so easy to open up to Jake. Was that what Mary Anne had sensed? What had she told him when she was locked in her room? He might not trust himself, but Mary Anne trusted him. So did Charlie.

And boy, was that dangerous. “We’d both better get to bed,” she said, stopping the movement of the glider and standing up. “Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day.”

She left him sitting alone and fled up the stairs to her room. Did cold showers work for females? She washed off her makeup, brushed her teeth, pulled on the T-shirt she slept in and crawled into the big Lincoln bed, sure that she’d sleep. But her mind kept churning.

Jake was a stranger, a student and a soldier. Triple threat.

After Steve died, she vowed never to allow anyone remotely military into her life again. No more warriors. No more dragging around the world after them and making a new home each time, the way her mother had done for her father. No more sudden deployments to Nowheresville or the other side of the world. No more shaking with terror every time the doorbell rang for fear it was the bad one—the notification that her husband was dead. Once was enough. She and Sarah had never been enough for Steve. Oh, he’d tried, but in the final analysis the pleasure of being with his wife and daughter couldn’t compete with his need to be back in the action. Between deployments, he loathed being a garrison soldier. He was addicted to danger and eventually, like most addictions, it killed him.

Warriors were great to have around when Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were just over the horizon and coming fast. Not so great when they weren’t.

Sitting next to Jake, she could feel her resolution to avoid warriors weakening. Bad. Bad and stupid. Jake might seem gentle, he might be an ex-soldier, but she could still sense the testosterone.

She’d fallen for Steve on sight. In the fourteen years they’d been married, she’d never looked at another man, even though that meant months of celibacy while he was on temporary duty or deployed somewhere she and Sarah couldn’t follow.

He’d really had to work to kill her love for him, but he’d finally managed.

No matter how attracted she was to Jake, he was her student. Not acceptable. He also had psychological problems that she couldn’t possibly inflict on Sarah.

CHAPTER FIVE

“OKAY, YOU TENDERFOOTS—tenderfeet—time to take your breakfast dishes into the house, pick up your hats and gloves, and learn the fine art of stall mucking.” Charlie realized what she’d said after the words left her mouth. She gave a quick glance at Hank, but he seemed not to have caught her incredible gaffe. Calling him a tenderfoot! How could she?

She caught Jake’s eye and felt herself blushing. He’d made the connection, all right. He gave a tiny nod as though to assure her that he absolved her. For a man who ignored his own lunch, he was too aware of the nuances of other people’s behavior.

“I did you a big favor this morning,” she continued. “I’ve already fed and watered the horses. From here on you’ll do that before breakfast. Then we muck stalls. I did not do that for you.”

“I’m exempt from mucking stalls,” Mickey said cheerfully. “I don’t swing a pitchfork too good from a wheelchair.”

“Put on your doggone leg braces,” Hank snapped. “Aren’t you supposed to practice standing and walking?”

“He can’t pick up a pitchfork full of horse manure yet,” Sean said, and turned to Mickey. “Good try, kid. I didn’t get my sergeant stripes putting up with slackers. I will personally find some nasty chore you can do sitting down.”

“You’re retired, Sarge,” Mickey said with a grin. “You ain’t the boss o’ me any longer.”

“But I am,” Charlie said, and slapped the back of the wheelchair cheerfully. “While the rest of us are learning to muck horse manure out of stalls, I’ll set you up in the tack room with saddle soap and harness polish. I’ll bet you know how to put a spit shine on leather, am I right?”

Mickey groaned. “When do I get to try out that handicapped carriage the colonel was talking about yesterday?”

“After you’ve learned how to handle the reins and been approved by an instructor. Me. And you won’t be driving alone for a while.”

She glanced around the table. “Since our regular grooms are on vacation, you’ll be doing their work as well as learning to drive. You can get used to handling reins by practicing on a rein board that emulates what it feels like to drive a horse. We have three in the tack room. We’ll rotate, since I imagine some of you need more practice than others.” She smiled at Jake, who had joined them after breakfast. She hadn’t bothered to try to get him to eat breakfast with them. Lunch was another matter.

She was grateful that he acted as though nothing had happened between them last night.

“Our grooms, Maurice and DeMarcus, feed and water at seven every morning.” She slid into one of the remaining chairs around the common room table. “Then they muck stalls and help harness and put to the horses.”

“Put to what?” Sean asked.

“That’s what you call harnessing a horse,” Charlie said. “And a horse that is harnessed to a cart or carriage is called being ‘in draft.’ There are a lot of peculiar terms and traditions about carriage driving because it’s been around such a long time. Any of you ever see the big parades from England with the fancy golden carriages and all the white horses?”

Several heads nodded. Jake’s didn’t move.

“The carriages are fancier than ours, but we do the same things. The horses are already well broke and used to being in draft, but there’s not a horse in the world that won’t spook in certain circumstances.” Charlie glanced at Mary Anne and saw her twist her hands in her lap. “It’s not like driving a truck or a motorcycle. Remember, the horse wants to survive, too. The motorcycle doesn’t give a darn.”

Charlie decided to see if she could borrow a small pony and cart from one of her carriage-driving friends for Mary Anne to try. She might be less frightened behind a pony. She could progress to a horse. If they were lucky.

“Now, you’re also going to learn what it takes to run a farm like this. Yesterday I picked up twenty bags of rolled oats from the feed store, and some trace mineral blocks. They need to be unloaded from my truck. Then later, a load of bagged wood shavings is being delivered from a sawmill in Mississippi.”

“Mary Anne can’t pick up fifty-pound feed bags,” Hank said.

“I can pick up anything you can,” Mary Anne snapped.

“Sure you can,” Hank snickered.

“This is not a contest,” Charlie said. She noted that Hank’s snide remark had brought Jake’s gaze up, but he said nothing. Jake’s fuse might be long, but she suspected it would burn hot once somebody lit it. If he hadn’t had some propensity for violence, why would he have joined the army?

She continued. “The horses that are not actually on the driving roster are in pasture. That includes four Percheron mares, two of whom have foals at foot. We’ll take a look at them after lunch. One shire mare is pregnant with a late foal, the other is barren this year. So, with luck, you’ll get to see a baby born sometime soon. If we can catch her having it, that is.”

“Can’t you tell when it’s coming?” Mary Anne asked.

“Theoretically. But mares are sneaky. We’ll bring her into the foaling stall when she starts showing signs she’s close to labor, but she’ll probably wait until the darkest, stormiest night of the year when everybody’s back is turned before she drops her foal.” She nodded. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”

* * *

MARY ANNE STACKED fifty-pound bags of feed right along with Charlie and the men. Every time she passed Hank, she tossed her head at him. He grinned and shrugged.

Midmorning a rusty three-quarter-ton truck with square bags of shavings loaded precariously on its bed pulled up outside the aisle door.

“Hey, Charlie, you got room to stack these shavings in the same place?” The middle-aged man who stuck his head out of the truck wore a straw Stetson over a face that looked as tough as if it had been professionally tanned but not stretched afterward.

“Man has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei,” Sean whispered.

“Hush,” Charlie whispered back. Then she said in a normal voice, “Drive on down the aisle to the end as usual, Bobby.”

“We got any help? Where’s Maurice and DeMarcus?”

“On vacation. Jake and Sean here will help unload. Guys, this is Bobby Holzer. He owns the sawmill down in Slayden that bags our shavings.”

Bobby nodded and pointed to the figure beside him in the shadows. “I brung some help just in case. This here’s one of my summer helpers.” He put the truck in gear, drove down the stable aisle to the far end and parked by the storage area where the few remaining bales sat waiting for the new load to be added.

The white-blond hair of the kid who climbed from the passenger seat was partially covered by a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. Unlike Bobby, who wore baggy bib overalls over a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the boy had on distressed jeans stretched tight over thigh muscles the size of hawsers on an aircraft carrier, while his arms and torso strained the stitching on his green polo shirt. He stood at six-six or six-seven and probably weighed well over three hundred pounds. None of it was fat. “Aidan, this is Miss Charlie Nicholson, owner and manager.” The giant nodded.

“Whoa!” Sean whispered.

Bobby smiled and winked at him. “Aidan’s starting at tackle for Mississippi State this fall. Coach sends ’em to me for the summer. Tells ’em working in the sawmill builds muscles.”

“He’s got enough already,” Sean said.

Charlie introduced Sean and Jake. Bobby shook hands. Aidan didn’t.

He looked sulky at the prospect of unloading and stacking an entire truckload of sixty-pound bales, but he hopped up on the back of the truck and worked his way to the front without comment.

“Give them a hand, please,” Charlie said to Sean and Jake. “I’m off to the tack room to teach Mickey and Mary Anne how to use the rein board.”

Jake climbed up on the tailgate and waited for the first bale.

The moment Charlie turned her back, Aidan swung it at Jake’s chest so hard he would have knocked him off the back of the truck if Sean hadn’t balanced him from the ground. His grin said he’d done it on purpose.

“Knock that off, Aidan,” Bobby said equably. “Sorry, Jake. He gets above himself sometimes. Likes to show off how strong he is.”

Aidan shrugged and lobbed the next bale high and easy. Jake fielded it and passed it down to Sean.

After that Aidan settled down, and the three men established an easy rhythm from Aidan to Jake to Sean to the shavings shed. After all the bales were off the truck, Bobby directed Aidan to finish stacking them.

As he passed Sean, Aidan asked, “Hey, man, that some kind of phony hand?”

“Nope. It’s real plastic,” Sean answered cheerfully. “A gift from the United States Army.”

By the time the stacks were complete, all three men were soaked with sweat and Aidan’s designer jeans were filthy. Bobby rose from the front step of the truck and joined them. “Hot work.”

Sean’s glance at Jake said “none of which he did.”

“Y’all got any cold sodas?” Bobby asked. “I’m flat parched.”

Aidan slouched past him toward the front of the truck. “Aw, come on, Bobby, let’s go get some lunch.”

Wiping her face with her scarf, Mary Anne came out of the tack room and strode toward them. She wore a sleeveless muscle shirt that revealed the puckered skin that ran from the side of her head to her glove. The sheen of sweat made the scars look red and raw.

She noticed Bobby and Aidan a minute before they noticed her, and wheeled back toward the tack room.

“Ooo-eee,” whispered Aidan as he watched her retreating rear in its tight jeans. “Hellooo, mama.”

She froze in midstride, turned and strode back toward them.

Jake heard Bobby catch his breath.

Aidan gaped and looked away. “No way. I don’t mess with ugly chicks.”

Jake saw Mary Anne stiffen and heard Sean groan.

“Jake—leave it,” Sean cautioned. “Jake!”

Jake ignored him and moved into Aidan.

A moment later, the big man lay flat on his back.

“Here now,” Bobby said. “Both of y’all take it easy.”

Aidan was big, but he was fast. He came off the ground in a lineman’s crouch, prepared to tear Jake in two.

“Back off, fool.” Sean stepped between the two men. Aidan brushed him out of the way.

Jake felt Sean’s hand on his arm and shook him off. He blocked the fist Aidan swung at his jaw, twisted, bent and thrust. A moment later Aidan was back on the ground, looking surprised.

“Stay down!” Sean snarled at him.

Aidan gasped. “What’d I do?”

“Apologize to the lady,” Jake whispered.

Aidan struggled to his feet. That a man twenty years older and a hundred pounds lighter could toss him around like a football seemed to hit him square in his manhood. “Listen, old man.” He lowered his voice. “Y’all gotta know that’s a freak.” A moment later, he was back on the ground with Bobby standing over him.

“Aidan, you idiot, stay down,” Bobby said. “You ain’t got the brains of a goose. Stop running your mouth before you get your teeth handed to you.”

“I warned you to stay down, goober,” Sean said pleasantly. “Now do what the man says and apologize to the little lady before he tears your arm off and feeds it to you.”

Jake glanced back at Mary Anne, who was glaring at Aidan. Sean grasped her hand with his right one and pulled her forward. As if his touch inflated her, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and snapped, “Yeah, jerk. Apologize to the ugly lady.”

From the ground, Aidan had to look up at her, but he couldn’t hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean nothing. Bobby says I got a big mouth.”

“Ya think?” she said, and kept her hand in Sean’s.

“You can get up, now,” Jake said. “I assume you were recruited for your size and not your GPA. Come on, Sean, we have horses to groom.” He strode off toward the wash rack.

Charlie passed him at a trot. “Bobby, what’s going on?”

“Aidan here,” Sean said, “slipped and fell.” He grinned.

“Three times,” Bobby said. “A man that big, sometimes he’s real clumsy, aren’t you, Aidan.” He gave his helper a hand up, then a gentle shove toward the truck. “Here’s the bill, Charlie. Me ’n Aidan are gonna go get some lunch.”

“Good girl,” Sean said to Mary Anne under his breath. He turned to Aidan. “You have just had a narrow escape. The major can take off the top of a man’s head with the flat of his hand.”

Bobby laughed as Aidan climbed into the truck, put it in gear and waved to them through the driver’s window as they drove away.

The moment the truck cleared the stable aisle, Mary Anne caught her breath in a sob and ran past Charlie to the common room.

“Sean?” Charlie asked.

“Ask Jake.” He followed Mary Anne.

Charlie trotted after him. “Where is he?”

“Mary Anne...”

“Leave her to me,” Charlie said. “You go find Jake.”

Sean hesitated, then nodded.

The common room was empty. Mary Anne’s bedroom door was locked again. When she pressed her ear against it, Charlie heard what sounded like sobbing. “Mary Anne? It’s Charlie. Please let me in.”

“Go ’way.”

“Not this time. I’m not Jake, but I can sit in the hall and wait as long as he did.”

She thought she might have to, but after a moment she heard the lock click. By the time she opened the door, Mary Anne lay facedown on her bed with her arms locked over her head. “I want to go back to the hospital.”

Charlie sat on the bed but didn’t touch her. “You’ll get over being afraid of the horses.”

Mary Anne rolled over and sat up. “Jake nearly got himself killed because that jock said I was ugly. I am ugly! I’m so ugly people want to vomit when they look at me.”

“That’s not true.”

Mary Anne got off the bed and began to pace the small room. “Don’t lie, Charlie. I saw that kid’s face. I saw all your faces when I took off my scarf. The first time my husband—sorry, my ex-husband—saw me in the hospital without my bandages, he ran into the bathroom and threw up.”

What could Charlie say to that? “I’m sure it was just the initial shock. Soldiers know what happens in a war zone.”

Mary Anne leaned her forehead against her window. “Charlie, he’s a civilian. An accountant, would you believe. I’d already enlisted when I met him. Bad enough I was a mechanic. Bad enough I deployed six months after we got married, but with the internet we stayed connected. We were in love! We had all these plans for when my enlistment was over. Then this happened.”

“Of course, he was devastated for you,” Charlie said. “But he didn’t stop loving you.”

Mary Anne leaned a hip against the windowsill. “He really tried. He took a part-time job close to the hospital to be with me. But the first time one of the nurses tried to teach him to change my dressings, he ran. When they let me out on a twenty-four-hour pass to be with him, he couldn’t touch me. We sat up all night crying. The next week I filed for divorce. It wasn’t his fault, Charlie, and it definitely wasn’t mine.”

“So you want to go back to the hospital to start more operations right now? I thought you wanted to take a break.”

Mary Anne flopped back down on the bed. “I did. I do. But nobody looks at me twice in the hospital.”

Charlie wrapped her arm around Mary Anne. “We won’t let you quit. And when you do have more operations, we’ll learn to change your dressings and you’ll come back here to recuperate.”

“You can’t promise that!”

“The heck I can’t. Now wash your face and let’s go groom horses.”

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