“How many horses have you rescued?”
“Ten or eleven, I think. I took in the first one when I was twelve.”
“Why?”
Again, Vivi Ann was surprised. No one ever asked her why. “It was the year my mom died.”
“It help?”
“Some.” She eased onto a rutted, potholed road that snaked through a thicket of giant evergreens. Slowing, she maneuvered around the biggest of the holes, until they came to a clearing with a pretty little log house, a four-stall barn, and a small fenced pasture. There, she parked. “The Humane Society found this gelding in a really bad way and brought him here. Hopefully the people who did this to him are in jail. Whitney Williams—she owns this place—is at work, but she knows we’ll be here.” She grabbed a lead rope from the back of the truck and headed for the barn. “Wait here.”
Inside, the barn was dusty and dark. At the last stall door, she paused. The black gelding melted into the shadows; all she could really make out were the bared, yellowed teeth and the whites of his eyes. His ears lay flat back and he snorted, blowing snot and air.
“Whoa, boy.” Vivi Ann opened the stall door and took a cautious step forward. The horse reared and lunged at her, striking out with his front hooves.
She sidestepped easily and snapped the lead rope onto his halter as his hoof banged into the wooden door.
It took her another quarter hour to get the terrified horse out of the dank, smelly stall and into the sunlight; then, finally, she saw the scars.
Wherever he’d been whipped or cut deeply enough, the hair had grown back in white.
“Son of a bitch,” Dallas muttered beside her.
Vivi Ann felt the start of tears and dashed them away before Dallas could see her weakness. No matter how many times she did this, she never quite got used to seeing wounded horses. She thought of Clementine, and how the horse had saved her when she’d needed saving, and it broke her heart to think how cruel people could be. She tried to stroke the horse’s velvety muzzle, but he yanked back from her touch, his eyes rolling wildly. “Let’s get him loaded and out of here.”
“If it upsets you so much, why do you do it?” Dallas asked later, when they were on the road again.
“I should just let them suffer because it’s painful to help?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to do that.”
“This particular horse—his name is Renegade—was the state Western Pleasure equitation winner just four years ago. I saw him win that day. He was magnificent. And now they say he can’t be ridden. They were going to put him down before he hurt someone. As if it’s his fault he’s violent.”
“Pain can turn an animal mean.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
His voice lowered. “He could hurt you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?”
Suddenly, strangely, Vivi Ann didn’t think they were talking about Renegade anymore.
She focused on the road, saying nothing until they were home again, parked in the gravel lot, and unloading Renegade. “Dinner will be a little late,” she said, letting the horse loose in the grassy paddock behind the barn. She knew from experience that horses like Renegade needed to be alone. Sometimes they were so broken they could never run with a herd again.
Dallas came closer. “Don’t worry about me. I’m taking Cat Morgan to dinner.”
“Oh. Well.” She took a step back, telling herself she wasn’t disappointed. “I guess I’d better get to the house.” But she didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure why until he closed the distance between them.
For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, and in spite of everything, she wanted him to, but then he whispered against her ear, “We both know Cat isn’t the one I want.”
Chapter Seven
After dinner at the Waves Restaurant, Vivi Ann and Luke drove back to the farmhouse. The noises of an early June night were all around them, floating through the truck’s open windows—motorboats chugging onto their trailers after a day spent on the flat waters of the Canal, kids laughing in the park along the shore, dogs barking. There was so much going on in town it should have been easy to overlook the silence in the truck, but Vivi Ann noticed every pause, every breath. In the weeks since she and Dallas had rescued Renegade, she felt as if her life had been suspended somehow, as if danger were nearby and she had to be careful, be on her guard against it always. There was a pressure building inside her, heating up.
She looked at Luke, and the smile he gave her was everything a man’s smile should be: clear and bright and honest. It should have made her want to smile back, to say something romantic, but the longer she looked into his eyes, the more trapped she felt. The whole of her life with him was suddenly here with her, sitting in his truck, and it was small and unassuming. Not what she wanted for her life at all. She wanted passion and fire and magic. Maybe her mistake had been in not sleeping with Luke. In the beginning, she’d held back because he was serious and she wasn’t and she hadn’t wanted sex to trap her into a false love, but now she was trapped anyway, and the irony was that he believed their lack of intimacy was a signal of love, a proof of it in some way. Maybe if sex was great with Luke, she’d be swept away and tumble into love . . .