On instinct, Chey reached out and took hold of Tory’s upper arm, gave it a light squeeze and a rub. Chey wasn’t much of a toucher, so that might as well have been a bear hug coming from her, and Tory knew it. “You’re going to land on your feet. Why don’t you come east? Blue Hollow Falls will pull you right in.”
“Lots of ranching in the mountains of Virginia, is there?” she said dryly, though she’d clearly been touched by the gesture.
Chey laughed. “Okay, maybe not. Not like out here, anyway. But there are plenty of horses and riders to go with them. At the moment, I’m the only game in town, at least where lessons and training are concerned anyway. As you duly noted, I’m also part owner of a lavender farm and we’re in full swing this year, so my horse side gig is honestly just that. You could pick up my lessons and go from there. I’ll help. Not that you’d need it, but I can introduce you around, vouch for you.” She grinned.
“That’s truly kind of you—”
“Don’t brush me off, now,” Chey said, a teasing note in her otherwise dead serious offer. “I’m not tossing that out there like a bone to a starving animal. You could get a job in every single state in the union, and many other countries besides. You loved your time in Canada—”
“I don’t want to leave the States,” she said. “That much I know. I may still have the accent, but I’m part American and a citizen here for far longer than I was a resident there. I’ll admit it was a bit of a thrill when I left the circuit and traveled as a trainer, being in demand in countries other than the US. Or it was when I was younger at any rate. Now?” She lifted a shoulder. “Not so much. These shores are home to me and I plan to stay somewhere between them.”
“Even better. But I’m not just offering you a chance to find work.” And as Chey spoke the words, she knew the truth of them. “I’m offering you a chance to find a home.” Not giving her friend even a moment to say anything, Chey went straight on. “How many of these mounts are yours?”
“Two are mine,” Tory said, looking confused by the subject change. “Buttercup makes three. Why?”
“I’m buying Buttercup from you, so that makes two.” She lifted a hand when Tory started to argue on the buying part. “At the very least I’m paying you back whatever it cost to get him away from those meat grinders.”
Tory shuddered, but simply nodded.
“You have a trailer?” Chey asked.
She nodded. “One-horse. Had a two, but it fell apart and I haven’t had the chance to upgrade again. I use the Parmenters’ ranch trailer when I need anything big—”
Chey talked over her. “Fine. I’ll put Buttercup in your one-horse, and leave the two-horse I hauled here. When the time comes, drive it back east for me and we’ll swap back.” She eyed her friend, wouldn’t let her look away, and stuck out her hand. “Deal?”
“Chey—”
“You’ve got no family left. I’ve got no family left,” Chey baldly stated in a way she wouldn’t have done with anyone else. “Blood family, anyway. I have three close friends who are family to me now. We own and run our farm together, and it turns out that has come with a whole town full of adopted family. The Parmenters are pulling up stakes.” She smiled. “I’m sure you’ll write long, lovely letters to each other and you can visit over the holidays. But in the meantime, you’re a horse trainer in need of a job. And a new home. And I just happen to have one of each I can share.”
“You came out here for Buttercup,” Tory said, but Chey already saw the considering look in her eyes, and the way her shoulders had straightened a bit. Both good signs.
“Lucky me, then,” Chey said with a smile. “Twofer.” She wiggled the fingers on her still outstretched hand. “Deal?”
“I don’t know when it will be,” Tory said. “I promised to stay until they got things completely settled here.”
Chey just kept wiggling her fingers. “Stop stalling.”
Tory rolled her eyes and Chey’s smile split into a wide grin. Now, that was the Tory she’d gone up against in the ring.
Tory took Chey’s hand in a grip that was unsurprisingly strong and deliberate. “If it will keep you from nagging, sure, I’ll come east and save your sorry little tush from being so overwhelmed you can’t even handle a few measly mounts.” Her utterly inelegant sniffle ruined her superior tone when she added, “I don’t know how you’ve managed to get along without me all these years.”
Tory didn’t let go of Chey’s hand and instead pulled her in for a tight hug. Chey stiffened and Tory just held on tighter. “Thank you,” Tory whispered in her friend’s ear. “You saved two lives today. I won’t forget this.”
Chey relented then. Hearing Tory’s choked gratitude undid something inside her. She’d been in a place far lower than Tory’s in her life, and she knew what a kind hand meant more than most. “Good,” she said gruffly. “I hope you still feel that way after harvest.”
Tory let Chey go, but immediately slung her arm over Chey’s shoulders as they turned to face Buttercup. “You gonna still feel that way when I farm the hell out of that lavender better than you and take all your students away?”
Chey hooted. “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be? We’re not in the show ring any longer, you know.”
“What, you think I’ve grown soft and complacent over the years?” She eyed Chey. “Have you?”
Chey looked at the horse. “You hear that, Buttercup? Big words. She has no idea, does she?”
The horse snuffled and ducked his head, as if he was agreeing with Chey. Chey and Tory both laughed. “I have a witness,” Chey said, looking at her friend and grinning. “You’re on.”
* * *
This time around, Chey did keep in touch, albeit not quite as loquaciously as her friend did. Three months had passed since Chey had successfully transported Buttercup back across the country to his new home in Blue Hollow Falls. Spring had arrived after a particularly stubborn winter had finally made its long-delayed exit, and things on the farm had started to hop.
Chey’s to-do list felt like it had tripled overnight, but she took a moment, folded her arms on the fence rail, and propped her chin on them. She watched from under the brim of her hat as Buttercup grazed contentedly in the pasture just beyond the paddock. The old gelding still had a long way to go, but he’d been slowly and steadily putting weight back on. His coat still looked pretty shabby, but it was growing back in, and his mane, though still thin and stringy, had an actual luster to it now. Best of all, the gelding’s eyes, despite being permanently clouded with age, were alert now, and focused. Buttercup wasn’t a fully healthy horse—that would take a much longer period of time, if it ever happened—but he was a happy horse. She’d take that.
Her gaze shifted from the pasture they’d dedicated to the horses to the farm beyond. Row after row of lavender bushes filled the landscape all the way to the horizon, where the peaks of the Blue Ridge rose up and filled the skyline, and her heart. It was a vista that never failed to move her. Now the lavender was coming to life, the buds creating a hint of that gorgeous purple hue, and the fields were showing signs of green. “The season is coming. Ready or not,” she whispered.
The sound of Foster, one of her rescues, kicking his stall door, drew her from her thoughts and she headed back inside. The rambling old stone stables had come with the farm, as had the stone and wood stable manager’s house that was now her home. It had been over a year since Chey had teamed up with her three “life warrior” friends and taken on rehabilitating the farm property and turning it into both their collective home and future livelihood. This would be their first complete beginning-to-end season, with Lavender Blue Farm and Tea Room fully open and operational.
The tearoom stayed open all year, though on reduced hours just three days a week in the off season. They held special events for each of the seasonal holidays from late October through May, but were otherwise closed to the public during that time.
Over the past sixteen months, like the rest of the property, both th
e stables and her house had undergone endless renovations to make them livable and functional after sitting empty and abandoned for many years. Decades of them. Given the age of the buildings, that would likely be an ongoing, lifelong chore. Chey would happily take it on.
She continued scanning the property until her gaze landed on the main house, and she smiled thinking about how far they’d come already. All four of them. Seeing Tory again had made Chey a little more reflective than she generally allowed herself to be, but these memories were all good, warm, forward-moving ones that filled her with optimism and hope. Hard to believe, from the outside looking in, that four uniquely different women, from very disparate paths, not to mention varying generations, could come together to not only forge this new life venture, but develop a bond so deep it rivaled any family unit. “And from that, we did this,” she murmured, shaking her head, still finding it hard to believe.
Chey knew she didn’t stop often enough to appreciate things; she was always too busy racing ahead to the next thing. She knew that came from a lifetime spent not allowing attachments to form, affections to grow, whether for a place, or the people who inhabited it. She’d always be leaving soon, so why set herself up for heartbreak and grieving over things, people, places lost?
Turned out life handed out heartbreak and loss no matter how careful you were. From that brutal reality, Chey had learned the value of investing herself—all of herself—in people, in a place, for the long term. And look at what we’ve done. They’d dubbed themselves the “fearsome foursome” the day they’d met at a grief counseling group, one they’d immediately ditched, opting to forge their own form of group therapy. That nickname had been more prophetic than they could have ever predicted. “Fearless foursome” might have been a better fit, Chey thought, and smiled.
Vivienne Baudin, a New Orleans-born former showgirl-turned-costume designer with her seventieth birthday on the not-too-distant horizon, had been the one who’d actually inherited the property, though they all owned a fair share now. Vivi lived up in the big main house, a part of which also served as the tearoom and, for now, the gift shop. Construction was starting on a separate shop space for that, turning the old potting shed into a unique, restored entrance to the actual shop, which would be built onto the back of it.
Hannah Montgomery, nine years Chey’s senior at thirty-eight, was an artist and former children’s book illustrator. She had her artist’s loft and living space over the large, detached carriage house. While Avery Kent, their resident genius and the youngest of the clan at twenty-five, had what they teasingly referred to as her mad scientist lab set up in her apartment, located in the addition that had been added to the back of the main house sometime in the middle of the previous century. Four women whose paths would have likely never crossed if not for that fateful afternoon.
As fate would have it, after moving to the middle of nowhere, somehow both Hannah and Avery were now in committed relationships with what Vivi called their “better halves,” and Chey wouldn’t be surprised if there were wedding bells for one, the other, or both, before the year was out.
She reached over the stall door and gave Foster a good rub along his neck. “You’re my better half, eh, Fos?”
The horse snorted, then lowered his nose over the stall door and started nudging Chey’s pocket. She laughed and dug out the apple she had stuffed in there earlier, for this exact reason. She held it while he nibbled off a chunk. “If only men were half as easy as you. Feed ’em, water ’em, put them in at night, and give them an occasional sweet treat? I might put up with one if that were the case.”
“Question is, would they put up with you?”
Chey whirled around at the sound of that British lilt. “Tory?”
Tory stepped into the aisleway and posed with a flourish. “’Tis I. Surprise!”
“Yeah, that it is!” Chey said, stunned. “How is it you can talk my ear off pretty much every other day but not mention that you packed everything up and headed east?”
“Well, I kind of took a detour, so I wasn’t exactly sure when I’d get here.”
Chey finished feeding an apple to Foster, then wiped her hand on her pants leg and turned toward her friend. “What detour? Don’t tell me. You found someone else’s horse on the blocks?” Chey had been kidding, but Tory didn’t laugh.
“Not exactly,” she said, then turned to look outside and motioned to someone or something. She put her hands on her hips and gave whatever or whoever was out there “the look.” No one denied Tory Fuller anything when she gave them what Chey teasingly called her “Queen Victoria face.”
“I hate surprises,” Chey told her, frowning now. Curiosity and dread filled her in equal measure, though she couldn’t have said why on the latter part. Call it a sixth sense. “Don’t let her bully you,” she called out. “In fact, run, run now.”
Tory turned to Chey. “You were kind enough to come get Buttercup when I couldn’t keep him and didn’t know whom else to call,” she explained. “But he’s not really your responsibility, Cheyenne, and I knew you wouldn’t—” She broke off and abruptly turned her attention back outside the stables.
Chey’s eyes widened when Tory stamped her foot and pointed to the floor in front of her.
“If I’d told you, do you think you’d have come? Now get on in here,” Tory said to whoever was out there. “Bloody hell, the two of you. I swear, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have knocked sense into both of you years ago.”
Chey had been walking toward Tory, but she stopped dead in her tracks. A prickle of pure dread—no, make that full-blown panic—raced over the back of her neck and all the way down her spine, immobilizing her on the spot. The dread turned into a tight ball in her gut, and she was very afraid she might be sick. Dread, or anticipation? Maybe both. Okay, definitely both. But she didn’t want either of them, thankyouverymuch.
“Tory,” Chey said, her voice low and as threatening as it had ever been in her life. “You did not—” She could barely get the words out. “Tell me you did not—”
“She did.” And if that voice didn’t set Chey so far back on her heels that it almost planted her ass-first on the packed dirt, one look at Wyatt Reed as he stepped into the stables—her stables—sure as hell did.
“Hey, Cheyenne,” he said, as if an entire lifetime of anger, pain, longing, friendship, and regret hadn’t filled her every waking moment since he’d walked out of her life so very many years ago. He held her gaze directly, and she owed him a direct one in return. She owed him so much more than that. But meeting his eyes was a start. And it took everything she had to manage even that much.
He didn’t look angry, or mad, or sad, or . . . anything, really.
What he did look was good. So incredibly, terrifyingly damn good.
Chapter Two
“I didn’t know,” Wyatt told her. “I mean, I knew about Buttercup—not that he’d ended up on the block. I thought he was dead. I thought my—” He stopped short, looked down as he tried—and spectacularly failed—to find balance. One look at Cheyenne McCafferty and he sounded just like the ridiculous, lovesick teenager he’d been the last time he’d seen her. He was so far and away from the person he’d been back then, in all ways imaginable, he didn’t even recognize that boy anymore. And he sure as hell didn’t want to be reminded of him, either. He’d worked too hard to leave that kid behind. And Chey along with him.
“I’m not going to apologize,” Tory said, speaking directly, and maybe a little defiantly, into the sudden, fraught silence. “Life’s too short for regrets. All three of us know the truth of that in ways most people don’t, and never should. I knew you both then, and I know you both now. I love you. I trust you. And I don’t give either of those things lightly. We’re all we have left of the unique existence we led, living on the circuit, like circus performers, just in a totally different kind of ring. No one can understand what that was like unless they lived it. Just because we chose to put that life in our rearview mirror doesn’t
mean we leave all of it in the dust. That life, all the good and all the bad, forged who we are, standing here right now. And I like what I see.”
Wyatt lifted his gaze to look at Tory. He wasn’t mad at her. He knew she thought she’d been doing the right thing. But he was far from happy with her, either. Or with this sudden twist in what had already become a rather convoluted situation. He was so far from ready for this, for Chey, he simply had no handle on what to say, much less do.
“I’m going to head out and take care of my horses and start unloading a lifetime of stuff from the back of my truck,” Tory said. “I expect that will take me some time.” Tory’s gaze went to Wyatt first, then to Chey, her Queen Victoria face on full display. “We’re adults now,” she said flatly. “Start acting like it.”
She strode out of the barn as if it belonged to her, which was pretty much how she’d appeared in any ring she’d stepped into from childhood on up. All tawny blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a fiercely determined, wildly competitive spirit hidden behind the biggest heart and the sunniest smile Wyatt had ever seen.
He shifted his gaze back to Chey, who looked anything but sunny. He fought the urge to smile. Some things hadn’t changed there, either.
“You can’t have him,” Chey said quietly. She might as well have yelled it, because the words, spoken in that deadly calm of hers, made him flinch just the same. “You had your chance. He’s mine now.”
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