Her Second Forever

by Joanna Sims

  “Guten Morgen.” Colt tipped his hat to her when she broke up the meeting, sending the workers scattering in different directions and then headed over to him.

  Gilda, a slight woman in her early sixties, who was dressed exactly as she had been at orientation—riding boots, slim-fitting riding pants and a long-sleeved shirt with a Strides of Strength logo walked his way. When she walked, she leaned forward a bit, her right shoulder dipping lower than the left and her arms didn’t swing freely by her sides. There was stiffness—a sternness—in her body that Colt interpreted as seriousness for her role in life. Gilda was the general manager in charge of both the nonprofit side of the facility as well as the profitable boarding side of the property. She gave him another slight smile when he greeted her in German.

  “Guten Morgen,” she repeated his earlier greeting in German, as well.

  Gilda led him to the office and Colt, for the second time in a short time, was disappointed when he discovered that neither Lee nor Chester were there. He resisted the urge to ask if Lee was on the property, not wanting to give even the slightest hint at his feelings. Yet, Lee and her pretty hazel eyes and her wispy hair and self-effacing smile had been at the forefront of his mind all weekend. Any doubt that he was completely smitten with her had been discarded. Colt was enamored, truly enamored, with a woman for the first time in his life. And the feelings he was having for Lee put into perspective all of the other infatuations he had experienced. It had been child’s play, he realized. Not real. The emotion he had for Lee was confirmation that love at first sight could happen. It had just happened to him and he sure as heck wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  “Wait here, please.” Gilda gestured to the waiting area. “I will be but a moment.”

  She opened the door to Lee’s office and returned a moment later, closing the door gently behind her, with a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Here is the list.” Gilda handed him the paper. “Lee and I discussed all of the needs on the property and we have prioritized the most urgent from top to bottom. Please follow it precisely.”

  The list was certainly long and could be daunting for someone without his vast experience growing up on a Montana cattle spread. Sugar Creek Ranch was one of the biggest land holdings in the greater Bozeman area and they had run a thousand head of cattle before. Colt knew what it took to maintain a facility with horses and livestock. It made him happy to see that everything on Lee’s list of priorities was something he could handle. And if he couldn’t handle it on his own, he had a long-standing list of connections to people who could help him.

  “Is this all?” Colt folded the list and tucked it into the pocket of his shirt.

  Gilda’s brows lifted in surprise. “You are not impressed with this list? We could add more.”

  Colt opened the front door for her. “I can handle my own load, now.”

  “We shall see,” his companion said in a way that reminded him of his second-grade teacher, Mrs. Bjorn, who was always sending him to the principal’s office for one reason or another.

  “I will introduce you to our in-house farrier. Boot takes care of all of our horses, including most of the boarders’ horses. If you need any supplies or equipment, please speak with Boot first before you speak to me. That is his area of expertise, not mine.”

  Just like Lee, Gilda walked with purpose and with an extended stride. Did all of the womenfolk on this property walk like they were being chased by something? He was darn near out of breath by the time he reached a small workshop on the far side of the indoor riding arena.

  “Boot?” Gilda walked inside of the dusty, disorganized workshop. It was the only place on the property that appeared to be in disarray. Old tires were piled up in the corner and the shelves that lined the paneled walls were stuffed with old spray bottles, tipped over and rusty and coffee cans filled to the brim with nuts and bolts and nails. There was a half-dismantled riding lawnmower in the middle of the shop with its parts cluttering the cracked concrete floor. Colt heard a loud sneeze followed by a very loud sniff, another sneeze and then a cough coming from a small room that was tucked away in the back left corner of the shop.

  “Boot?”

  “Yeppers.” A gravelly, rough voice preceded the man’s appearance into the main part of the workshop.

  “I’d like you to meet Colt Brand. He will be working for us this summer as a handyman.” Colt noticed an affectionate sparkle in Gilda’s guarded brown eyes when she looked at Boot. “Colt, this is Boot Macbain.”

  “Sir.” Colt stepped forward and held out his hand to the man.

  Boot Macbain was a tall man somewhere in his sixties, his head shaved bald, a prominent straight nose, snapping deep-set blue eyes and a bushy snow-white goatee. His hands, large, rough and beefy, were stained with black oil spots, presumably from years of working on farm equipment without gloves.

  “I heard you were going to be providing a much-needed service here.” Boot was eye to eye with him and Colt was six feet four inches in his bare feet.

  “I’ll leave you now.” Gilda nodded to Colt and then her eyes touched on Boot one last time before she left.

  “Fine lady,” Boot mused openly before he turned his attention back to Colt. “I’ll show you the good stuff. We’ve got a whole warehouse full of man’s toys that’s going to leave you salivating. You ever operated a backhoe?”

  “Started when I was seven.”

  Boot smiled at him, showing an even row of Chiclet-sized teeth. “Someone raised you right, son.”

  Boot took him to an enormous gray metal warehouse that was filled with farm equipment—tractors, manure spreaders, aerators, bush hogs, Bobcats and different-sized trailers. It was truly a man’s playground.

  “Over this a way—” Boot gestured for him to follow “—is where I’ve stocked the power tools and just about any little gadget you might need. If we don’t have it, let me know and I’ll try to finagle room in the budget.”

  “How did you guys manage to amass all of this?” Colt stood with his hands on his hips, trying to take in all of the options at his disposal.

  “Lee is a master at writing grant proposals and sweet-talking donors,” Boot said as he exited the warehouse and walked to a second smaller adjacent building. “This here is where we stock our wood and posts to fix the fences.”

  At the end of the tour, Boot said, “Well, that should get you started.”

  “I’d say so,” Colt agreed. And unable to resist the question that had been rattling around in his brain ever since Boot mentioned Lee, he asked, “Have you known Lee a long time?”

  Boot’s sharp blue eyes honed in on his face, as if he could already sense his interest in the pretty entrepreneur.

  “Long time.” He gave a nod. “She was married to my son.”

  * * *

  “He drives that tractor around this property too fast, Gilda!” Lee spun her chair just in time to see Colt drive past her window on the tractor. As he always did, he looked over at her office window and caught her looking out at him. He raised his hand in greeting and smiled at her broadly. Her cheeks grew hot from being caught, again, watching him out of her window. Lee spun her chair back toward the desk, frown lines creasing her forehead. “The man’s a menace with that tractor. Please tell him to slow down.”

  “I have,” Gilda replied calmly. “I will tell him again.”

  “Yes.” Lee nodded. “Please do. It’s a safety hazard and camp starts next week.”

  Lee shuffled papers around on the desk, her mind temporarily scattered by the lingering image of Colt’s handsome smiling face in her mind. That face—that smile—had been more of a distraction in her life than she wanted to admit to herself, much less anyone else in her life. Her life was exactly as she wanted it to be—it was as she had designed and planned and carefully constructed. A fleeting, ridiculous attraction to an overgrown boy masquerading as a man was not
going to become a permanent dish on her menu.

  “How is he doing, other than driving around here like a bat out of hell?” Lee asked.

  “Very well, in fact.”

  Lee stopped shuffling papers, sat back in her chair and frowned. A very well from Gilda was high praise indeed.

  “Everyone loves him,” Gilda added.

  Of course they do.

  “He arrives early,” the manager continued. “He is a hard worker.”

  Shocking.

  “He is very helpful and polite. I’ve heard nothing but good things so far.”

  “What does Boot think of him?” Lee crossed her hands in front of her body.

  “I haven’t asked him directly.”

  “But you like him.”

  Gilda took a moment to mull over her exact opinion, as was her way, and then she said definitively, “Yes. I think that I do. So far.”

  If Lee had been looking for an ally to find a good reason to reassign Colt to a different facility, she wouldn’t find one in Gilda. Having Colt at Strides of Strength made her feel uncomfortable and uneasy. Not because she thought that he was a deviant or untrustworthy—but because she felt pulled toward him in a completely organic way, against her own will, like a magnet. She had worked to avoid him on her own property, taking different out-of-the-way paths in order to not run in to him directly. It would be impossible, and completely juvenile, to behave this way for the entire summer. If she was attracted to Colt, like every other female on the property, human and animal alike, then she was just going to have to face it, deal with it, desensitize herself to the feelings and get on with business. Honestly, she didn’t have time to be conflicted about a cowboy.

  Lee pushed away from her desk. “You know what, I’ll talk to Colt about the tractor. Ultimately, I’m responsible for him.”

  Gilda and Lee parted ways, with the manager heading to the boarder’s barn to oversee the progress of afternoon hay distribution and mucking of the stalls. Lee headed toward the pasture at the back of the property where she had spotted Colt fixing a line of fence that had been in desperate need of repairs for months. Colt had been on the property for only a week and already his handyman skills were making a difference and Lee couldn’t deny that. Colt had climbed up the light pole and fixed a light at the front of the property that had been burned out for too long and now the area was flooded with light between the three barns. Almost all of the broken boards on the fences had been repaired and now Colt was replacing the split or rotten posts. Holding her locket in her hand as she approached Colt, Lee ran an internal dialogue in her mind, reminding her body that she was not going to act on any attraction she might feel for this man.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Colt was kneeling down in front of a post he had just put into the ground, his back to her.

  He was humming to himself as he worked.

  “Hello?” she said more loudly when he didn’t turn around.

  Colt stood upright, turned around, spotted her and gave a start. He laughed, pulled ear buds out of his ears and let them dangle around his neck. “My stars! I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”

  Unexpectedly, Lee laughed in return. “My stars? That sounds like something my Grandmother Macbeth would say and she’s in her nineties!”

  Colt took a bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat off his face and neck. “Come to think of it, that was something my grandmother used to say.”

  They stood there smiling at each other, not speaking, just mindlessly enjoying the moment without thought. Finally, Lee realized that someone needed to speak and it was going to have to be her, because Colt seemed content to let the moment drag on. If she had wondered about Colt returning her attraction, she didn’t have to wonder any longer. Colt was attracted to her. It showed in the way he studied the features of her face and in the way he gazed at her with such admiration—his attraction was unmistakable. And it simultaneously thrilled her and shook her to the core.

  “How’s it going?” It was a stupid question—she could see with her own eyes how it was going.

  Colt didn’t seem to mind. He looked over his shoulder at his own work and then turned back to her. “I’ve got only one more post to put in and then I can get started working on the barn.”

  This time, the smile was genuine. “That’s wonderful news! I’ve been so worried about that. I’ve heard that we are going to have record highs this summer and I’m genuinely concerned about how hot the horses will be in that barn. Last year, they were sweating in their stalls.”

  Colt adjusted his cowboy hat. “Not this year.”

  Until that moment, Lee hadn’t realized how much Colt had already added to the function of the property. She had been worried about how she was going to budget getting the fences fixed and now that problem was solved. In one week, by one industrious man. How could this same person be the reckless drunkard arrested for riding while intoxicated?

  Colt’s eyes were on her face when he asked, “So, you’re happy with my work so far?”

  “Yes.” She turned her head away, not wanting to get caught up in his eyes. “So far, so good.”

  Her companion’s smile widened with pleasure. He winked at her. “Maybe you’ll put in a kind word for me and I’ll get some time off for good behavior.”

  Colt was just kidding with her—she could see it in his face. But her stomach knotted up in the strangest way at the thought of him leaving at the end of summer.

  “I don’t know about that,” she countered. “You’ve proven to be a valuable asset for us.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “However...”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I would appreciate it if you would drive on the property with more caution.” This admonition came out much more tempered than she had originally intended. She had intended to be stern and firm and really put her foot down with Colt. But when she got sucked into his charming orbit, she had gotten all soft and gooey inside. Darn it if she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings.

  Colt’s expression turned sheepish. “I get a little impatient to get from point A to point B.”

  “You need to slow your roll, Colt. The week after next, we are going to have children on this property and their safety, the safety of the horses and the staff are number one.”

  He lifted up his hand like he was swearing to something. “I promise to do better, boss.”

  Lee’s hand went back to her locket. “Thank you. And thank you for the work you’ve already done here. It’s been...more helpful than you can even imagine.”

  With a quick wave, Lee turned away from him, her heart pounding in her chest as if she had just run a mile. Even the simplest of exchanges with Colt got her blood pumping in a way she hadn’t experienced in such a long, long time.

  “Hey, Lee?”

  She turned around at the sound of her name—a name that somehow sounded exotic and sexy when said in Colt’s baritone voice.

  “It was good to see you.”

  “It was good to see you too,” she said honestly.

  “I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

  Her brain froze for a split second before a simple excuse fought its way through the fog and out from her lips. Flatly, she said, “I’ve been busy.”

  Colt’s eyes drifted down to her lips and she couldn’t help but wonder how incredible it would feel to be kissed again, to be held again. To hold someone’s hand again.

  “Well, maybe I’ll get lucky and you’ll have a reason to come talk to me tomorrow.” He rested his hands atop the posthole digger stuck in the ground.

  “Perhaps.” She pointed her finger at him, with a half-kidding, half-serious tone. “But not about the tractor.”

  He crossed his heart. “No. Not about the tractor.”

  * * *

  Colt watched Lee walk awa
y, her ponytail bouncing playfully on her back. Colt had begun to make a list of traits that he particularly admired about Lee, and one of those traits was her swinging ponytail. She always walked with happiness in her stride and that extra bounce made that ponytail swing back in forth in the most charming way. He watched all the way until she disappeared into the enclosed riding arena and then he dropped his head down onto his hands and tried to catch his breath. His heart was pounding harder than it had all day, even more than it had when he struggled to get those posts in the hard ground. Lee Macbeth made his heart race, plain and simple. He knew—he knew as sure as he was standing in Montana—that Lee was the woman he was meant to marry. He felt it in his gut and he knew it in his mind. And yet, he could tell that Lee wasn’t going to be caught easily. He was going to have to be strategic and patient. The news that Boot had shared with him earlier in the week had knocked him off balance. Lee had been married before but Boot talked about the marriage in the past tense. Lee was married to my son. If there had been a divorce, would Boot still be so involved with Lee’s business? Colt wanted to ask Boot directly about the marriage, almost had done it a couple of times, but decided it was best to hold his tongue. Lee wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; she seemed like the type of woman who would let the world know she was married by faithfully donning her wedding ring.

  “You calling it a day, son?” Boot groaned as he stood up from his chore of reassembling the lawn mower.

  “I think so.” Colt twisted to the side to stretch the stiff muscles in his back. “This place has worn me out.”

  “This place’ll do that to you,” Boot agreed. “There’s never enough energy, daylight, help or money, that’s for sure. You’ve been a big help already, I have to say that.”

  “Lee scolded me about driving the tractor too fast.”

  Boot chuckled. “I figured she would.”