by Joanna Sims
“Where do want me to leave the keys for the tractor?” Colt slipped the keys out of his pocket.
“Over there on that ledge will do just fine.” Boot pointed to a small shelf by the entrance.
Colt picked his way over to the shelf, dropped the keys on the ledge and then his eyes spotted an old picture, frayed at the edges with spots of sun damage blurring some of the image. It was a picture of Boot in his younger days, standing in front of a muscle car with his arm around a tall gangly young man in a graduation cap and gown.
“That’s a nice ride,” Colt commented. “A Cheval?”
Boot walked over to join him. “Yes, sir. That was my boy’s dream car. I was so proud to be able to get it for him for graduation. My parents couldn’t afford a car for me, so it was something that I could do for my own son. My wife wasn’t so sure about it, but she finally agreed.”
Boot hesitated for a moment and then he said, “After Michael died, I kept that old Cheval running for as long as I could.”
The older man beside him smiled faintly. “My friend was a mechanic and he told me that at the end, the car had been rusting from underneath for so long that the only thing holding it together was prayers and car polish.”
They stood together looking at that picture silently.
“Well.” Boot patted Colt on the shoulder, turned around and disappeared into the small office. Colt leaned in to get a closer look at the man who would grow up to be Lee’s husband. He looked like a nice kid, like someone he would have been a friend with in high school. After that exchange with Boot, Colt had one of his questions answered without ever having asked it. Boot had lost his son. Lee had lost her husband. He didn’t know how her husband had passed away, but there wasn’t a ring on her finger because Lee was a widow.
Chapter Four
The week before the summer session began was always the busiest for Lee. It was a time when her mind was so occupied by details and decisions that any personal issues she might have were shoved into the background. She didn’t have time to think about her own baggage, not when she had the children to think about. During the final prep week, she had to train the volunteers as to the specific manner in which to lead the horses. The horses at Strides of Strength had so many different people handling them that they wanted to keep how they were led consistent. Lee was also in charge of teaching the volunteers how the children would mount and dismount from the specially designed mounting ramps, how to execute an emergency dismount and how to be an effective side-walker. It took three people to provide equine-assisted therapy for one child: a horse leader, a therapist and a side-walker to ensure the safety and stability of the child.
“One of the most important things that you have to remember—” Lee stood in front of the new volunteers in the covered arena “—is that you can’t use the horse or the rider for support. Your arm is going to get tired, especially if you are side-walking with one of our taller horses like Sweet Girl, but it’s your responsibility to stop yourself from leaning on the horse or putting pressure on the rider’s leg.”
Lee asked Gilda to bring one of the demonstration therapy horses forward. Callie was sitting on the back of the horse, acting as the demonstration rider. After all, Callie was one of her original riders. She was the perfect person for the volunteers to practice with before the summer session began.
“If a rider is like Callie and is more independent—” Lee gave Callie a quick smile “—you don’t even have to have your hands on their leg or foot. You can walk next to the horse, without touching the rider, but always ready to perform an emergency dismount.”
Lee showed the volunteers several appropriate side-walking positions and then demonstrated the incorrect positions.
“I’m going to lean on you a bit. Okay, Callie?” she asked, resting her arm on Callie’s thigh.
“Okay,” Callie said with her trademark smile.
“It’s easy to accidentally lean on the rider and this can cause pain and discomfort for the rider. Many of our riders are nonverbal and cannot express to you that they are in pain or uncomfortable. So, please be mindful about carrying your own weight.”
After the morning session, Lee hoofed it back to the office to check in with Gail Allen, who was organizing all of the intake forms for the program to ensure that all of the riders were properly enrolled prior to the beginning of session. Their summer program had gained some notoriety after she had been nominated for a CNN Heroes award and parents would bring their children from all over the country to attend. The first official week of the program would be particularly hectic because the therapists would be getting eyes on their clients for the first time. Most of the riders arrived with previous evaluations, while some would need to move through the entire evaluation process.
“How’s it going, Gail?” Lee asked anxiously as soon as she walked through the door of the main office.
Gail had been one of Lee’s most faithful volunteers and a fierce advocate of the program. Gail had single-handedly begun the partnership between the First Baptist Church Bozeman, a church that was established in Bozeman 125 years earlier and prior to Montana statehood and Strides of Strength. Every year, Gail spearheaded a fund-raiser at her beloved congregation to raise money for Lee’s program.
“We’re doin’ just fine, dahlin’,” Gail said with her soft southern Georgia drawl. As was usual for Gail, her bobbed, wavy silver-white hair was perfectly quaffed, her subtle makeup was accented by the perfect shade of lipstick for her peaches-and-cream complexion and her accessories—earrings, necklace, bracelet and ring—complemented her outfit. “We are ahead of the game this summer. All the forms are in!”
Lee raised her arms up in celebration. “Yes!”
She wasn’t really superstitious but she couldn’t help but believe that this was a good omen for the summer session.
“Hey! Where’s Chester?” Lee looked around. She was surprised her feline companion hadn’t greeted her at the door, as was his habit.
“I believe you’ll find him in your office.” Gail nodded toward her office with a little smile on her face that gave a hint to Lee that something out of the ordinary was going on.
Lee went to her office and found Chester happily sprawled out on top of her desk. He lifted up his large gray head, blinked his eyes at her and gave her a meow that morphed into a yawn.
“How did you get up there?” She wrinkled her brow curiously. On closer inspection, she saw a set of steps custom-made specifically for the height of her desk.
“Where did these come from?” She ran her hands over the stained wood that matched her desk perfectly and the small carpet inserts that picked up the main burgundy color of the rug in the lobby.
“Gail? Where did this come from?” She asked the question, but it was largely rhetorical. This gift for Chester—this gift for her—had to have come from Colt.
Gail appeared in the doorway, a pleased look on her face, her hands clasped excitedly. “Isn’t it wonderful? Chester followed Colt into the office, watched him set those up and walked right up them like he knew they were made just for him. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. Chester sat on that top step right there, gazed at Colt as if to say thank you and reached out and touched him with his paw.”
Lee couldn’t stop admiring the quality of the stairs. Colt wasn’t just handy—he was a very talented craftsman.
“I wish I had been here to see that.”
“Colt wanted to surprise you,” Gail said.
Lee nodded. “He succeeded.”
“You know,” the older woman mused aloud, “I believe that man has surprised all of us, just a little bit since he’s been here.”
Lee leaned over and kissed Chester on the head. From the therapists to the volunteers to Gilda, Gail and Boot—everyone had embraced Colt and welcomed him into the fold. It had never occurred to Lee that he would be able to fit into this world
so easily. But Lee still was reserving judgment about his placement until she saw how the children and the parents responded to Colt. No, he wasn’t going to be leading the horses or side-walking during sessions, but it would be unavoidable for him to interact with the children and parents at some point. Until Colt was able to pass that test, his position on the facility, no matter how beneficial it had been already, was not secure.
Lee gave Chester one last cuddle before she headed out the door. She checked her phone for the time before she headed to the back of the property. As good as his word, as soon as he was done repairing the fences, Colt had begun working on the main projects in the oldest barn. He was standing on the metal roof of the barn, wearing his cowboy hat, but he had taken off his shirt. Lee’s heart gave a little jump at the sight of his tanned, muscular chest and arms. He was simply and undeniably a handsome man. Colt was every woman’s type—tall, young, fit, strong chiseled features and a leading-man smile. Her attraction to him, she decided, was evidence that she was still human, nothing more.
“You’re being careful up there, aren’t you?” She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up at him.
Colt stopped rolling the thick silver sealant on the metal roof and grinned down at her. “Absolutely. Don’t worry about me. I love heights.”
“I know,” she said, remembering him climbing up the light pole like an agile cat. “But I’m still worried.”
When his smile widened, as if he was interpreting her worry as a sign of a more personal connection between them, she added quickly, “Liability.”
“Don’t go anywhere.” Colt ignored her liability aside and walked over to the ladder that was propped against the side of the barn.
Lee rushed over to the ladder to hold it for him. Maybe he didn’t need her help, but she was going to give it to him anyway.
Colt hopped down off the ladder, his half-naked body so close to her that she could reach out and touch the sexy contours of his biceps and the ridges of his flat stomach. His skin, hot from the morning sun, smelled salty from the sweat and Lee discovered that she was even more attracted to him, not less.
“Thank you.” Colt leaned over to pick up the shirt he had balled up and tossed onto his toolbox.
Lee was finding something in the distance to admire while he shrugged on his shirt and buttoned it up, instead of staring at his body as was her want.
“You can look now,” he said in a teasing voice.
Embarrassed, with a blush creeping up her neck that just happened whenever she was near Colt, she tried to cover up her feelings by saying, “I think it would be best if you kept your shirt on while you worked, Colt. We’re going to have a lot of parents and kids here starting next week.”
“I gotcha.” He nodded easily. “Come into the barn. I want to show you what I’ve done so far.”
“Okay,” Lee agreed, “But I wanted to thank you first. That’s why I stopped by.”
Colt adjusted his hat on his head, tipping the brim up a bit so she could see his eyes. Those eyes were smiling at her, knowing that she had seen his gift.
“And here I was hoping that you stopped by because you missed me.” He frowned at her playfully.
In truth, she had missed him. It was a truth that she wasn’t willing to admit out loud. But lately she had been finding reasons to seek him out. And if she missed seeing him during the day, she would look for his truck in the parking lot and feel a knot in her stomach when she realized that he had gone for the evening.
Lee reached for her locket and held on to it tightly. Sometimes she squeezed it so tightly that her fingers felt stiff and sore after she released the keepsake.
“Thank you for the steps. For Chester.”
“You’re welcome.” He sent her a pleased smile. “They were a gift for the both of you. Do you like them?”
“They are so beautifully made, Colt. The way you matched the stain on the wood to my desk—you could put those online and sell them. A lot of cat furniture is so wobbly.”
“Well, I’m glad you like them.”
“I don’t like them, I love them,” she corrected. “How did you manage to pull that off without me knowing?”
“I bribed Gilda with a bag of Helmut Sachers coffee.”
Lee couldn’t help but laugh. Colt had a way of always making her laugh and it felt good to be around him because of it. She smiled all the time, but that smile was often a mask to make other people feel good. It wasn’t a reflection of how she actually felt inside. When she was with Colt, somehow he was the one who made her feel good inside.
“Gilda is very serious about her coffee. You know, Vienna is where they first brewed coffee,” Lee said.
“I think she might have mentioned something like that to me a time or two,” he said. Gilda was proud of her Austrian heritage and had bemoaned, once or twice, the taste of American coffee.
“I didn’t realize Gilda could be bought off so easily,” Lee mused.
“It was a larger-sized bag of coffee, if that makes you feel any better.”
Lee walked beside him into the barn. “Not really.”
Once inside the barn, Colt shifted gears and began showing her the plan for the two most important projects: the fans and the automatic watering systems.
“Now—” Colt led her over to the electrical panel inside of the tack room “—we don’t have enough voltage coming into this barn to handle the load of the fans and the automatic watering systems.”
“Meaning?”
“We’ve got to get an electrician out here to ramp up our capacity.”
Lee immediately saw a chunk of her budget disappearing. Electricians, even at the reduced rate they usually gave her, were expensive. She took in a deep breath and let it out. He glanced over at her.
“Don’t worry,” he said, having read the wrinkles in her forehead correctly. “I’ve got a friend who’s the best darn electrician in Gallatin County. He won’t cut corners or do anything that isn’t by the book and up to code, so we won’t have to worry about anything catching fire here. He’ll do everything industrial grade.”
“Okay. But for how much?”
“You let me worry about that,” Colt said, “Ben and I go way back and he owes me a favor or two.”
“You don’t mind calling in those favors for this job?”
“Nope,” he said. “I don’t mind at all. Now, about the watering system.”
Colt led her through the particulars of installing the automatic watering systems that she had purchased six months ago. It was a much more complicated job than she had thought, much like installing the fans. But after Colt walked her through his plan, she was able to do something she rarely did—she put her faith in Colt’s ability to get the job done and left her worry behind with him. Colt climbed back onto the roof while she headed over to Boot’s workshop. She glanced behind her one time and found that Colt was watching her walk away. She gave him a little wave and he gave her his trademark tip of the brim of his hat.
“Hi, Boot.” Lee tried her best to ignore the mess in her father-in-law’s workshop. It was the one place she had agreed to use a hands-off approach but the clutter made her nuts.
Boot stood upright, stiffer than she’d like, with a groan and opened his arms to her. “Daughter.”
They hugged tightly, taking a moment to lean against each other. It seemed like they had been leaning on each other for a lifetime.
“So, you finally got this old thing put back together?” she asked of the lawn mower.
“Yeppers.” Boot rubbed his hand over his head. “But she’s not purring just yet.”
“Boot...” She wrinkled her brow at him. “Do you really think that she’s ever going to purr again?”
“Don’t you worry yourself about it. I’ll get her purring again.”
“Okay.” She held up her hands in surrender. “I’ll wait wi
th bated breath for the purr.”
Lee walked over to the faded snapshot of Boot and her late husband. She picked up the picture and wiped the light film of dust that had covered the image. “You know, I remember this day like it was yesterday.”
“Me too.” There was that familiar catch in her father-in-law’s voice whenever he spoke about his only son, his only child, Michael.
“He took me out after graduation in that car. He was so proud of that car. So proud.” She put the picture down on the shelf, turned her back to the image and crossed her arms in front of her body. “We rolled the windows down—we still had our gowns on from the ceremony—and he took me out on one of the country roads and he drove so fast...”
Her voice trailed off for a moment. She swallowed hard a couple of times. “I can still feel the wind on my hand.”
“I remember all of us parents were ticked off at the both of you for showing up to the restaurant so late.”
“I know,” she said quietly, pensively.
The Macbains and the Macbeths had lived across the street from each other in a middle-class suburb in upstate New York. Michael and Lee had grown up together, always being seated next to each other for every school event because of their last names. They were play buddies in elementary school, crushes in middle school and finally, they were each other’s first love in high school. Michael had been her first everything—her first kiss, her first lover, her first genuine heartbreak. Nothing compared to losing Michael. It was difficult to imagine that anything ever would. She missed him every day. Her heart ached for him every day.
“But we all forgave you when we saw you walk through that door with your caps and gowns, looking so grown up. You, the valedictorian and Michael, the captain of the football team. Both of you with full-ride scholarships—we were all so proud of you.”
“Magical times,” Lee agreed.
Neither of their families knew at that graduation dinner that Michael had proposed to her just moments before. He hadn’t had a ring yet and she wasn’t ready to wear a ring then. But he had asked her to be his wife someday and she had agreed, without hesitation. Of course, she was going to marry Michael Macbain—they were going to graduate from college the same year, get married and have lots of beautiful babies together while they both had incredibly successful careers. It had always been in her mind that their eventual marriage was inevitable—it was written in the stars and in her diaries. That was before she realized how easy it was to dream and how difficult it was to actually make those dreams a reality.