The bulk of those attending the auction were local families looking for a sweet-tempered and good-looking saddle horse. They’d come to the right place.
Each horse was more handsome than the last—roans, palominos, grays, buckskins, and one simply gorgeous pinto. Linne exclaimed over and fell in love with every single one of them, and every time a new horse was led into the ring, she reneged on her promise not to beg her mother to bid.
The first twelve horses went quickly amid spirited bidding, but even though the last one, number thirteen, was offered for an opening bid of only one hundred dollars, no hand rose to claim him.
The gelding, Stormy, a sixteen-year-old American Standardbred, wasn’t as handsome as his stablemates. He stood fifteen hands. His coat was brown, his mane and tail were black—that was it. He had no special markings, no white blazes or stockings. He was just a dull brown horse in a very bad mood.
The other horses had followed the trainer calmly into the ring and stood quietly during the bidding, munching apples from the trainer’s hand. Stormy, who had to be escorted into the ring alongside another horse, with the mounted trainer holding a lead attached to his halter, started to buck, rear, and writhe as soon as he spotted the crowd of spectators.
An older man standing next to Holly, who wanted to buy a horse for his teenaged grandson but hadn’t been able to keep up with the bidding, shook his head firmly when the boy urged him to make a bid.
“No way, Clark. That horse is crazy. Look at him. He won’t let anybody touch him, let alone ride him. Standardbreds are harness horses anyway.”
“But, Gramps, I’d work with him. This is our last chance! Please. He’s only a hundred dollars.”
“And a bad bargain at half that price. Dangerous. No amount of working with him will change that. I’ll get you another horse. Promise. One that won’t kill you.”
The old man walked off with his grandson trailing reluctantly behind.
The auctioneer, shouting to be heard over Stormy’s frantic whinnies, lowered the starting bid to fifty dollars. When there were still no takers, he thanked everyone for coming and reminded those who’d made winning bids to settle up their payments and make arrangements to pick up their horses before departing.
The crowd dispersed.
As they walked back to the field where the car was parked, Holly glanced over her shoulder. Linne was trailing behind them, involved in an imaginary conversation with her model horse, but Holly kept her voice low just the same.
“Cady, that last horse, the one nobody bid on . . . Stormy? What will happen to him?”
“Well . . .” She, too, kept her voice low and looked over her shoulder, making sure Linne wasn’t listening in. “Probably what I said. Old Mrs. Finley can’t keep a horse like that. Nobody could.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“I agree, but you can’t blame her. Nobody is going to take that horse off her hands; they’d be crazy to try. He’s old, nothing much to look at, and so pissed off he could end up killing somebody. It’s sad. Maybe something happened to him. Maybe he was born mean. Either way, what can you do about it?” Cady shrugged and opened the driver’s side door. “Some poor creatures are just too broken to save.”
Cady was probably right. But still, Holly couldn’t stop thinking about the horse. She got into bed a little after midnight, but she couldn’t shut down her brain. It was busy, sleepless through the night, thinking about Stormy.
Even though he’d been on one side of the fence and she was safe on the other, when Stormy started bucking and stomping, Holly was scared. But as the horse, living up to his name, stormed furiously around the paddock, snorting and pounding the ground with his hooves, Holly was able to look into his eyes. Not for long—it was no more than a breath—but long enough to see that he was scared too. He was terrified.
The other thing she’d seen that others had not was that, plain brown coloring or not, he was a handsome horse, a beautiful creature, and worth saving. But, like Cady said, a person would have to be crazy to take on a horse like that.
At five in the morning, before it was even light, Holly decided she was crazy.
Holly drove out to the Finley ranch, parked alongside the road, and waited. She saw a light turn on in the upstairs bedroom, and then, about twenty minutes later, just a little before seven, she saw the gray head of an old woman through the kitchen window. She got out of her car and knocked on the door.
The elderly woman, whom Holly recognized from the day before, was understandably cautious. Holly noticed that she kept the screen door closed.
“It’s awful early to come calling.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Holly said, remembering to address her politely, the way Cady always spoke to older ladies. “I’m sorry to bother you. I was at the auction yesterday.”
“Oh, that’s right! I remember you! Pretty little thing. You’re not from around here.” Mrs. Finley smiled and opened the screen door. “What happened, honey? Car break down? Do you need to call somebody?”
Holly stepped over the threshold.
“No, ma’am. I came out to talk to you about Stormy. I’d like to buy him.”
CHAPTER 18
In the wee hours of the morning, with the lights of the city still shining diamond bright in the night sky, Mary Dell slowly lifted Hub-Jay’s arm from her shoulders, then propped herself up on one elbow, gazing at his sleeping face and form for some long minutes before slipping stealthily from beneath the covers.
As quietly as possible, she gathered her discarded shoes and clothing, lifted her overnight bag off the luggage stand, and padded down the hallway to the second bathroom so she wouldn’t wake Hub-Jay.
She emerged ten minutes later wearing minimal makeup, dressed in black slacks and a purple-and-black-striped blouse, her hair combed and corralled by a gold clip. She opened and shut the door of the suite silently, took the elevator to the lobby, and asked a sleepy bellman to bring her car around.
Mary Dell’s predawn departure did not stem from any sense of shame or regret. On the contrary, when she woke, drowsy and warm, with her head resting on Hub-Jay’s chest and his arm still around her shoulders, the steady and soft whoosh of his breathing the only sound in the room, she felt better than she had in a long time. She felt happy. But it was more complicated than that.
She had tried to puzzle it out there in the bedroom, while studying Hub-Jay’s sleeping face, regulating her breathing to his, as if this might help her find the answer and give a name to what she was feeling. At first, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but then it dawned on her: this was what it felt like to be loved.
She had nearly forgotten.
That was why she slipped from Hub-Jay’s bed without saying good-bye, and made certain that her phone was switched off before making her exit. Not because she was ashamed of what had passed between them, but because she wanted to preserve that feeling for as long as she could and she knew that if Hub-Jay woke he would want to talk about what came next, and she wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Many, many years before Howard was born, she’d spent another night with another man who was not yet her husband, and it changed her whole life. Back then, barely more than a child, she’d been touched by a momentary madness, drawn to Donny as inexplicably and irresistibly as a moth is drawn to a flame, having no idea what she was getting herself into and why.
She wasn’t a child now.
What had happened in the night, the awakening of passions she thought had passed her by, was not the result of an impulse beyond her control, a Fatal Flaw. It was a choice she had made. She understood that by every moral standard she’d ever set for herself, what she had done was wrong, but she wouldn’t feign regret she didn’t feel, heaping one transgression upon another.
Nor would she deny or forget what might have been the most beautiful night of her life, the kind of night she might never experience again. Because even before slipping from Hub-Jay’s side, she knew she would never allow herself another such n
ight, not for any reason, not unless they were joined as man and wife.
And that was something that might never happen. Or it might. She didn’t know. What she did know, as her eighteen-year-old self had not, was that the decision she’d made in the passion of the night would require more decisions—practical, sensible, well-considered decisions—made in the logical light of day.
But today was not that day.
Today she needed to go home, to tend to her family, her business, and her future. This was real life, not a movie. The night she had shared with Hub-Jay and the feelings they had discovered for each other had not solved her problems or become her happy ending.
Hub-Jay might love her and want to marry her, but that didn’t change the fact that her family needed her, that she was responsible for the welfare and well-being of many. Right now, that was where her focus needed to be.
If the feelings Hub-Jay professed for her were true, they would wait and so would he. Wouldn’t he?
That would be his decision. When she was ready and the time was right, she would make hers. But she would not be rushed, because this time, unlike the last, she understood exactly what she would be getting into. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to have her life upended like that. Somewhere in the previous twenty-four hours, she had discovered feelings for Hub-Jay that surprised her, but she was old enough to know it took more than feelings to hold two people together, for better or worse, through the roller coaster of life. Donny’s departure had shown her that.
And yet . . . how lovely last night had been.
With the convertible top down and the sun climbing warm into the blue, Mary Dell extended her arm into the air, stretched her fingers wide to catch the rushing wind, and smiled.
Eighty miles later, when the Eldorado passed through the gates with “F-Bar-T” sculpted from wrought iron and then bumped over the cattle guard and onto the long gravel driveway that led to the ranch, Mary Dell was seized with sudden giddy joy. Coming to the top of a little rise and seeing the house, she laughed out loud and smacked the horn, tapping out “shave and a haircut” with the heel of her hand.
By the time she turned off the engine and hopped out of the car, Taffy and Cady were spilling out the back door, whooping like cowboys on payday. Mary Dell opened her arms wide, hugging them both at once.
“We were starting to wonder what happened to you,” Taffy said. “Hub-Jay called, looking for you. Said he’d tried your cell phone about a dozen times and it kept going into voice mail.”
“Oh. I had it turned off. Saving the battery. I’ll call him later.”
Taffy shook her head and squinted her eyes, as if she was trying to bring her daughter into sharper focus. “You shouldn’t ought to be giving a man like that the brush-off, Mary Dell. People say he’s as rich as feedlot dirt.”
“Momma,” she said, pausing at the end of the word, making it a sentence all on its own. “Hub-Jay is a friend of mine. That’s all. I’m not interested in him or his money.”
“Why not?” Taffy countered. “If you ever hope to put your brand on another man, you need to get a knot in your lasso, and quick. You don’t have that many good years left, you know.”
Mary Dell arched her brows. “Thank you, Momma. I’ll keep that in mind.”
The screen door slammed and Linne came running out the door. Mary Dell bent down and scooped her up in her arms.
“Ugh!” she grunted. “What is your momma feeding you, baby girl? I bet you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last.”
“Are you home forever now, Aunt Mary Dell?”
“For good and forever,” she confirmed.
It was still early, so Taffy went into the kitchen to make breakfast while Cady and Linne helped Mary Dell unload the car and unpack.
“Momma seems better,” Mary Dell said as she piled clothes into drawers.
Cady was unloading a box filled with picture frames, jewelry, and a few mementos Mary Dell had been unwilling to entrust to the moving company.
“She has good days and bad. But more good since she heard you were moving home. I think she missed you. But I made her a doctor’s appointment for next week, like you asked.”
“Thanks, baby girl. I just want to have Dr. Gillespie give her a once-over.”
“Good idea. When will the moving truck arrive?”
“Probably not until this afternoon. I doubt they’ve even left Dallas yet.” Mary Dell shoved a row of dresses closer together, trying to make more space on the rack. “I swear, I don’t know where we’re going to put everything. I can take my sewing stuff over to the shop, but we’ll have to store stuff in the shed until I get it sorted out. But I was thinking we could take my blue sofa and chair over to the rental.”
“That’d be nice,” Cady said. “The furniture could use some updating.”
Mary Dell took some of the pictures Cady had unloaded onto the bed and started setting them up on top of the dresser.
“How’s your new renter working out?”
“Fine,” Cady said, sounding a little cautious. “Did you know she’s your co-host?”
Mary Dell turned toward her. “You’re kidding.”
Cady shook her head.
“So . . . what’s she like?”
“Very nice,” Cady replied quickly. “And a real hard worker.”
Mary Dell frowned, wondering why or how her niece would have occasion to observe her new co-host’s work ethic.
“The thing is,” Cady continued, correctly interpreting the expression on her aunt’s face, “Rob Lee called me right after she moved in and asked if I could come over and show her how to do a few things . . .”
“How to do a few things?” Mary Dell’s frown deepened. “You mean, like, jiggle the handle on the toilet to keep it from running? Or flip the breakers when the air conditioner overloads the circuits?”
“More like . . . sew.” Cady licked her lips, then lifted her gaze to meet Mary Dell’s. “She doesn’t know how to sew.”
Mary Dell’s hands dropped to her sides. “You mean she doesn’t know how to sew a particular kind of block? Ones with curved piecing or Y-seams? Or . . .”
“I mean she doesn’t know how to sew. At all.”
Mary Dell’s jaw dropped.
“But she’s getting better,” Cady rushed to assure her. “Really. I’ve been going over there for a couple of hours every afternoon to help her, but she is stitching from dawn till midnight so she’ll be ready in time.”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful,” Mary Dell said, then clucked her tongue in disgust. “So? What can she do so far?”
“She’s got Four Patches and Nine Patches down,” Cady replied. “And Rail Fences. Her Snowball blocks are a work in progress.”
“You mean that’s it? Four beginner’s blocks? She doesn’t know how to attach a binding, or miter a corner, or quilt a finished top?” Mary Dell tilted her head back, addressing the ceiling. “Why in the world did they hire this girl? Wait. I already know. She’s young and gorgeous, right?”
“Uh. I’d say she’s definitely . . .” Cady clamped her lips closed.
Mary Dell turned around, addressing Linne, who was sitting on the floor with Mary Dell’s jewelry box, putting away her aunt’s rings, necklaces, and bracelets, but taking her time doing it, trying on each bauble and bangle before putting it in the proper compartment.
“Linne? Have you met Miss Holly? What does she look like?”
“Like a movie star. She’s nice too. She gave me a new horse for my collection! She liked Breyers when she was a little girl, just like me.”
Cady pulled another tangle of necklaces from the box and handed them to Linne. “Please, Aunt Mary Dell, don’t fire Holly. She’s worked so hard. At least give her a chance.”
“Bless you for thinking I could, baby girl. I didn’t hire her; the network did. I couldn’t fire her if I felt like it.”
Mary Dell sighed and sat down on the bed, holding a stack of folded tops in her lap. “Guess I’ll just have to make the best
of a bad situation and get her up to speed as quick as I can. I appreciate you getting the ball rolling, Cady.”
“I like her. I bet you will too. Did you know her mother is Rachel McEnroe?”
“Really?” Mary Dell looked impressed. “Then why doesn’t she go by McEnroe?”
“Her daddy’s name was Silva. I don’t think she wants to trade on her momma’s fame.”
“Huh.”
Mary Dell got up, walked over to the dresser, and started putting the tops away, organizing them in the drawers by color and pattern, just the way she did when she organized her stash of fat quarters.
Maybe this arrangement with Miss Holly Silva would work out after all. Or, she thought, remembering those four beginner’s blocks, one of which was “a work in progress,” maybe it wouldn’t.
But Mary Dell would give the girl a chance. She didn’t have a choice.
Taffy called out from the kitchen, saying that breakfast was ready. Mary Dell called back to say they’d be right in and put the last of her tops away in the dresser.
“Guess we’d better go eat before the eggs get cold. Hey,” she said, frowning, “where’s your brother? I haven’t seen him at all this morning.”
“Probably still in bed,” Cady said.
“At this hour? Is he sick?”
“I heard his truck in the driveway around three.”
“Three? In the morning? What in the world was he doing out until that hour?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Cady replied grimly. “But whatever it was, he was probably doing it at the Ice House.”
“Excuse me,” Mary Dell said, setting her jaw and closing the dresser drawer with more force than was required. “You and Linne go on in and get your breakfast. Tell Momma I said not to wait for me. There’s something I need to attend to.”
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