Lawful Heart

by Amity Lassiter

  And then she did see two tiny hooves on the ends of the most impossibly fragile looking legs. The miracle of life. Norah slid one hand over her barely-there bump and swallowed hard.

  “This is amazing,” Norah said, watching as the mare had another contraction and a few more inches of the foal’s legs appeared. The animal’s body relaxed a bit and she let out a couple hard breaths. She glanced over at Banks, who was watching intently. “How long does it normally take?”

  “As long as it does,” he said, as another contraction moved Dixie. His hands remained in his pockets, like he was trying to stop himself from intervening.

  They watched quietly through a few more contractions before Banks slowly opened the stall door.

  “What’s happening?” Norah asked.

  “We’re just going to give her a hand. That foal hasn’t moved in a few pushes.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. I’m gonna need you to just sit at her head and keep her calm.”

  A flight of butterflies took off in her stomach. Witnessing it was one thing, participating was another thing entirely. She’d barely touched a horse in her lifetime, never mind assisted one in delivering a foal. But Banks was watching her with an expression of expectation, and she couldn’t imagine disappointing him, so she stepped through the stall door he held for her. He knelt by Dixie’s head and motioned for Norah to do the same.

  “Just hold the halter here. Pet her and talk to her. If she struggles too much, just get back and let her get up. We don’t need anyone to get hurt.”

  Norah got down next to Banks, suddenly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Despite the fact they were in a barn, she could smell him—unique and manly—like a deep forest and sun-warmed leather—and she could feel him…heat, and something else, emanating from him, almost tangible.

  “What do I say?”

  Banks laughed, stroking the mare’s jowl.

  “Anything. Tell her she’s pretty. That she’s doing a good job. Just keep talking.”

  Still unsure, Norah settled in at the mare’s head, watching as Banks moved toward her tail, all of his motions slow and fluid. Dixie let out heavy breaths through flared nostrils as another contraction moved through her. Norah slid her hand across the mare’s glossy coat.

  “You’re all right, you pretty girl…you’re doing such a good job.” She might have been imagining it but the mare seemed to relax with her words.

  “You’re doing good, Dix. You too, Norah,” Banks said. He’d rolled his sleeves up and was crouching at the mare’s rear. “One more push and I think we’ll have the shoulders clear.”

  As if she understood what her owner said, Dixie’s whole body tensed with another push, a loud groan coming out of her.

  “Good job, girl. Good job,” Banks said with laughter in his voice, wiggling back away from Dixie with a big wet baby horse in hand. Right away the foal moved, its body jolting now and again as its long, elegant neck worked to support its head and little tippy ears.

  “Is everything okay?” Norah asked.

  “Looks that way, everything’s just new. A big, strange world,” Banks replied with a chuckle on his voice, then gestured to Dixie. “Let her have her head. She’ll want to take a look at what she did.”

  Norah let go of the horse’s halter and backed away and the big horse rolled up onto her chest, craning her neck to see the foal. She made low, quiet noises, almost under her breath, barely audible, but the foal heard, his ears perking. Even horses knew their mother’s voices from inside the womb.

  Emotion clogged Norah’s throat and she felt hot, unexplainable tears prickling. Being emotional wasn’t one of her pregnancy symptoms, or so she had thought. She couldn’t justify why she wanted to bawl her eyes out about this horse and its baby, but it was all she could do to stop the tears from coming as she watched them touch noses, the foal’s high pitched voice sounding a greeting, imitating the noises Dixie made. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever witnessed.

  “A good, big filly this year, lovely,” Banks said to the mare, patting her hip as he got to his feet. “Good work.”

  He wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket and let out a long breath. Norah got to her feet, too.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we let nature do its thing.”

  He opened the stall door and stood back to let Norah out. When she passed by him in the narrow space, a frisson of energy passed between them. She glanced up to see if he’d felt it too, and the look in his eyes told her he hadn’t missed it. She drew a big breath, just a beat, before he bent his head and took her mouth.

  If she’d fantasized about Banks’ mouth, her fantasies were terrible approximations, because it was far better than she had imagined. He touched his lips to hers, soft at first, taking just a taste, then pulled away for a second, cupped her jaw in his big hand, and tipped her head back before he came back for more, firm this time, taking, not asking. She was surprised, in a good way, and she let herself open up to him, inviting him in, her pulse racing, her fingers clutching the front of his shirt. He banded an arm around her waist, clinching her to him in the sort of possessive way that made all her insides go liquid. The other hand moved from her jaw to her neck, his fingers curling against her nape, his thumb finding the soft hollow where her pulse beat faster than she was sure it ever had before. She didn’t know why he was kissing her, but it fit with the series of fortunate events she had experienced since Rob had left her in that bar, and she wasn’t going to argue.

  She shifted the angle, tugging his shirt to pull him closer, and his body bowed forward over hers for a second before he stepped forward, pushing her flush against the outside wall of the stall, his big, solid body following, pressing her back, until she wanted to explode. How a simple kiss, hands above the waist, could make her feel like a cat in heat, she wasn’t sure, but he was doing it.

  And then, very suddenly, he wasn’t. He straightened and stepped back like she’d scorched him. She truly wouldn’t have been surprised if she had, she was running so hot. His gaze changed from hungry to sorry and she went from boiling over to chilled just as quickly. He frowned, rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. She thought he might apologize and that was one thing she simply wouldn’t allow.

  She turned, linking her fingers into the wire covered window looking into the stall and saw that the foal was on her feet, wobbling unsteadily beside Dixie on long spindly legs, rooting for milk.

  She didn’t want to see the apology, either.

  “Look,” she said, before he could say anything else. Banks stepped up beside her, mirroring her stance to look into the stall.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened—and truthfully, that was better than the alternative. Norah didn’t want a conversation to burst the warm bubble she’d floated into. “I did not expect her to unfold those legs that quick. Already heading for the milk bar.”

  Right on cue, the loud sound of slurping could be heard in the relatively still air of the barn and Norah laughed out loud.

  “That’s nature right there,” Banks said. “Why don’t we go inside and give them some time to get to know one another?”

  *

  Bank’s stomach was grateful for the meatloaf but the rest of him was still hungry for something else; someone else—the someone sitting across the table from him with her hands wrapped around a coffee mug like it was a life preserver. She was definitely chewing something up in her head. He’d taken her by surprise, that much was obvious. She had been a delightful surprise, all warm and soft and open—she felt too good after a long dry spell, like water in the desert, and he’d have liked a little more.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed her. It wasn’t like him to be impulsive, but that little shot of electricity that passed through the air between them and the adrenaline coursing through him from the successful delivery had emboldened him to take what he wanted. Just having her there in the barn
with him had been calming; but the masterful way she stepped up to the task at hand, followed his direction, and stayed calm when he felt like he was in the middle of a windstorm was like balm on an itchy rash that had broken out on him the minute he had decided to breed Dixie again for another foal. So when she passed so close, so amazed, in such awe, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to kiss her, the obvious next step. And he didn’t regret it for a second.

  Maybe she did, though. He couldn’t tell. He watched her as she turned the mug in a circle on his table top. She’d asked for the drink but she’d barely touched it since he poured it.

  “I’m glad you were here,” he finally said, clearing the slightly uncomfortable silence that had settled between them since they’d come into the house, out of that magic bubble that smelled of new life and sweet hay. No better time to be vulnerable. It would either warm things back up between them or chill them out entirely. Maybe then he could go back to being comfortable and in control in his office, instead of constantly thinking about the next opportunity he’d have to see her, talk to her, be close to her. “She had a hard time last year and we lost the foal, so I was nervous. And you being here helped me not to be.”

  She looked up, meeting his gaze. She didn’t look the way someone who’d just heard those words should. Maybe she did regret the kiss. Then she spoke.

  “I’m glad I was here, then.”

  He was still having a hard time reading her, so he took a leap.

  “That boy who left you here was a damn fool, Norah,” he continued. He knew from experience with domestic disputes right here in town that sometimes when a woman was beaten down enough, she started to believe the untrue things her abuser told her. “But I’m grateful he did.”

  Because it meant she wasn’t God-knows-where with that POS and maybe nobody to protect her when he got angry. And because it meant she was here in Three Rivers. With him. In the barn tonight. In his office tomorrow morning.

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared so hard into her coffee, he thought she might be trying to make it levitate. Finally, she broke the silence, without lifting her gaze.

  “You should know that the reason Rob left me here was because he was mad that I’m pregnant.”

  The words hit Banks in the chest like a big cannonball and he almost felt like pushing his chair back just to give the idea some space. He didn’t, though. He put on his sheriff face, his impartial face, the one that showed no fear, no emotions, carefully constructed to make people open up to him and talk.

  “I see,” he started.

  He’d known there had to be something, but he just hadn’t put any thought into it by this point. If they’d liked each other enough to head for Salt Lake together, a minor tiff shouldn’t have been enough to piss Rob off that badly. He mulled it all over for a second, and it must have been long enough, because Norah finally lifted her gaze.

  “I just…after you kissed me, I figured you should know. I mean…if that meant anything. I just want you to know what you’re getting into. I mean, if you’re getting into anything…” She finally pressed her lips together to stop the words spilling out of her. She shook her head and cast her eyes down again, a bright blush creeping up her neck. Not the pretty, flattered kind, the horrifically embarrassed kind.

  Banks frowned, reaching across the table to touch her hand lightly.

  “Hey. It’s okay.”

  If he had to be honest, his mind was spinning at a rate of about 2500 rpm trying to process this new information. He liked being near her, liked the way she made him feel, the way she took care of him at the office—this was just…a big, important thing. And that big, important thing was irrevocably attached to the asshole who’d dumped her here.

  She lifted her head and cast her gaze to him, letting out a long breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice sounding braver than her eyes looked.

  “You don’t have a thing to be sorry for, Norah.”

  “I do. I should have been honest.”

  “Well, you weren’t dishonest. I don’t expect your whole life history just because of a kiss.”

  “I’m ruining it by making us talk about it, aren’t I?”

  “The pregnancy? I’m glad you told me,” he said, and he meant it. In the heat of the moment, it didn’t change a thing.

  “The kiss. I’m killing the magic of the moment.”

  He chuckled, wiping a hand over his mouth. She was cute.

  “Magic, eh?”

  She blushed again but this time it was a pretty flush creeping up her neck when she dropped her eyes. The corners of her mouth tilted up in the slyest smile.

  “Trust me. You can’t kill the magic of that kiss.”

  When she finally lifted her gaze again, Banks was rewarded with a full-watt smile like he hadn’t seen before. It was infectious, and he found himself smiling back, a slow warmth growing in his belly. He hadn’t been lying—the magic of that kiss was indestructible.

  *

  Norah’s shoulder bumped Banks’ as they walked through the dark back out to the barn, following the beam of a flashlight he carried. Since she’d arrived, she’d felt like her secret was a big force field surrounding her. It protected her to keep that secret, but it stopped anyone from getting close, and after being abandoned, she could use some closeness. She’d never imagined the closeness and intimacy she’d crave would be from the sheriff who’d given her work, and hope, but here she was, looking at him in an entirely different way. And not just the way that pregnancy hormones made you look at a handsome, well-built man in uniform. But…that way, too.

  The night had been transformative. Norah would have laughed in the face of anyone who told her that someday she’d be midwifing for a horse when she was pregnant herself, rolling up her sleeves and getting dirty in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, crushing on the town’s sheriff who seemed like he came right out of some silly TV drama, and wasn’t her baby daddy. And yet, here she was, and she wasn’t resisting either. She still didn’t have a plan, but she had a roof over her head and was earning a paycheck and that seemed like a pretty good start. And she was making friends. Well, she considered Nan, Layla, and Nate friends, and Banks was getting there.

  “So, have you thought about a name?”

  Norah was startled out of her thoughts by that question. Well…no, she hadn’t. She’d seen the baby as everything but human so far. At this stage in the game, though, there was no denying it.

  “Um…I like William.”

  Banks glanced over at her as they entered the barn and he flicked on a set of lights in the aisle—just enough for them to see, not enough to disturb the horses.

  “For a filly?”

  “Oh, for the horse,” she said with a laugh, the realization making her cheeks flush. “Um, no. She’s your horse.”

  “I’ll name dozens of foals in my lifetime,” he said, leading her down the hall back toward the foaling stall. “And I’ll help deliver as many. This is the first time I’ve had company besides the vet. Go ahead and think of something good.”

  Norah pressed her lips together as they approached the stall. Inside, Dixie was nickering softly to the foal that was tottering along on her long, spindly legs, replying in a slightly higher pitched tone, nosing around the udder. She launched forward and immediately, a loud slurping sound filled the space of the stall.

  Banks laughed out loud. “Guess we can safely say she has no issue with the milk bar.”

  She stopped herself from saying, for the millionth time that night, how amazing it was. Apart from the little assistance and reassurance they’d provided, Dixie had just laid down and gone to work, gotten up and taken care of her baby. It wasn’t like human babies—the more Norah thought about those, the more she realized they were about the most helpless mammal to be born. Weird, compared to animal species that could get up and walk after being born, feed themselves with no assistance from their mother. Superior species, sure.

  Nor
ah took a long look at the filly, furrowing her brow. She was a lush chocolate brown color now that she’d dried out, with a ring of white around each rear hoof and a big star in the middle of her forehead, connected to a little snip on her nose by a narrow strip of white. The way the snip was situated between her nostrils made her look like she was smirking.

  “Sailor,” she said, finally.

  The expression Banks cast at her took her off guard. The big, handsome grin told her she’d done well.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but her grandfather’s registered name is Sailors Risky Whiz.”

  “Oh, well…she needs her own name, then.”

  “No, no. It’s common with registered horses, especially Quarter Horses like these, for parts of names to get passed down.” He paused and chuckled. “In this particular line, people like to pass down the Risky or the Whiz, it seems like…But I like Sailor, so Sailor it is.”

  —FOURTEEN—

  Gloria answered the door before Norah even had a chance to knock. She’d taken her time coming up the path to her aunt’s apartment with the intention of giving Banks enough time to drive away and not be seen dropping her off, but it appeared that Gloria had been waiting by the door, looking out the window for her.

  “Come right in here, sweet girl,” her aunt greeted her, drawing her into her arms for a warm hug. If she hadn’t already made up her mind to give life in Three Rivers a try for the foreseeable future, her great aunt’s loving reception would have been the deciding factor. Norah felt herself light up, and stepped into the apartment when Gloria stepped back to let her in.

  “Hi Auntie,” she said, stepping out of her shoes and putting down her purse.

  “I haven’t heard you call me that in years and years,” Gloria said, pausing and pressing one hand in the middle of her chest like she was trying to keep her heart from beating out of it.

  “You haven’t seen me in years and years,” Norah reminded her.