by Laura Moore
“Don’t worry about it this time,” he said. “But next time you’re confronted by a mouthy guest, stand your ground. Be polite but firm.”
“Don’t look now, but here comes the mouthy guest in question,” Reid said.
After offering Ziggy a drink, she had steered him away from the trough. Spotting Ward and Reid, her smile widened and she nudged her mount toward them with her boot heels.
“Tell me what happened,” Ward asked Jim.
The younger man raised his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “No clue. She took a disliking to Nate. Decided he was a beginner horse.”
“Jim did his best to convince her that she should ride Nate, Ward.” Tess spoke in a quick rush since Erica was closing in on them.
“I know you’re not to blame, Jim,” he said.
Okay, he thought assessing the situation. So Erica would be riding Ziggy. He was a good horse, but it was spring and sometimes even the most seasoned horses succumbed to spring fever. They got just a little jumpier and friskier. His mother liked to use the term “fizzy.” Ward had chosen Nate for Erica because he’d been ridden a number of times during the week and had been rock solid on each outing.
Though he was tempted to haul Erica off Ziggy’s back and tell her it was Nate or nothing, he had a hunch she’d figure out a way to make that backfire just to score a point, such as listing every trail ride they’d ever been on together. He had no desire to listen to such a recitation. Besides, a confrontation would only embarrass everyone. And if they didn’t head out soon, they’d be late for Carrie’s meeting with George Reich, which had been scheduled for before the lunch crowd descended.
Erica reined Ziggy to a halt in front of them. Her smile was all satisfaction.
He got right to the point. “We assign horses to riders here for a reason, Erica.”
“Don’t be silly, Ward. You’ve seen me ride. I know what I’m doing on a horse.”
Erica was an okay rider, but, like many others, her opinion of her abilities was inflated.
Stacy Westfall she was not.
It wasn’t the first time they’d dealt with guests who thought they were hot shit in the saddle when, in fact, they were dried turds. He would simply have to control the environment as much as possible by making their stints at a lope short and sweet. If Erica complained even once, he’d whip out his bandana and gag her.
Turning his back on Erica, he said to Tess, “Let’s get you into the saddle. Brocco was out on the trail yesterday so the stirrups may need to be adjusted. If you’ll hold Rio, Jim, I’ll help Tess mount.”
He gave Rio’s reins to Jim, and he and Tess walked over to where Brocco was standing.
Tess waited while he unfastened Brocco’s halter and checked the cinch.
“Ready?” he asked.
He couldn’t point to the moment when touching Tess or getting a smile from her had become a key means to lifting his spirits or beating back the lousiness of a day, but he accepted the power she now wielded. Even now, just catching the scent of her shampoo as he stepped closer made him happy. So happy that he felt a smile tug the corners of his mouth.
“I guess so.” She patted Brocco’s neck—the gesture showed him he’d been right in thinking her confidence around horses was growing—and nodded. He grabbed her bent jeaned leg—his smile growing—and boosted her up. She’d gotten smoother about settling into the saddle. Yeah, he was damned proud of her. She found the stirrups, and he checked their length.
“They actually look good. How do they feel?” he asked.
“Okay—”
Whatever else Tess had planned to say was cut off. “Wow. I didn’t realize you offered the deluxe treatment, Ward. A leg up and stirrups checked? Isn’t the mounting block good enough for Tess?”
He glanced up from his position in front of Brocco’s large diamond-shaped head. Erica was smiling at him, but even from this distance he detected the tension behind the effort. If she forced the smile any more it might crack.
“Any complaints, take it up with the owners,” Ward replied. After making sure that Tess was holding the reins properly in her right hand, he walked back to Jim, who passed him Rio’s.
“Thanks, Jim. We’ll be back in a couple. You and Quinn taking the guests on the eleven-o’clock ride?”
“Yeah. It’s not a big group, just twelve riders. We’ll probably take the lake trail,” he said, referring to the lake that was fed by Silver Creek and formed part of the forest preserve.
Ward swung himself into the saddle. “Good day for it. Have fun. Reid and I will take care of the horses after we come back.”
Jim nodded and escaped to the sanity of the horse barn.
Reid was already astride Sirrus. “So, Erica and Brian, you’re going to ride with me. We’ll be taking some excursions on connecting trails to do some loping. When we feel like walking we’ll rejoin Carrie, Tess, and my geriatric older brother.”
Ward looked at Reid to signal his thanks but his brother already had Sirrus heading out of the courtyard at a brisk walk.
The morning suddenly got a whole lot better from Ward’s point of view. “All right,” he said with a smile. “Let’s ride.”
He was going to have to think of a way to repay Reid when this ride was over, Ward decided. For all of Reid’s razzing over how determined Erica would be to remain in Ward’s company during the ride, his brother was doing an outstanding job blocking her every attempt, taking full advantage of the number of trails that crisscrossed one another over the ranch’s rolling hills. After having publicly boasted of how she longed to ride at a faster pace, Erica couldn’t exactly protest whenever he suggested they peel off on a side trail to trot or lope.
And when the five of them were together, it was easy for Ward to keep his attention primarily fixed on Carrie and Tess. The two of them were clearly enjoying themselves. Carrie had been extolling the beauty of the day—easy to do with the spring sunshine warming the air and scenting it with the fragrant notes of fresh green grass and pine. For the first time since their arrival, Carrie’s enthusiastic comments drowned out Erica’s, saving Ward from having to fend her off.
Still, he grinned in relief when once again Brian and Erica followed Reid down a trail that crossed Silver Creek, the distant sounds of their hooves on the wooden bridge music to his ears.
Carrie, chattering away with Tess, didn’t even notice. “I fell in love with this place the summer I came to visit Brian. My sophomore year in college. Brian and you were juniors, right, Ward?”
“Yeah.”
“Adele and Daniel had been giving Brian gainful employment since high school. But just because they’d opened their hearts to Brian didn’t mean that they had to open their home to some girl from Greenwich, Connecticut.”
“I did vouch for how cute you were, Carrie.”
“I cannot thank you enough. Because who knows whether I’d have gone into astrophysics—I’d been thinking of majoring in math—if I hadn’t come out to Silver Creek and lain in the meadow with Brian. We spent hours staring up at all the stars glittering down on us. No houses anywhere, no lights, just those points of light. It got me to imagining what might lie beyond.”
“That’s what you were doing with Brian?” Ward teased. “Reid and I were always sure you two were exploring far more than the celestial heavens.”
Carrie giggled, blushing under the hat she’d borrowed from Quinn. “We weren’t always stargazing,” she conceded. “But this place is magical. I just don’t know anything like it back east. Do you, Tess?”
“Certainly not near Queens, New York, I don’t.”
“So do you feel this way, too—this incredible awe at being surrounded by so much nature? Has it made you fall in love?”
Unlike Carrie, Tess wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat. As soon as Ward understood where Carrie’s question was leading, he slowed Rio’s walk further to observe her reaction.
Her laughter sounded a bit forced, as colored with embarrassment as her cheeks. Her response betrayed
an equal self-consciousness.
“In love?” Her gaze darted to the right, connecting with his, then ricocheted back to stare fixedly between Brocco’s cocked ears. “I—uh, well, I’m a city girl through and through.”
Carrie looked across to Ward. “Looks like Tess needs a little convincing. I’d recommend taking her out to the meadow at night so she can appreciate the wonders of nature.” She grinned.
“Hmm, the evenings are warming up.” He was set to say more to see how much Tess’s blush could deepen when the sound of horses loping up the trail reached him.
And all hell broke loose.
Reid was in front, followed by Brian and then Erica. The men pulled their horses back from a lope down to a walk, but Erica, either because Ziggy had been trailing a bit and she wanted to catch up or because she wanted to get back to the group as quickly as the others and not miss any of the exchanges, waited to slow down. Not an expert rider, she misjudged the distance—and like a speeding driver tailgating the car ahead, her belated attempt to slam on the breaks failed.
Ziggy, his head jerked high by Erica’s yanking on the reins and ears pinned back, rammed Chili. Chili was one of their best trail horses, but no animal likes to be plowed into, and he reacted with a buck, his rear hooves doing their own slamming—right into Ziggy’s chest.
Ziggy squealed in pain and reared, throwing Erica off balance. Lurching frantically to stay in the saddle, she overcompensated, falling onto his neck. With a cry she grabbed his mane.
These five seconds of frightened chaos might have ended with no further incident if, at that exact moment, a doe and a buck hadn’t burst through the underbrush on the side of the trail with a crash and the snap of young branches, landing in the horses’ midst.
Already panicked, Ziggy lost it completely. Normally mellow when confronted with the deer, rabbits, and even bobcats that sometimes crossed their paths, this time he spooked, jumping sideways. The second his hooves touched the ground, he wheeled around and was gone, tearing down the trail as if the hounds of hell were chasing him.
It all happened so quickly. And since Reid was riding in front of Brian, he missed the mayhem. Ward, facing the opposite direction, saw the nightmare unfold.
The second the frightened Ziggy spun on his haunches like a circus pony and took off down the trail, Ward spurred Rio forward. He was already at a gallop as he passed Reid. “Keep Tess safe!”
Tess’s heart pounded as loudly as the sound of Rio’s hooves thundering down the trail as he and Ward flew after Erica. It pounded not just from the fright of seeing Erica’s and Brian’s horses shy and spook, or from having two large deer burst out of the undergrowth like two disturbed extras from Bambi (a movie she’d honestly never liked because of all the wild critters), it pounded from the crystalline revelation: She’d fallen in love with an extraordinary man.
She might never come to love Bambi but she suddenly knew without a doubt that she loved Ward Knowles. He was an amazing man, a true hero, a modern-day knight in jeans and a cowboy hat, racing off to save a damsel in distress.
Another thing she realized was that she pretty much loved Brocco. He’d stood still, his hooves never leaving the ground during the pandemonium. It was as if he’d heard Ward’s shout to Reid—that he keep Tess safe—and decided to do his part. She was going to filch a carrot from Quinn’s cache and feed it to him once they got back to the barn.
With Brocco she could easily show her appreciation and the depth of her affection. Ward was a different matter.
Even if she could screw up the courage to show how deeply in love she’d fallen with Ward, there was a little problem. The man of her heart was racing off to rescue the wrong damsel. When he returned fifteen minutes later—fifteen minutes that felt more like fifteen hours as Tess listened to Reid talk soothing nonsense to calm a rattled Carrie—Erica was seated in front of him on Rio, leading a limping Ziggy behind them. Despite her scare, despite Ziggy’s injury, Erica’s eyes shone with what Tess could interpret only as joy. And why not? After all, Erica was back once more in Ward’s arms.
FOUR HOURS LATER that special glow still illuminated Erica’s face. More irritating and depressing was how it amped up in wattage when Ward and Brian appeared at the tail end of Carrie’s meeting with Samantha Nicholls at her Mendocino floral shop, Seaside Lilies.
The meeting had gone well. Since Samantha had come recommended by Adele, Tess hadn’t really worried it wouldn’t. Samantha had done her homework and suggested a mix of peonies, roses, and calla lilies for Carrie’s bouquet that suited the romantic style of her wedding dress. Fortunately Samantha had visited Silver Creek during the summer, and so she knew which flowers would be in bloom and was able to suggest arrangements for the tables’ centerpieces that would echo the ranch’s gardens.
It was Samantha’s job to be helpful; it was seeing Erica fulfill her role as maid of honor with immense good cheer that caught Tess by surprise. The glow resulting from Ward’s gallant rescue had done more than color her cheeks; it had mellowed her personality. Not a single silky-smooth criticism passed her lips. When asked for her opinion on the bridesmaids’ bouquets and the men’s boutonnieres, she offered ideas that actually suited the style of the wedding. More surprising, she then went on to make the frankly brilliant suggestion that Samantha create several hanging decorations of star flowers for the tent that could be suspended over the diners, combining the theme of stars and flowers. The idea perfectly encapsulated Carrie’s vision for her wedding.
Riding ensconced in Ward’s strong arms had obviously brought out the best in Erica, Tess thought as Carrie sprang out of her chair and hugged her stepsister.
“That is so brilliant, Erica. I love the idea,” Carrie said.
If Erica was revealing an admirable best side, all glowing sweetness and light, Tess was feeling impossibly dull. The only positive thing she could say about herself was that she had just enough self-restraint to keep her petty thoughts about Erica’s transformation to herself. Unleashing them would only show Erica how much it had rankled to watch her ride back to the ranch, safe and secure in Ward’s arms.
While Carrie was greeting Brian and then excitedly listing the flowers Samantha was going to use in the centerpieces and larger displays, along with Erica’s idea for a hanging installation, Ward chatted with Samantha, who wanted to know when Adele and Daniel were returning from their trip so that she and Adele could confer about the flowers for the Mother’s Day weekend they were holding at the ranch.
Erica had sidled next to Ward and entered the conversation easily by praising Adele’s eye and excellent taste. Tess, unable to take much more of Erica’s triumphant niceness, especially when she found herself agreeing with the other woman, decided a hasty retreat was in order.
She scooped her purse off the stool that stood next to a long wooden workstation and, exiting the glass conservatory that served as Samantha’s studio, glanced at her watch.
It was four o’clock, but after the morning they’d had it felt much later. For each hour since Ward’s dramatic rescue, Erica must have recounted the tale of his bravery three times over. With every recounting her voice grew a little more breathless.
By now Tess could recite the story herself, visualize Rio racing after Erica’s terrified horse and, as they galloped neck and neck down the winding trail, see Ward leaning over and grabbing Ziggy’s bridle and bringing the animal under control. She could hear Erica, who’d lost her reins as well as her stirrups, sob with relief as she slowly unclenched her fear-frozen fingers from Ziggy’s long mane. Apparently, when she’d slid from the saddle her legs had been too shaky to hold her. So, of course, Ward had lifted her onto Rio’s back and shepherded her to where the others waited in worried apprehension.
Tess thought her head might explode if she had to hear the story again. She took a deep breath, hoping to empty her mind of every last image of Erica curled against Ward’s broad chest as Rio carried them back to the barn.
She looked around her, not really s
eeing the grounds of Seaside Lilies. She drew another breath and caught the hint of the sea’s salty tang in the air. But its freshness couldn’t chase away the pounding inside her head. Opening her handbag, she looked inside, rummaging through the jumble of her keys, cell, lipstick, compact, hair elastics, and her ever-present notebook filled with the decisions Carrie and Brian had made over the weekend. Where was the darned aspirin?
The sound of the others’ voices had her abandoning her search. She’d get some aspirin in her cabin. She must have some there.
“There you are, Tess. I hope we didn’t keep you waiting,” Carrie said. She had her hand wrapped in Brian’s bigger one and looked happy. That was good. So far, Carrie, bless her generous nature, had been pleased by all the wedding plans put forth.
“No, I was just getting some fresh air. I’ve never smelled the Pacific before.”
“You’ll have to take some time off and do some exploring. The northern coast is amazing,” Brian said.
Tess smiled past her headache. “Yeah, maybe.”
They made their goodbyes to Samantha and walked toward the cars, Brian’s rental car and Ward’s. Erica had naturally positioned herself next to Ward so Tess maintained a space between herself and the foursome.
“Hop in, Tess,” Ward said. “I don’t want us to be late.”
She glanced over at him in confusion, unable to think of a single thing they might be late for.
“For our appointment,” he prompted.
“You guys have another appointment?” Brian said.
“Yeah.” Ward was already drawing his car keys from his jeans pocket. “Luckily it’s not far. We’ll meet you back at the ranch.”
“So what’s this fairy tale about a meeting?” Tess stared out the windshield as she spoke. They were on Route 1, going God knows where, and the scenery was beautiful. Almost as magnificent as the man steering the car. “Erica knew you were lying by the way.”
“Ask me if I care. I wanted to spend some time alone with you.”