Then Heath was crying. “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” he gasped, and his body shook with sobs.
Gabe, tears falling down her cheeks as well, turned and wrapped her arms around him, tucking his head against her chest. He twined his arms around her and wept.
She was consumed with more emotions than she could identify—with compassion and concern, with sympathy and empathy, and with so much more. That he had entrusted her with this moment moved her deeply, seemed even to change her. The image of sitting among the arches in Utah rose up, and the memory of what she’d thought, about days that were gentle breezes, and days that were fierce storms, about the changes that the elements made on the landscape and in one’s life. Right now, this moment, Gabe felt an elemental change in her life.
In her arms, Heath breathed deeply and found his composure. He pushed back and met her eyes. He didn’t try to wipe the spent tears from his face. “I’m sorry.”
She bent her head to his and kissed him; his lips tasted of salt. “It’s okay. More than okay. Thank you for telling me your truth. I’m sorry it hurt so much to tell it.”
His eyes dancing back and forth between hers, he smiled, then closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. “It did, but it’s good, too, to have someone who knows it more like I do. I haven’t…I haven’t done that since it happened. I didn’t even cry at the funeral.”
Gabe’s cheeks warmed with a blush. She didn’t know why, but his words pleased her. She felt safe with him, she felt known, and she’d forgotten what that was like.
Shifting so that she could press her face to his chest again and feel surrounded by him, she asked, “Can I share my truth later? Yours feels too big right now.”
“Yeah. You can share yours whenever you like. We should probably sleep.”
As he said it, his hand swept over her ass, his fingertips just trailing at her cleft, then eased down her thigh, and Gabe didn’t think he was really ready to sleep. No more than she was.
“Yeah, we probably should.” She pushed her hand into his half-open jeans.
They slept. Eventually.
Chapter Ten
“I’m gonna have to find a super-cheap car soon. I can’t expect people to drive me everywhere forever.”
Heath had taken her arm to help her out of his truck in his customary way. His truck was big, and high off the ground, but she could certainly have hopped down on her own without trouble. Yet this chivalry was as much a part of him as his green eyes.
He paused with his hand around her upper arm and frowned at her. “I don’t want you in some junker. I want you safe. And I like picking you up.”
It was Saturday, only three days after the evening of the family dinner and their first—and so far only—night together. From the time he’d left the bunkhouse on Thursday morning to the time he’d picked her up on this day a few hours earlier, they hadn’t seen each other or had more contact than a few texts and a couple of phone calls, so they were about as new a couple as they could possibly be.
His possessive care, however, always apparent in that chivalry, had become overt almost immediately, from the time they’d woken on Thursday.
If asked out of context how she’d feel about a man who insisted on opening doors and helping her through them, who said things like ‘I want you safe’ as if that were an end to a discussion, Gabe would have rolled her eyes and made a snide comment about chivalry being nothing but a gentle kind of sexism.
In the context of Heath—so far, at least—she liked it. She’d put a little thought into it in the past couple of days, and she’d decided that it was more than just Heath. It was her, too. And them. He needed somebody to take care of. And she needed to be taken care of. It was part of their coming out from the dark places they’d been.
She was worried about setting a pattern for the way they would always be, though, and worried that she wouldn’t always like it the way she did now. So she gave him a smirk. “A little soon to be telling me what you think about my choices, don’t you think?”
The lines between his eyebrows deepened. “Is it?”
That spun her a bit. “Isn’t it?”
“Don’t talk in circles, Gabe.” He let go of her arm and cupped his hands around her face. “I’m not…”—his eyes slid away as he thought of the word he wanted, then came back when he found it—“casual. I told you how long it’d been. Going so long alone wasn’t an accident. It was my choice. I was done. And now I’m not. Now I’m with you. So it doesn’t feel ‘soon’ to me.”
God. She’d never known anybody like this man before. She didn’t think there was anybody like this man. She’d thought he was aloof and inscrutable, but that was only the iron casing over a raw, vulnerable heart. He’d let her in, and with a bolt of understanding, she saw the responsibility that came with his trust.
It was scary. And exhilarating.
She swallowed. “Okay.” The word came out as a whisper.
“Okay.” The frown darkening his face smoothed away, and he leaned in and kissed her. All it took to forget her reservations, to lighten the load of his trust, was the touch of his lips to hers. She hooked her arms around his neck and leaned back, and his hands dropped from her face as he pulled her into a full embrace, folding over her while he stood between his truck and the open passenger door. Her tongue sought his and found it, and for a few moments, Gabe thought they might actually get busy right there, in his truck, parked outside the stables at the Twisted C.
But then he turned his head and broke the kiss. Breathing heavily, he chuckled and picked up his hat from the truck floor, where it had fallen when their embrace had knocked it from his head. “Come on. Time for your lesson.”
He pulled her up to sitting, then grabbed her hips and lifted her out of the truck entirely.
“I’ve been on a horse before. I told you,” she grumbled as they walked hand in hand to the stable.
“Broken-down trail horses don’t count—as you said. You want to live out here, you need to know your way around horses.” They entered the cool space, dim after the bright morning sun. “Don’t you want to?”
“I do.” She honestly did. But she felt some nervousness, too. Horses were a big part of Heath’s life. What if she sucked at all this cowboy stuff?
They did lessons up at the Moondancer, and the day before, she’d asked Catherine if she could get one—just one—from one of the hands who did guest lessons—mainly so she wouldn’t completely embarrass herself with Heath. Her boss had emphatically explained that lessons were for paying guests only.
So here she stood, knowing nothing, standing in a long, seemingly empty stable. Then a big brown head came over a stall door and made a sound like it was clearing its throat.
Heath dropped her hand and went to the stall. “Hey, sweet thing.” He leaned his forehead on the horse’s…forehead? And they stayed like that for a few seconds until the horse made that sound again and Heath laughed.
“Only for my sweets, I know.” He dug into his pocket and held something to the horse’s mouth. It snuffled it up in its lips and crunched down.
“Gabe, this is my girl Maggie. Maggie, my girl Gabe.” He held out his hand, and Gabe went to him. He took her hand and set it on Maggie’s nose. The horse’s eye seemed to focus on her.
“First thing—never come up on a horse unawares. Let ‘em know you’re there. You don’t want a thousand pounds or better shying and bolting. And watch their ears. Those ears’ll tell you how they’re feeling. Up front like Maggie’s now, that’s good. She’s glad to see us and wondering if we’re going to do something fun. Pinned back—that’s trouble. That would mean she’s scared, and a scared horse can hurt themselves or anybody around ‘em, even if it’s somebody they love. Sometimes, when she’s been on her own and is taking a break, maybe sleeping, her ears get a little floppy and her head will be a little saggy—you want to signal that you’re around before you get too close, so you don’t startle her. If she’s swinging those ears around like antennae,
then she’s tense and trying to figure things out.”
Gabe had been trying to memorize all that, and she must have looked it, because Heath laughed. “Just in general, be easy around an animal this big. Pay attention. And if somebody who knows better than you says look out, look out.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small brown cookie. “My mama used to say that horses are like men. The way to their heart is their stomach. Here. Hold it flat on your hand, so she doesn’t accidentally catch your fingers while she takes it.”
Gabe took the cookie and did what Heath said. Maggie made that coughing sound and snarfed it up from her palm, then did a little nod. Heath laughed.
“Don’t go cheatin’ on me now, missy. You’re my girl.” He rubbed Maggie’s face. Then he stepped a bit down the aisle to another horse in a neighboring stall. Gabe had been so intent on Maggie and everything Heath was saying that she hadn’t noticed this other horse—a smaller, pretty grey.
“This here is Phoebe. She’s a good, gentle girl.” He turned and gave Gabe a look she didn’t understand—smiling, but suddenly sad, too. “She’s five years old. Just a baby when Ruthie died. They were supposed to grow up together.”
Gabe went to the grey and reached out. Phoebe swung her head toward her and snuffed at her empty hand. Heath smiled and gave her a horse cookie to offer the little mare.
“She’s so pretty. Smaller than Maggie.”
“Yeah. Maggie’s a Tennessee Walking Horse. They’re big. Phoebe’s American Quarter Horse. She’s your ride today.”
Gabe stepped back. “What? Heath, I can’t…I can’t ride your daughter’s horse.”
“Why not? She’s good under the saddle. Calm and sweet, and a good spirit. She needs a rider. Em wants Anya to have her when she’s old enough, but—”
“Heath.” She doubted she’d have felt more shocked if he’d held out an engagement ring. Offering his dead daughter’s horse, even if only to ride this one time, seemed incredibly intimate.
He gave Phoebe another cookie and then came to Gabe. He picked up her hands. “I’m asking you to ride her, Gabe, not marry her. Or me.”
Once again, it was like he’d opened her skull and read her mind.
“O-Okay. Okay.”
The obvious pleasure in his smile eased her reservations. “Hold on. You need one thing before we work on getting them saddled up.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, then took off down the aisle toward the back.
Since she hadn’t been invited to join him, Gabe went back to Phoebe and got to know her. The horse stretched her neck and nosed at her jeans pockets, looking fruitlessly for treats, but she seemed content to let her stroke her face and play with the long lock of coarse grey hair that lay over her forehead like bangs.
“Hi, baby,” she crooned. “I hope you like me after you see how much I don’t know about all this.”
Heath was back, holding a fairly big square box in his hands. Plain brown, but constructed like a gift box, it was about a cubic foot in size. “Can’t ride without this,” he offered with a grin.
Curious and excited at the thought of a gift—it’d been years since she’d gotten one—Gabe lifted the top of the box. Inside was a cowboy hat. The felt, if that was the material, was a creamy, pale tan. Around the head part was a brown leather band studded with copper discs and oval stones of turquoise. They looked real. The brim was lashed with leather lacing.
She’d seen a lot of cowboy hats in her time in Jasper Ridge, on men and women alike. Only one person wore a hat this fancy: Catherine, whose hat was black, with a big burst of vivid feathers at the front of the band.
She looked up at Heath. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”
“You like it?”
He seemed anxious for her approval of this gift, and there was no chance she would dash his hopes, though she had her misgivings. The hat was beautiful, no question. But what would people think if they saw her wearing it? Everybody in town knew she was not really of this world. Would they all think she was a poseur?
No—they would all know Heath had given it to her. They would see her wearing it and know they were together. Really together.
“I love it.” She lifted it out of the tissue bedding and set it on her head. It fit perfectly, she thought. “How do I look?”
His expression said everything. She looked like she belonged.
*****
After a careful lesson about saddling and bridling the horse, which involved her watching him do it and then doing it herself several times until she could do it all properly without his intervention, and then a lecture about the proper care of ‘tack’—that was what it was called, ‘tack,’ and she had a new vocabulary of words like ‘cinch’ and ‘pommel’ and ‘cantle’—and more than an hour in the ‘paddock’ learning cues with the reins and with her legs—Heath and Gabe went into the big house and made a picnic lunch, which he packed into saddlebags fixed to his own saddle. Then he took her out onto the ranch for a ride.
The ride was gentle, just an amble, really, with Heath pointing out features of the land and telling her stories about it and his life on it, and asking her questions every now and then about riding to reinforce what he’d taught her. They’d sped up to a ‘canter’ once, in a clearing, but that had been scarier out in the open than it had been in the confines of the paddock, and when Heath had seen the worry on her face, he’d slowed them down again.
Phoebe had huffed when they’d slowed, and Gabe would have sworn she’d heard irritation in it.
By the time they stopped to have their lunch, near what Heath called a ‘creek’ but seemed more like a river, Gabe’s ass hurt, despite the padding on her saddle. And her thighs and calves!—she’d had no idea that there was so much leg work involved in sitting on a horse.
They sat at the top of a grassy slope, above the creek, amidst a copse of big, fragrant pines. The day was bright, the sky cloudless and blue. The water rushed gently by, whispering as it passed below them. A perfect spring day.
Along with the cold sandwiches, bottled water, and bag of potato chips, Heath had brought a soft, plaid blanket, and they stretched out together and rested when their lunch was done. He lay behind her, his arm around her. Their hats—hers new and fancy, his old and sweat-stained—sat side by side at the edge of the blanket.
An absolutely perfect day.
She hoped she wasn’t about to ruin it. “Can I ask you something?”
He lifted his head and spoke at her ear. “Anything.”
Boy, she hoped she wasn’t going to ruin it. But the question wouldn’t leave her mind—even though she didn’t know why it would matter. “You said you and your wife were together since high school.”
She felt him flinch slightly at the mention of his wife. “Yeah. Tenth grade for me, and ninth for her.”
“And it’d been four years when we…”
He laughed, and she could hear that he knew her question and didn’t mind. “Are you asking how many women I’ve been with?”
Embarrassed for even wondering, she could only nod.
“As of a couple of days ago, two.”
Holy shit. The reason she’d been wondering and had needed to ask was that she’d come up with the same answer, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. But still, he was thirty-six years old, and he was good at sex. He was excellent at sex. Toe-curlingly fantastic at sex. Sure, being with someone for years and years probably meant that he’d had a lot of it, but all with the same person? Holy shit.
“Is that a problem?”
Turning to face him, she smiled. “No. I just can’t decide whether I’m glad that there’s something I’m more experienced than you at, or if I feel slutty in comparison.”
“You’re not slutty, no matter what. And I’m not sure variety is the same thing as experience.” After a pause, he added, “But can I ask you the same question?”
Despite what he’d said, she felt a little slutty, and she couldn’t quite keep eye contact. “As of a couple of
days ago, five.”
She didn’t miss the lift of his eyebrows, though he tried to control it. She’d told him that it had been nearly three years for her, and it had. When she’d broken up with Tony, her last boyfriend, she’d been eighteen, a few months before her nineteenth birthday, a few more months before her father had done what he’d done.
“It seems like a lot, I guess. But all four were boyfriends. I didn’t—I don’t—mess around.”
He brushed his fingers over her face. “I’m not judging. But I’m glad to know it.”
As calm as he was being, Gabe felt like she had more explaining to do. “It’s not as much as it sounds. I started when I was in tenth grade…or maybe that’s worse.”
“Gabe. Stop.” He sat up and tugged on her arm until she did as well. “I’m not judging you any more than you’re judging me. It doesn’t matter, except that we’re getting to know each other. Anyway, I started when I was in tenth grade, too.”
Now she was embarrassed about being embarrassed. “Sorry. I guess I’m used to defending myself about it.”
Cocking his head, he asked, “What do you mean?”
She finished a bottle of water before she answered. “I guess maybe it’s time for my truth.”
His frown told her that he didn’t see the connection. He would.
Picking her mother’s crucifix up from her chest, she began, “My mom lost her mind when she found out I was sleeping with my first boyfriend. She was a fucking awful snoop, and she did things like rooting around in my laundry hamper and smelling my underwear. From the time I had my first period, she was on me all the time about boys. She’d had me when she was sixteen, and she was terrified I’d end up like she had.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 12