Sit. Stay. Love.

by Karis Walsh

  Alana winced as she knelt on the floor and started to tuck pups into the crate. She had only had two lessons so far with Tegan and hadn’t made it beyond a few minutes of walking while actually on the horse, compared to forty-five minutes of walking on the ground next to Charm. She had complained about the slow pace but was secretly relieved when Tegan ignored her nagging and concentrated more on horse handling than riding. Those brief stints in the saddle had left Alana aching more than she would ever admit to Tegan, even though she considered herself to be in reasonable shape. She was discovering the difference between doing reps in a hotel gym—which had been her preferred method of working out in the past—and doing real-world physical activity.

  She paused when she got to the sixth and largest puppy, a mostly white male with dark brown ears and a lighter patch of brown surrounding his black nose. His eyes were open, and he was blinking at her, as if trying to get her into focus. Tegan had said they were about three weeks old. Only five more before they’d be ready to go to a new home. Alana was planning to start canvassing her neighborhood soon because she planned to have six new owners—seven if she included a foster or adopter for Lace—lined up well before then.

  She kissed the little pup on the top of the head and put him in the crate. Lace followed, keeping her eyes on Alana as she moved. Alana stayed very still until she was inside the crate, and then she securely closed it. It made her sad to see how nervous Lace was around people, but she hoped the dog would become more trusting the longer she was inside and cared for.

  She picked up the crate and carried it out to the truck, where she had already stowed supplies for the dogs and her riding helmet. She had been planning to ask Chip about bringing the dogs to work, but she had decided to just show up with them instead. Her old boss would probably have fainted at the sight of an animal crate in the hotel, let alone an actual animal. Not that Alana had ever considered getting a pet before, much less carting it around with her everywhere she went. She wasn’t sure she would still recognize herself once she moved away from Yakima and got back to city life. Then again, maybe she would easily shed this new Alana, as if her time here had never happened.

  Not likely. Horseback riding and dog fostering would no longer be part of her life when she left, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to push Tegan’s memory away as quickly. The sensation of Tegan’s hands on her waist during her first lesson, and then on her rear, pushing her into the saddle, was something Alana couldn’t seem to get out of her mind. She felt like a memory foam mattress, and the marks of Tegan’s fingers were imprinted on her skin. She had considered hopping around as if she couldn’t mount again in her second lesson but had come to her senses and clawed her way into the saddle on her own. It hadn’t been graceful—and hadn’t felt as good as when Tegan helped her—but she couldn’t expect Tegan to be here at the ranch every time she needed a boost.

  Alana parked and got the shopping bag with dog food and her helmet in it, draping the straps over her forearm and hoisting the crate. It was less cumbersome than the cardboard box had been. She carried everything to the front door and managed to get herself, the dogs, and her bags through the door after several attempts. With some annoyance, she noticed a group of five construction workers sitting in the lodge’s main room, watching her struggle with the door. Once she was inside, they turned their attention back to the flat screen television mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

  Alana dropped her bags near the vacant reception desk and walked past it to Chip’s office. He was sitting at his desk, staring into space and tapping a pencil against his knee, but he sat up and gave her his usual carefree grin when she knocked on the open door.

  “Good morning,” he said, standing up and noticing the crate. “Oh, are those the puppies Aaron found under your porch?”

  Alana had carefully prepared a speech about why she had brought a litter of puppies to work, but she hadn’t counted on the speed of a small-town grapevine. “Yes. I hope you don’t mind if I…”

  Her voice trailed off as Chip bounced over and knelt next to her, looking through the grate at the dogs.

  “How cute! We used to have a cocker spaniel when I was a boy, and the mother reminds me of him a little. Are you planning to ride today? I’ll keep them in here with me.”

  “Oh, are you sure? I was planning to set them up in my office, where they’d be out of the way. I know how busy you are,” she said, trying to be polite even though Chip hadn’t seemed to be busy either today or on her first day at the ranch. She wasn’t quite sure what tasks were filling his days, but preparing for the grand opening didn’t seem to be one of them.

  “Oh, well, yes. Very busy. I had been hoping to take you out on the trails to show you around, but I need to stay in the office and supervise the work that’s being done. I can easily puppy-sit at the same time.” He sighed and glanced toward the door, through which Alana could hear the sound of the television and laughter.

  “Actually, not much work seems to be getting done,” she said, cautiously approaching the subject. “Or is it already break time for them?”

  “Yes, I guess it is,” he said. “Say, I have the perfect bed for the pups. Hang on.”

  He stopped by the thermostat and turned up the heat before disappearing out the door. Alana stood in place for a moment. It wasn’t any of her business what went on inside the lodge. She had enough to do to prepare herself for her own job, let alone butting in on Chip’s. And why did she care if he went bankrupt and the lodge never opened? She’d be off the hook, free to run away from Yakima and saddles and stray dogs.

  She nodded to herself, appreciating the logic of her arguments, and then set the crate on the floor and went into the main room. She plucked the remote off the arm of a chair and stood in front of the workers, turning off the television over her shoulder.

  “Who’s in charge here?” she asked. The three men and two women looked at one another before one of the men hesitantly raised his hand.

  “What’s on your agenda for the day?”

  “We’re here to put up the drywall,” he said, which she didn’t think was really an answer to her question. “But the electrician isn’t finished with all the rooms.”

  “Is he finished with some of the rooms?”

  He looked at his crew again, and Alana wasn’t sure if he was communicating telepathically with them or hoping someone else would take over and answer her.

  “Yes?” he said, with the inflection of someone asking a question.

  “Good. Then there’s no reason for Chip to pay you to sit here and watch TV when you could be working on the rooms that are already wired. Right?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer but headed back to the office, taking the remote with her. Chip was standing in the doorway to the pool room, holding a child’s plastic wading pool and staring at her. She heard the shuffling sounds of the crew getting up and leaving the room behind her, but she walked into the office without turning to check on them.

  “Wow. You’re amazing,” he said, clutching the pool and staring at her as if she’d just dropped down from heaven. “I’ve had the hardest time getting people to do any work around here.” He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice, as if sharing a big secret. “I don’t do well with confrontation.”

  No kidding. Alana was counting on that trait to guarantee she kept her job. She obviously wasn’t the only person employed by him to realize that he could be a pushover. A kind one, of course, but kindness didn’t always get the job done.

  “I was raised in my family’s hotel,” she said with a shrug. “I was overseeing renovations and repairs before I was in my teens. You just need to expect people to do the work you’re paying them to do. Don’t accept less.”

  She felt a twinge of guilt as she spoke, since she wasn’t exactly qualified to do the work he had hired her to do. Still, she was spending her free time and her own money trying to improve her skills. Or, rather, develop them in the first place.

  “I
know. I’ll try,” he said, putting the pool near the heater vent and lining it with a fleece blanket that had been tossed over the back of a chair.

  Alana filled Lace’s water bowl and set it near the pool before opening the crate and putting the pups into their new bedroom. She had been unsure about how Lace would handle the naturally exuberant Chip, but he stayed still, holding out his hand for her to sniff, and she seemed to accept her family’s new location with her usual detachment. She didn’t seem to have any expectations for herself, as long as her litter was safe.

  “Tegan…Dr. Evans, I mean, said they’re old enough to be handled a little bit, so you can hold them if you want. I’ll come back in a while and give Lace her lunch.”

  “Okay,” he said vaguely, his attention focused on the dogs. She sighed and stood up. She had been expecting to spend her day running back and forth between the corrals and her office to check on the puppies and Lace. Now it seemed they’d be all right, but she would have to come back here to check on the workers instead. It’d be a fair trade since she was better suited to hotel management than dog watching. She hesitated in the doorway, but as soon as she recognized the tiny hint of jealousy she felt when Chip picked up one of her puppies, she escaped to the barn.

  She started by figuring out the names of all her charges. She used the process of elimination and the information about color and gender on their records to identify each one, and then she thumbtacked index cards with the occupants’ names on them to each paddock. She wasn’t sure if she’d mixed up two nearly identical chestnut geldings, but she didn’t think the guests would know the difference if she was wrong. She only had to consult the books Tegan had given her to study once—to look at a picture of a dun horse. She wasn’t about to let Tegan know the books had come in handy. They were obviously meant for a much younger reader, with their cartoon drawings and simple vocabulary. Tegan had told her she could be indignant about them if she wanted, but only after she had memorized all the material in them. Alana stuck out her tongue at the pile of books. Not only did she feel like she had returned to school, but she had gone all the way back to kindergarten.

  Once she knew the horses’ names, she went through an abbreviated version of her lesson with each one. She haltered them, led them to the hitching post, tied and groomed them. Each horse had a labeled hook with a bridle on it in the tack room, but the saddles seemed to be randomly shoved on racks and stacked on top of each other. She chose the one that was easiest to extract from the cluttered mess and used it as she rode each horse, merely walking in a circle or a figure eight before dismounting, putting the horse away, and moving on to the next.

  Even those basic tasks were a stretch for her to perform. She spent two hours with the first horse—she chose Blaze because he seemed extra sleepy and patient—and half of it was wasted with her trying to untangle the bridle, which she accidentally dropped on her way from the barn to the corral. She was used to having Tegan hand it to her with all the tangly leather parts hanging neatly in place. She hadn’t realized how much Tegan had been helping her along the way until she was left on her own without Tegan’s words of advice and her dire warnings.

  After four rounds of this, Alana was sweating and peeling off layers of clothes until she was left in a dirt-smudged tank top. Her legs were inexplicably sore, and she was ready to give up the charade and never go near another horse in her life.

  Alana led horse five, Cookie, toward the corral, barely getting her out of the gate and closing it behind them before her paddock-mate had a chance to slip through. She stomped toward the corral, and the only positive thought she could muster was that Tegan couldn’t criticize her for looking too stiff while she led this horse since she was too worn out to be bothered with good posture.

  She flung the end of the lead rope over the wooden rail and tied a quick release knot before picking up a currycomb. She paused with her arm outstretched, ready to begin grooming, when she realized what she’d done. She released the knot to make sure it was correct, and then tied it again. With the previous horses, she’d needed to consult the diagram in her notebook and had made no fewer than three attempts each time before getting it right. This time, she hadn’t even been conscious of the process.

  She felt a renewed energy as she groomed Cookie. She was getting somewhere. Not very far, of course, but she’d take the inch of progress and be proud of it. She wanted to call Tegan and share her small victory, but she realized she really just wanted an excuse to hear Tegan’s mellow voice, even if over the phone. Alana reacted the same way she had when she felt jealous about Chip and the puppies—she pushed those foolish thoughts out of her mind and focused on work instead.

  After Cookie, she gave herself a break and went back to the lodge. Chip was sitting next to the wading pool, watching the puppies sleep. He tried to pretend he had just sat down again and hadn’t been there the entire time she’d been at the barn, but she wasn’t sure she believed him. She left him in there, watching Lace gobble her lunch, and went into her office to eat her sandwich alone. She checked on the progress of the drywall—which was moving along surprisingly quickly—and trudged back to the barn.

  She had meant to work with all twenty-five horses, but ten seemed to be her limit for the time being. She’d put in a full day of work as it was, and she was too tired and achy to even lift her arms to halter one more horse. She felt a sense of accomplishment, though. The constant repetition had ingrained some of the horse-related actions, and she no longer had to think about every step before doing it.

  Still, she was slowly learning how far she had to go. Moseying around an enclosed space for five minutes at a time was nothing like leading a trail ride with all its potential hazards, many of which were cartoonishly illustrated in one of the books Tegan had given her.

  Her phone rang as she was walking back to the lodge, preparing herself for the upcoming task of prying the puppies away from Chip, and a jolt of excitement chased away all thoughts of stiff muscles from her mind.

  “Hey,” she said, pausing in the shade of a pine tree.

  “Hey back,” Tegan said, and Alana could almost hear her smile.

  “So, I’ve been practicing, and you’ll be pleased to know that I’m now an expert at quick-release knots.”

  “Good. I’m sure the ranch’s guests will be just as happy watching you perform knot-tying demos as riding the horses.” Tegan said. “Have you memorized the books I gave you yet?”

  Alana pinched off a clump of long needles and pleated them with her fingers. “Just the chapter on the importance of finding a nice, non-smart-ass instructor.”

  Tegan laughed outright at that. “Well, if you’re a desperate enough student, you take what you can get. How are the puppies?”

  “Fine, except I’m concerned that Chip might give up ranch work and take a job as a puppy nanny instead.”

  “Uh-oh. I think you’re joking, but I really can picture him spending his life walking dogs, running through parks with a big smile on his face. Anyway, I called because Dez asked for tomorrow morning off, and I’m scheduled to do a stable call at a breeding farm in Toppenish. If you want to come along, you’d get good experience handling horses that are more energetic than Charm and Chip’s string. Plus, I’d buy you the best lunch you’ve ever had as a thank-you.”

  “I’d love to,” Alana said, without even pausing to wonder what Tegan meant by more energetic. Fire-breathing? Was she about to experience the bolting Tegan had mentioned? She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to pass up the chance to spend time with Tegan, especially if she could justify it as work-related and nothing personal.

  Chapter Eight

  Tegan parked next to Alana’s garish truck and let her engine idle while she waited. She had vacillated between looking forward to the morning with Alana and wishing she had just decided to go on this appointment on her own. Immediately after Dez had asked for some time off to attend a study session at school, Tegan had called Alana’s number without giving it a second thought. Sin
ce then, she had worked through second and third and fourth thoughts. She was up to about forty now.

  Some misgiving was because Alana wasn’t ready to handle the hotly bred horses they would be seeing today. She could barely manage to lead Charm in a circle, and the mare’s most disobedient action consisted of dozing off during their lessons. Mostly, however, she was concerned about her own reasons for calling Alana. They were all much more personal than she had insinuated on the phone. Alana wouldn’t get much extra experience today, because Tegan planned to have the farm’s grooms handle the horses for her. Tegan wanted to show Alana some of the more beautiful spots in Yakima. Introduce her to friends. Spend time with her. In her mind, she had justified this by telling herself Alana was new in town. She needed someone to help her adjust, help her appreciate the town and its people, help her escape feelings of loneliness and isolation. In truth, however, Tegan was the one who wanted and needed Alana’s company. She wanted Alana to share everyday things with her, like work and spending time with her friends.

  Things she should want to do with someone who lived here, who wanted to be here and was likely to stay for more than a year, or just a summer season.

  Too late now. Tegan watched Alana as she walked off the porch and across the parking lot. She rubbed her palms against the rough fabric of her jeans, trying to wipe away the suddenly tingly feeling in her fingertips at the sight of Alana wearing a white T-shirt with an unbuttoned plaid shirt over it and tied at her waist. Her jeans and boots were already grubby and dusty after only a few days of wear. She looked like she belonged here, as long as Tegan didn’t dwell too long on her trendy haircut and the fact that she had explicitly said she was only here temporarily.