“Okay,” he admitted rather grudgingly. “So I’m guilty of hoping.”
Shania shook her head, discarding his explanation. “You, Deputy, are guilty of knowing your sister. And, deep down inside, you know she can be trusted. Especially if you make a point of letting her know that you trust her. Now, go home to spend some time with your sister—as her brother, not her warden,” she stressed, walking him to the front door.
Daniel opened it, then paused to look at her. “And she’ll know the difference how?”
She put her hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him over the threshold and out of the house. “Because she knows you,” she said, then closed the door.
Belle made a mournful noise, then looked up at her mistress.
“Don’t worry, Belle. He’ll be all right,” she assured her pet.
Belle barked again, as if to indicate that she wasn’t all that sure about that.
Chapter Eight
Daniel had never been an optimist. It was a given. Part of him was always waiting for something to go wrong, even when everything seemed to be going right.
That was why, even though Elena seemed to have settled down and appeared to have gone back to concentrating on getting good grades rather than bad boys, Daniel felt as if he was coexisting with a ticking time bomb that would most likely, at the most unexpected moment, just go off.
Still, the brooding deputy tried, at least outwardly, to maintain a positive outlook on things.
When Sunday finally rolled around, he got up early, got ready and then waited for Elena to wake up.
For her part, Elena slept in, taking advantage of her only day off. When she did stumble her way into the kitchen, her eyes half closed, she looked surprised to see her brother sitting there.
Recovering, she took a deep breath as she sank down at the kitchen table and fixed Daniel with a probing look. “What are you doing here?”
He raised his cup in her direction as if in silent tribute. “Waiting for you to get up.”
Elena blinked, still trying to clear the sleep out of her eyes and still somewhat foggy brain.
“Why?”
Although things seemed to have been going along well between them these past few days, deep down inside Elena kept waiting for the next lecture, the next inquisition to suddenly materialize. Each day that it didn’t, she just grew that much more tense anticipating what she felt was the inevitable.
“It’s Sunday,” Daniel answered.
Her eyebrows narrowed together as she tried to focus on his face.
“And...?”
Elena continued staring at him, trying to understand where her brother was going with this. Did he think that because it was her day off from school, she was going to take off somewhere? Do something he inherently disapproved of?
“I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she told him.
She’d forgotten, Daniel thought. “I thought we had a date.”
Elena blinked. “Wait, what?” She stared at Daniel, confused. “A date? With my brother?” she asked as if what he was suggesting was as ridiculous as could be.
“And a couple of horses,” he added, trying to jog her memory. When she didn’t say anything, Daniel made the natural assumption. “You don’t remember, do you?”
The cloud began to lift from her brain. Bits and pieces came back to her. She stared at Daniel as if she was watching him grow another head.
“You were serious?” she cried.
“Of course I was serious.”
She thought for a second, then shrugged. She proceeded to let him off the hook—or so she believed. “You don’t have to. I know you’ve been working all week. This is your only day off and you don’t have to spend part of it with me.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, his voice totally unemotional. “I don’t have to. I want to. Don’t you?”
Daniel had caught her off guard with his question. She looked as if she was torn for a minute.
She wasn’t. She liked the idea, but she didn’t want him to think he was doing her a favor. That would put her in his debt and she didn’t want that.
“Well, if you really want to, I guess I can get dressed and go riding with you,” she said with just the right touch of resignation.
“Good. Because I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”
Elena rolled her eyes before she got up from the table. “No, you haven’t,” Elena said as she left the room to get dressed.
“Yes, I have,” he called after her, half rising in his seat.
As he sat back down in his chair and sipped what was left of his coffee, Daniel smiled to himself. Maybe that cute little physics teacher actually did know what she was talking about, he thought. So far, the woman was two for two.
* * *
Jake McReedy owned and operated Forever’s only stable, simply named McReedy’s. He could always be found there, even when the stable was closed for the night. That was mainly because he slept in a tiny room that was located just at the rear of the building. In general, most people thought he had a far better relationship with the horses that were housed there than he did with the citizens of Forever.
The deeply tanned older man had far more hair on his face than he did on his head. That, at times, made it difficult for anyone to see his expression. In addition, his squinty eyes were partially hidden by his bushy eyebrows.
But Jake clearly looked surprised when Daniel came into the stable that morning with his sister.
“What can I do for you, Deputy? Miss?” Jake asked, nodding at Daniel and then his sister. Leaning the straw broom he’d been using to sweep up the small area in front of his office that wasn’t covered with straw against the wall, he crossed toward the duo.
“I’d—we’d,” Daniel corrected himself, sparing a quick glance at his sister, “like to rent two of your best horses for a couple of hours—or possibly longer,” he amended, thinking that if Elena didn’t start complaining and asking to go back home, they could easily stay out for more than just two hours.
Jake nodded. “We can settle up once you finish your ride and bring the horses back. Something special going on today I don’t know about?”
Daniel didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” the older man said, bringing forward one saddle, then a second, “Sundays aren’t usually busy until the afternoon, but you’re the second and third people to come by so early today. Thought maybe there was something special going on,” Jake explained. He began saddling the first horse, a large palomino stallion.
“I just want to go out for a ride with my sister,” Daniel told the stable keeper. “We used to do that all the time when she was younger.” He stopped there, seeing that he was making Elena uncomfortable.
Jake nodded. Finished tightening the cinch on the palomino’s saddle, he prepared to slip on the stallion’s bridle.
“Yeah, you can’t beat a horse for companionship,” he told Daniel. Belatedly, he seemed to realize that could be taken as an insult. He glanced toward the deputy’s sister. “No disrespect intended,” he mumbled to the teen, awkwardly touching the brim of his hat with two fingers in what passed as a semi-salute.
“None taken,” Elena responded.
Wandering toward another stall, she stopped to look at a pinto. The horse was a little smaller than the other horses found in the stable. Saying a few words to him in a very low voice, Elena dug into her back pocket and took out three small lumps of sugar. She subtly offered them to the horse.
Daniel backed up to see what his sister was doing—and was surprised to catch a glimpse of the sugar cubes before they disappeared. He was pleased to see how prepared she seemed to be.
“You brought sugar cubes,” he noted quietly.
Her expression indicated that he didn’t have to be so surprised.
“I want the horse on my side. I’m not an idiot,” she informed him with an all-too-familiar toss of her head that sent her hair flying almost into his face.
“Never said you were an idiot,” he reminded her. “You’re a lot of other things, including, at times, a royal pain in my butt, but you were never an idiot—and you’re still not.”
Jake had finished saddling the second horse, the pinto that Elena seemed so drawn to, while she had been busy bribing it. Taking the reins, one set in each hand, he turned to face the deputy and his sister.
Jake offered them the reins.
“You two want to take these horses out for a ride or are you just going to stand in here, jawing at each other for the next couple of hours?” Jake asked. “Just so you know, the charge is the same either way.”
Daniel glanced at Elena, then told the stable owner, “We’ll ride.”
Elena took the pinto’s reins. After eyeing her mount uncertainly for a moment—it had been a long time since she’d gotten on a horse—Elena grasped the saddle horn, put her left foot into the stirrup and fluidly swung herself into the saddle.
For a fleeting second, she looked pleased with herself.
The look wasn’t lost on Daniel. “Came back to you, didn’t it?”
She’d had her doubts, but that wasn’t anything she was about to willingly admit to her brother.
“It never went away,” she informed him.
Daniel merely nodded as he swung himself into his own saddle like a man who had been born on the back of a horse.
“I had a feeling,” he said, going along with the scenario Elena was trying to create for his benefit.
Now that they were both on their mounts, Jake stepped off to the side.
“If you’re of a mind to catch up with that teacher, she rode north,” he told them.
Just about to urge his horse forward, Daniel abruptly held himself in check.
“What teacher?” he asked.
“You mean Ms. Stewart?” Elena asked, immediately making the only connection that she could.
Was it just his imagination, or did Elena’s voice sound a little higher than it normally did? Daniel wondered.
“Dunno her last name,” Jake admitted. “She paid cash,” he explained. “She did say that she’d suddenly gotten the yen for riding after spending all week looking over test papers and lesson plans. I ain’t got any kids in school no more, but I figured from what she said, she had to be a teacher.” He smiled a little wistfully, as if he was thinking about past opportunities that had slipped away. “Pretty little thing. Eyes that made you stand up and take notice. Makes me wish I was a young man—or at least younger,” Jake amended with a deep laugh.
He caught the way both Jake and his sister were looking at him. As if they expected him to ride after the woman. He saw no reason to pretend that he had no interest in going for a ride with the woman. After all, she was Elena’s teacher and she was the reason that he and Elena were out riding in the first place.
“We’d better get going if we want to catch up with her,” Daniel commented.
The next moment, he kicked his stallion’s flanks and horse and rider were off in a gallop.
Elena followed suit, quickly catching up to her brother and riding alongside of him. The second they had left the stable—and the owner—behind, she asked Daniel, surprised, “You want to catch up with Ms. Stewart?”
He had a change of heart about honesty and said, “No, I don’t. But I got the feeling that if we didn’t get out of there, Jake was going to go on talking until both our ears fell off in self-defense.”
Elena laughed. He caught himself thinking that he’d missed that sound. Again he realized that he was in Shania Stewart’s debt.
“I thought he liked keeping to himself instead of talking to people,” Elena said.
“Obviously you brought out the talkative side of the man,” Daniel said, teasing his sister.
“Anyone could see that he was talking to you, not to me,” Elena pointed out.
And then, as the situation hit them—the teasing remarks they were exchanging as well as the banter that was going back and forth—they both laughed this time, their voices blending.
Just the way they used to, years back.
“So,” Daniel asked as the laughter died away, “where to?”
Elena glanced at her brother. Despite the exchange that had just taken place, she was surprised. “You’re leaving it up to me?”
“Why not?” he asked. “We’ve got the whole day ahead of us if we want and you’re just as capable of picking a direction for us to go in as I am.”
An amused expression settled in on Elena’s face as she slanted a look in his direction. Daniel thought that his sister looked almost devious as she asked, “How about north?”
Part of her waited for Daniel to negate her choice and pick one of the three other directions. Another part of her hoped that he wouldn’t.
“All right,” he said with a nod of his head. “North it is.”
And then he kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks as he pointed the animal northward.
* * *
The idyllically quiet morning surrounded her like a familiar old soothing melody. The silence was occasionally interrupted by the chirping sound of birds calling to one another.
If she listened very hard, Shania thought, she could make out rustling, signifying some small creature that was scurrying to escape possible danger from a predator. Or maybe just foraging for food.
For the most part, though, there was a harmony about the sounds that were around her and she felt at one with the elements and nature.
Though she rarely had the opportunity to do it, Shania liked going out for a ride in the early hours. Liked pretending that she was the only one around for miles.
Not that she had any desire to become a hermit for any true length of time, but a little “alone time” once in a while could be a really nice thing, she thought now with a smile.
She couldn’t help thinking that this was a real change from living in Houston. Houston was all movement and chaos while Forever moved at a far slower, more tranquil pace. It was funny how quickly she had acclimated to both ways of life, Shania realized. When she’d lived in Houston, she couldn’t imagine going back to live in a little town like Forever. And now that she was here, she caught herself wondering at times how she had managed to survive all the hustle and bustle that existed within Houston.
Shania sighed. Stop it!
She was thinking too much. She had come out here to get away not just from all the demands that she had to deal with, but from her own thoughts as well. She needed to empty her head.
She needed to—
Shania slowed her horse down a little as she cocked her head, listening.
Were those hoofbeats in the distance? And not just hoofbeats that belonged to one horse. From the sound of it, she was certain that she made out the sound of two horses.
Was that...? She crossed her fingers and hoped she was right.
Those hoofbeats were definitely growing louder because they were coming in her direction.
She turned her horse toward the sound of the approaching horse beats.
And then, within less than a minute, she smiled as the two riders came into view.
Shania felt validated that Daniel Tallchief had taken her advice.
Chapter Nine
Butterscotch, the mare that Shania had rented from McReedy’s stable early this morning, seemed anxious to resume her fast pace. Shania could feel the horse shifting impatiently beneath her, ready to run.
She leaned in closer to the mare, patting Butterscotch’s sleek neck.
“What’s the matter, girl?” she asked in a low, soothing voice. “Don’t you want to have a little company on this ride?”
The mare shift
ed a little more, as if she understood what was being asked. Shania knew that all she had to do was give the horse her lead and the mare would take off. But she continued to remain still where she was, waiting for the deputy and his sister to come closer.
She told herself it wouldn’t be polite just to take off after seeing them approaching, but the truth of it was that Shania didn’t mind having a little company herself. And she was curious to find out what, if anything, the deputy would talk about with her. She had been in Daniel’s company and she had certainly been in Elena’s company, but she had never been exposed to both of the family members at the same time. She was rather intrigued to find out how the two played off one another in a social situation.
Better, she hoped, than she’d initially assumed they did. Especially now that Elena had settled down and started applying herself.
Though she did try to observe both riders as they came closer, if she was really being honest with herself, Shania would have had to admit that her eyes were drawn toward Daniel.
He cut a magnificent figure astride the palomino, moving as if he and the stallion were one. Daniel’s slightly unruly straight black hair was flying behind him and he made her think of a warrior on the move. Watching his strong, wide shoulders and his obviously trim body approaching created an electric current that zipped right through her, making every single inch of her feel alive and alert.
Shania did her best to look unaffected, but she wasn’t all that sure she succeeded.
“The stallion’s nice, too,” she whispered to Butterscotch.
As if in response, although still shifting, Butterscotch seemed to be just a little less agitated, but it could have just been her imagination.
“Hi,” Shania called out to Daniel and Elena when the two were almost right up to her. “Nice day for a morning ride.”
“Yes, it is,” Daniel answered. His voice sounded even more formal to her than it usually did.
The Lawman's Romance Lesson Page 8