Miguel hooked his arm around his wife’s ample waist and gave her a hug. She patted his shoulder and began pouring another round of coffee into empty cups.
“Pretty Boy with Pretty Girl. Hard job, all right,” Clyde said, a hint of sourness in his voice.
Ignoring the men’s jabs, Austin said, “Thanks for helping with our horses yesterday.” Working with the beautiful blonde day in and day out might look cushy to these two, but they had no idea what it was like to deal with her mercurial temperament.
“The big gelding’s a mean cuss,” Scooter said. “We couldn’t get near him. Had to leave him in the pasture all night.”
Austin tensed. He’d forgotten about telling Kenzie they’d check on the horses after returning from the party. He hadn’t, and hoped she hadn’t gone to the stable alone in the dark. “Not a problem,” he said, heaping a second helping of scrambled eggs onto a warm tortilla and rolling it up. “Gotta run. See you for dinner.”
“Can’t wait!” Clyde called as Austin tore out the front door.
* * *
—
Hoping to beat Kenzie to the stable, Austin jogged all the way, but when he arrived, she was already filling the grain bins in each stall, where all three horses were waiting to be fed. He quickly realized that the bunkhouse crew might not be charmers, but they knew enough about horses to have left Blue’s outside stall door open so that the gelding could come inside at will. “Hey, good morning. You should have waited for me.”
She barely glanced at him. “Woke up early, thought I’d get started.”
“You sleep all right?”
“Of course.” Her smile was tight, and dark shadows under her eyes belied her answer.
Austin quickly scooped a serving of grain into Blue’s bucket from a plastic hinge-lidded container. The big horse was used to Austin by now, and began to eat instead of backing away. “I’ll get the hay ready,” he told Kenzie. Without a word, she nodded, dismissing him, her braid bobbing.
He used a pitchfork to heap the loose hay into a wheelbarrow. After a few moments he looked over his shoulder and saw Kenzie sitting on a bale of straw, her face in her hands.
He lowered the wheelbarrow, came closer. “What’s up?”
She raised her head, scooted off the bale. “Nothing. I thought I’d groom the mares after they eat and exercise Oro on the trail for Lani.”
“Why don’t I ride along with you? I can take one of the boarder’s horses—Ciana has an exercise rotation schedule on the barn wall. I don’t mind pitching in. Less work for you.”
“It isn’t a chore for me, and you should work with Blue.”
Her got her message—she didn’t want him around. He tried again. “What happened to the ‘teamwork’ concept? Did it occur to you that I might like to ride the trails with you?”
“I…I guess I didn’t…I don’t know…” She refused to make eye contact.
He stepped in front of her. “Look at me, please.” She did and he saw that her eyes were bloodshot, swollen, and damp. “Kenzie, what happened to you between yesterday at the pool and coming home last night? You ran off as soon as we got here. This morning you’ve hardly spoken. You’ve been crying. Did I do something wrong?”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” she snapped.
Good, he thought. Fire from Kenzie was better than ice. “It doesn’t? Why, I could have sworn yesterday when we held hands that you liked having me close to you. So much so that if I’d walked you to your door last night like I wanted, I might have gotten a kiss.”
She recoiled. “Kiss you? You conceited jerk! What makes you think for one minute that I’d ever want to kiss you? A kiss means something, and you mean nothing to me! Nothing.” Glaring, she crossed her arms. “You’re not even my type. You’ll never be my type!”
Boiling anger might make her spew out whatever was eating her alive, and he wanted to know, had to know, if he was going to continue to work with her. He offered himself as a target, edging closer, purposely crowding her. “Since you seem to know so much about me, please tell me what it is about me and my ‘type’ that you dislike. I’m curious.”
She shoved his chest hard, but he stood immovable. “Your type.” She fairly spat the words. “I know who you are. You’re all glib and charming, all smiles and compliments! You think every girl who sees you will fall at your feet. I’ll bet women lap up your lies and flattery. Bet they hang all over you, give you whatever you ask them for.” She drove a finger into his chest. “I’ll bet you played football in high school and made a girl believe you loved her and talked her into doing things she would never have done in her right mind!”
Austin stood silent, a sick sensation in his stomach. He began to understand that Kenzie wasn’t seeing him standing in front of her and that her vivid description was of someone else. Softly, he asked, “What did the girl do?”
“Why, she did whatever he asked because she loved him.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “And when he asked her to…to send pictures of her naked body to him, she did…because he said he loved her. And how did he reward her love? He posted the photos on social media and the g-gossips and Internet trolls, total strangers who didn’t even know her, had never even met her”—she gulped a breath of air—“they shamed her! Made f-fun of her, and when the poor g-girl couldn’t take it anymore, she went home…and she…she—” Kenzie’s voice cracked. She furiously swiped her wet cheeks.
Austin’s muscles tightened, wanting to find this guy and pound him to a pulp. “Please tell me what the girl did.”
Kenzie’s blue eyes looked haunted. “The girl went home in February…and…and on Valentine’s Day…she hanged herself.”
He exhaled slowly, rocked by her words, at a loss for what to say. Only platitudes came to mind, hollow words, wholly inadequate to give solace. “Kenzie…I—I’m really sorry. I mean…that’s a terrible way to lose a friend.”
Through clenched teeth, she hissed, “S-she wasn’t m-my friend! She was my sister!”
Her words slammed his midsection like a fist. She shoved him again, and this time he let her push him out of her way.
Kenzie bolted from the stable. Austin made no move to stop her.
The power of Kenzie’s story, the horror of it, bit hard. He wished he could even the score with the hateful people who had driven Kenzie’s sister to kill herself. But Kenzie was also a victim. Reading hateful posts about someone she loved had left deep wounds. No wonder she shunned social media. He rolled his shoulders to loosen tension. His rational mind reminded him he had a job to do—he couldn’t get involved. Yet he had spent weeks with Kenzie and hated seeing her in such crushing pain. Perhaps he’d grown soft, allowed his personal feelings to tip the balance between personal and professional. He knew better! It was perfectly all right to care generically, broadly, the way a person would because of a situation, but not because he had feelings for the person in the situation. Back off, he told himself.
And yet he couldn’t walk away. Not only was he locked in place at Bellmeade by circumstances out of his control, but he now had to find a way to make a fresh start with Kenzie. A way to say he felt sorry for what had happened without tumbling further into emotions that would keep him from doing the job he’d been sent to do. He needed a plan—at least for today. She had wanted to groom the rescue horses, but that could wait. An idea began to percolate, and he jogged to the bunkhouse, went inside, and found Delores in the kitchen doing prep work for lunch.
“Mr. Austin! Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I…um…I need a favor.” She waited while he parsed his thoughts. “Will you make a couple of sandwiches? No, more than that…a picnic lunch? Nothing fancy, just make enough for two.”
Her eyes twinkled. “But of course. It would be my pleasure.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back in fifteen.”
“All wi
ll be ready.”
He hurried to the big barn and, once inside, was relieved to see that Ciana hadn’t turned the horses out to pasture yet. Unlike the stables in the back, the older barn had no outside doors, so someone had to lead the horses to pasture. Oro was just finishing his grain, and the next stall housed Dark Matter, a chestnut gelding Austin had exercised before in his spare time. Austin grabbed gear from the tack room and quickly saddled both horses, led them to the bunkhouse, tied them to a porch railing, and ducked inside.
Delores beamed him a knowing smile and handed him a bulging double-sided saddlebag. “Two sandwiches on my homemade bread, some fruit, two bottles of water, and some chocolates.”
“Chocolates?”
“I assumed you are not planning to go riding with Mr. Clyde or Mr. Scooter.” She offered a saucy wink.
“You assumed correctly. Thank you, Delores. Miguel is a lucky man to have you.”
“I tell him so every day. Now go.”
Outside, he untied the horses, mounted Dark Matter, and cozied the saddlebag over the horse’s withers. Leading Oro, he rode to the rescue work stable. He tied the horses to the hitching rail, muttered, “Here goes,” and strolled inside. Knowing she wouldn’t desert the horses in her care, he found Kenzie right where he expected her—sitting on a metal chair, surrounded by bridles and halters she was cleaning with saddle soap. She ignored him, scrubbing the same spot on a leather bridle with a vengeance until it looked as if she’d rub a hole through it.
She also had changed clothes, smoothed out the dark places beneath her eyes with makeup. He walked closer, took a stance in front of her chair. She continued to snub him. “Soccer,” he said.
The unexpected word made her look up. “What?”
“I played soccer in high school, not football, and I mostly rode the bench because I wasn’t very good. No girls fell at my feet. I broke no hearts. I did have a girlfriend, though, and that’s all she was, a girl who was also my friend. She had a horse and we were in 4-H together. We rode in barrel riding competitions at the county fair from time to time. We kissed once just to try it out and broke out laughing. No chemistry. No magic. We graduated together and moved on. I haven’t seen her for years. We’re not even Facebook friends.”
As he spoke, color and heat crept up Kenzie’s neck, spread across her face. She loosened her death grip on the bridle and rested it in her lap. Fearful she’d crack and begin to cry again, she inspected the bridle. She spoke, her voice watery. “I…I didn’t…shouldn’t have said the things I said to you. I made dumb assumptions, and I—I’m sorry. You did nothing wrong yesterday or last night. And I had a very good time at the party. Please believe that.” She thought of how many times she’d had to apologize to him for behaving rudely. He must have thought she was crazy.
Austin crouched in front of her chair and gently removed the bridle from her lap. Without it, she felt defenseless. “Kenzie, what you’ve gone through is life-shattering. February, you said? That was only a few months ago. This kind of pain can’t be laid down in a few months.” He resisted the urge to take her hand in his. Not a good idea on too many levels. “Look, I…um…I’m no counselor. I don’t know how to tell you anything more than I’m sorry about what you’ve been through. I had no idea how bad you’ve been hurting all along. If I’d known…” He searched for something else to tell her and gave up.
“No merit badges for grief counseling?” She offered a tiny smile.
Relieved to see it, he smiled too. “None.”
“Talking about what happened to Caroline—that was her name—isn’t easy. It made the news when…when it happened.” Another stain on her family. “I barely made it through the last couple of months of classes. Working with horses, then knowing I was coming here for the summer, well, that helped to keep me going. I guess stuff was building up inside me, and…and I’m sorry for falling apart and attacking you. That wasn’t fair. I guess neither one of us knows much about the other, do we?”
“True.” He warned himself away from asking a barrage of questions. “A wise man once wrote that there’s a time to mourn and a time to dance. You deserve to mourn.” He shifted his weight. “However, right this minute, I’ve got two saddled horses outside waiting for riders. What do you say? Want to take them for a spin?”
The idea of a good long ride appealed more than she could express. “Y-you have them ready?”
“And lunch to go.” He stood, held out his hand. “Teamwork.”
Gratitude to him, for him, brought her to the verge of tears. She stood, took his hand, and said, “I think both are super great ideas.”
* * *
—
The riding trail Jon and Ciana had laid out for exercising horses meandered along Bellmeade’s generous property lines, skirting fences around fields of growing alfalfa grass, cutting through a generous thicket of woods, and ending at a turn-around with a picnic table, benches, and a fenced grazing area where trail horses could graze. A leisurely ride up and back could take forty-five to fifty minutes. Taking time to picnic could stretch the ride much longer. Today, Austin was in no hurry.
Although most of the trail was wide enough for horses to walk side by side, he let Kenzie take the lead, content to follow and watch her well-practiced seat in the saddle. He admired the straightness of her back and the way her braid hung between her shoulder blades, moving with Oro’s gait and catching sunlight. She seemed content with a slower pace too.
The fresh air, the warmth of the sun, the sound of Oro’s hooves, and the sway of his walk soothed and settled Kenzie. The ride gave her time to clear her head and calm herself. The adrenaline rush from her earlier outburst had made her heart pound erratically. Not a good thing. She took deep, measured breaths to steady the beats. She’d held the hurt of losing Caroline inside herself for months, and telling Austin, saying the words She hanged herself, had been painful but cathartic. The memory was as fresh as the day a counselor, sent from the admin building, had come into her psychology class at Vanderbilt, walked her into an empty room, and as gently as possible delivered the news. Not all of it, just that her sister had died and that her father had sent a car to bring Kenzie home. Once home, she learned the rest of the story. Caroline had committed suicide, had chosen death over life.
Kenzie shook her head to dislodge the lingering shadows. No more today. She wanted to be in the present, the here and now. Austin had gone to some trouble to give her a pleasant experience, and she wanted to soak in it. And she wanted him nearer. Over her shoulder, she called, “The trail’s wide enough for both of us, you know.”
He nudged Dark Matter with his heels, and the horse stepped up and fell in beside Oro. They rode in amiable silence with the plodding sound of hooves and the occasional squeak of saddle leather making trail music. Minutes later, they were in the woods with leaf patterns falling over them.
In the shaded light, Austin’s eyes looked jade green. She was getting used to how his eyes changed colors; the familiar definition of his muscular arms, browned by the sun; the sound of his voice when he said her name. She was getting used to him, this man. She shifted her gaze forward, wary of such an attraction. Not. Possible.
When they broke into the clearing and dismounted, Austin tossed the saddlebag on the old wooden table and released the horses into the field. As he unpacked their lunches and spread the goodies on the table, Kenzie grabbed a water bottle. “Quite a feast you whipped up.”
“Full disclosure: Delores made the goodies. But I saddled the horses,” he added, making Kenzie smile.
“Oooh, chocolate!” She reached for a piece of the wrapped candy, and Austin playfully scooped it aside.
“That’s dessert.”
“The perfect place to start.” She defiantly snatched a piece and popped it into her mouth.
A bluebird hopped onto the end of the table from a tree. Kenzie tossed a bread crust away from the
table and the bird swooped to follow it. “I…I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have dumped on you this morning the way I did.”
“If you ever want to talk—”
“No. I…I really don’t want to talk about it, about that day…when…it happened. Maybe sometime, but not today.” She unwrapped her sandwich and began to eat.
“Not a problem,” he said, irritated at himself for asking. A rookie mistake. He was already blurring the line between professional and personal interest with this trail ride and picnic. He needed to tread carefully for both of their sakes.
They ate, finishing the food in silence, until Kenzie said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this picnic. For being you.”
He scrambled to his feet and started gathering the debris from their lunch and stuffing it into the saddlebag. “We better get moving. It’s past time for another feeding.”
Taken aback by his haste, his brusqueness, Kenzie wordlessly watched him gather their horses. This morning, he’d sought her out after her outburst. He had been kind and sympathetic, taken her on a trail ride and a picnic—all above and beyond his job description. She mounted Oro and urged him into a trot, all the while thinking that Austin Boyd was a total puzzle, as curious and strange as his changing eyes.
* * *
—
Austin was asleep when the vibration from the burner phone under his pillow woke him. He groggily pulled it out, sat up. The readout announced Caller 2. He punched the talk button. “Yes?”
“How’re you doing?” The man’s voice was scarred by years of smoking.
“Things are all right, but…” Austin left the sentence hanging.
“But what?”
Austin saw the gray light of morning peeking through the room’s window curtain, meaning it was almost time to get up anyway. “I’m ready to leave this place.”
The Girl with the Broken Heart Page 6