by Joanna Sims
She brushed his body, ignoring his grouchy attitude when she switched sides and asked him to move his feet. Then she combed his mane and his tail and finished by cleaning out each of his hooves. The entire time she worked on him, he tried to bite her, and his body language, from the tail swishing to stomping his hind hooves, was a sign that he had some behavior issues that they were going to have to work on.
“You look super handsome now, Val.” Bonita wrapped her arms around the horse’s neck and gave him a quick hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At a ridiculously early hour.”
While she was putting the grooming tools back in the bucket hanging outside the stall, Bonita heard Gabe’s voice nearby. She walked toward the sound of his voice.
He was standing next to what looked to be a full-blooded Thoroughbred in the large, indoor riding arena. He was talking to a couple of people who Bonita assumed to be the owners. She looked around and found that there were empty bleachers nearby. She climbed up to the midpoint in the bleachers and sat down.
“Everything we do with horses is pressure,” Gabe was saying. “We put a halter on them, it’s pressure. We ride them, it’s pressure. What they want is to be left alone and eat. That’s not how it’s going to be for them, but we have to understand what they want if we’re going to change their behavior. What is that you want this horse to be able to do?”
The younger of the two women, the one wearing a pair of riding breeches, said, “I want him to not freak out every time he sees a flag. When I take him to a show, he’s fine, unless there’s a flag. Then all bets are off. He bolts, he tries to buck me off...”
“Well, he might have had someone train him wrong with a flag. We don’t know his history. So his reaction, at least to him, could make perfect sense, even if it’s doesn’t make perfect sense to you. But don’t worry, we can work on it. We need to operate on the principle of pressure. Operating on the principle that horses respond to the application or the release of pressure, we can desensitize this horse to stimuli. In this case, a flag.” Gabe nodded his head toward the other side of the arena. “Why don’t the two of you stand over there so when he reacts, you won’t be in the way, and I’ll show you what you can do with him.”
In Gabe’s free hand, he was holding a training device that looked like a long crop with a flag on the end. He had the flag grasped in his hand, so the Thoroughbred didn’t see it. Calmly, as was the way Gabe seemed to operate in the world, he stepped away from the horse, gave him some length of the lead rope and then showed the horse the flag.
The moment the horse spotted the flag, it started to rear and then buck and tried to run away. Gabe held on to the horse, and instead of taking the flag away, he waved the flag to keep the horse moving.
“If he’s not doing what I want him to do, which is stand still, I keep him moving,” Gabe explained while he worked. “In the horse world, whoever moves the feet is the boss. That’s the way it goes. All this horse is looking for is a leader. That’s what a horse is looking for in all of us.”
When the horse finally stopped moving and stood still, Gabe dropped the flag to the ground. For the next thirty minutes, Gabe worked with the Thoroughbred, repeating the steps over and over again, until the horse let him rub the flag over his body.
“We don’t want to teach him that this tool is another thing to fear, so we want to rub him all over his body with it to let him know that it’s not.”
Bonita heard one of the women say, “I’ve never seen him do that before. I can’t believe that Gabe managed to accomplish in thirty minutes what we haven’t been able to accomplish in all these years.”
The women went out into the arena to thank Gabe and shower their horse with praise. The Thoroughbred was winded but calm in the presence of the flag. Gabe handed the woman in the riding breeches the lead rope. And then he handed her the training flag. “Now you have a flag.”
Bonita met Gabe at the bottom of the bleachers and they walked side by side toward the rig. It was getting dark and she already knew that Gabe would be expecting to leave at 4:00 a.m.
“That was impressive.” She glanced over at him, seeing the cowboy in a fresh light.
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t know you were a horse trainer.”
He laughed a bit. “That’s how I make my living, for the most part.”
She had assumed, wrongly, that Gabe was only a long-distance horse transporter. He was so much more than that. She had been around trainers all of her life, but she’d never seen anyone work with a horse quite in that manner and she said as much.
“Horsemanship training is different, but it’s the most important. Did you ever see that movie The Horse Whisperer?”
She nodded.
“I trained with Dennis Reis out in California. He was one of the trainers who worked on that movie.” Gabe tipped his hat at a group of women standing in the tack room. “I had to go out there for a month and I had to take my own horse. But it was worth it. My career’s been growing ever since.”
“It doesn’t seem like there’d be too much business in Bozeman.”
“No.” He smiled. “You’re right about that. I train local when I can, but I spend most of my time traveling. I go down to Wellington in Florida during the summer. Folks have a lot of money to spend on training for their horses down there and they like to have me around.”
“I can see why.” She nodded. “I’ve never had that kind of training and it seems like I’ve been training on horseback for years.”
“It’s the foundation. That’s where horse ownership should start. Ride the horse from the ground, then get on his back.”
When they got back to the rig, Gabe opened the door for her, as he was wont to do, and then followed her inside. The kitchen was clean and he had already pulled out the queen-size bed that had been tucked away inside of the convertible couch.
“You’ll sleep here.”
When she had first decided to join the trip unannounced, she imagined that there would be an opportunity for her to get a hotel room. Just like with the food plan, she hadn’t really thought the entire scenario through. Why, after all, would Gabe spend all of this money on a decked-out rig like this only to spend money on a hotel room? It didn’t make sense. But sleeping in the same space with him hadn’t been a part of her original consideration. Her father had brought up the subject of the sleeping arrangement, but she had brushed off the concern.
“I hate to take your bed.”
“You’re not. I bunk up there.” He pointed to the bunk bed above the front cabin. “I’ve never had this bed out before.”
Gabe suggested that he take the first turn in the bathroom so he could get up in the bunk and pull the curtain. His attempt to give her some privacy, to make her more comfortable in an uncomfortable situation she had designed for herself, made her add a brick to the wall of respect she had been building for the cowboy day by day.
While he was in the bathroom taking a shower, she called her parents and checked in with her friends on social media. She had been posting pictures from her trip along the way and all of her friends loved Val. But the subject all of her female friends seemed to love even more was Gabe. Bonita scrolled through the comments, and almost to a person, there were questions about the “sexy cowboy.”
Was Gabe sexy? He did have incredible blue eyes; there was no denying that. And it was true that there was something compelling about a man in a cowboy hat. And the way he was able to train horses was definitely a selling point. In fact, when she checked out Gabe’s social media, ten to one of his contacts were women from the horse community.
“There’s enough hot water for you.”
Gabe opened the door to the bathroom, followed by a billow of steam. His wet hair was slicked back from his face and he was fully dressed down to his cowboy boots. He didn’t look like a man about to go to bed.
“Okay.” Bonita was
sitting cross-legged on the bed.
Gabe stopped at the foot of the bed. “You want to keep Tater with you?”
Tater was curled up next to her leg. “She’s comfortable.”
Gabe nodded and then grabbed a ladder that was hanging on the wall and hooked it just beneath the bunk.
“I’m going to pull the curtain, so you’ll have some privacy.”
“I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“I’m setting the alarm for three. We’ve got another ten to do tomorrow.”
“I know.” That was said with a tinge of sullenness.
“We’ve got to fold up that bed and get the extension back in place and move the rig so we can load Val.”
“I’ll be up. I promise.”
Satisfied that he’d prepared her for the inevitable early departure, the cowboy climbed up the ladder and disappeared behind the curtain.
Knowing that the alarm was going to go off sooner than she wanted, Bonita climbed off the bed, went into the bathroom and quickly prepared herself for bed. She cut her nightly routine in half, and dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, she hurried over to the bed and got under the covers. Tater repositioned herself closer to her once she turned off the light.
It was hard to imagine for her, because she had insomnia, but the cowboy was already asleep, based on his breathing. With a sigh, Bonita kissed Tater on the head and prayed for sleep. Although she was beginning to adjust to the routine, life on the road was certainly not for her.
* * *
Gabe awakened thirty minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He’d taken his boots off but decided to sleep in his jeans and his shirt. In case of an emergency, he didn’t want to be jumping out of the bunk in his socks and underwear. But it wasn’t comfortable to sleep fully dressed and he hadn’t slept as well as he’d like with ten hours of driving in his future. And yet he knew that it wasn’t just his clothing that was making it difficult to sleep.
He had Bonita on the brain. From the moment he saw her, he’d wanted to ask her out. It was her attitude, initially, that had scared him off. It seemed like she was looking down on him and he didn’t like anybody looking down on him. Little by little, she’d been changing his mind.
He liked her without her makeup, when she was teasing him, when she was cooking him a meal and when she was watching him train a horse like she respected him. And he liked it when she was fresh out of the shower, her long hair loose around her pretty face. The smell of her hair and her skin seemed to be everywhere—that faint scent of lavender.
She was his client, but he wanted to ask her out on a date.
She was his client, but he really wanted to kiss her.
He didn’t usually date his clients. In truth, he hadn’t dated much over the years. He’d been building his business and avoiding entanglements and fresh heartbreak. But there wasn’t a rule against it. And technically, once he delivered Val, Bonita wasn’t going to be his client any longer.
If he asked her out on a date, would she say yes? He’d never dated someone like Bonita; he was tempted to try.
Maybe when they got back to Bozeman and Val was safe in his new home, he was going to have to gather up the nerve to ask Ms. Delafuente to do him the honor of joining him on a date.
Chapter Five
“Rapid City, South Dakota, here we come!” It was five past four in the morning, and Bonita, running on two hours of sleep and a strong cup of coffee, was sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat, waving goodbye to Grimes, Iowa.
“Thank you again for finding those creamers for me,” she said to Gabe, who, as he always did, looked put together and prepared for the day—boots on, cowboy hat on and button-down shirt tucked in tight.
She saw him nod in the dark in response to her thank-you. He might be thinking it was a mistake to find those creamers in the lounge at the equestrian facility. Now that she had coffee, the caffeine was making her chatty.
“Hey!” Bonita exclaimed when she started to explore sightseeing in Rapid City on her phone. “Mount Rushmore is in Rapid City, South Dakota. Did you know that?”
Another nod.
“I’ve always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. I’m not kidding. I wonder if we’ll have time. Do you think we’ll have time?”
Gabe had told her during dinner the night before that they would be staying with one of his father’s longtime business partners. A friend of the family might be willing to lend them a car for a quick trip to Mount Rushmore.
“Have you been to Mount Rushmore?”
Gabe shook his head no.
“Do you want to see Mount Rushmore?”
He sighed a little. “If we get there in time, I’ll see if Bill will lend me one of his vehicles and I’ll take you there. That’s not a problem.”
She barely got her thank-you out before he turned on the music. Then she wished she hadn’t had the coffee, which made her too talkative, which made him turn on the music, and now she couldn’t fall asleep because she was too wired with caffeine.
No bueno. Not good at all.
Perhaps it was a form of self-preservation, or perhaps it was a form of indoctrination, but she actually caught herself singing along to a Trace Adkins song. The fact that she actually knew the words in the first place was cause for concern, but it was downright troublesome that she had, without thought, started to sing the words out loud.
“You don’t like to talk much when you drive, do you?” she asked over the music.
Gabe seemed to be in the zone, focused on the road and not appearing to feel the need to talk. But thankfully, in response to her question, he switched off the music.
¡Gracias a Dios! She said a private thanks to God for answering her prayers. Better late than never.
“I don’t usually have anyone to talk to. I’ve tried to have a conversation with Tater a time or two, but she’s the quiet type.”
Bonita smiled down at the dog in her lap; Tater had made all the difference for her on this trip. She was going to miss her when the trip was over. “Is that true, perrita?”
“It’s nice to see her take to someone.”
“I was just thinking how much I’m going to miss her. If you ever need a Tater-sitter, you just let me know.”
That made him laugh. He had a nice laugh. And in truth, he had a nice smile.
“I can’t believe I’ve done the things I’ve done these last three days,” she mused aloud. “I’ve never seen the country this way. It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful.”
This was the closest thing to roughing it she had ever done in her life and although she wouldn’t want to repeat it anytime soon, it had been an experience to travel this way.
“Rapid City is the capital of South Dakota, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s Pierre.”
“Pierre? No. That doesn’t sound right.”
“Look it up.”
“I will.”
“But it’s Pierre. I can name every capital of every US state.”
Bonita searched for the capital of South Dakota on her phone.
“Shoot.”
“It’s Pierre, right?” he asked.
“Lucky guess.”
“No. I’m telling you. I can name every capital. Quiz me.”
“Hold on. I’m horrible at geography, so I have to find a resource.”
She began to quiz Gabe, and every state she named, he came up with the correct capital without hesitation.
“Okay—here’s one you won’t get. Rhode Island.”
“Providence.”
“How did you know that?” She half laughed, half exclaimed.
“I’m a smart guy.”
Gabe went on to name the rest of the capitals in the United States, including US territories and then just to show off, named the European capitals as well.
“Do you want me t
o move on to Africa?” he asked smugly.
“No, gracias!” She put her phone down. “I think I’ll just assume you know the rest. And don’t be offended, but I did judge the hat.”
“I know you did,” Gabe told her. “It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.”
Yesterday, it had sunk in that a cowboy like Gabe could be sexy. Jeans and cowboy boots, country music and four-wheel-drive trucks had never been her kind of sexy in a man. But what he did yesterday with that Thoroughbred. That was sexy. And as it turned out, he was also a smart cowboy. She had just assumed that he hadn’t gone to college and maybe he hadn’t. Either way, he wasn’t dumb.
At the halfway mark, they made a pit stop, grabbed some lunch, gave Val some fresh hay and then headed out. Gabe didn’t mess around and she had learned to appreciate that about him. He was focused and goal oriented. Maybe they didn’t have the same type of goals, but they did have that personality trait in common.
They rode in silence for a while, and her mind, as it often did, drifted to her mother’s illness. Her own life had been charmed up until that diagnosis—she had earned two bachelor’s degrees, a master’s degree and she had been accepted to medical school. She had worked for senators, she had traveled all over the world, and she had shown horses at some of the biggest venues in the country.
And, then her mother was diagnosed with ALS and everything, everything, changed. It was her mother’s dream to retire to a horse ranch in Montana. And when her parents realized that retirement age was never going to come for one of them, George bought the horse ranch outside of Bozeman. Now Bonita was living in Bozeman, too. Taking care of her mother, managing the medical staff, making doctor appointments, arranging therapy and filling prescriptions had become her full-time job. Her father, her hero, was in many ways unable to handle his wife’s steady decline.
“Do you know what just occurred to me?” An idea came into Bonita’s head and she couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to have it.