Ride a storm

by Quinn Wilder

  "Speaking of which," he said, lifting a stern eyebrow, "I hope this week of seclusion hasn't meant another week without seeing your doctor and your therapist."

  "I keep telling you that's none of your business."

  "And I keep telling you I'm making it my business."

  "Okay," she conceded grouchily. "I went. And you needn't look so satisfied with yourself. I went because I knew it was time for me to take responsibility for my own health. I'm glad I did."

  "Really? What's the charming blush all about?"

  You couldn't put one single thing past Dace Stanton, she decided, bemused. "In those first few weeks after the accident I was in something of a daze. There was so much pain and disappointment to deal with that I just started shutting things out, not listening as closely as I could have.

  "Some of the things..." her voice was somewhat choked "... that I thought I would never do normally, I will be able to do—with time and plenty of physio. For six months I had to restrict some of my movement—not for a lifetime. The therapist is going to start working on lateral movement again very soon."

  "That's wonderful, Cadence." His eyes had the most wicked gleam in them, and she rushed on.

  "I may even be able to ride again, some day. Oh, probably not competitively, but " She stopped

  and stared at him. "What are you looking at me like that for?"

  "Because you're her."

  "Who?" *

  "The Cadence in the video. Even better, somehow. There's a depth mixed with the laughter in your eyes. Was it finding out you could ride again that did it, Cade? That gave you back something you'd been missing?"

  Actually, she suspected her eyes had taken on that glow he was talking about in about the same instant that she'd recognized who her intruder was. But she didn't feel ready to let him know that, yet.

  "Something's missing, all right, but I haven't got it back. Where's my horse?"

  "He's safe from your bad temper."

  "I wouldn't have really shot him."

  "I know. Sold him, though?"

  She laughed. "The advertisement is in the paper. Of course, I'm not answering the phone."

  "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry you thought I'd leave you. I never wanted to cause you any more pain. It seems to me you've had enough." He sighed. "But I'm going to have to hurt you once more. What I found out about Storm isn't good."

  She could see the agony in his eyes that the thought of hurting her caused him, and Storm didn't seem very important right now. "I don't think I would have ever known how much I loved you, Dace, if I hadn't had this week to miss you, to think about it. You just asked me to marry you, and that feels as if you gave me a suit of armor to wear against life's hurts. What can hurt me, when the man I love with all my heart and soul loves me back?"

  "You're a brave and beautiful woman, Cadence," he said softly. "And tonight I'm going to lose myself in your bravery and your beauty and your special kind of magic. Enough time tomorrow to let the world back in."

  He took her lips and gnawed gently on than, but the storm built in both of them as he went on to gently ravage her eyes and her nose and her cheeks and her neck. He dipped lower and she felt lightning bolts of thrilling tension rip through her. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, and her heart was making thunder inside her.

  Together, they rode the flashing heat of the storm into the unearthly still serenity that followed. She curled up in the strong circle of his arms. She had never felt so safe, so treasured, so cherished in all her life. She had found her shelter for all time.

  A sharp rapping on the door woke her up. The first thing she felt was an odd tug of loss because she realized the bed beside her was empty.

  "What?" She felt panicky. Had any of it been true? Or had it been the most delicious of dreams?

  "Miss Cadence, that man is here again."

  She giggled at Timothy's put-out tone. Somehow she didn't mind being called Cadence. At all. It was her name. And her spirit danced with the most astounding grace. Dace, she realized, had called her Cadence nearly from the beginning. Her name sounded so good and so right coming off his lips.

  "Is he?" She noticed that this time it wasn't even morning. It wasn't even light out yet.

  "Does he ever call at a normal hour? Does he ever call normally V Timothy groused.

  "Is he coming in?"

  "No. He said he'd wait outside for you."

  She made him wait, despite her own eagerness to be with him again. She showered, dressed meticulously in a calf-length white Indian cotton dress. She piled her abundance of red hair on top of her head and pinned it up, leaving soft tendrils to curl around her face. She draped a matching shawl of the beautiful cotton over the soft naked swell of her shoulders and went to meet Dace*

  But when she first flung open the front door, she felt disappointed. She thought he would have the carriage. Instead, he sat astride Storm, looking down at her, a certain sadness in his face.

  She stared up at him, feeling excluded—but only for a moment, because he reached down and caught her under her arms and swung her up, across his lap. He cradled her in his arms.

  "Are you okay? Is that comfortable?"

  She nodded. She had never felt as exquisitely feminine as she did in this moment.

  He walked the horse out of sight of the house, and then broke into a trot.

  "Still okay?" he asked her.

  She nodded again, and he nudged the big horse into that smooth canter.

  She began to cry. She had never thouht she would feel this again. The sheer joy of sitting on a horse, the wind stinging her face and tugging playfully at her hair. And some day she might do this again sitting astride her own horse. Maybe Dace would be racing at her side. Maybe children on fat ponies would be chasing them through sun-drenched meadows... She wept into Dace's chest.

  He stopped on the crest of the hill, and his grip tightened on her. "The sun will come up over there," he said, nodding with his chin.

  She could see a fine ribbon of light starting on the horizon and she fastened her eyes on it.

  "I have to tell you the bad news now." He hesitated, tucked a piece of her wild red hair behind her ear. "He's been in a fire, Cadence. Storm was in a stable fire."

  She didn't understand what he was trying to tell her.

  "I tracked down his stable of origin using a bill of sale. He's changed hands a whole lot of times. Twelve, actually, before you bought him. I guess somewhere along the way the information about the fire wasn't passed on, and he just got labeled a problem horse."

  "I don't understand what it means," she said, puzzled by the immense sadness in Dace's eyes as he looked down at her.

  "Sirens," Dace said quietly. "The sound of a siren makes him go crazy. It must be as if the terror of that night is imprinted in him and certain things twig it. They always will, Cadence."

  She stared at him.

  "The smell of smoke. Sirens. Being kept inside. Those things are always going to terrify him. He's fourteen years old. I don't think he's going to change. I think it would be cruel to try and make him change, say by exposing him to sirens and smoke."

  "What are you saying?"

  He sighed. "Cadence, those are all things we couldn't control in a show situation. To a certain extent, we can control them out here, in the country, but at a show we can't control when a siren will go off, or when there's going to be smoke in the air.

  You'll never get him to calm down inside a stable. Never;'

  "Dace " The panic was rising in her voice.

  Just last night she had thought it didn't matter. But it did. She could not expect Dace to be her whole life. She would smother him. She had to have something else to direct her boundless energy at.

  "I think the kindest thing you could do is retire him. We can ride him like this. For the pure pleasure of riding him. But he's never going to give you your gold, Cadence. I'm sorry."

  "But what am I going to do?" she whispered brokenly into his chest. She cried. Gone. The dream was g
one. There would never be another horse quite like this one. There would never be a feeling like the one he had given her. His immense spirit, his innate greatness, had made her feel so close, as if she could taste and touch and smell that gold medal Now what?

  "Cadence," he finally asked her softly, "isn't it obvious to you by now? What you should be doing? What you were probably born to do?"

  "I thought I was born to win a gold medal," she croaked.

  "And maybe you were. You have this incredible gift of being able to pass on what you know about ! your sport and about horses. There's a fire that burns in you, that ignites everything it touches. I don't know about gold medals, Cadence, but I know you should be using your gift. I know you should be teaching others how to get the most out of themselves. I know you've got a wicked eye for great horses, though I don't think I'll let you pickj any more of your own pupils."

  She stared at him wide eyed. Had it always been there, sparkling with such clarity, waiting for her

  to see it? His words gave her a peaceful sense of homecoming. She knew that he was right. That was exactly what she was supposed to do: choose great horses and coach great riders.

  "Aren't you going to be one of my pupils any more, Dace?"

  He shook his head, and looked deep into her eyes. "No, ma'am. I like jumping horses. In open fields, with the wind in my face and the silence all around me. There's a freedom about it—an illusion of joining eagles."

  She felt a small twist of sadness but somehow she had known all along that, though a man with such monumental self-assurance could fit in anywhere, there were only a few places he would call home. In her heart she had known the show arena was not one of them.

  She managed to smile. "Somehow I think Storm will like it much better, too. I want you to have him. The two of you belong together."

  Dace laughed. "No, the two of us belong together. But Storm is a very special animal, and he has a place in my heart. I'll accept on the condition that it will be the last extravagant gift from you."

  "Maybe some day yet I'll present you with a gold medal," she promised him.

  "I was riding for the gold, too," Dace informed her softly. "But I got the gold I was riding for."

  "Did you?" she asked with surprise.

  "I was riding for the gold of your eyes, Cadence. I wanted to see them the way they looked in those videos. Full of laughter and life and contentment. Full of fire and spirit—putting every other kind of gold on this earth to shame. I was riding for the gold. And I got it. In some ways, I got so much

  more than I started out for. Because now there is a wisdom and pain tempering the gold of your eyes that makes you beautiful beyond mere physical beauty."

  She started to cry again, this time with joy mingled with her sadness.

  "It seems to me I put a dream on hold," he continued, stroking her hair, "and it's time to get back to it. I've got enough money saved to get the Charolais bull I like; to build a house on my land. And I've got enough maturity, now, to know that I have to balance work—that I don't have to prove to anyone that I'm a man by working myself to death. And I have enough courage, now, to love. To love you with everything I've got, for the rest of my days."

  They were silent for a long time, and then he nudged her. "Look."

  And she looked and saw dawn spreading its golden fingers across the land. The show was spectacular, the whole world painted for a moment in the brilliant, golden light of hope, of new beginnings, of dawn.

  "You see," he said quietly. "There are so many different kinds of gold that are worth having." He nodded over the gold-drenched landscape. "This one only seems free. It's not. It takes a lot of heartache before a man looks at this and understands the value of it. It's a gold worth riding for, too, Cadence."

  She nodded against him, feeling a languid sense of having enough. Right now. In this moment. Her tears had left her exhausted and at peace, too. Yes, there would be other kinds of gold worth having, worth striving toward.

  Dace cleared his throat. "There's this kind of gold, too." He pressed a piece of crinkly tissue paper into her hand.

  She leaned against him, and opened it carefully. Folded tenderly within it was a beautiful, simple, solid gold wedding band.

  "It was my mother's," he said, a growl of emotion in his voice.

  "Oh, Dace, it's beautiful." The gold was mellow, shining a soft liquid yellow that put the sun to shame.

  "I can't promise you gold medals. And maids

  are out of the question. But this " he swept his

  hand over the lingering gold of the morning landscape "—I can promise you this."

  And then she knew. Her obsession with gold was a small and petty thing in comparison to what she felt for this man who wanted so much for her to have her dreams, for her to know the joy of contentment, the simple peace of being loved.

  It was time, now, to put away the dreams of a little girl, and to begin to dream the dreams of a woman. Dreams spun of gold—and lace. Dreams of bassinets and big brass beds. Dreams of loving and being loved.

  She knew at last she had found real gold. It wasn't out there somewhere, but it was that thing that shone endlessly inside her. Love. Love was forever gold.

  Dace looked at her face, and had to bite his lip against the sweet agony the light that glowed there caused in him. He gathered her tight against him, and spurred toward the gold ball of the rising sun.

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