“Good job,” Teddy said.
Jake said nothing. She threw a triumphant glance at him.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Hawthorne?” she said. “Did I scare you with my reckless speed?”
“No,” he drawled, “I’m scared I’ll be too old to get outta the truck by myself by the time I get home.”
Laughter erupted in the back and Clea realized the old guys had been pulling for her success. Jake should’ve been, too. After all, that was his trailer she’d managed not to hit.
He didn’t like her much. But he didn’t have to show it every second, did he? She stepped down on the accelerator and they roared off down the road with the old guys laughing and whooping and Jake staring out the window again.
Sullen, too. Well, whatever. What did she care?
Buck and Teddy showed her the turnoff to the cabin that was meant to be hers, which was about two miles into what they said was a five-mile distance to their place. She kept thinking about the ordeal she’d just gone through, about all the challenging ordeals that had made up this day so far. Living in Montana couldn’t be quite this rough all the time.
As soon as she dropped these guys off, she’d go back by her new place and check it out. Once she got Ariel hauled over there and her stuff all moved in, surely she’d have some peace so she could get herself organized.
Finally, Buck said, “Next road. There. On your right.”
Their cabin looked to be a little bigger than Jake’s. It had pens and a small barn immediately behind it and beyond that, just a little higher up at the foot of the hill, a large indoor arena. With real metal walls, not the black curtains like in Texas.
“That there’s where your winter stall will be if you want it,” Teddy told her. “You can ride your mare in there when the snow’s ten-foot deep. All you have to do is figger out how to get yourself over here.”
He and Buck laughed at her horrified expression. Jake wasn’t listening.
“I like to ski,” she said dryly.
“Sometimes it’s that or snowshoe in,” Ted said. “There’s a guy hired to feed and clean stalls when you can’t make it, though. Included in the rent for all the cabins.”
Buck said, “Let me and Teddy out here at the house and we’ll mix up the feed fer the foal. You and Jake go on to the barn and see about her.”
Clea stepped on the brake. “I’m just dropping y’all off…”
“Jake oughtta come in and learn to mix the milk,” Teddy said. “If ‘n’ he’s really gonna take his turn at feedin’ tonight, I don’t want him wakin’ me up—”
Buck interrupted the diatribe. “Clea, you have to go down there by the barn anyhow to turn around. Let Jake show you our little wild orphan.”
He opened his door. “Come on, Ted,” he said, in a sardonic tone. “I’ll do the work and you kin put yore feet up.”
Insisting that he was not lazy, he just wanted things even, Teddy got out and he and Buck headed for the house. Jake was entirely silent as Clea drove on. He seemed to be deep in thought, a million miles away.
“I don’t know why Buck thinks I need a place to turn around,” she said, with self-deprecating sarcasm, “I could just back out to the road.”
It didn’t get a rise out of him. He was staring through the windshield at the mountains. Well, of course. Duh, Clea. He’s worried about his truck, no doubt.
She pulled up and stopped in front of the barn.
“Here you are, safe and sound in spite of all I could do,” she said. “I’m really sorry about your truck. Have your insurance people contact me about the damage and I’ll take care of it.”
She shifted into Park and reached to open the console.
“I’ll write down my cell number.”
He opened the door and stepped out as he waited for her to write the number down on an index card.
“They’ll need your last name,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, but that hadn’t occurred to her. Usually the people she dealt with knew who she was.
Above the number she wrote, Clea Mathison.
Clea Mathison, whom Jake Hawthorne saw as an incompetent idiot—a dumb blonde. Well, she might just let her hair grow out to its natural chestnut.
When she looked up to hand the card to him, she smiled and said, “Again, I’m sorry I shot your truck, Jake.”
He barely glanced at her, just took the card with a muttered thanks, closed the door and walked away.
She watched him go, the sunlight bright across the back of his shirt. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t look back. He no longer knew she was there.
Since she was a teenager, every man anywhere around her always knew she was there. Even Brock. He’d ignored her plenty of times but he’d always been aware of her and so had every other man.
Now, to Jake Hawthorne, she wasn’t even a sex object.
She didn’t want to be one. But to be perfectly honest, at that moment she didn’t know who she was, either. And she didn’t want to be alone.
When she ran away from home to another world, she’d had no clue how alien she would feel.
The old Clea would have driven away and let that feeling get stronger. Especially if that was what she was expected to do.
But the new Clea would do something positive. Whatever her heart wanted her to do.
She reached down and turned off the motor. “Wait up,” she called.
Jake, halfway to the barn, stopped in his tracks to look back.
“I want to see the foal,” she said.
He said nothing, just stood there and waited for her to catch up to him.
“I’ve gotta ride,” he said.
“Just point me in the right direction. I don’t expect you to give me a tour. I’ll see the baby and then I’ll check out the arena and the winter stalls.”
He looked as if he didn’t know what to think of her. He was wary. Like the shy, lonesome cowboy in an old movie who’d be less afraid of a gunslinger than of talking to the new schoolmarm. Except he’d plainly told her she couldn’t shoot and couldn’t drive.
Who was he, anyhow? He was going to be her neighbor. He was her neighbor. Solitude and self-sufficiency were fine but she’d seen just now that she might need her neighbors sometimes. And they’d have to have dealings about his truck repairs, so they might as well be on pleasant terms with each other. “Have you lived here on the Elkhorn for a long time?”
“No,” he said. As if that should put an end to the conversation.
She gave him a nice smile. “So. Where are you from?”
“Never lived anywhere more than a year or two.”
“By yourself?”
He gave her a slanted glance that said it was none of her business.
He turned toward the barn.
“Then we’re opposites,” she said, matching strides with him. “I’ve never lived anywhere new before. You’ll have to teach me about living free and on my own in a brand-new place. I need to enroll in How to Start Over 101.”
They walked across the graveled drive to the broad doors standing open at the end of the barn aisle. Without another word.
That