Around midday, Sidney headed over to get Eli so he could help her cut the last mustang from the herd and get it into the round pen for its first lesson.
Eli must have been content with the bag full of hay and the trough of water beneath a man-made shelter, because he hadn’t bothered untying himself to find something better.
She freed him, tightened the cinch, and climbed into the saddle. She’d saved the buckskin mustang for last. The one the burro had attached itself to. The one for whom the burro had made her job difficult.
Once inside the mustang paddock, she cut the buckskin from the rest of the herd, but getting it through the other gate and into the round pen without the donkey was impossible. After wasting fifteen minutes trying to separate the two of them, she finally drove them both into the round pen and slammed the gate closed.
She’d worked two horses together in a round pen before, but not a horse and a donkey—both of which were wild. She would have to be extra vigilant to stay out of striking distance.
After returning Eli to his hay, she picked up her lunge whip and climbed over the top of the pen. The horse was running the perimeter, trying to find a way back to the rest of the herd. The burro tried to keep up.
By the time they’d finished their lesson she’d panted and sweated as much as the buckskin and the burro.
Of all the horses she’d worked that morning, the buckskin was the wariest. Sidney smiled as she pulled her Astros baseball cap off and wiped the sweat from her brow, determination running thicker than blood through her veins. This guy was going to make her earn his trust and earn her keep. Bring it on.
If she’d wanted easy, she’d have married a prince.
When the buckskin came toward the center, toward her, she backed away a few more steps, standing relaxed, relieving the pressure with her calm body language. The horse and donkey stood still, staring at her, their sides heaving, their nostrils flaring, but the buckskin was licking his lips. The first sign she’d seen of him relaxing.
She waited until their breathing slowed, teaching them that if they looked at her, they would get rewarded with no pressure. It was a start. Teeny tiny, but a start.
The buckskin raised his head and sniffed the air seconds before boots scuffed in the dirt behind her.
“Hey.”
She recognized Bryan’s deep timbre without looking over her shoulder.
“Just finishing up. Man the gate so I can get them back into the paddock.”
He walked around the pen, four large, wary brown eyes watching. When the gate slid open, the buckskin took one moment to calculate the risk of running past Bryan with the reward of being back with his herd. The herd won.
The burro followed at a walk. He stopped at the gate. Bryan pulled a treat from his pocket and held it out. The burro sniffed the air, then he eased a couple of steps forward, then another and another, and giraffed his neck all the way out, his body and legs leaning back, ready to flee.
Donkey stole the treat then disappeared through the gate.
“He likes you.” Sidney closed the gate. “I couldn’t get within twenty-five feet of him.”
“Maybe it’s my hat he doesn’t like then.” He removed his hat and messed with it again. He’d managed to get the shape closer to normal, and as tall as he was, the hoofprint on top of the brim was hardly noticeable. At least for her.
“Maybe.” She pointed to the extra water bottle in the crook of his arm. “Please say that’s for me.”
He looked around like he didn’t want anyone to overhear. “It’s vodka.”
“V-vodka? It’s the middle of the freaking day? What if Mac catches you? Or Dale or Lottie? Or you fall off the ladder and break your neck or you get someone else hurt or—”
“Take a breath, Irish.”
She swallowed her tirade and glanced around them, hoping no one had seen, no one had heard. Her breath came in short, rapid inhalations. Her heart raced and blood swirled in her ears, making sounds dull and far away, and she wasn’t even the one drinking on the job. She bent over, her hands on her knees, her head lowered to keep her from passing out.
Too late. Stars shot across her vision, bright volleys and strobe flashes. She barely felt it when she plowed head first into the sand.
When she came to, Bryan was kneeling beside her, wiping the sand off her face and shading her with his hat.
“What the hell?” he asked.
She blinked him into focus.
“You keep sleeping on the job and I’m gonna have to report it to Mac.”
“You’re an ass,” she said, but it made him smile.
She tried to sit up, but her hand slid out from beneath her in the deep sand. He grabbed her beneath her arms and sat her up, leaning her against one of the rails.
“Here, drink this.” He handed her the bottle.
She eyed him.
“It’s water. Promise.”
She’d panicked. Over a bottle of water. A joke. Idiot.
He unscrewed the lid and held the bottle to her lips, tilting it up for her to drink. She guzzled half the bottle. Feeling her strength return, she took the bottle from him and scooted herself up higher.
“Sorry,” she said. “I must have gotten a little dehydrated. Dry mountain air and all.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit what?”
“You didn’t pass out because you were dehydrated,” he said.
“You suddenly an expert on my body?”
He waited a beat before answering. She expected some kind of smart-ass remark, but his eyes never left hers. Then his expression shifted, softened. “No. But I’m an expert on panic attacks, on PTSD, on things that go bump in the night.” His voice was quiet, sincere, unexpected.
“I don’t have PTSD.”
“Or dehydration.” He settled against the rails beside her. “But that was one fucker of a panic attack.”
She pulled another long, defiant swallow from the bottle.
“What gives?” he asked.
Laughter escaped her, incredulous and full of derision. “Seriously? Mister goes silent and deep like a nuclear sub when asked about his leg, his service, then expects me to take my own knife and gut myself? Fat freaking chance.”
He nodded once at that, leaned back, rested his head on the rail, and settled his hat low on his head, like he was shading his eyes from the sun and was about to take a nap, though his body vibrated with tension like a support wire on a suspension bridge. At the base of his neck, his pulse thrummed.
“I was stationed in Fallujah, Iraq. Camp Baharia.”
She leaned nearer to hear him better.
“A big, fat, fucker of a boil on the hairy ass of the world. It was a day like every other day, hot enough to fry your brain in your head, sand whipping and grinding into sweaty cracks and crevices you didn’t even know you had.”
She edged closer still, afraid if she moved too fast, he’d realize what he was revealing and stop talking.
“Went to a briefing that morning with my commander, my CO, two other enlisted, and a trusted Iraqi informant the US had been