“He’ll bring a better one if he’s trained.”
He heard the determination in her voice and a hint of something more. Desperation?
Refusing to be moved by it, he shook his head and continued to brush down the horse. “I’ve got a list a mile long of people waiting for me to train their horses. I haven’t got time to take on any more.”
“I’ll pay you your standard fee, plus a percentage of the horse’s sale price.”
Startled by the unusual offer, he glanced her way…and immediately wished he hadn’t. Seeing her again brought every memory, every heartbreak, winging back. Eyes the color of aged whiskey; long, honey-blond hair that tumbled over her shoulders in soft waves; delicate features that had haunted his nights for seven long years.
Tearing his gaze away, he tossed the brush into the tack box and plucked out a currycomb. “Like I said. I don’t need any more business.”
“Whit, please—”
“No,” he snapped, then spun to glare at her. “Now, if you want me to recommend someone, I will. Otherwise I’d appreciate it if you’d get off my land.”
Melissa sat parked in front of the school, her SUV at the head of the car pool line. A soft breeze blew through the open window on her left, ruffling her hair, but it didn’t come close to cooling the heat in her cheeks. She was embarrassed. Humiliated. Furious. Panic-stricken. It had taken her weeks to work up the nerve to approach Whit about breaking Matt’s horse. Weeks spent searching for another option, anything, so long as it didn’t include Whit. In the end, she was forced to admit he was her only option.
And he’d turned her down flat.
Not that she had expected him to leap at her offer. She’d known going in that there was a strong chance he would refuse. What she hadn’t known was how much it would hurt when he did.
The doors to the school flew open and children spilled out, shrieking and laughing as they raced for the cars that lined the narrow lane. Melissa quickly unfastened her seat belt and pushed open her door. Before she could step down, a pair of arms vised around her legs.
“Hi, Mom!”
Chuckling, she scrubbed her knuckles over her son’s blond hair. “Hi, yourself, kiddo.” She reached down and lifted him up and over her, then plopped him into the passenger seat beside her.
“And how was your day?” she asked as she fastened the seat belt around him.
“Joey Matthews threw up all over his art paper and Shane Ragsdale’s dog had thirteen puppies. Can I have one? Please? Can I?”
She turned the key, starting the engine. “We already have a dog,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but Champ’s not mine. He’s yours. I want a puppy that’s all mine.”
She checked for traffic, then pulled out onto the street. “One dog is all we can handle right now.”
“Please, Mom?” he begged, straining against the seat belt. “I’ll feed him and take care of him. You won’t have to do nothin’, I promise.”
“Anything,” she corrected automatically, then sighed, feeling as if she was always saying no to her son. “We can’t afford to feed another animal right now,” she explained gently. “You know that.”
He slumped against the seat in a sulk. “Being poor sucks,” he mumbled.
“Grady Jacobs!” she cried. “We are not poor.”
“Then how come you have to sell Dad’s horse?”
“Because we need money more than we need a horse,” she replied, then gave him a stern look. “But that does not mean we are poor.” Jutting her chin, she faced the windshield again. “We’re just experiencing a temporary cash flow problem.”
“Angela Hanes’s mom said we don’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out.”
It was all she could do to keep the vehicle on the road. “Angela’s mother said that to you?” she asked in amazement.
“No, Angela did. She heard her mom talking to Mrs. Henley on the phone. I asked Angela what it meant and she said it meant we’re poor. That when Dad died he left us broke.”
She narrowed her eyes, furious to know that her friends and neighbors were talking about her behind her back. “Well, Mrs. Hanes is wrong,” she informed him. “We are not broke.”
“Then why can’t I have a puppy?”
She closed her eyes a moment, praying for patience, for just the right words to make her son understand their financial situation without letting him know how desperate it really was.
“Before Matt died,” she said carefully, “we had two incomes to pay our bills. With him gone now, we only have the money I make.”
“I could help you so you could earn more money.”
Her heart melting at the offer, she reached to smooth the hair back from his brow. “Thanks, sweet heart. But I don’t want you worrying about our financial situation, okay? Once we sell Matt’s horse, everything will be fine.”
And everything would be fine, she told herself as she turned her gaze to the road again.
Just as soon as she found someone to break Matt’s horse.
After the unexpected visit from Melissa on Monday, Whit’s week went downhill in a hurry. Tuesday, one of the studs in his care cut his foreleg while fighting with another stud through the fence that separated them. It required a call to the vet and another to inform the stud’s owner, which cost him almost a full day’s work. To make matters worse, Wednesday night a raccoon got into the feed room and tore into the sacks of oats stored there, ruining three perfectly good sacks of feed and creating a hell of a mess for Whit to clean up on Thursday. Then on Sunday, a gelding Whit was working with bucked him off, conveniently dumping him in a fresh pile of manure. By the time he returned the horse to its stall and limped back to the house for a shower and a change of clothes, it was pushing noon.
He considered blowing off going to the Bar-T, where his stepbrothers and their families gathered for Sunday lunch, and kicking back with a beer and an afternoon of ESPN instead. But he knew, if he did, the entire Tanner clan would probably show up at his house, looking for him.
Shuddering at the thought of having all those people crammed into his small house, he climbed into his truck and made the drive to the Bar-T. Thanks to the gelding and the landing spot he’d chosen for Whit, he was the last to arrive.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he slid into the empty chair beside Rory.
Rory glanced his way, then pulled back, with a frown. “What happened to you?”
Grimacing, Whit rubbed a self-conscious hand over the bruise the fall had left on his cheek. “Horse pitched me off.”
Ry passed Whit a platter stacked high with chicken-fried steak. “If you want, I can take a look at that for you later,” he offered. “Make sure there aren’t any broken bones.”
Whit forked up a steak and dropped it onto his plate before passing the platter on. “It’s nothing. Just a bruise.”
Maggie gave her husband, Ace, a pointed look. “I’ve heard that one before,” she said dryly.
Familiar with the story of Ace’s fall from a horse and his refusal to allow Maggie to take him to the doctor, everyone shared a laugh at Ace’s expense.
“Laugh all you want,” Ace said grumpily. “But a man who can’t take a tumble from a horse, without running to some sawbones to get patched up, isn’t