Wanting to believe Josh, Duran nodded, but the protective father in him wouldn’t rest easy again until Peggy was back in the barn and Noah was safely on solid ground.
Once started in the right direction, the group of them fell into a comfortable pattern, the kids riding a little ahead, he and Lia side by side behind them, Cort and Josh bringing up the rear. Duran began to relax a bit, soak in the sun and breathtaking high country scenery. It was then he was finally able to focus his attention on Lia.
She fairly glowed beneath the afternoon sun, her hair threaded with a thousand different highlights of copper and gold, her cheeks flushed soft pink, a slight smile curving her lips as she savored the air fragrant with pinion and sage.
“You ride well,” he said, taking note of the curve of her backside and thighs beneath slim jeans as her body rose and fell in harmony with her horse’s rhythm.
“Me? No, hardly,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ve never had time to pursue it as a sport or a hobby. Medical school, then my practice pretty much precluded getting good at any sports.”
“You could have fooled me. You ride like a natural.”
“You’re not doing so badly yourself for someone not used to a horse.”
They smiled at each other. “I haven’t fallen off yet, so I guess that’s progress. I have to admit, this is a nice change. My preferred mode of transport is my bicycle. In California, I hardly use a car. Now that Noah is old enough to ride with me, when he’s feeling up to it, we bike everywhere together.”
“What a great thing to do together. Did you grow up riding bikes a lot?”
Nodding, Duran remembered his childhood fondly. “Yeah, my dad got me into it. We used to spend endless hours messing around in the garage, building bikes, taking them apart, getting new components and rebuilding them. He ran sort of a neighborhood bike shop out of our garage.” He glanced over to Lia, noticing she had a distant look in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m boring you.”
Lia’s horse sneezed and shook all over. She bent and stroked his neck. “Almost to the pond, where you can take a rest under a shady tree,” she soothed. Slowly, she turned toward Duran, a strangely solemn look on her face. “You’re not boring me at all,” she answered softly. “I’m imagining what it must have been like growing up with parents who spent so much time with you, and thinking how lucky Noah is to have such a devoted father.”
The few things she’d said, the old pain underlying her words, made him wonder, yet hesitant to ask directly about her childhood. It might be something she wasn’t comfortable talking about with him. But curiosity got the best of him and he asked straight out, “I get the impression you aren’t that close to your parents.”
Lia laughed, but it was a brittle sound, without joy. “That would be the understatement of the century. I spent very little time with my parents. They were far too occupied messing up their lives to waste time trying to improve ours. I taught myself to ride a bike, finally, out of embarrassment at being the last kid on the block to learn, at about Noah’s age. I fell so many times, my knees still have scars. Neither of my parents had time to help me. Between work, destroying their marriage, divorce, remarriage, boyfriends and girlfriends, kids were mostly an inconvenient blip in their social schedules.”
Duran could barely conceive that kind of life, although he wasn’t naive enough to think it didn’t exist. He’d been lucky. Compared to his stable, constant, loving middle-class upbringing, her childhood sounded like a bad soap opera.
He couldn’t help but wonder how years of living with instability had affected her own sense of self, her ideas of love and commitment. Red flags immediately went up and he knew one thing for certain. He had to get to know Lia Kerrigan a lot better before allowing his son to get any closer or investing more of himself in her.
They rode along in an awkward silence for several minutes, the only sound a muffled clop of the horses’ hooves through tall grass. Ahead of them, the sound of the kids’ talking and laughing made happy music on the breeze.
When he turned to her, he found her watching him, her eyes now veiled in caution. “I’ve scared you, haven’t I? You didn’t grow up at all the way I did.”
“No, I didn’t. In fact, you’d probably call my life dull compared to yours. My parents, who were quite a bit older than is typical by the time they decided to adopt, loved me and doted on me, but I never felt spoiled, exactly. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we did have a lot of love in our house, Mom and Dad for each other and each of them for me. I guess that’s why I grew up being naive to the fact that all marriages are not so idyllic.” Unwillingly, the memory of the day Amber walked out on Noah and him reared up from the dark corner of his mind where he’d shoved it. He shook his head in remembered anger and pain. “Mine certainly wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never been married, but I have been through more breakups and separations, mostly because of my parents’, than I can count. It hurts every time, especially if you don’t see it coming.”
“I should have. I did, probably. I just didn’t want to see it because it didn’t fit the image in my head. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to me. Not to Noah. When I married, I married for life, just like my parents. For better or for worse—all that idealistic stuff.”
“And now?” Lia asked, brushing aside an errant strand of hair the light wind had blown across her cheek. “What do you believe?”
Duran watched the delicate play of her slender fingers over her smooth, flushed skin. Looking at her—strong, radiant with health and vivacity, yet soft with caring and tenderness toward him and Noah—he wanted to say he felt nothing but hope, that his beliefs were unshaken despite his ex-wife’s abandonment.
But that would be a lie. The truth was his idealism had been shaken to its core. And despite the genuineness of Lia’s compassion and kindness, he had to remind himself to remain on guard, to be wary even though it felt so natural to be vulnerable to her. Like no other woman he’d met, from the start something about her relaxed his usual defenses. He almost couldn’t help but open himself to her, yet he knew he had to resist that impulse for Noah’s sake and his.
Finally he shifted in his saddle and twisted to look at her. “I believe people still find that kind of love, the kind that lasts a lifetime. But I also believe those people are few and far between.”
Lia’s smile fell away, betraying her disappointment at his answer. “That’s too bad. I was hoping that if anyone could have optimism about love and marriage it would be you. Because of your parents, I mean.”
“I haven’t totally lost it,” he said lightly. “But I’ve definitely gotten out of the habit of thinking it’s going to be a part of my life. I’ve been on my own for so long now that it’s hard for me to imagine myself ever finding someone I’d be willing to share it with again.”
“Yes…” She glanced away, focusing on the path ahead. “It’s hard, when you’re afraid of losing someone you love.”
It wasn’t exactly his meaning and at first he thought she was referring to Noah. But his next impression was that it was more about her vulnerability or one she thought they shared.
They once more fell into an uneasy silence, avoiding looking at each other, until thankfully, the kids turned around then, Tommy helping Noah swing his mount around, starting back toward them.
Pulling their horses up nose to nose with Lia and Duran’s, Noah was all smiles. “The pond’s up there. Can I go with everybody else?”
Cort and Josh caught up to them then and Cort grabbed Noah’s reins. “We’ll go with them. You and Lia can take your time.”
“You won’t have any trouble findin’ us,” Josh said with a nod toward the kids. “Just