“Let me show you the goats,” he said. “Maybe they’ll ring a bell for you.”
The goats were up against the front porch and Tanner swept his hat off, waving it around to get the goats to disburse farther from the house. “Your little herd keeps the grass down around the house, so they aren’t completely worthless. I don’t ever have to bring out the mower.”
“I like goats?” She watched a large black-and-white goat butting a much smaller tan one. It appeared to Rebecca like the larger was picking on the younger, and it made her wonder why she would want an animal like that in her yard.
Tanner grinned and nodded. “It was your idea to get them. You had to talk me into them. Mackenzie likes them, too.”
Rebecca had reached the edge of the herd of goats and she hesitated, putting her hands in the front pockets of her jeans so she didn’t have to touch them. They looked kind of mean with their little horns and slit eyes.
“Oh,” she gasped, when one of the goats butted her leg, sending her off-balance. Tanner snaked his arm around her waist with lightning speed, steadying her until she could stand on her own two feet and back away. The bigger her son grew in her womb, the more klutzy and off-center she felt, like one of those penguins in Antarctica.
“It’s okay,” Tanner assured her with a chuckle. “He’s just playing with you.”
“What about that big one over there? It looks to me like he’s picking on the little one.”
“Naw. They’re just playing.”
Tanner had assured her that she liked goats. That he’d bought the herd because she’d asked him to.
And now they scared her and she wasn’t sure she would ever find the guts to interact with them.
Everything frightened her. Would it always be this way?
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Tanner said.
“There’s more?” she asked, hoping he wasn’t going to show her his cows. She didn’t know how it had been in the past, but at the moment, she had zero interest in bovines. They had long tongues and licked their noses, and just—eww.
Now how did she manage to remember such inconsequential facts as those and yet was unable to remember she even had a husband, much less all the history between them? She was so frustrated she wanted to throw something, preferably something breakable.
He led her to the far side of the house where a small fenced pasture lay. Inside were fluffy creatures with long necks and enormous brown eyes.
“Llamas?” she guessed. It was one of those words that just popped out from the back of her mind. She’d probably learned about llamas in elementary school.
Tanner leaned on the gate, but Rebecca held back.
“Close. That was a good guess. These are alpacas. This herd is not only your favorite hobby but your pride and joy.”
“My...hobby? But don’t they spit?” Another useless piece of trivia.
He laughed. His smile lit up his whole expression, softening the stress lines, and Rebecca’s stomach did a little flip. She wished her response was from a glimmer of true recognition, but no. She couldn’t go so far as to call it that.
It was physical chemistry. She could certainly understand why she’d been attracted enough to this cowboy to marry him. Even now, she found herself inexplicably drawn to him, though her brain refused to offer up why. He was handsome, and as he’d mentioned earlier, rugged, in a way that really captivated her.
“Alpacas spit sometimes. Llamas spit more often and they can be mean. Alpacas are for the most part gentle creatures. You use their wool to knit. You love everything about the whole process, from shearing their fleece to knitting hats and mittens for the homeless out of their wool. Do you remember how to knit?”
She nodded. She remembered how to knit, although she didn’t recall knitting for the homeless. And she definitely didn’t remember anything about the alpacas, nor any of the processes needed to turn fleece to knittable wool.
One of the alpacas spotted her and came at her at a dead run. She gasped and stepped back, even though she wasn’t leaning against the gate like Tanner was.
The alpaca screeched to a dead stop just short of the gate and chewed her out with the strangest honking noise she’d ever heard.
Tanner laughed. “They kind of sound like geese, don’t they? Betty here is wondering why you haven’t come to see her in so long.”
“She looks like she needs a haircut,” Rebecca said.
“Yeah. We’ll have to do that soon if we’re going to get you and your mom knitting in time for Christmas.”
“Right.” Rebecca hoped Tanner wasn’t expecting her to do the shearing, although he’d said that was something she’d done in the past.
“A couple of years ago you started competing in agility competitions with the alpacas.”
“Agility?” Not surprisingly, her mind was drawing a complete blank.
“Weaving through stakes, loading and unloading from a trailer, putting their packs on their backs. That sort of thing.”
“I see.” She didn’t, of course.
“You’re really good at it. You’ve won quite a few trophies. I don’t know whether you noticed them or not, but we’ve got them all displayed on the mantel over the fireplace in the living room.”
Rebecca’s throat closed around her breath. Tanner almost sounded proud of her accomplishments.
Then his gaze clouded over and his frown deepened.
“After you left, I almost got rid of the alpacas,” he admitted. “Keeping them around was just more work for me to do, and they reminded me of you on a constant basis. It—it was hard.” He lifted his hat and tunneled his fingers through his blond hair, then replaced his hat and lowered the brim over his eyes.
Another alpaca, this one a spotted brown and white, approached the fence far less aggressively than the first one, and much less vocally, and leaned her head over, close enough for Rebecca to tentatively touch her soft wool.
“I’m glad you didn’t sell them.” Her throat tightened around the words. It was an odd feeling brushing her palm over the alpaca’s soft head. She searched her mind and found nothing regarding the animals, and yet her heart naturally responded to their big brown eyes and enormous eyelashes.
Her baby gave her a good, swift kick in the ribs and she rubbed at the spot where his little heel was.
Tanner’s gaze dropped to her belly. “Does the baby move around a lot?”
“Oh, yes. Come here and feel.”
It was a little awkward taking Tanner’s hand in hers and placing it over her belly, but the baby did a nice flip for his daddy, who grinned when he felt it.
There was something so special, so intimate, about a man and wife sharing this moment with their unborn child. She had lost far more than she knew, but somewhere deep down, one thought echoed through her heart and mind.
She was home.
Tanner poured the perfect amount of waffle batter into the iron, closed it and flipped it over to cook. Knowing how to make waffle batter from biscuit powder was only one of the many things he’d had to learn after Rebecca had left him. He spread bacon evenly into a frying pan and grabbed an eighteen-pack of eggs out of the refrigerator,