“That’s a little better,” said Ian. “Now breathe deeply, from way down in the bottom of your belly. And ease up on the reins a little more. Like that, yes. Now move them both to one hand. All you’ll need to do is lay the reins on her neck, to the right to turn right, to the left for left, just like I’m doing here. See?”
She was grateful when he demonstrated, his amusement giving way to patience as he took her through the nudges, clicks and reining that he claimed would be enough to get her started.
As he expertly guided his mount and closed the paddock gate behind them, he eyed her critically. “We’ll still have to work on your seat.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” Her breath caught as she reminded herself that the light teasing, the innuendo, was no longer appropriate between them.
When he laughed, though, she decided it was worth it. Worth easing her professional demeanor to help him relax around her.
“Hardly,” he answered as they headed for the range, riding side by side, “but mostly because the only girls I see around here are married, five years old or my mother.”
“What about Miss Althea? And there must be maids, I’m guessing?” Judging from the size of the house, it would take a team to clean it.
“Miss Althea’d crack me upside the head with a wooden spoon if she ever caught wind I was thinking about her or the maids’ seats. And you’re the first visitor we’ve had staying here since...” The spark in his blue eyes dimmed. “Since I...”
“Since you’ve been back?” she prompted.
She saw his throat work as he swallowed, caught his haunted look as he nodded in answer.
They rode in silence for a while, the creaking of the saddles and the clopping of the horses’ hooves the only conversation. She fought back her impatience to get started with her counseling, to finish this job and head back to Warriors-4-Life, where the lines between the past and present didn’t blur like hoofprints in the wind. But she reminded herself that Ian’s healing was what mattered and that pushing him too quickly would only shut him down again. So instead, she took a deep breath, forcing herself to enjoy the mildness of the morning sunshine and reminding herself that the ability to wait and to listen was worth twice as much as anything a mental health professional could ever say.
She was lost in thought when Ian told her, “We’ll pick up and catch the fence line I’ve been checking about a half mile up ahead.”
“How can you know where anything is? It’s like the surface of an ocean. I don’t see anything but grass.”
“That’s because you haven’t learned to really look yet, to see it like the horses or the deer or the coyotes. A lot of what’s out here lies beneath the surface. There are gullies and old streambeds, hidden groves of trees and cow paths.”
She looked around, still seeing nothing, then turned in the saddle and realized with a start that she’d lost track of the mansion and the ranch outbuildings, too. How was that even possible, if the land was as flat and featureless as her senses tried to tell her? “Guess you have to be born to this land. I’m so turned around, I have no idea of the way back.”
“I can teach you,” he assured her. “Show you, so you can always find your way back home again.”
“Like you did...” she said quietly, so quietly that she wasn’t certain he had heard her until she marked the way his shoulders stiffened.
“There,” he said, pointing to two tufts that were a brighter green than the mostly golden grasses. “Those are the upper limbs of cottonwoods we’re heading toward. They’re actually good-size trees—and you see the notch between them where the creek’s eroded a ravine?”
“So you go by the color of the treetops?”
He nodded. “And the time of year. Whenever you see that shade this late in the season, you know you’re close to flowing water—cottonwoods usually crowd the creek beds, and the cattle like to lie in the shade beneath them.”
“Sounds like an oasis.”
“Oasis...” he echoed, frowning over the word as if it had stirred some dark association. Before she could decide whether to follow up with a question, he added, “It can be until a storm rips through and sends a flash flood roaring though that ravine. Then it’s a damned death trap, those high walls hemming you in, heaven only knows who looking down on your location.”
Andrea’s stomach tensed as instinct warned her he was referring to a harsher territory. Did he himself even know what he was doing, or was she hearing from that part of him still wandering through foreign lands among those who meant to kill him, a part of him still desperate to get home?
“Thank goodness it doesn’t look like rain, then.” She gestured toward the thin silvery wisps painted over the blue sky, her need to reassure him stronger than her desire to draw him out. “And no one for miles around.”
“No one,” he repeated, his blue eyes unfocused until he shook off whatever reverie had gripped him. “Right. Of course, you’re right. Our nearest neighbor’s a half-day’s ride, and I always check the forecast. Every single day before I ride out.”
“You used to like surprises,” she said, remembering how she’d always been the one who’d wanted things locked down and certain. Remembering how she hadn’t been able to deal with it when he couldn’t give the security she craved.
“Not anymore, I don’t.”
Something in his tone had her feeling a little skittish as they rode single file down into the ravine. The narrow, crumbling walls seemed to close in on her, even after Ian stopped and pointed out a low rock outcrop behind them that marked the way back to the mansion.
Soon, however, Ian eased her worry, straightening in his saddle and leading the way with the natural air of confidence she had been drawn to from the first time she’d met him. Her faith in his leadership was soon rewarded when the ravine opened to a green and grassy hollow bisected by a swift but shallow creek splashing over rocks. The air cooled as they continued downhill, riding beneath the spreading arms of the cottonwoods and provoking a symphony of morning birdsong.
Mooing to protest the invasion, cattle rose from the hollow they’d claimed as a resting place and trotted along the barbed-wire fence line on the other side of the creek.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, marveling at the hidden world he’d shown her.
“Beautiful and a pain, too, sometimes. Cows are always using those fence posts to scratch whatever itches—if they’re not pushing ’em over, it’s some thunderstorm that’s washed them out. Look, there’s one now that needs attention.” Dismounting in one smooth motion, he used rock from the creek bottom to brace a tilted post.
“Want some help there?” she asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure she could get back on her horse without a mounting block.
“I’ve got it covered. Just relax and enjoy the view.”
She didn’t have to be told twice, her gaze seeking out one singer and then following the progress of a pair of bright red wings flitting among branches. She tracked the movement until she was distracted by what looked like the metallic glint of something moving above them on the hillside. Something that didn’t belong.
She stood in the stirrups and leaned to the right, trying to see it through the branches. “What’s that? I saw something move. There.” Though she’d lost sight of the movement, she pointed in the direction she’d last seen it.
He looked up from the strand of barbed wire he’d been tightening, a pair of pliers in hand. “What? You mean a bird?” he asked. “Or maybe a—”
She shook her head. “Something man-made, I think. A windshield, maybe, or something metal. Could someone be—”
He swore and rushed at her,