CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
WHEN KATHY HARRIS was a teenager, she’d dreamed of being a fashion designer, a professional basketball player and an airline pilot—anything to get out of her small hometown.
So much for dreams.
She shoveled another pile of manure into the wheelbarrow.
She was back in Harmony Valley, the smallest of small towns in the remotest of remote corners of Sonoma County, California.
She made a clucking noise with her tongue and gave Sugar Lips a gentle shove in her chestnut haunches. The former racehorse turned brood mare nickered softly and ambled to the other corner of the paddock. Kathy scooped her manure-filled shovel again, beginning to feel warm in her jacket despite the brisk breeze that had the last reddish-gold leaves of fall swirling around her feet.
“You must be Kathy.” An unfamiliar, masculine voice.
Kathy looked toward the veterinary clinic where she worked, trying to identify the source, but the afternoon sun was in her eyes and all she could see was a silhouette of a man—tall, broad-shouldered, a baseball cap on his head.
“I’m Dylan.” His voice was smooth as molasses, sweet as honey to a fly. It drew her closer. “I’m here to help with the horses. Dr. Jamero said you’d be back here.”
Dr. Gage Jamero was Kathy’s boss. He ran a small-animal clinic for the locals and a horse obstetrics unit at the rear of the property. Kathy hadn’t seen Gage in action yet, but she imagined him to be an equestrian midwife, high-strung mares being his specialty, although his tales of Sugar Lips hadn’t lived up to her reputation. The mare may have been a hellcat during her first pregnancy, but most of the time she was more like a tired kitten.
He’d hired Kathy despite her just getting out of rehab. She kept the animals, big and small, fed and watered, and cleaned the clinic, inside and out. Out being her preference. That was where the horses were and where she felt she could breathe.
The fifteen-hundred-pound kitten nudged Kathy forward, causing her to drop the shovel. “Knock it off, Sugar.”
Dylan, whose face she still couldn’t make out with the sun in her eyes, laughed. It was a friendly laugh. An I-don’t-know-you’re-an-alcoholic laugh. Whoever Dylan was, Kathy dreaded telling him the truth, as she did with anyone. And she was blunt about the truth nowadays. She’d hid her addiction too long. She hid very little lately, only her most painful of secrets.
Kathy hefted the shovel and walked toward Dylan. The mare trailed behind her. They both stopped in the shadow of a sixty-foot-tall eucalyptus tree near the paddock gate. Its silver-green leaves rustled like tissue paper in a gift box on Christmas morning.
Dylan’s appearance didn’t match his voice or his laugh. His silhouette was deceptive, too. Who’d seen those cowboy boots coming? Broad shoulders, yeah, but he was linebacker-solid beneath that navy vest jacket and those blue flannel sleeves. His laugh might have been friendly, but his scrutiny of her was not. A fringe of soft brown hair beneath his red ball cap contrasted with sharp gray eyes, a strong nose that looked as if it’d been broken at least once and a firm slash of a mouth.
Someone had already told him who she was—what she was.
She swallowed back the sudden bitterness in her throat, tugged off a work glove and extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Kathy, and I’m an alcoholic. Four months sober.”
She expected his mouth to turn down. She expected his eyes to drift away from hers. Instead, he smiled. The smile transformed his face from intimidating to accepting to handsome. “Good to meet you, Kathy.” His grip was warm and firm, almost too firm.
She retrieved her hand, resisting the urge to shake the bones back into place. “Are you delivering another mare to us? Gage didn’t tell me we were expecting a new guest.” The veterinary clinic made most of its money from their high-end racehorse clientele.
Dylan hooked his arms over the metal paddock rail, still smiling at her. “No, I didn’t bring any horses. I came to assess the ones here and work with them a few days a week. If things work out.”
Suddenly, she remembered Gage mentioning him. “Oh, shoot. You’re the miracle worker.”
“Horse trainer,” he corrected, gaze dropping to his scuffed and stained cowboy boots.
Sugar rubbed her long, elegant chin back and forth over Kathy’s shoulder. Kathy resisted the urge to check for slobber streaks on her pink jacket. “Go on, have your fun, Sugar. Your spa days are over. This man’s going to save Chance and put you through your paces.”
Sugar blew a raspberry at Dylan.
“Never mind her.” Kathy patted Sugar’s cheek. “She’s a tease.”
Dylan blew a raspberry of his own, smiling not at Kathy but at the horse. The mare sniffed the brisk air, then stretched her head toward Dylan, bumping Kathy out of the way.
“Careful,” Kathy warned Dylan as Sugar gummed the navy flannel sleeve of his shirt. “Sugar prides herself on being unpredictable.” She’d already chewed the finger off one of Kathy’s gloves. Good thing Kathy’s finger hadn’t been in it at the time. “Her papers say she’s a Thoroughbred, but I think she’s part mule.”
“It’s okay. She and I understand each other.” Dylan scratched beneath the crown of Sugar’s halter. “Dr. Jamero is busy with a patient. He said you could show me around.”
“Of course. You’ll be wanting to see Chance.” Kathy put the shovel into the wheelbarrow and pushed it outside the paddock, thanking Dylan for opening and closing the gate. “We’ve got two pregnant mares stabled, plus Sugar and her colt, Chance. We have room for eight horses back here, pregnant or otherwise, and expect to be booked up come spring.”
Dylan walked with a slight limp, but with a gracefulness that reminded her of Sugar when she trotted around the paddock. Another contradiction in a man so big and muscular.
The stables were up a gentle incline from the clinic. The walk was quiet except for their cowboy boots on pavement. Dylan stopped in the stable’s entry and breathed in deeply, as if reveling in the smells of home. It smelled of hay and manure. Kathy was growing used to those aromas, but she still spritzed herself with perfume every morning.
“I thought Dr. Jamero only took in mares ready to deliver,” he said.
“Chance is Sugar’s.” When Dylan didn’t say anything, Kathy’s suspicion sensor went off—like a finger tap-tap-tapping her temple. She cast a sideways glance his way. “Didn’t Gage tell you about Chance?”
Dylan shot her a quick look, one eyebrow quirked, as if to say, What? You doubt me? “I’m here to evaluate. I like to see for myself.”
Two equine heads poked over stall doors.
“This is Trixie.” Kathy pointed to the tall gray mare who nickered a welcome. “And that’s Isabo.” A tired-looking bay who seemed too long in the tooth to be having babies. She stretched her nose toward Kathy.
“They like you.” Dylan sounded surprised.
His reaction pressed her pause button. Was it surprising because she was an alcoholic? A woman? Or...
There was a loud thud in one of the rear stalls.
“That would be Chance.” Kathy hurried to the stall. “I hear you, baby.” She slipped inside, moving slowly, surveying the stitches and bandages on the chestnut colt’s lower neck and chest. He pranced nervously through the straw, eyeing Kathy as if he’d never