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Charlie blinked. The idea of driving six draft horses across a single line was mind-boggling. She laughed. “Maybe you should be teaching this course.” She knew the minute the words left her mouth she’d said the wrong thing.
He froze. “No,” he said, and walked ahead of her into the den.
Ms. Big Mouth, Charlie thought. He might not have driven any kind of equine for years, but driving draft horses was like riding a bicycle. Hadn’t taken Charlie long to get her skills back after she and Sarah moved in.
He was probably a better driver than she was, and a better horseman, as well, considering Picard’s reaction. He’d be a great second in command if she could convince him to come out of his shell.
How could she get through to him? She’d do anything to see that smile again and hear the gentle voice he used with Picard. She intended to know the officer he must have been, even if she had to drag him kicking out of the shadows.
* * *
SEAN SETTLED JAKE in an empty seat on the banquette under the windows.
“Okay,” the colonel said, “here’s the deal. You five signed up to be test cases in a pilot program.” He held up a hand. “Sounds better than guinea pigs, doesn’t it? A similar program to train veterans to drive carriages has been a success in northern Virginia, and I think it can work down here. If you succeed, we already have jobs lined up for you.”
“What kind of jobs?” Hank asked.
Mary Ann’s hand went up. “How can we make a living driving horses? Who even does that anymore?”
“Can you say weddings, girl?” Mickey said. “Don’t see how you can fit a wheelchair on one of those Cinderella carriages, though.” He grinned at her. “Can’t you just see me hauling the bride’s train up to the church? Get that net stuff wound around my wheels and she’d wind up on her butt.”
“Shut up, Mickey,” Sean said without heat.
“We’ll talk about the opportunities over the next few weeks as we figure out your particular skill set,” the colonel continued. “Take the rest of the day to unpack, settle in and learn your way around. This wing of the stable contains your living, dining and cooking area.”
Mickey raised a hand. “How come you have a dormitory in your barn?”
The colonel smiled. “My father ran training courses where people could learn to farm with draft horses. This is our first course since his death some years ago.”
“We’ll set up a roster of chores both for the living areas and the stable,” Charlie said. “Or you can make your own. You’re not simply going to be driving. You’ll be mucking stalls, cleaning tack—maybe even a little farriery. Learning everything it takes to become a horseman. For the first few weeks, you will be the only people working with the horses. After that, our regular grooms come back.”
“How about food?” Mickey asked. He had that perpetually famished teenage look. Charlie guessed that no matter how much he ate, he’d always be hungry and skinny.
“There’ll be breakfast makings sent over from the main house every morning,” the colonel said. “Cereal, juices, bagels, rolls. If you want to cook, there are eggs and bacon in the refrigerator.” He gestured to the doublewide steel refrigerator in the small but well-equipped kitchen area open to the main room. “Make your own coffee. Clean up after yourselves. There’s a dishwasher. The lunch and dinner dishes will be sent over from the kitchen in my house on a trolley. They’ll either be picked up after dinner, or one of you can take the trolley back. There’s a bigger dishwasher at the house. Anything special you want, there’s a whiteboard beside the refrigerator you can write on. We’ll try to accommodate you as much as possible.”
“Beer?” Hank asked.
“Within reason,” the colonel said. “I don’t recommend wine or liquor. And don’t overdo it. Working in the hot sun long-lining a seventeen-hand Percheron while nursing a hangover will be plenty of punishment for getting drunk.”
“So how do we get it?” Hank asked. “We’re prisoners out here working our rear ends off to run your operation and all we get is room and board.”
“Plus a small weekly stipend,” the colonel said. “You all knew the rules going in. It’s not much, but it’ll give you spending money in town.”
“Do we have to hitchhike?” Hank seemed intent on being belligerent, and Charlie wondered where his anger came from.
“There’s a couple of pickup trucks for farm use,” Charlie said. “I see no reason why we can’t have a weekly pizza run. Maybe Chinese or sushi.”
“Our cook, Vittorio, will provide lunch and dinner over here six nights a week,” the colonel added. “Saturday night you’re on your own. I’ll join you for the occasional meal, but this is Charlie’s baby, not mine. It is imperative that you all have lunch and dinner together. That’s when you’ll discuss the day’s instruction, get assignments and handle problems. Now, there should be sandwiches for lunch today already in the refrigerator.”
“We can set stuff out on the counter,” Charlie said. “I’m starved.” She turned to ask Mary Anne to help, then realized she had chosen her because she was a woman. “Hank, give me a hand, will you?”
“Sure.” He flashed her a smile. Huh. So he argued with male authority figures and charmed the females. She could use that.
“Silverware’s in that drawer, place mats in the one under it.”
Hank was already pulling glasses and plates out of the cabinets above the sink. He was apparently over his pet for the moment. Maybe it was only the colonel who annoyed him. If he had a problem with authority figures—and many rodeo cowboys did—why did he join the military? And how on earth did he get to be an officer?
By now everyone was helping to set out lunch. Everyone except Jake. He sat with his hands loose in his lap and his face turned toward the window and the pasture beyond. It wasn’t that he was avoiding the job. He simply didn’t seem to be aware it needed doing.
When the food was ready, everybody sat down except Jake, who didn’t look up. Charlie gave a slight shake of her head at Sean, who was about to call him over. “Let me,” she whispered. Jake didn’t react as her shadow fell across him. “Time to eat, Jake. Aren’t you hungry?”
He made no move toward the table.
“Come on, join us,” she said.
As the platters of sandwiches were passed around, he ignored them.
Charlie took a sandwich from each platter, put them on his plate, poured his diet soda into his glass and asked, “Would you like mayo and mustard?”
He didn’t respond.
“Yeah. And pickles and potato chips.” Sean took the plate. “I’ll do it for him.” When Charlie raised her eyebrows, Sean added in a whisper, “He doesn’t eat with people.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He’ll go outside on the patio or up to his room, but he won’t sit at the table with us.”
“But he has to. It’s one of the few hard and fast rules the colonel’s set up for this group.”
Sean added condiments to Jake’s sandwiches and picked up a soda with his prosthetic hand. “Hey, look at that. I didn’t crush the can. I’m actually getting the hang of this thing.”
Charlie decided not to push Jake at this meal. She’d stand back and watch what he did. But he would have dinner with them.
Jake took the plate and drink from Sean, walked out onto the patio, sat in the swing and wolfed down his sandwiches.
Nothing wrong with his appetite. He’d chosen to groom the stallion, although he might not think of it as a choice. Maybe horses were the key to getting him to reconnect with the world.
Charlie would start by cajoling him into making small decisions with the horses. Could other animals help, as well? She’d try him out on the barn cats.
If he could actually touch one without getting himself raked to the bone, he was a true animal whisperer.
But even felines made allowances for damaged human beings. Usually. The big brindle tomcat regarded man as a lesser species created only to provide for his comfort. He wouldn’t cut the president any slack.
Jake brought his empty plate and soda can back into the kitchen but didn’t seem to know what to do with them.
“Put the can in the trash and the plate in the dishwasher,” Sean said.
Charlie added, “We have brownies in the microwave for dessert. Jake, why don’t you get them?”
That apparently counted as a command, because he took them from the microwave and carried them to the table, then looked uncertain where to put them. Charlie took the plate. “Thanks.”
She was passing the brownies to Mary Anne when the door from the stable burst open and Sarah burst in, then came to an abrupt halt. “Oh!” she said. “They’re here already. I didn’t see the van.” She turned to flee.
“Been and gone. Lunch was scheduled for noon,” Charlie said with a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. It read twelve thirty-five.
“You could have called me. Did you leave me anything to eat?”
“Sarah, we have guests.”
She pivoted toward the table. From her vantage point, Charlie caught the precise moment her daughter spotted Mickey and Hank. “Uh, hi,” she said, but her words, like her eyes, took in no one except the two young men.
“This is my daughter, Sarah,” Charlie said. At fourteen, Sarah was already six feet, a tall colt of a girl. She’d cried for days when one of the boys she liked at school called her the Jolly Pink Giant.
When Charlie heard about that, she wanted to complain to the guidance counselor. Actually, she wanted to drop the boy down the nearest volcano, but Sarah begged her to let it go.
The vets would read Sarah’s toss of her head and peremptory tone as arrogance, but Charlie knew it masked terminal shyness.
She put the last two sandwiches on a plate and handed them to her daughter. “Soda’s in the fridge. What have you been up to all morning?”
Sarah bristled. “I’ve been answering my emails, okay? There’s nothing to do around here.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Nothing to do?” Hank gaped and pointed out the window. “Girl, you got horses!”
“They’re just driving horses,” Sarah said. “You can’t ride ’em or anything.”
Hank laughed, showing every one of his perfect teeth. “If you can drive ’em, you can ride ’em.”
“Mom was the only one who ever hung around the post stables.” Sarah eyed Charlie. “But then there was tons of other stuff to do. Actual humans and the post exchange and a pool and stuff.”
“You’ll make new friends once school starts,” Hank said. “Hey, you must be good at it, right? Army brats are.”
“They’ll hate me.”
“Why would they hate a foxy chick like you?” Hank said.
Charlie cleared her throat and caught Hank’s eye. This was her daughter he was calling a foxy chick. He had the grace to look away.
“Right. As if.” Sarah picked up the sandwiches, added a couple of brownies to the pile, stuck a diet soda under her arm and headed for the door.
“Lay off the computer for the rest of the day,” Charlie said.
“Mom!”
“Show us around this afternoon,” Mickey said, looking to Charlie to make sure that was okay. She nodded. “You can wheel the crip.” His chair whirred as it backed away from the table.
Sarah’s eyes widened. Apparently she hadn’t realized he was in a wheelchair. She recovered instantly and flashed him a grin of her own, the first real smile Charlie had seen on her face in days. “I’m up for that, just not right now.” She flipped her long, light-brown hair over her shoulder. “I suppose I’ll go read an actual b-o-o-k. Is that all right with you, Mother dear?”
“Sarah—” Charlie began. Without waiting for an answer her daughter went out and shut the door firmly behind her.
“She hated having to move down here,” Charlie explained. “She’s lived on post since she was born. Out here she’s lonely and bored.” There was no reason to tell them that Sarah had lost her father less than a year ago. She might not act as though she was still grieving, but Charlie knew she was and ached for her. She wanted so much to help, but Sarah wasn’t interested. She blamed her mother for her father’s defection and death and didn’t hesitate to tell her.
Nobody said anything. Men. They probably had no idea what to say.
“I haven’t helped much,” Charlie added. Big understatement. Why couldn’t she simply tell Sarah she loved her and keep on telling her until she believed it? Charlie asked herself for the hundredth time. Heaven knew she wanted to, but she didn’t know how.
One thing she’d learned from her father very early—don’t show your heart to anybody, especially the people you love. You do, you get zapped.
“At her age she’d find fault with Paradise,” Sean finally said. “I’ve got two daughters of my own. One’s majoring in engineering in St. Louis and is relatively civilized. The other—not so much.” After lunch, everyone went off to unpack, then reassembled to explore the farm. All except Sean and Jake, who was staring out his window again.
“Hey, Jake, how about I show you around?” Charlie said. Sean appeared grateful for the break. “Unless you’re tired and want to unpack.” She watched him weigh his choices and was prepared to choose for him if he couldn’t or wouldn’t. He needed an opportunity to make small decisions and build up to larger ones.
Sean started to speak, but Charlie wiggled her fingers behind her back to stop him.
She caught Jake’s panicked glance at his friend.
“I’ll introduce you to the other horses,” she said. “Come on.”
“Okay.”
She heard Sean release his breath behind her.
She handed Jake a baseball cap off the rack in the corner. “Down here the sun is dangerous to your skin all year round.”
He nodded. “Like Iraq.”
He put on the cap. She plopped her battered khaki safari hat on her head and started out into the stable. As she passed Sean, he touched her arm and winked at her.
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE MUSTN’T THINK she was watching him. All the students had emotional as well as physical problems, but Charlie suspected Jake would be the most difficult to deal with.
She needed to figure out the hot buttons for the others, too. She heard Hank’s boots click on the staircase and realized he also limped, though less than Jake.
Without the front half of his of his right foot, Hank would never be able to balance on a saddle bronc. He’d probably be able to ride bareback, but not on a bucking horse.
He could drive draft horses. No balance required.
And he obviously loved horses. Carriage driving didn’t involve as much adrenaline as rodeo, but there were still moments of terror. Vic Piper, the farrier, said that carriage wrecks were less frequent than riding accidents, but were usually worse, especially when the horse in question was a big old Belgian or shire.
She looked around and realized that Jake was no longer walking beside her.
“Jake?” she called.
“Down here,” he answered.
In the hay-storage room the bales were stacked in stair steps all the way to the roof of the barn some twenty feet above.
