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“In Missouri. On my father’s farm.” Simple question, simple answer. “Where did you?”
“Here. On my grandfather’s farm.” She waved a hand. “I spent every moment I could here—vacations, school holidays. I spent a whole year on the farm while my parents were stationed in Belgium. I wanted to graduate here, but the colonel said I had to join them after they came home.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“Try furious. Granddad fought to keep me, but nobody fights the colonel and wins. Oh, he thought he was doing the best thing for all of us. He always does.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that.” She touched his hand. “The colonel really is an excellent psychologist. I mustn’t undermine him in your eyes.”
She removed her hand, but he could feel the lingering warmth of her fingers. “Not so expert with his own family?” He’d assumed the colonel was a genius with everyone, not just his patients. Thanks to him, Jake could at least acknowledge that most of his problem with decisions arose from his survivor guilt.
Actually, to discover the colonel had feet of good Tennessee clay was somehow reassuring. “Haven’t you heard that old cliché that psychologists and psychiatrists raise bratty kids?” Charlie said. “You’ve plowed with horses, so you know the difference between telling a horse to ‘gee’ or ‘haw,’ don’t you?”
He nodded although she couldn’t see him. “Go right or left.”
“When I was twelve, I hung out at the post stables in Maryland after school nearly every day. I didn’t own my own horse, but there was a big half Percheron that I rode whenever I could. Daddy hated that I didn’t go in for golf or tennis or some team sport that would—and I quote—serve me in later life. When we moved, I wanted to buy Doyle and bring him down to Granddad’s, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. Mom, as usual, backed him up. He said I already had horses to ride during my vacations, and we certainly couldn’t ship a horse to the District of Columbia and pay expensive board. He just didn’t get it. Leaving Doyle for the next kid to ride nearly killed me.”
He felt his heart go out to her. When he left home, he’d missed the horses almost as much as he missed his family, even though leaving them behind had been his choice. “I’m sorry.”
“He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.” She spread her arms wide. “What was the big deal? I could ride when I came down here. After Mom got sick, I didn’t have time for extracurricular activities anyway. We declared a truce for her sake, but I’ve never forgotten.”
She turned to him, and even in the dark he could see the glint of tears in her eyes. “After she died, when he said gee, I went haw.”
He longed to take her in his arms, but she might mistake his comfort for something else. Besides, if the colonel walked out to the patio, he might deck Jake. How could the man be so empathetic toward his patients and so blind to his daughter? “He does miraculous things as a psychologist,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll help you. I can’t believe you let me run my mouth like that.”
“I’m honored you told me.”
He expected she’d bolt, but she stayed quiet and moved the glider with her toe.
Maybe he could lighten the atmosphere between them. In the distance the sound of a bullfrog filled the silence. Jake took that as his cue. “Well, Mr. Bullfrog, I hope the lady you’re courting appreciates your fine bass baritone.”
Charlie sighed and relaxed. “I wonder what he did to shut down his rivals.”
An answering chorus settled that question.
“They sound like one of those Russian army choruses,” Jake said. “No tenors need apply.”
“The peepers have their own choir,” Charlie said. “And then there are the cicadas—they remind me of fingernails on a blackboard.”
“Not this late in the summer.”
Sitting beside him, Charlie felt grateful that he’d directed the subject away from her and her life. It was so easy to open up to Jake. Was that what Mary Anne had sensed? What had she told him when she was locked in her room? He might not trust himself, but Mary Anne trusted him. So did Charlie.
And boy, was that dangerous. “We’d both better get to bed,” she said, stopping the movement of the glider and standing up. “Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day.”
She left him sitting alone and fled up the stairs to her room. Did cold showers work for females? She washed off her makeup, brushed her teeth, pulled on the T-shirt she slept in and crawled into the big Lincoln bed, sure that she’d sleep. But her mind kept churning.
Jake was a stranger, a student and a soldier. Triple threat.
After Steve died, she vowed never to allow anyone remotely military into her life again. No more warriors. No more dragging around the world after them and making a new home each time, the way her mother had done for her father. No more sudden deployments to Nowheresville or the other side of the world. No more shaking with terror every time the doorbell rang for fear it was the bad one—the notification that her husband was dead. Once was enough. She and Sarah had never been enough for Steve. Oh, he’d tried, but in the final analysis the pleasure of being with his wife and daughter couldn’t compete with his need to be back in the action. Between deployments, he loathed being a garrison soldier. He was addicted to danger and eventually, like most addictions, it killed him.
Warriors were great to have around when Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were just over the horizon and coming fast. Not so great when they weren’t.
Sitting next to Jake, she could feel her resolution to avoid warriors weakening. Bad. Bad and stupid. Jake might seem gentle, he might be an ex-soldier, but she could still sense the testosterone.
She’d fallen for Steve on sight. In the fourteen years they’d been married, she’d never looked at another man, even though that meant months of celibacy while he was on temporary duty or deployed somewhere she and Sarah couldn’t follow.
He’d really had to work to kill her love for him, but he’d finally managed.
No matter how attracted she was to Jake, he was her student. Not acceptable. He also had psychological problems that she couldn’t possibly inflict on Sarah.
CHAPTER FIVE
“OKAY, YOU TENDERFOOTS—tenderfeet—time to take your breakfast dishes into the house, pick up your hats and gloves, and learn the fine art of stall mucking.” Charlie realized what she’d said after the words left her mouth. She gave a quick glance at Hank, but he seemed not to have caught her incredible gaffe. Calling him a tenderfoot! How could she?
She caught Jake’s eye and felt herself blushing. He’d made the connection, all right. He gave a tiny nod as though to assure her that he absolved her. For a man who ignored his own lunch, he was too aware of the nuances of other people’s behavior.
“I did you a big favor this morning,” she continued. “I’ve already fed and watered the horses. From here on you’ll do that before breakfast. Then we muck stalls. I did not do that for you.”
“I’m exempt from mucking stalls,” Mickey said cheerfully. “I don’t swing a pitchfork too good from a wheelchair.”
“Put on your doggone leg braces,” Hank snapped. “Aren’t you supposed to practice standing and walking?”
“He can’t pick up a pitchfork full of horse manure yet,” Sean said, and turned to Mickey. “Good try, kid. I didn’t get my sergeant stripes putting up with slackers. I will personally find some nasty chore you can do sitting down.”
“You’re retired, Sarge,” Mickey said with a grin. “You ain’t the boss o’ me any longer.”
“But I am,” Charlie said, and slapped the back of the wheelchair cheerfully. “While the rest of us are learning to muck horse manure out of stalls, I’ll set you up in the tack room with saddle soap and harness polish. I’ll bet you know how to put a spit shine on leather, am I right?”
Mickey groaned. “When do I get to try out that handicapped carriage the colonel was talking about yesterday?”
“After you’ve learned how to handle the reins and been approved by an instructor. Me. And you won’t be driving alone for a while.”
She glanced around the table. “Since our regular grooms are on vacation, you’ll be doing their work as well as learning to drive. You can get used to handling reins by practicing on a rein board that emulates what it feels like to drive a horse. We have three in the tack room. We’ll rotate, since I imagine some of you need more practice than others.” She smiled at Jake, who had joined them after breakfast. She hadn’t bothered to try to get him to eat breakfast with them. Lunch was another matter.
She was grateful that he acted as though nothing had happened between them last night.
“Our grooms, Maurice and DeMarcus, feed and water at seven every morning.” She slid into one of the remaining chairs around the common room table. “Then they muck stalls and help harness and put to the horses.”
“Put to what?” Sean asked.
“That’s what you call harnessing a horse,” Charlie said. “And a horse that is harnessed to a cart or carriage is called being ‘in draft.’ There are a lot of peculiar terms and traditions about carriage driving because it’s been around such a long time. Any of you ever see the big parades from England with the fancy golden carriages and all the white horses?”
Several heads nodded. Jake’s didn’t move.
“The carriages are fancier than ours, but we do the same things. The horses are already well broke and used to being in draft, but there’s not a horse in the world that won’t spook in certain circumstances.” Charlie glanced at Mary Anne and saw her twist her hands in her lap. “It’s not like driving a truck or a motorcycle. Remember, the horse wants to survive, too. The motorcycle doesn’t give a darn.”
Charlie decided to see if she could borrow a small pony and cart from one of her carriage-driving friends for Mary Anne to try. She might be less frightened behind a pony. She could progress to a horse. If they were lucky.
“Now, you’re also going to learn what it takes to run a farm like this. Yesterday I picked up twenty bags of rolled oats from the feed store, and some trace mineral blocks. They need to be unloaded from my truck. Then later, a load of bagged wood shavings is being delivered from a sawmill in Mississippi.”
“Mary Anne can’t pick up fifty-pound feed bags,” Hank said.
“I can pick up anything you can,” Mary Anne snapped.
“Sure you can,” Hank snickered.
“This is not a contest,” Charlie said. She noted that Hank’s snide remark had brought Jake’s gaze up, but he said nothing. Jake’s fuse might be long, but she suspected it would burn hot once somebody lit it. If he hadn’t had some propensity for violence, why would he have joined the army?
She continued. “The horses that are not actually on the driving roster are in pasture. That includes four Percheron mares, two of whom have foals at foot. We’ll take a look at them after lunch. One shire mare is pregnant with a late foal, the other is barren this year. So, with luck, you’ll get to see a baby born sometime soon. If we can catch her having it, that is.”
“Can’t you tell when it’s coming?” Mary Anne asked.
“Theoretically. But mares are sneaky. We’ll bring her into the foaling stall when she starts showing signs she’s close to labor, but she’ll probably wait until the darkest, stormiest night of the year when everybody’s back is turned before she drops her foal.” She nodded. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”
* * *
MARY ANNE STACKED fifty-pound bags of feed right along with Charlie and the men. Every time she passed Hank, she tossed her head at him. He grinned and shrugged.
Midmorning a rusty three-quarter-ton truck with square bags of shavings loaded precariously on its bed pulled up outside the aisle door.
“Hey, Charlie, you got room to stack these shavings in the same place?” The middle-aged man who stuck his head out of the truck wore a straw Stetson over a face that looked as tough as if it had been professionally tanned but not stretched afterward.
“Man has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei,” Sean whispered.
“Hush,” Charlie whispered back. Then she said in a normal voice, “Drive on down the aisle to the end as usual, Bobby.”
“We got any help? Where’s Maurice and DeMarcus?”
“On vacation. Jake and Sean here will help unload. Guys, this is Bobby Holzer. He owns the sawmill down in Slayden that bags our shavings.”
Bobby nodded and pointed to the figure beside him in the shadows. “I brung some help just in case. This here’s one of my summer helpers.” He put the truck in gear, drove down the stable aisle to the far end and parked by the storage area where the few remaining bales sat waiting for the new load to be added.
The white-blond hair of the kid who climbed from the passenger seat was partially covered by a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. Unlike Bobby, who wore baggy bib overalls over a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the boy had on distressed jeans stretched tight over thigh muscles the size of hawsers on an aircraft carrier, while his arms and torso strained the stitching on his green polo shirt. He stood at six-six or six-seven and probably weighed well over three hundred pounds. None of it was fat. “Aidan, this is Miss Charlie Nicholson, owner and manager.” The giant nodded.
“Whoa!” Sean whispered.
Bobby smiled and winked at him. “Aidan’s starting at tackle for Mississippi State this fall. Coach sends ’em to me for the summer. Tells ’em working in the sawmill builds muscles.”
“He’s got enough already,” Sean said.
Charlie introduced Sean and Jake. Bobby shook hands. Aidan didn’t.
He looked sulky at the prospect of unloading and stacking an entire truckload of sixty-pound bales, but he hopped up on the back of the truck and worked his way to the front without comment.
“Give them a hand, please,” Charlie said to Sean and Jake. “I’m off to the tack room to teach Mickey and Mary Anne how to use the rein board.”
Jake climbed up on the tailgate and waited for the first bale.
The moment Charlie turned her back, Aidan swung it at Jake’s chest so hard he would have knocked him off the back of the truck if Sean hadn’t balanced him from the ground. His grin said he’d done it on purpose.
“Knock that off, Aidan,” Bobby said equably. “Sorry, Jake. He gets above himself sometimes. Likes to show off how strong he is.”
Aidan shrugged and lobbed the next bale high and easy. Jake fielded it and passed it down to Sean.
After that Aidan settled down, and the three men established an easy rhythm from Aidan to Jake to Sean to the shavings shed. After all the bales were off the truck, Bobby directed Aidan to finish stacking them.
As he passed Sean, Aidan asked, “Hey, man, that some kind of phony hand?”
“Nope. It’s real plastic,” Sean answered cheerfully. “A gift from the United States Army.”
By the time the stacks were complete, all three men were soaked with sweat and Aidan’s designer jeans were filthy. Bobby rose from the front step of the truck and joined them. “Hot work.”
Sean’s glance at Jake said “none of which he did.”
“Y’all got any cold sodas?” Bobby asked. “I’m flat parched.”
Aidan slouched past him toward the front of the truck. “Aw, come on, Bobby, let’s go get some lunch.”
Wiping her face with her scarf, Mary Anne came out of the tack room and strode toward them. She wore a sleeveless muscle shirt that revealed the puckered skin that ran from the side of her head to her glove. The sheen of sweat made the scars look red and raw.
She noticed Bobby and Aidan a minute before they noticed her, and wheeled back toward the tack room.
“Ooo-eee,” whispered Aidan as he watched her retreating rear in its tight jeans. “Hellooo, mama.”
She froze in midstride, turned and strode back toward them.
Jake heard Bobby catch his breath.
Aidan gaped and looked away. “No way. I don’t mess with ugly chicks.”
Jake saw Mary Anne stiffen and heard Sean groan.
“Jake—leave it,” Sean cautioned. “Jake!”
Jake ignored him and moved into Aidan.
A moment later, the big man lay flat on his back.
“Here now,” Bobby said. “Both of y’all take it easy.”
Aidan was big, but he was fast. He came off the ground in a lineman’s crouch, prepared to tear Jake in two.
“Back off, fool.” Sean stepped between the two men. Aidan brushed him out of the way.
Jake felt Sean’s hand on his arm and shook him off. He blocked the fist Aidan swung at his jaw, twisted, bent and thrust. A moment later Aidan was back on the ground, looking surprised.
“Stay down!” Sean snarled at him.
Aidan gasped. “What’d I do?”
