Taking the Reins

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“Apologize to the lady,” Jake whispered.

Aidan struggled to his feet. That a man twenty years older and a hundred pounds lighter could toss him around like a football seemed to hit him square in his manhood. “Listen, old man.” He lowered his voice. “Y’all gotta know that’s a freak.” A moment later, he was back on the ground with Bobby standing over him.

“Aidan, you idiot, stay down,” Bobby said. “You ain’t got the brains of a goose. Stop running your mouth before you get your teeth handed to you.”

“I warned you to stay down, goober,” Sean said pleasantly. “Now do what the man says and apologize to the little lady before he tears your arm off and feeds it to you.”

Jake glanced back at Mary Anne, who was glaring at Aidan. Sean grasped her hand with his right one and pulled her forward. As if his touch inflated her, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and snapped, “Yeah, jerk. Apologize to the ugly lady.”

From the ground, Aidan had to look up at her, but he couldn’t hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean nothing. Bobby says I got a big mouth.”

“Ya think?” she said, and kept her hand in Sean’s.

“You can get up, now,” Jake said. “I assume you were recruited for your size and not your GPA. Come on, Sean, we have horses to groom.” He strode off toward the wash rack.

Charlie passed him at a trot. “Bobby, what’s going on?”

“Aidan here,” Sean said, “slipped and fell.” He grinned.

“Three times,” Bobby said. “A man that big, sometimes he’s real clumsy, aren’t you, Aidan.” He gave his helper a hand up, then a gentle shove toward the truck. “Here’s the bill, Charlie. Me ’n Aidan are gonna go get some lunch.”

“Good girl,” Sean said to Mary Anne under his breath. He turned to Aidan. “You have just had a narrow escape. The major can take off the top of a man’s head with the flat of his hand.”

Bobby laughed as Aidan climbed into the truck, put it in gear and waved to them through the driver’s window as they drove away.

The moment the truck cleared the stable aisle, Mary Anne caught her breath in a sob and ran past Charlie to the common room.

“Sean?” Charlie asked.

“Ask Jake.” He followed Mary Anne.

Charlie trotted after him. “Where is he?”

“Mary Anne...”

“Leave her to me,” Charlie said. “You go find Jake.”

Sean hesitated, then nodded.

The common room was empty. Mary Anne’s bedroom door was locked again. When she pressed her ear against it, Charlie heard what sounded like sobbing. “Mary Anne? It’s Charlie. Please let me in.”

“Go ’way.”

“Not this time. I’m not Jake, but I can sit in the hall and wait as long as he did.”

She thought she might have to, but after a moment she heard the lock click. By the time she opened the door, Mary Anne lay facedown on her bed with her arms locked over her head. “I want to go back to the hospital.”

Charlie sat on the bed but didn’t touch her. “You’ll get over being afraid of the horses.”

Mary Anne rolled over and sat up. “Jake nearly got himself killed because that jock said I was ugly. I am ugly! I’m so ugly people want to vomit when they look at me.”

“That’s not true.”

Mary Anne got off the bed and began to pace the small room. “Don’t lie, Charlie. I saw that kid’s face. I saw all your faces when I took off my scarf. The first time my husband—sorry, my ex-husband—saw me in the hospital without my bandages, he ran into the bathroom and threw up.”

What could Charlie say to that? “I’m sure it was just the initial shock. Soldiers know what happens in a war zone.”

Mary Anne leaned her forehead against her window. “Charlie, he’s a civilian. An accountant, would you believe. I’d already enlisted when I met him. Bad enough I was a mechanic. Bad enough I deployed six months after we got married, but with the internet we stayed connected. We were in love! We had all these plans for when my enlistment was over. Then this happened.”

“Of course, he was devastated for you,” Charlie said. “But he didn’t stop loving you.”

Mary Anne leaned a hip against the windowsill. “He really tried. He took a part-time job close to the hospital to be with me. But the first time one of the nurses tried to teach him to change my dressings, he ran. When they let me out on a twenty-four-hour pass to be with him, he couldn’t touch me. We sat up all night crying. The next week I filed for divorce. It wasn’t his fault, Charlie, and it definitely wasn’t mine.”

“So you want to go back to the hospital to start more operations right now? I thought you wanted to take a break.”

Mary Anne flopped back down on the bed. “I did. I do. But nobody looks at me twice in the hospital.”

Charlie wrapped her arm around Mary Anne. “We won’t let you quit. And when you do have more operations, we’ll learn to change your dressings and you’ll come back here to recuperate.”

“You can’t promise that!”

“The heck I can’t. Now wash your face and let’s go groom horses.”