Page 40 of Snowed In with the Rancher

Not sure what to do, she bent down to grab the bucket and the strewn carrots and apples. She lifted her head to apologize to Asher but he was gone, the only way she knew where he’d gone was by the sudden sub-zero gust of wind that entered the barn.

“Shhh,” she said softly, turning her attention back to Mercy, and holding up an apple slice. “Shhh, big guy, it’s okay.”

Mercy was breathing deeply, snort spraying out of his nose. His eyes were wild, but he was focusing them on her more and more. She lifted her hand and touched his neck, the only part of him she could without actually getting into the stall with him.

But that seemed to be enough and he turned to face her, snorting and snuffling and breathing heavy.

“It’s okay,” she cooed. “It’s okay. That was a loud noise, followed by another loud noise, but it’s okay. Shhhhh.” She petted his neck and when he gave her more access, she stroked his face and pressed her forehead to the side of his face. “Shhhh, big guy. Shhhhh.”

She stood there with her eyes closed, forehead to Mercy’s cheek until he’d stopped panting and moving about. She held her palm out in front of his nose with the apple slices on it and his lips gently gripped the apple and pulled them into his mouth.

“That’s it. Good boy. Good. Just a few big noises, but nothing to worry about. It’s okay.” Running her hand down his neck back and forth, she continued to murmur similar things to Mercy until he’d completely calmed down. She gave him more apple and attention until he seemed to have almost forgotten entirely what happened and was sniffing around her waist and neck in search of more treats when she cut him off. “I need to save some for the other horses,” she said on a laugh as he sniffed her hair and gently head-butted her. “I can’t be accused of playing favorites. You may have put Macklin in his place just now, but the guy has a serious crush on me, you better watch out.”

At that Mercy just snorted like he’d like to see Macklin try, and shook his head.

Asher still hadn’t returned, but she didn’t let that stop her and she went about giving Christmas treats to the rest of the horses. Then she visited the donkey, the pony, and the miniature horses, returning to the main part of the barn with an empty bucket, straw in her hair, and goat hoof prints on her thighs.

Asher was also back.

He was mucking out Greenleigh’s stall while Greenleigh munched on hay and paid him no mind.

Slowly, cautiously, she approached the stall with the open door, standing out of the way of the horse shit that was being tossed through into the wheelbarrow.

She cleared her throat. “Umm …”

She knew he knew she was there. His back stiffened and his shoulders tensed. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge her.

“I uh … I think we could probably take Mercy to the corral now, he’s calmed down.”

But have you calmed down?

His reaction to the loud noise had to be PTSD-related. She wasn’t an idiot and had worked with veterans with PTSD before. A client she started working with last year developed, lung, throat, and mouth cancer from inhaling smoke from the burn pits in Iraq and he had to basically re-learn how to talk, eat and swallow after his surgery. He had severe PTSD and they had to conduct their sessions in a room with minimal light, and she had to keep her voice low when she spoke. Noah was doing very well now, but he still had issues with loud noises—even his boisterous children bothered him—and he preferred to go out at night rather than during the day.

Something traumatic must have happened to Asher for him to react that way. It also made her wonder if he’d reacted this way around Mercy before and Mercy associated Asher with the outburst and that was why he was so anxious around him.

He finished cleaning out Greenleigh’s stall and stepped back out into the barn, finally tipping his blue gaze up to her. “Fine.”

Fine?

Fine!

She was giving this man a lot of leeway, but she deserved more than just “Fine.”

Grinding her teeth, she took a few deep fortifying breaths. At the very least he owed her an apology for the way he spoke to her. It was understandable how something like a metal bucket falling over would trigger him, but he said some pretty mean stuff to her, too, and he needed to own it.

Plopping her hands on her hips she stared at him. “That’s it?”

He grunted and walked past her toward Mercy’s stall.

“That’s it?” she said again, this time louder and turning around to face him, even though he was still showing her his back. “I get you were triggered by the loud noise, and I’m not going to pry about why, but you owe me an apology.”

He spun around to face her, anger in his eyes. “Fine. I’m sorry. Happy?” He turned back around, heading toward Mercy’s stall.

She ran after him, got ahead, and stopped in front of him so he was forced to stop, too. “No, I’m not actually. I get that you think you’re broken, and you’ve probably experienced some trauma and have PTSD, but that doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole and not genuinely apologize for it. It doesn’t give you license to be a jerk and think you can get away with it. What happened with the bucket was a pure accident, what happened after that wasn’t. And what’s happening now, sure as hell isn’t, either.”

“You don’t like it, don’t like who I am …? Then you’re free to fucking leave anytime you want.” He swept his hand out and pointed toward the road. “I can call you a cab right now.”

She nodded and rolled her lips inward. “Is that what we’re doing then? You’re scaring me off so that you don’t have to run the risk of someone actually seeing your flaws … of seeing the real you?” She laughed. “I mean, yeah, you’ve got the grumpy, war-ravaged soldier schtick down pat, not gonna lie, but you’re laying on that anger at the world, not worthy of love or happiness thing a little thick right now, don’t you think?”

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