Page 48 of The Cowboy Takes A Bride

Jace couldn't help but smile. “Not a bad distraction. A good one. A real good one.”

Meredith blushed and turned away.

Jace looked around to get his bearings. He'd been so preoccupied, he needed a moment to make sure they were headed in the right direction. “We’ll start in the far east pasture and circle back around. I usually like to go out and work my way in, but we’re getting a late start.”

“You know, if you tell me what to look for, I might be some help out here. There's more to me than you think.”

Jace sat back in his saddle, his reins in one hand, his other hand resting on his knee. “I know this. You've done great learning stuff around the house and pitching in, but how about you fill me in on some specifics? I know very littleaboutyou, and when I ask, I get silence.”

She bit her lip. “I grew up around horses. We had a house next to my grandparents, and they had the horses. My grandmother used to race thoroughbreds as a business but had gotten away from that and into training, breeding, and some horse rescuing. I rode every chance I got.”

“Why did you quit riding?” He moved up next to her andpointed down into a valley, the direction they needed to go. He didn’t want her to stop now that she’d started. “You know my mother died.” She glanced at him, likely waiting for a nod. “My grandparents died in the same accident. My father sold off everything after their funerals. Including the horses.”

“One afternoon when I’d returned from therapy, my father told me what he planned. The next day, my favorite horse, her name was Lizzy, and the others were gone. A week later, we moved away from the only home I'd known to this ugly McMansion on the outskirts of the city. Far from where I had grown up, but close enough to be just out of reach.” Meredith brushed a finger under one eye then the other. “Leaving it all was like losing my mother and grandparents all over again.”

She looked ahead, avoiding his gaze, and he wondered what it would be like to lose most of the people he loved in one day. And he was worried about her getting too close to her family. If ever there ever was a person who needed people, it was Meredith.

He was a top dick, thinking only about himself and getting the ranch. He shook his head, Sabrina’s advice ringing in his ears. Hadn't she told him that to get something he had to give something? He was getting the ranch out of this deal. It was only fair for him to look for an opportunity to give to her.

“You were a teenager, right, when they died?” He rode next to her but didn’t look at her, knowing she would be uncomfortable.

“I was sixteen.” She stretched forward and rubbed her horse’s neck.

“We’re going to camp right at the top of that hill there.” He pointed.

They rode in silence until they reached a tree that stood out from the rest. After sliding off their horses, Meredith tied them to a large branch and worked with Jace to unpack their tent.

“If you want to talk about it, I’m here. I know when we got Pop’s diagnosis, I felt like the world tilted and was trying to toss me off.” He paused, plucked a long blade of grass, set it between his lips, and then leaned against a tree. That day had been awful, so many unknowns, and for a man as self-sufficient as Jace, it rendered him helpless in ways he never thought possible. No matter how strong or smart or cunning he could be, it would never be enough to cure his father.

He watched her, her face changing expressions from moment to moment. Was she reliving it? Did it bring back a plethora of memories like Pops did for him? It was always a game of comparison. He’d watch Pops struggle with opening a sandwich bag and recall a time he took down a steer. Each of those were gut punches, as he would then try to envision his father paralyzed and confined to a chair. Jace pushed from the tree and scooped up the tent. After pulling it from the bag, he grasped two corners and cracked it in the air, spreading it out. Meredith took one side and staked it.

“My father was the sort who was present, but mostly in body and not spirit. So losing my mother was—is—the most painful experience I’ve ever had.” She connected the poles and threaded them through the tent side. “It was as if my father went nuts afterwards and was determined to remove all traces of my mother.” The tent was up, and Jace tossed their sleeping bags inside.

“Here, help me hang up the bear container.” He tossed her a rope and carried the large cylindrical container over to a different hill upwind, several hundred feet away from their tent.

“Wow, bears keeping popping up.” She looked over one shoulder, then the other.

He shimmied up a tree and tied off one end of the rope. “You should always be mindful of bears. Most are easily scared, but we got one that likes my herd. How did they die? Car accident?”What were the possibilities of three people dying in the same accident? It had to be something transportation based unless it was something so awful and tragic he couldn’t imagine.

Meredith stared up at the clear sky; she squinted at a small speck, the droning of the engine in the wind.

Jace frowned at the same spot and put the pieces together. “It was a plane crash?”

She nodded. “I read recently that there are only two places on earth left where you can go and not hear a sound made by man. Pure natural sounds. I’d like to see what that’s like.”

She looked forlorn, standing at the top of the hill looking into the sky. Young and beautiful was how he initially had seen her. Scared, too. But now he saw more than that. He easily recognized the loneliness, but Meredith was strong. Through her ran a deeply entrenched desire to be something other than the one left behind, the victim of so much loss. She’d been pale and thin, a bit shaky, and although she was still too thin for him, she’d thickened up some. Color stained her cheeks now, as it had done every day since she began working in the garden. She stood taller and was laughing more. Her hands were often dirty, and her desire to see more, do more, and live more was ever present. Now he understood why she had come to him.

“Your dad, he must have sold everything out of grief or something.” He handed her a bottle of water, took one for himself, and sat on a small campstool he’d brought. Meredith sat on hers.

“I thought that at first, but every year he got worse, more controlling. I was accepted into Brown, where both my mother and grandmother went, and he wouldn’t let me go. I went to the local college. I have a teaching degree.” She glanced at him, a small smile on her lips. “Doesn’t really help me here, but when I applied for my first job, my father made sure I didn’t get it, or any other job forthat matter.”

Jace couldn’t understand a father blocking his own child. “Why?”

Meredith shrugged. “I’ve asked him that a million times. Basically, he wanted me to do what he wanted, when he wanted, for reasons he thought were important. My father is a businessman, and knowing the political climate is essential in his business. I was his tool for getting that information.”

Jace nodded and squeezed his bottle, water leaking out from beneath the lid. What kind of father did that to his child? Jace thought back to the diner and their brief reception. She’d worn a plastic smile and a vacant look, and now it all made sense. Plus, the headache.

“Hey, have you had any headaches since you’ve been here? Other than the first day?”

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