Page 42 of Christmas at the Ranch
“I haven’t forgotten, either,” I retort. “I just…” But I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t admit that it’s because I’m distracted by thoughts of us, limbs entwined in the loft above.
“Okay, change direction now,” he says, and I do—then stick my tongue out at him when I correct my diagonal in the middle of the arena.
“Hey!” he says, laughing. “Don’t make me put you on the ranch school’s naughty list.”
“What happens to the students who get put on the naughty list?” I ask.
“Stall-mucking duty for a week,” he replies. “Okay, slow her to a walk now, please. I know you probably want to canter now, and I don’t blame you—that would be the logical next step, and this horse has a gait like a rocking chair,” he says. I nod my agreement. “But I was thinking…” He takes a few steps closer and looks up at me.
Even from this height, this distance, even with a thousand pounds of horse between us, I feel it—that connection, that flash of electricity. Discomfited, I break his gaze and reach down to pretend I need to check the tightness of Star’s girth.
Tate’s voice is softer now, but I can still hear him. “I’d love to get her back out on the trail,” he says. “I really would. What you said about the Starlight Ride…it’s improbable, but it would be so great to have her there again. Still, if it’s not what she wants,I’m not going to force it. I need to be really sure, though. So I want to listen to her, to watch her. And I want to do that while someone else is riding her. Someone I trust.”
Someone I trust.It shouldn’t mean so much that he has said this, but I find myself grabbing on to those words and holding them in my heart like a Christmas gift I had been fervently hoping for, but not expecting to receive.
“What if we go for a walk on the trail and I lead her?” he continues. “It would mean you’re not in control. I’d take off her bridle and use a halter and lead rope. But it also means I can be close to her, watch her. I can try to listen to her. Determine what she really wants, what she really needs. And then I can decide if I’ll keep forcing it, or if she’ll just become one of our horses who we don’t use on the trail.”
“I’d be fine with that,” I say. “I trust you, too.”
He looks up at me, but just for a split second, so there’s not enough time for me to fall into that electrical minefield. He nods, once, decisively, then says, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
He returns quickly, holding Star’s halter and a lead rope, which is striped red and white like a candy cane. I wait as he removes her bridle and hangs it on the jump standard, then puts on her halter and attaches the lead rope to the little brass ring at her chin. “Ready, girl?” he says to her.
Then he looks up at me, his expression serious. “I’ll do my absolute best to keep her from rearing,” he says. “I’ll hold her head tight and keep her down if anythinghappens. I’m not going to let her get away from me. We’ll turn around and head straight back here if she seems too upset.”
I nod. “I know. It’s going to be okay.”
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “It wouldn’t be fair to her to be nervous. She’d feel it.”
He nods. “She would.”
“She can do this,” I say.For Star,I tell myself.
“I know she can,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. But then he looks away and leads us outside, into the wintry lateafternoon.
Twenty
With me on Star, and Tate walking along beside us, there will be no more moments when our gazes meet—and this is a good thing. Because it’s important for me to keep my heart rate steady so Star can do the same for herself. Now I can only see the top of Tate’s head, covered in his Stetson, the sun-bleached ends of his always-in-need-of-a-cut hair peeking out from beneath it.
The air is cold and crisp; all I can smell is the almost minty tang of snow—and then, as we reach the forest trail, cedar, pine, some distant woodsmoke. It’s Tate, but not Tate. It doesn’t have the same effect. So far, so good.
“So,” Tate says as we walk, “how’ve you been all these years?” Then he laughs at himself, and I find myself laughing, too. “Big question, I guess. But seriously—you went to journalism school, the way you wanted?”
“I did,” I say. “And I worked atThe Globe and Mail,in the newsroom, for five years.”
“Your dream,” he says, and I feel surprise at this—the way he still remembers my dreams. But then, I still remember his. “And you’re not there now?”
“Layoffs,” I say. Star butts her head softly against Tate’s shoulder as we walk. With him close, she has been completely calm since he led her from the arena. He murmurs softly to her. So gently, his voice full of care.
“That’s a bummer.”
“It was. But I’ve been freelancing since last year. That’s going pretty well. Or, at least, it was.”
“Oh, really? Who do you write for?”
I name some of the publications, and he lets out a low whistle. “Impressive. I’ll have to look up some of your work.”
