“This is Apollo, the resident stud. He’s a royal pain in the ass, but I love him. Don’t I, big guy?”
Ryan flinched when she gave the stallion a scratch under the chin, expecting the horse to snap off a few of her fingers. Instead, he tolerated the affection for a few seconds before pretending to try to take a bite out of her shoulder.
But Dr. Sammy was a professional and accustomed to the trickery. She danced out of the horse’s reach. It was all for show, he realized. A flirtation between stubborn and loving souls. The stallion practically had hearts in his eyes when he tossed his head arrogantly and looked away from Sammy.
“Come on,” she said, waving. “The office is this way.”
They turned a corner and found a small office with an open door and a glass window that overlooked the indoor riding ring.
“Bullshit,” barked the woman refilling a mug of coffee in the office. She was long-legged like one of the fine specimens of horse in the stalls. Her dark hair was stick straight and pulled back in a long tail through a dirty ball cap. She wore those tight riding pants that horse people preferred, knee-high boots, and a heavy sweatshirt.
“It’s not bullshit,” the girl behind the desk argued. “You called the distributor a mercenary dictator and threatened to feed him his own balls last month.”
“I have a feeling you’ll like Joey,” Sammy predicted before knocking on the door frame. “You pissing off distributors again?”
Joey snorted over the rim of her coffee cup. “No one would have to get pissed off if people did their damn jobs in the first place and weren’t so damn sensitive about perfectly reasonable criticism.”
Sammy was right. Ryan felt an immediate kinship with the woman. He bet she hated Christmas movies, too.
“I keep telling her she should let me take over the ordering so we wouldn’t have to switch suppliers every few months,” the girl said.
“I agree with Reva,” Sammy said, leaning against the door. “You might need to finally accept that you suck at peopling and dump that responsibility on someone who doesn’t make grown men cry at least once a week.”
“You both can kiss my ass,” Joey said with a toss of her long tail of hair. The movement reminded Ryan of Apollo’s disdainful head toss.
“But you’ll think about it,” Sammy predicted.
Joey grunted. “Maybe.”
Sammy winked at Reva, who looked smugly triumphant.
“Who are you?” Joey asked suddenly, her eyes narrowing in on him.
“This is Carson’s great-nephew Ryan. Ryan, this is Joey Pierce and her daughter Reva.”
Given the narrow age range between the women, Ryan guessed that biology hadn’t played a part in the parent-child relationship.
“What are you doing here?” Joey asked.
She was the first person to ask him that. Everyone else seemed to already know. “I’m handling a family matter for my uncle,” he said.
“Your uncle’s family matter involves my stables?”
“It’s a long story,” Sammy cut in. “Ryan’s car wouldn’t start, so he’s playing vet tech today in exchange for a chauffeur.”
“Hmm,” Joey mused. She sounded like she didn’t quite buy the explanation.
Sammy glared at the woman. “Don’t tell me you’ve been in the gossip group.”
“I haven’t,” Joey said defensively. “But that one over there maybe mentioned something about you two and your romantic romp around town.” She nodded in Reva’s direction.
“Romantic romp?” Ryan scoffed. “Doesn’t anyone here have anything better to do with their time than gossip?”
“Not really,” Joey and Sammy said together.
Reva grimaced. “You know. I think I hear something… somewhere that’s not here. Bye!” Hiding a grin, she jumped up from the desk and hurried out the door. “Nice to meet you, Ryan!”
“You, too,” he called after her.
“Well, let’s look at a horse uterus, shall we?” Sammy said, rubbing her palms together.
“Now, thanks to Apollo and Calypso, the farm’s biggest moneymaker is the breeding program,” Joey explained to Ryan.
“And you’re still running the riding school and boarding horses?” he quizzed her. The streams of income available to a farm with some creativity and capital were fascinating.
“Yep. Speaking of which,” she said, peering over Sammy’s shoulder at the ultrasound image on the iPad, “your girl could use a ride. I wasn’t able to get her out yesterday.”
Sammy blew out a breath through her teeth and hit send on the images. “I planned to today,” she admitted, “but we’re tight on time.”
Ryan felt a sting of guilt. If there was one thing he understood, it was responsibility. And the fact that he was keeping Sammy from one of hers irked him. Should some poor horse suffer just because he was in a hurry to go get paper cuts while digging through a disorganized mound of paperwork?
“I have time,” he announced.
Sammy looked at him with a “you’re sweet but” expression. “I’d need at least forty-five minutes. I know you have things to do.”
“I can wait,” he insisted.
“Why wait?” Joey piped up. “You ever been on a horse before?”
“Me?” Ryan looked over his shoulder to see if Joey was addressing someone else. “Hell no. I don’t like sitting on animals. It feels too Napoleonic.”
17
“I still don’t understand how it happened,” Ryan complained. “I very distinctly remember saying no.”
Sammy turned in her saddle and grinned back at him as he plodded along on Shakira, a dappled gray horse with a bristly mane. She was a school mount for beginners. Ryan looked both uncomfortably out of his element and just a little delighted about it. It was adorable.
“Joey is very determined. It’s always safer to just go with whatever she wants you to do.”
“I seem to recall you were also rather convincing,” he said dryly.
“I did no such convincing,” she argued, swinging away from the fence line to cut down the middle of the field.
“You underestimate the power of those big, blue eyes, Sparkle.”
She shifted and looked at him again. His ear flaps were down, the reins clenched in a death grip in one hand—a stickler for the rules. He looked both ridiculous and yet still unsettlingly attractive. “Are you flirting with me?”
“I don’t flirt. I’m simply stating a truth.”
“Well, it sounds like flirting,” she pointed out.
“It’s not my fault if you take it that way.”
Sammy shook her head and returned her focus to the ride. She reached down and patted the neck of sweet Magnolia. Maggie was a blue roan Tennessee Walking Horse. Sweet and dainty, she had an enviable stride. She also was a skittish mount. With a little more time, a little more love, she’d find her confidence again.
Sammy loved a snowy ride. The thick quiet broken only by the crisp crunch of hooves. The trail of prints the only imperfection in the otherwise intact blanket still covering the ground. The creak of the saddle. The rock of the gentle horse beneath her. The way the sun and sky and snow built a picture so vibrant she couldn’t stare directly at it.