“How do I catch up to you?” Ryan called from behind.
“Give her a little kick with your heels and click your mouth.”
It took him three times, and his mouth click was more like a kiss, but he managed to bring his mount next to hers and looked pretty pleased about it.
“Nice job, cowboy.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
A young boy in a snowsuit and bright orange hat burst out of the back door of the barn, a scruffy gray-and-white dog in a sweater on his heels.
“That’s Caleb and Waffles,” Sammy explained, returning the wave the boy sent her as he ran for what looked like the beginning of an army of snow people lining up against the pasture fence. “Both adopted by Jax and Joey. Reva too. They’re good people. They built their own family.” She respected that about them.
“Are all your friends married?” he asked.
“Married or in committed relationships. Layla and I are the lone holdouts in our little circle,” she said. “You?”
“Mostly married. The ones who haven’t divorced already are struggling their way through the early years of kids,” he said with a shake of his head. “People just don’t get it. Marriage isn’t some romantic thing that happens to you—it’s a decision you make based on your current and predicted compatibility.”
“Be careful, your accountant is showing,” she teased. “You’re a very practical man.”
Ryan shrugged his broad shoulders then had to steady his balance. “Why waste each other’s time with grandiose ideas of mortgages and minivans and basketball practice if all those goals are built on the idea that one of you has to change to make it happen?”
She pressed her lips together and thought about it. “You’re not wrong,” she admitted. “But is there a place for romance or is it just a business partnership?”
“Romance is like the big family vacation every year. The thing you look forward to while you’re doing the hard work. The hard work is what makes that vacation possible. The hard work that you’ve put into the relationship is what allows you to enjoy the reward of the romance. It works that way. But it never works the other way. How long can someone live off of flowers and candy and surprise Christmas morning proposals if your partner uses baby talk in bed or consistently runs up her credit cards over the limit?”
“Those are some very specific examples,” she noted with a grin. He was unsettlingly cute when he got carried away lecturing. “But what you’re saying makes sense. It’s a shaky foundation to start an entire relationship based on what you think you can turn the other person into. It’s much smarter to prioritize compatibility.”
He shot her a searching look. “Are you just saying that so I don’t feel like some Cupid-stomping robot?”
She laughed. “I’m not. But—”
“I knew that was coming,” he groused.
“Compatibility is important,” she conceded. “But there’s also something to be said for finding someone who challenges you, who makes you a better version of yourself. If you went by compatibility alone, wouldn’t you just end up with Lady Ryan?”
“What’s wrong with Lady Ryan?”
“Do you want to wake up next to someone as grumpy as you are for the rest of your life?”
“God, no,” he shuddered. “But why can’t I just go out there and find Less Grumpy Lady Ryan?”
“I’ll tell you why,” she said, warming to the topic. “Because you need to be challenged with a puzzle, a mystery. We all do to a point, but you especially. There’s a special kind of chemistry between people when there’s interest. When you don’t already understand every motivation. When you’re surprised by a reaction and feel the need to dig into it and get to the bottom.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm ‘interesting point’ or hmm ‘shut up’?” she asked.
“Hmm, somewhere in the middle,” he decided. Ryan carefully leaned forward and patted Shakira on the neck.
She knew better than to ask him if he was having fun. Instead of admitting it, he’d provide a list of criticisms for the experience before even attempting to decide if there were any positives. But somewhere, deep down, Grumpy Ryan was having a nice time.
“You know, the last twenty-four hours have felt like an out-of-body experience,” he said.
“Every once in a while, we all need one of those,” she sympathized.
“Will Magnolia come to live with you when you finish your barn?” Ryan asked, changing the subject.
“She will. As long as I have another horse. She came from a big riding stable operation in Pennsylvania. An unstable ex-husband broke into the barn and shot the trainer. The trainer survived, the bad guy went to jail, but Magnolia here was traumatized. The students and staff couldn’t seat her anymore and put her up for sale. I fell in love with her the second I saw her online, and I think she liked me at first sight. She’s doing really well here.”
“How do you deal with it?” he asked with a frown aimed between his mount’s ears.
“Deal with what?”
“The cruelty. The neglect. You’re not a DEA agent busting up drug rings. You’re an animal lover caring for animals that are in pain or traumatized. Some you can’t save.”
She pulled up on the reins and brought Magnolia to a halt before exhaling a stream of silvery breath to the sky.
The view from the ridge of the hill was a picture-perfect winter scene. Fields rolled out gently before them. A small pond where the Pierce men were rumored to skinny dip on occasion turned almost turquoise under the afternoon sky. Patches of woods and sentry lines of pine trees popped green against the white and blue.
“It’s not easy,” she admitted. “It can be crushing to try to save a starving calf, to see the fear in a horse’s eyes when you try to approach it after years under bad hands. To know you can’t save them all or give them all the life they actually deserve.”
“I hate that for you,” he said with a quiet vehemence that she found oddly comforting.
“Thank you,” she said, not daring to look at him. “But the key is to find the good and to hold on to it with both hands. I’m there when a calf takes its first breath in the spring. I get to watch sheep unburdened of their winter wool dance around the pasture in the spring. I fix baby goats’ legs so they can keep up with their siblings. I celebrate every birth, every recovery with the family.”
“That means you also mourn every loss with them,” he pointed out astutely.
“Ah, but there’s no good without the bad, Ryan. No life without death. No celebration without mourning.”
“But someday, you’ll watch Magnolia take her last breath,” he said. Not cruelly. Almost like he was warning her, like he was afraid she hadn’t protected herself enough from the eventuality.
She reached out and laid her gloved hand on his. “I know. But when she does, I’ll know that I gave her the best possible life I could between our meeting and our parting.”
He wrapped his fingers around her fist. “You have to know how terrifying that concept is to me.”
“Maybe that’s why you think you can look for a life partner and not the love of your life.”