While Sarah watched, fascinated by the procedure, he draped the harness over the first horse’s back, pulling and shifting, buckling and attaching, then repeating the same steps with the second horse.
“You might want to stand aside,” Logan warned as he gathered up the reins. He clucked to the horses and started backing up and, to Sarah’s surprise, the horses slowly backed out as well.
“Good trick,” she said, full of admiration for what he had just done.
“Good training,” he said. The horses stopped, turned. “Now we need to get them to the sleigh. It’s just outside. Could you grab the blanket that’s lying on the shelf behind you?”
Sarah did as she was told, then followed Logan out, watching as he hitched the horses to the sleigh.
“Done here.” Logan wound the reins around a bar and turned to Sarah and helped her in. He climbed in behind her then took two blankets, wrapped one around each of their legs. “It’s kinda cold once we get going. No in-sleigh heater.”
Sarah pulled her blanket a bit closer. Logan clucked to the horses and with a light jerk of the sleigh they were off.
The moon had risen higher, throwing out a spectral light—enough to make out the shape of the driveway and the trees beyond it. The muffled thud of the horses’ hooves, the jingle of the bells on their traces and the hiss of the runners over the white snow created a gentle resonance to the pale shadows cast by the moon.
“I feel like we’re the only people out here,” Sarah whispered, as if the very act of speaking would break the mood.
“I love being out in the full moon. Just us and the coyotes.” Logan slanted her a smile, his teeth bright white against his face.
There it was again, the flash of awareness that sprang up so easily between them. Logan watched her, his smile fading, as if he sensed it as well.
“Thanks for taking me,” Sarah said primly, determined to enjoy the sleigh ride and equally determined not to let foolish emotions intrude on the moment. He was just an old friend taking her for a ride.
“You are most welcome, madam.”
Sarah pulled her blanket closer, leaning back against the padded seat, looking everywhere but at Logan.
The trees, their branches laden with caps of snow, slipped silently past them as they turned onto the road. The horses’ heads bobbed as their snow-muffled hoofbeats pounded out a lulling rhythm, counterpointed to the jingling of the bells.
“This is amazing,” she said quietly. “Do you do this often?”
“Never as often as I’d like,” Logan admitted. “My work keeps me busier than I want to, but I try to find the time when I can. Working with the horses is relaxing and rewarding.”
Logan steered the horses onto a trail and, as the horses plowed through the unbroken snow, Sarah was overcome by a sense of wonder. “We’re the first people on the trail this winter.”
“It ends up at the back of our property, so it doesn’t really go anywhere people on snowmobiles would even want to venture. Most people around here know that.”
“And maybe most people around here don’t want to face the wrath of Logan Carleton when they trespass.”
“I can be pretty fierce,” he admitted.
“I remember the time you caught those boys throwing eggs at your truck. I feared for their bones.”
Logan’s sidelong glance held a suggestion of hurt. “I hope you have better memories than ones of me losing it.”
Sarah smiled. “I have lots of good memories of you, Logan.”
He jerked his gaze away, his jaw suddenly set. “Name me one.”
Sarah heard the faint challenge in his voice, underlaid with a hint of anger that often simmered just below the surface with Logan.
“I remember going for a walk. Your truck had broken down.”
“That’s not a best moment.”
“There’s more.” She ignored his anger, recognizing where it had come from. “It was October and the sun was setting. The northern lights came out that night, brighter and more colorful than anything I’d ever seen before. They were dancing and shimmering, a curtain of blue and green and pink.”
“You got a sore neck, watching them,” Logan said.
“You remember, too?”
Logan kept his eyes on his horses, but she sensed his attention. “I kissed you for the first time that night.”
A tremor of remembered connection crept through Sarah. She swallowed as the memory grew, filling up the space between them. She forced a laugh, trying to lighten the mood. “Do real men remember first kisses?”
This time he looked at her. “I do.”
Sarah’s interest tipped slowly toward a headier, deeper emotion. She looked away, pulling the blanket closer as she watched the trees slip silently past the sleigh. Her mind skated back through time, resurrecting memories she thought she’d abandoned long ago.
She’d been so filled with love and all its attendant emotions. Logan was a young girl’s ideal first love. Taciturn, aloof, dark, and mysterious. Toss in the whole puzzling but complex Westerveld/Carleton feud, and it suddenly became very Montague and Capulet. An irresistible combination for any young girl on the cusp of womanhood.
When Logan had noticed her, started talking to her, she had felt as if she trembled on the verge of something else. Something exciting and serious. He was her first, serious love. They’d dated, kissed, made naïve, whispered plans for their future. They were in love and the rest of the world hadn’t mattered. Until it intruded on them.
Sarah huddled deeper in the blanket. Since she had come back to Millars Crossing she had other information to work with, other experiences. She still wasn’t sure what to do with this all, how to fit it into her life.
The horses sped up, just a bit, then turned onto another trail. The trees hung low, shedding showers of snow as they passed.
“Where are we going?” Sarah finally asked, breaking the silence.
“You’ll see.”
No sooner had he spoken than the trees suddenly gave way to an open field. Logan turned the horses toward the edge of the field and when they stopped, Sarah felt perched on the edge of an unknown and dangerous world.
They stood on the edge of a sheer cliff dropping over a hundred feet then sloping away to the deep, wide valley. The river that had cut the valley spooled out below them, a wide band of white broken by a few tree-dotted islands.
Sarah had grown up with the river just a short drive away, had crossed over the bridge spanning it a thousand times, had walked along its edge as a young girl, throwing sticks into it to watch them being carried away downstream. But she had never experienced the immense depth and width of the valley the river had carved over the centuries.
“This is amazing,” she whispered, hardly daring to speak, hardly daring to break the peace that had descended as soon as the horses stopped.
Logan wound the reins around a post and sat back, his dark eyes sweeping over the valley, lit by the ghostly light of the moon. “I come here whenever I need to think,” he said, his voice growing quiet, almost reverent. “I’ve spent a lot of time sitting here. Dreaming.”
“What dreams did you have, Logan?”
“You’ve heard them all.”
“Things have changed in our lives. Surely your dreams have, as well.”