15
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
DAISY
Thunder cracked so hard overhead, the lights in the temporary building flickered.
Our faces tilted up to the ceiling as rain pelted the windows, the work in front of us forgotten for a moment. The foreman Jace sat near me, and Keaton was at his desk on the other side of the building, as far as he could get from me.
Or at least that was how it felt.
It’d been a week or so since we’d been shut down and all the work on site had been fixed. We’d been hard at work filing all the right papers, leaving us in a lurch as we waited for them to be approved. Again. I’d been more of their acting assistant than any real help, guided by Millie from the main office. She was far too busy with the many other contracted projects, but I was glad to help. Everybody won.
Except maybe Keaton.
He’d done his best to avoid me, which wasn’t unusual. Stupidly, I’d thought we could be friends, but I wasn’t sure if he even had room for that. I wished I could have said that I hadn’t thought twice about him, but twice was long in the rearview. I was somewhere in the hundred kabillions.
Nothing about him is easy. Shouldn’t it be easy?
You know why it isn’t easy for him, I argued myself. I bet he hasn’t opened up to anybody in a long, long time. You’d be scared too.
Be careful—you’re headed into Beauty and the Beast fix him mentality.
All right, if I say I only want to kiss him, would that be acceptable?
Yes, but it’d also be a lie.
I sighed, garnering a look from the closest of the men, which I ignored. I pretended to pay attention the email on my screen, but really I was imagining what it would be like to have Keaton for a boyfriend, as I had been for a longer than I would have liked to admit. Or even better—to kiss him. It had been so long, I barely remembered the feeling. Maybe what I thought I remembered was derived from books and television. Hopefully, it was like riding a bike. But it was more likely that I’d probably be terrible at it, all teeth.
I swept the thought away at another crack of thunder, white lightning washing the room in a flicker.
My phone rang, and Jo’s face lit up my screen. I answered with a smile, figuring she was checking up on us with the weather.
“Hey,” I started. “You hear that thund—”
“Daisy!” she yelled over the sound of rain and wind.
“What’s the matter?”
“Two horses got loose—storm hit when Poppy was in the stalls, and don’t ask me how. They took off in a panic, but we haven’t found them. They came runnin’ in the direction of the site.”
“What horses?” I asked gravely, already standing.
Keaton’s eyes followed me.
A long pause. “Gretchen and Ginger.”
My heart lurched, my throat locking. I swallowed hard. “I’m coming.”
“We’ll find her, Daisy. I swear it.”
“I know. Call me if you find her. I’ll do the same.”
A brief goodbye before we disconnected, but I already had my things bundled up in my arms.
Keaton was standing, moving in my direction. I barely registered him.
“What happened?”
“Two horses are out, one of them mine,” was all I said on my way to the door. “I’ve gotta help find her.”
“I’ll come with you,” he informed me. It wasn’t an offer.
“Thank you, but I’ll manage.”
“Not in your daddy’s old truck you won’t. I have four-wheel drive—we’ll cover more ground this way. Plus, you’ll need help with the second horse or risk losing it again.”
I was too frazzled to formulate any sort of argument. So I nodded and said, “All right.”
We were running to his truck seconds later, feet slapping in the mud, sending splashes in every direction. I wished I’d at least known it was going to rain today. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when I left the house, but just before lunch it went dark, and the storm came quick, bringing a torrent that had sent muddy rivers charging through the dirt parking lot. I hopped one before climbing into Keaton’s truck.
I was already soaked, my blouse clinging to my skin and my skirt heavy, my hair sticking to my forehead and neck. At least I had on sandals with an ankle strap. Anything was better than barefoot.
“Did she know where they headed?” he asked as he backed up and took off toward the house.
I shook my head. “Only that they were running our direction.” I racked my brain, considering our favorite trails. The one we’d just run the other day was nearby, and if we topped the hill we might be able to see her, if we could see much of anything. “Turn up here, between the trees. There’s no road, but there’s a vantage point up there.”
A nod, and he pulled off the dirt road. The rain had come so fast, the ground was spongey and slick, and the back-end of the truck slid behind us. He pulled us to a stop and put it in four-wheel, then climbed the hill where I hoped we’d find salvation.
Panic sizzled under the surface of my calm, a hundred thoughts and emotions changing second by second. There were too many places on the property that could hurt her if she ran into them unthinking. Rock-bedded creeks, craggy limestone rises, jags and crooks for delicate legs to get caught in.
I caught myself trembling and clasped my hands, pressing them into my lap, locking my arms as my eyes scanned the tree line in the valley below. The creek ran through there, cutting into rocks to make a small ravine.
Frantically, silently, we searched without finding them.
“Where do you want to look?”
“Down by the creek,” I answered with terror clawing my throat, my brain weaving sick visions of what we might find, the worst case, and though I tried to hush them, the effort was wasted.
He drove along the bed of the creek, careful to follow the muddy, rocky bank.
My eyes combed lines of trees, searching for a patch of white or tan, whispering nothing, nothing, nothing with every shallow inhale and exhale.
In a break of trees, I caught a flash of movement, then another, a blur of white and brown.
“There!” I pointed in the direction, and he hurried toward them as they bolted through the trees.
I rolled down the window, squinting against the rain, calling her name. Her head whipped in our direction, her eyes ringed with white, but Gretchen slowed, bringing Ginger with her.
Keaton knew what to do, hurrying alongside the trees to get ahead of them, pulling to a stop. We burst from the cab, running toward their path. Still I called her name, hands in the air, moving toward her, and she slowed a little more, rearing when she reached me.
I approached her from the side as she came down, stroking her neck with shaking hands as she skittered. Remembering Ginger, I whipped around, one hand full of Gretchen’s mane. But Keaton had her still, though stamping. Relief washed over me.
“There’s a barn nearby,” I yelled over the rain. “Can you ride bareba—”
Before I could finish, Keaton grabbed a handful of mane, steadied the other hand on her back, and swung up and over, settling himself and comforting Ginger as I watched with my mouth open. When he looked down at me, I got to mounting Gretchen. I didn’t have his height and had to plant a knee in her hip for leverage, but she was unbothered by that. The lightning flash was another story.