Page 42 of A Cowboy to Call Her Own

The same reason he had yet to go down to the brothers’ wing at the ranch house where their bedrooms were and instead chose to sleep on the couch in the family room. The treehouse was abandoned. Same as the brothers abandoned each other to follow their own paths. It was not right or wrong. It just was. There was no sense looking back now. He asked, “Have you returned to your special garden?”

She shook her head. “It became a vegetable garden and stayed that way until my grandfather died.”

“And now?” he pressed.

“It’s overgrown with weeds. I can’t see the path anymore,” she said then added, “And the truth is I haven’t taken the time to try.”

“Same here.” Asher extended his arms over the stall door and held his palms out, inviting the colt to come to him. “I don’t have the time to go chasing days gone by.” And so he kept looking ahead. Always.

“All the same, it was nice to revisit just now.” She bumped her shoulder against Asher’s. “It reminded me how much I could use a proper vegetable garden right about now.”

He grinned. “You should talk to Edwina. She used to tend to the garden my mom started near the staff quarters. I’m sure Edie would share if she has anything growing there.”

“I will track down Edie tomorrow.” Kelley reached into her pocket and pulled out the spearmint leaves. “Speaking of garden fresh, maybe we should see if Pride might like some organic mint.”

Asher shifted his attention back to the colt and away from Kelley and things not meant for him. He said, “Let’s try and see.”

Kelley rubbed a leaf over her palms, then set another one in her hand and reached over the stall door. Her words were soothing and calm. “You want to move, don’t you, Pride? But you’re not sure who to trust. I know that feeling.”

Pride’s ears perked up. His nostrils flared.

“Who don’t you trust?” Asher asked Kelley and watched Pride extend his head toward her.

“Myself,” Kelley said, then worked to soothe Pride before Asher could ask her more.

That, he supposed, was as it should be.

Kelley continued, “You can trust me, Pride. I won’t hurt you.”

Asher did not want to hurt his cowgirl. The only way to do that was to get her out of his head. He trusted himself to do that. Because he could not be trusted with a cowgirl’s heart as big and tender as hers.

Pride breathed heavily and took a tentative step toward Kelley, who held herself in place. Her focus remained fixed on the colt. “He’s coming to me.” There was a smile in her words. “You can do it, Pride.”

One minute there was no connection. And the next, the colt was nuzzling Kelley’s palm while Kelley cheered him on. She chuckled. “He likes it.”

The next thing Asher knew, Kelley was pressed up against him, crushing a spearmint leaf against his hands and explaining to Pride that Asher was one of the good ones, too.

Asher very much wanted to be, if only for his cowgirl. And a good one would know when to let go and walk away. Pride searched Asher’s palms for more spearmint and Asher said, “Let’s open the door and see if Pride will let me in.”

Another spearmint branch and Asher was inside Pride’s stall. Kelley stayed on the other side and rubbed her fingers over Pride’s muzzle. Asher ran his hand over Pride’s back, noted the still tense muscles and set out to give the colt a massage that he’d seen his father treat his horses to after a hard-won race.

A short while later, Kelley said, “I think the spearmint and massage are working. Pride is looking much more at ease.”

Asher was feeling the same. There was something soothing yet energizing about winning over the racehorse. He heard Pride breathe heavily on Kelley and smiled. “He likes you.”

Kelley said, “That is because Pride knows I understand him. We get each other.”

“What do you mean?” Asher smoothed his hands in a circular motion over Pride’s hind leg.

“His world went from traveling to one racetrack after another to this tiny stall,” Kelley explained. “Now Pride is scared and unsure. That was how I felt after I got divorced and lost my restaurant.”

It was not lost on Asher that the more Pride relaxed, the more Kelley did, too. Both the colt and his cowgirl were starting to trust him. Heady stuff for sure. Asher would need to tread carefully. He picked up a grooming brush from the bucket and asked, “Do you mind if I ask what happened between you and your ex-husband?”

“We should have worked,” she said. “We did work on paper. We were aligned in our culinary passion and goals. We cared for each other.”

“But,” he pressed.

“I realized I lost myself in pursuit of some vision I could no longer see,” she explained. “My ex-husband enhanced the menu so much, he edited me out. Still, I was convinced he loved me, and he was making the right decisions for us as a team and for our future, not just his own success. Turned out I was wrong.”