Nicole braced her boots in the snowbank beside the sleigh, one gloved hand resting on Copper’s flank.
“You’re making me look bad, bud,” she murmured, stroking the mane of the horse she’d fed, brushed, and coddled for a decade, who now stood rooted to the snowy ground like an overgrown lawn ornament.
Her father, seated up on the sleigh bench, gave the reins a gentle twitch. “He’s stubborn today.”
Nicole shot him a look. “He’s stubborn every day.”
She rubbed Copper’s neck, feeling the powerful muscles coiled tight beneath his mahogany-colored coat. He wasn’t scared, exactly. Just…unwilling. Like something inside him remembered what had happened the last time he tried to pull the sleigh and said…Nope. Not again.
Something had startled him the first time he pulled the sleigh—maybe a loud noise. He hated ski helicopters and the rare rumble of thunder. Whatever it had been, he’d stumbled off the trail and, since that day, he hated the very sight of this thing.
“Baby, I get it,” she whispered into his ear, getting a noisy shake in response.
Boy, did she get it. She knew what “spooked” felt like, what the sight—or sound—of something scary could do to you. She knew how an ordeal remained engraved on your memory and paralyzed a person. Or a horse.
They’d always been connected on so many levels, whether Nicole was saddled up and trotting over the trails of Snowberry with him or just lazing in the paddock. They spoke the same language and Copper truly understood English.
When he wanted to.
As she coaxed him forward, she remembered the moment that had her frozen in shock just a few minutes earlier. Brianna had seen what was going on out here and had waved Nicole to the window.
Like bad little kids spying on their parents, the two of them had peered out and observed the whole sweet and, yes, romantic scene. They’d giggled and poked each other and laughed…but something about the encounter hadn’t really been funny.
It had been…dreamy.
Was there any chance? Maybe. She’d seen the way Dad had leaned closer, the way Mom had let his cheek brush hers. What had he said to her? An old memory? A dear name? An inside joke?
They had so much history. They should?—
“You gonna try to move this horse, Nic, or are we going to give sleigh sits instead of sleigh rides?”
She threw a look over her shoulder at her father, half tempted to tell him what was on her mind. But that might jinx it. That might make him go running off back to Vermont.
“I’m trying,” she insisted, wrapping her arm around Copper’s neck. “I’m bonding with him. It takes a minute.”
“And a peppermint,” he suggested.
“Good thought.” She reached in her pocket and grabbed a candy to hold under Copper’s nose. His ears twitched. His lipswiggled. He didn’t move. “But apparently, he can’t be bribed. I have to talk to him.”
“All right. You work your magic.”
Cooing into his ear, she stroked his mane over and over, watching the fight slip from his eyes. “All right, big guy. Eyes ahead,” she said softly. “Where you look is where you go.”
Jack chuckled behind her. “And where’d you learn that line?”
“From the master,” she joked. “Come on, Copper. Come on, baby.” She urged him forward, and he took one small step, enough to jingle the bells attached to his harness.
And he froze again.
“Do sleigh bells scare him?” Jack asked.
“They remind him of the first time you harnessed him to this thing.” She turned and looked at him. “You remember? It was your last Christmas here and I was home from college.”
He nodded. “Of course. He slipped out where the trail turns into Moose Creek and there’s that big drop at the east end of the meadow.”
“He’ll ride past that in the summer,” Nicole said. “But he hates that trail in the winter, not that I take him out much in this weather.”
“I used to practice skiing down that drop,” her father mused, making her wince at the idea.
