He shook my hand, laughing with me. “We really are.”
“Good luck with your construction bear.”
“Good luck with your sassy cowboy.”
I askedthe third date for a raincheck. I just didn’t have it in me to date someone who wasn’t Rowdy Lockwood.
5
ROWDY
Huck wasthe first horse I’d ever bought with my own money. The guys over at Rebel Sky Ranch also had a rescue program to go along with their fancy (expensive) breeding program. They’d take in horses from local rescue operations and those horrible auction houses. Their trainers—husband duo Sparrow and Luke—donated their time toward ensuring that the horses were adoptable. They often sold these rescues at cost, and Woody had been buying from them for years.
When it was time to buy a horse, there wasn’t anywhere else I was gonna go.
My Huck was a paint horse that’d been surrendered by his owner due to behavioral issues. When he made his way to Rebel Sky from the local rescue, he was underweight and full of suspicious cuts and injuries. I had wanted to go look up his previous owner and have a word or two, but Woody’d convinced me not to.
Still thought about it, though.
Even after he’d been gelded, Huck had been quite the job for the trainers. Sparrow liked to joke that if he couldn’t calm a horse, his compact husband would bring them around. It was the opposite with Huck, though. He kept biting Luke and endedup giving him a half-moon scar on his hip. Sparrow thought it was pretty damned funny when Huck started responding to his training sessions over Luke’s.
Luke, who I’d recognized from his rodeo days, took it all in stride, nothing but pride shining from his face when Sparrow talked through all the things they’d done to bring Huck up to weight and make him feel safe enough to trust them. I tried not to be jealous of their affectionate relationship, but given the fact that Stevie let it slip that Kess had started going on dates, watching those two was a punch to the gut.
Anyway.
Sparrow and Luke had warned me that Huck could still be a little skittish around strangers, but the second I’d walked into his paddock, I knew we’d be friends for life. Sure, he tried to bite me the first time I tried to rub his nose, but I didn’t hold that against him. I understood more than most that he wasn’t gonna let anyone hurt him ever again. My mask looked different, but I recognized one when I saw it.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Huck liked having a job. So, I saved Woody’s gas-guzzling Mule for refilling the feeders on rainy days and used Huck to survey the property. He had reared up the first time he’d seen our animals, and they’d run from him as fast as they could. Soon enough, though, everybody kind of got used to each other, and now they mostly ignored him.
Days like today, I was grateful to have him in my life. Just as I was trying to get really morose, my text notification fired off. I grinned.
Skylar: What’s up, hooker?
Dick.
Me: Kess went on another date last night.
Skylar: How do you know that? Are you spying on him?
Me: No. I was riding Huck along the fence line and saw Kess get into his car. He looked nice. Like he was going into town.
Skylar: Did he stay in town, or did he come back?
Me: He came back.
Skylar: Busted.
Me: Shut up.
My FaceTime notification rang, and I rolled my eyes, even as I accepted it.
“You are pathetic,” Skylar said, brushing out his eyebrows.
“Going out?” I asked as he fussed with the arch.
“Daddy Big Bucks has the night off and wants to take me to his favorite steak place.”
“And you were calling me pathetic?”
