Logan gave her a solid minute after the phone call ended before he pressed. “House?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Abbs—”
“Ugh!” Before she could successfully turn her phone off or at least on silent and put it face down on the blanket, another text buzzed through. “I have to go. Vince wants us for a team meeting.”
Chapter 12
Logan
Gibbs made a mad dash for Judith’s front counter when Logan arrived with Abbie at the saddlery. He wasn’t sure what Judith put in those homemade peanut butter treats, but whatever the secret ingredient was, that dog was addicted.
“Thank you for watching him, Mom,” Abbie said. “Carl sneezes nonstop if he gets within twenty feet of Gibbs.”
“Everything okay?” Judith asked as she dug out a couple of treats.
Logan tried his best to linger in the background, browsing a rack of button-up shirts while he let the women talk. But his attention was locked on what Abbie might confess. He wanted to know about that house. He wasn’t sure whether there was anything he could do, but it was important to her. That much he could tell.
“Besides Vince hounding me to show him a sample of my article?”
Judith lifted the lid off a jar filled with chocolate mints marked at twenty-five cents and handed a couple to Abbie. “Sounds like my brother. Abbs, I know Vince means well. But he needs to give you a chance. Give you space to make your own mistakes.”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
Abbie glanced over her shoulder at him across the showroom, catching his eye for a moment. Resolve seemed to settle in hers. “No, don’t do that. I’ll talk to him after the meeting.”
Good. She needed to stand up for herself. His Abbie wasn’t usually afraid to do that, but with family, it was more complicated. Especially when her dream was on the line.
Judith lifted her chin, looking at him now. “Those are thirty-percent off this week,” she said, a cue to leave the ladies to their conversation if ever he’d been given one. Maybe she thought Abbie was out of sorts because of him.
“Mind if I try one on?” he asked, hoping the compromise would satisfy them both.
“You know the way to the dressing room.”
Gibbs, convinced the treats had run out for the moment, trotted down the hall after him. Between the muffled dressing room in the back of the store and Gibbs’s heavy panting, it was much harder to hear snippets of their conversation. In fact, it was nearly impossible. He quickly changed shirts, hoping to ask their opinion in order to successfully eavesdrop a little more.
At the end of the hall, he paused, hoping Gibbs wouldn’t do anything to give him away. The dog looked at him expectantly, as if there might be some game to be played and he wanted to know the rules.
“Abbie, I wish there was something we could do to help you get that house.”
“No, Mom, it’s okay. I’m not asking for a loan or anything.”
But is she?
“Write the most heartfelt letter you can and hope for the best, sweetie. Have faith that if the house is meant to be yours, it will be.”
“If only Mrs. Hampton didn’t think I was such a pesky kid.” Abbie laughed a pitiful laugh that rang of strength despite the pain in her voice. “Well, I guess I’m going for it, then. I’ll text Christy and tell her to send over the paperwork.”
Mrs. Hampton. Now he knew which house it was. No question about it, she’d always had her eye on that Victorian home on the edge of town. They’d spent nights lying on a pile of blankets in the bed of his truck stargazing and talking dreamily about living in that house one day. The house and its historic appeal had Abbie’s heart. But the property itself with the acreage and horse corral had always snagged his interest.
An image of them living there played out in his head. Abbie curled up on a cushioned wicker chair on the porch writing an article, Gibbs snoozing at her feet, Logan kissing her on the cheek before he went to work with the horses.
He’d been thinking about the future a lot lately. Last night he hardly slept. He wouldn’t ride bulls forever. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t ride them after this season was over. Either he’d draw Tornado by the finals, or the bull would be retired.
It was what came after that that used to scare him. The year he had off after Tornado nearly killed him had left him feeling lost. He’d never known anything other than bull riding. But after that day at the Andersons’ horse camp, he found himself reminiscing about his childhood and how great it’d be to be a part of something like that.
