Heat instantly filled my cheeks.And I’m sure that meant my face was bright red.My cousins all smirked as if it were, anyway.“I … I don’t know him well enough.We’ve met three times.The second time was weird too.He just … left.Closed the door, and Sam and I took that as a sign we weren’t welcome anymore.”
“What do you mean heleft?”Gabrielle asked, gathering her thick, dark-brown locks into her hand and holding them on top of her head for a moment to let the back of her neck cool off a little.
“The donkey—Piñata—was terrorizing the ducks in the pond, and we helped him lure Piñata out.His clothes got soaked, then he got this weird look in his eyes, stood up straight, and walked out of the field, to his house, opened the door, closed it, and never came back out.Never said a word to us either.It was super weird.”
“And he didn’t address it today?”Raina asked.
I shook my head.
“Maybe he was just really uncomfortable and went to change?”Naomi postured.
“I didn’t get that vibe from him.”Running the pad of my index finger around the rim of my glass, I kept my gaze focused on the grain of Gabrielle’s dark wood dining room table.“Honestly, it almost felt like he got overwhelmed and just kind of shut down.The same way Sam does when she’s on the verge of an anxiety attack.”
Gabrielle raised her brows slightly.“Could be.Maybe he suffers from anxiety too.Would explain the fact that he basically operates as a recluse on the island and nobody knows he or his place exists.I mean, the fact that Jolene Dandy has never mentioned him or tried to set him up with anyone is astounding.”
Snickers of agreement flitted through all of us.
There was a reason the woman had the nickname “The Island Mouth” because she never stopped talking—about other people.She considered herself a matchmaker too, and always liked to zero in on single people and try to set them up.As far as I knew, she’d never made a successful match, but that didn’t seem to stop the woman from meddling whenever she could.I’d turned her down more than once in her efforts to “set me up with a good father figure for Sam.”
The longer we sat there, and the conversation drifted naturally to other things—mainly the upcoming wine season and opening up the tasting room in a couple of weeks—the more I started to think that Tom was a person who suffered from anxiety.Why else would he allow two little girls, who also had anxiety, to infiltrate his haven of calm?He could have told Cameron and me to pound sand and ferry our kids to the mainland for equestrian therapy.But he didn’t.
And the look in his eyes after he got Piñata out of the pond was very similar to the look in Sam’s eyes when her anxiety was taking over.
I wasn’t put off from getting to know him by this sudden speculation; if anything, I was more intrigued.To put his own comfort aside for the sake of two kids he didn’t know at all, spoke volumes about what kind of person he was.Not to mention his animal rescue sanctuary, which seemed to be funded from his own pocket.
After what happened with my husband ten years ago, I was pretty convinced all the good guys out there were truly taken, and only the dregs remained.But seeing Raina fall in love with Jagger, and Gabrielle fall in love with Maverick had rekindled some of my hope.And Tommaso Barone also seemed like one of the good guys.The question was: was I ready to even entertain the idea of welcoming a man into my life again?Or was this mare ready to be sent to the glue factory too?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tommaso
Isleptinthebarn that night.
Nothing new for me.I had a cot that I set up just outside of Angel’s stall, and Portia stayed with me—though she didn’t seem overly enthused about the idea, even though I brought out her princess bed for her to lay in.
Unfortunately, Morty couldn’t say how far along the foal was.He didn’t have his full ultrasound machine, just the doppler, and while Angel was sickly, the foal’s heartbeat was surprisingly strong.
Angus worked past midnight on her hooves, since both he and Angel required frequent breaks.She wasn’t keen on having someone touch her so much, and he said his back was sore having to bend over that way for so long to clean up her gnarled hooves.
By the time the chopper picked both Angus and Morty up at twelve-thirty, the frail mare had a brand-new set of shoes and a fresh pedicure.She hadn’t eaten much besides the carrots I had given her, but she did seem to like the calming salt block I had put in her stall.Rich with minerals, including magnesium, as well as dextrose and electrolytes.I usually offered these to my horses when they first arrived since they helped to calm them naturally as well as provide them with essential nutrients they may not have previously received.
I adjusted my pillow and rolled over onto my side in my cot.Portia snored like a lorry truck shifting gears before going uphill in her plush princess bed beside me.I shook my head at the very chill pig.“Diva,” I murmured.
Angel made a noise in her stall, and the other horses in the barn replied in turn.Nothing alarming, just huffs and lip flutters all around, almost like a greeting.“Welcome to the family” sort of thing.
Closing my eyes, I tuned into the smells and sounds around me, hoping the calming scent of straw and fresh manure, and the gentle snores of the horses—combined with the obnoxious snore of my pig—would lull me into sleep.But as soon as I closed them, none of those things really took shape.Instead, all I could see were the bright, hazel-green eyes of Danica.The small, demure smile on her lips, and the way the wind swept her blonde hair across her face in an almost angelic way.
Growling, I flipped around in my bed again to the other side, punched my pillow, and tugged the single wool blanket higher up onto my shoulders.
I didn’t even see her and her daughter off today.This was the second time I had been rude to her.The first time being my panic attack and how I just walked away from them, and now today, when I was so focused on Angel that I didn’t even see them leave.
Even though the animals were my life, that didn’t excuse my being rude.
She didn’t deserve that.
She was advocating on behalf of her child.She was here for her child.
She probably had much better things to do than brush horses for hours, but she did it—for her child.
