Even across the yard he could hear the music floating from Clovis’s cabin. Sounded like bluegrass. Probably one of the local stations. Clovis did like his music. He played a mean mouth organ when he wanted. Jake crossed the yard and headed for the lights, a half smile already on his face. They’d just serenade the mares with that little tune.
His boots clacked on the wooden porch as he raised his hand to knock on the door. Just then the music stopped.
“That’s real pretty,” he heard Clovis say. “What else do you know on that thing?”
Jake’s hand dropped. He moved enough to see in the window.
“Try this, Clovis.”
Jake froze. The clear, waterfall notes of a dulcimer spilled from inside the room. The melody was sad, soft and sweet, the playing delicate. Clovis’s harmonica joined in, and then Jose’s fiddle. Jake could see the three of them through the curtains, each bent over their instrument, eyes closed, their music binding them together, shutting him out.
He stood there for a long time, through that song and into the next, as Amanda offered Appalachian melodies in exchange for Clovis’s western versions. They never heard him on the porch while they laughed and played.
Finally, Jake turned and walked back through the darkness to his house. Closing the house up in darkness, he stood at the front window, alone in his own house, on his land, aching for something he couldn’t have. Hurting for something that was too old to atone for. Looking out from the prison he didn’t know how to escape, the prison that had no bars. A prison that Amanda Marlow reinforced with every step she took.
“Is Jake taking good care of you?”
Amanda instinctively laughed. She’d spent another night doing research on her bed since she obviously wasn’t supposed to get any sleep there anymore. She’d come home from the impromptu concert at Clovis’s to find that the moon had washed the valley and mountains in the most mystical glow, robbing her of every ounce of pragmatism she’d fought so hard to accumulate. Again all she could think of was what Jake Kendall might look like under it. How his eyes would look, silver blue, with the moon softening his skin into a whisper beneath her fingers.
The moon made her mad. But Jake Kendall was making her ache, and that had kept her from sleeping.
Now she was at the ranch, speaking to Lee on the telephone.
“He’s been a real gentleman,” Amanda assured his little sister. “I’ve talked to the hands, and Clovis is teaching me to ride.”
“And Jake? What’s he doing?”
“Well, he’s letting me hang around during his busiest time of the year. A girl can’t ask much more than that.”
Amanda heard the heartfelt sigh on the other end of the line and diagnosed it as the frustration of a very romantic little sister whose ideas about what she’d had in mind for her big brother and her favorite teacher weren’t panning out. She tried very hard not to laugh again.
“Has he at least read your book?”
There was some kind of commotion outside. Amanda switched ears and turned to try to see it. “No,” she said, attention only half on the call. “He’s much too busy right now. Betty read it, though. She liked it.”
“Of course she did. It’s wonderful. How’s the new book coming?”
Men were gathering over by the corrals again. Amanda heard Betty come out of the den and approach the front door. She tried to stretch the kitchen cord a little farther, but it just wouldn’t go.
“Damn fool,” Betty muttered, shaking her head.
“Book’s fine,” Amanda assured Lee. “Listen, kid, you’re spending a fortune on this call. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, right?”
“Seventeen days. Take care of Jake 'til I get there.”
Once again, Amanda fought her instinctive reaction. “I will,” she promised. She hung up the phone in time to hear Betty gasp.
“What’s going on?” Amanda demanded, trotting for the front door.
“Jake’s been in a temper all morning,” Betty answered, never taking her eyes from the corral area. “Guess he’s going to take it out on Sidewinder.”
Amanda reached the woman’s side just in time to see Jake reach over from where he sat astride the big palomino and pull the blindfold from the horse’s eyes. The result was instantaneous, breathtaking and terrifying. With a shrill whinny, the animal went straight up in the air. Every hand on the place, and probably a few from neighboring spreads, crowded atop the corral fence, cheering Jake on as he clung to the horse’s back. Amanda stopped breathing completely, certain that any minute she was going to see Jake airborne.
“Oh, my God.”
Betty gave her head a sharp little shake. “It is somethin’ to see, isn’t it?” Amanda noticed, though, that her hand was clenched around the pen she’d carried out with her, and her eyes never strayed from the action outside.
“Is that really the way a horse is broken?”
