“Poor Amanda.”
Jake turned around. “Poor Amanda what?”
Lee shot him a saucy grin. “She’s going to get to spend another fun-filled night taking care of your busted ribs. By the way, that’s a dandy of a scar. Is that from that last dance you had with him?”
Jake overcame the urge to rub at the scar just over his right eye. He’d taken the stitches out himself, but it still itched.
“I should have asked those friends of yours to take you with them to the convent.”
“We’re not Catholic, Jake.”
“I’d pay ‘em for the privilege.”
She snorted unkindly, which made Jake grin as he turned back to the filly.
“She’s a pretty little thing,” Lee admitted. “Isn’t she Buttercup’s baby?”
“Buttercup and Detonator from over at Jensons.”
Lee whistled. “She’s gonna have some speed, then.”
Jake nodded. “And a temper. She reminds me of you when you don’t get your way.”
“Snot.”
God, it was good to have her home. Just like he had at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas, Jake battled the desire to beg her not to go back. Not to leave him in that empty house all alone. She was the last to go, the hardest given away. She was all that was left of his resolve to keep going.
“Amanda said to thank you again for the loan of Sweet William. Those two really seem to get along.”
“Clovis tried to teach her to ride on Pokey. Bill seemed more her size.”
Lee laughed. “Isn’t she wonderful, Jake? Isn’t she everything I told you in my letters?”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his hand on the smooth, warm coat of the filly, his mind a meadow away. His heart crumbling. “She reminds me of you,” he retorted.
“Then you do like her!”
He turned a hard-won wry smile on her. “I said she reminds me of you. Which means she’s a smart aleck who thinks she knows everything and doesn’t mind in the least telling everybody.”
Lee’s answering smile was smug. “No wonder you like her so much.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she teased. “I found her clothes under the couch.”
Jake whirled around on her, instinctively furious, exposed, unnerved by the suddenly adult young woman who sat atop the corral grinning down at him. “Listen, you snot—”
She waved him off. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, lighten up. I said you’re doing it, not me. Although, if Tommy still looks as good as he did, I might take the risk—”
“Lee!”
She giggled and jumped from the fence. The filly danced away, still not used to all the extra stimulus. Jake didn’t even notice. His eyes were on his little sister and the real joy in her eyes.
“I promise I’ll behave,” she told him, stepping right up to him and challenging him just the way Amanda did. “Although it’ll probably give me a rash. But there is just one thing I want to say.”
Jake groaned dramatically, hoping it hid the dread, the sick sensation of inevitability.
Lee cuffed him on the arm and then betrayed her real concern. “It damn near killed me to leave you, Jake. I felt like we were all deserting you. I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to figure a way to get you someone else in your life. Somebody who’d be here for you when we all scatter to the four corners of the world.” She shook her head a little, her eyes brimming with emotion. “If it has to be Amanda, I’ll just have to live with it. Especially since she’s just about my second favorite person in the world—and don’t you dare tell Gen or Zeke, or I’ll cut your cinch when you ride Sidewinder.”
