‘Romeo,’ Mav corrected with a laugh. ‘Did you say thank you to Uncle Benji for organizing it with Santa?’
Poppy turned serious eyes on him. ‘Thanks, Uncle Benji. This is the bestest present ever.’ She sighed. ‘I love you.’
Benji’s heart swelled. ‘I love you too, bub. Merry Christmas.’
While Mav took the lead rope to walk Poppy around on Romeo’s back, Nina and Markus following close behind, Benji draped one arm over Sierra’s shoulders. ‘She kills me,’ he said. ‘She’s such a good kid.’
‘She is,’ Sierra replied quietly.
He heard her tone, filled with caution, asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Do you ever …’ She shook her head when her emotion overtook her.
But Benji knew what she was asking. ‘All the time. I imagine her being stubborn, like you. And I imagine what it might have been like the first time I eventually let her on a horse. You on one side, me on the other as we held her in the saddle and walked forward. I imagine everything, all the time.’ He pulled her into his arms. ‘But do you know what the craziest thing is?’
‘Tell me.’
‘They’re all happy imaginings. And I don’t think having kids is all happy, all the time. And, in a way, it’s comforting to know that we’ll only ever imagine who she might have been as happy, healthy, and whole.’
‘Yeah.’ Sierra sighed deeply. ‘Yeah, that’s nice to think about actually.’
Benji didn’t say more, but he had to consciously fight his urge to push, to talk abouttheirfuture and what it might look like. Maybe it was just Christmas and the hope it brought. Maybe it was that he was forty goddamn years old and felt it every time he watched Poppy take another gigantic stride towards adulthood. Or maybe, it was that he felt Sierra coming back to him and needed to hold on to her with both hands – especially after the run-in with his father and the reminder of where he’d come from. Whatever it was, it was impossible for him to be with her and not want everything with her.
He was an all-in type of guy.
And he wanted –needed– to be all-in with Sierra Hunt.
But she had said she needed time, and he would give it to her despite his own impatient heart.
So instead of the promises he longed to make to her, he opened his jacket and pulled a flat box from the inside pocket. ‘Merry Christmas.’
Sierra paused before taking it. ‘I left yours on the bed.’
She hesitated before opening it, so Benji brushed her hair behind her ear, said, ‘Don’t panic. It’s nothing intense.’
She sighed, and it broke him that the sound was relieved.
Sierra tore the wrapping paper and opened the box. ‘Oh.’ The sound she made was wistful. ‘It’s gorgeous.’
Inside was a small, ornate dreamcatcher on a leather string. It was about the size of his hand. The spider web net, originally created by the Ojibwe people to ensure the protective charms of Asibikaashi, the Spider Woman, was woven from a few strands of Ty’s white tail hair, which he’d snipped and shipped to the weaver. White dove feathers for peace and rose quartz beads for emotional healing hung from the bottom. ‘To protect your dreams,’ Benji said. And although he didn’t say it aloud, he’d gotten it to comfort her in the night in case she didn’t ask him to stay.
They hadn’t talked about it, but his time at Hunt Ranch would technically come to an end in only a week, once Mav came back to work after his honeymoon. And although he desperately wanted to open the subject with Sierra, he was afraid she wasn’t ready.
Worse, he was afraid she was – and that she wouldn’t choose him.
Chapter 22
Hunt Ranch, Santa Barbara County – March, 2013
It had taken them a year to gentle and train the Mustang they’d aptly named Diablo for both his attitude and his homeland. Despite James and Benji’s lifetime of combined horse experience, the dun gelding had lived the first four years of his life as a stallion, raising hell in Devil’s Garden, an area of Arches National Park known for its wild herds.
Since they’d brought him home, Benji and James had worked side by side, at first, just to be able to get close to the horse without him aiming a powerful kick in their direction, then, to halter him, lunge him, saddle him, and finally, ride him.
It had been difficult. Diablo was unlike any of the horses Benji had worked with before. The gelding was a handsome brute, with a shiny dun coat and contrasting black mane and tail that were impossibly long, so that Sierra jokingly called him Fabio. But he was also stubborn and spirited, with an attitude that seemed born more from mocking amusement than any prey animal fear.
The horse had been corralled as part of the Bureau of Land Management’s annual herd management, a programme necessary to maintain the land’s carrying capacity for not only wild horses, but also other animals that relied on the natural resources. While it had always been hard for Benji to see the terrified horses loaded onto trucks and pushed into pens before being adopted out to anyone for a mere two-fifty, he also understood that if left unchecked, the horses could quickly outbreed available resources in their territories.
Still, Hunt Ranch was a working cattle ranch. They weren’t known for taking in feral horses. Diablo had been a spontaneous adoption by James Hunt when they’d attended a Mustang event to help a neighbour find a suitable project horse for her young daughter.
