“Drop them in the dirt.”
“What? Won’t she run off?”
Jedidiah laughed. “They’ve both been trained. It’s called ground tying. They’ll stay until we pick up the reins.”
Seemed iffy to him but what did he know?
Jedidiah took off her boots and socks, rolled up her jeans and sat on the bank of the river, dangling her bare feet in the water. “Join me?”
Why not? He followed suit and sat beside her.
“This trail was always one of my favorite things on the ranch. I’d ride out to the stream, here where the trees are so tall and it was quiet and I’d read or play in the water or just sit and think. Generally I was avoiding chores,” she said with a smile. “Ruthie, our housekeeper, used to call me incorrigible.”
“I can’t envision you avoiding work. You’re as compulsive as I am about work.”
“Different kind of work. As Damaris pointed out, I never liked shoveling horse shit. Love to ride but mucking out stalls is way down on my list. And I was always dreaming of going somewhere exciting or doing something exciting. That’s one reason I left right after high school. I wanted to see what was out there. My parents were great. They didn’t stand in my way or try to force me to do something I didn’t want to do. They wished me luck, gave me some money to tide me over until I found work, and kissed me goodbye. I love my family, but I just needed to be on my own.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
She nodded. “And then some.”
Trevor wasn’t sure what could have been exciting about her jobs, which seemed to have been mostly involved with computers. But he obviously didn’t have the whole story and she just as plainly wasn’t ready to tell him.
He changed the subject. “Did you ever bring boys with you down here?”
“Nope. You’re the first.”
“Really? We should do something to commemorate that.”
“Like what?”
He put his arm around her, tipped up her chin with his other hand and kissed her on the lips. “I have some ideas,” he said and kissed her again.
“Tell me more.” She looped her arms around his neck.
“Well, it seems a shame to have the perfect make-out spot yet you’ve never made out in it.”
“Excellent point.” She pushed him to lie on his back, then stretched out on top of him. She kissed him, a hot, sexy meeting of lips, tongues, and teeth.
He put his hands on her ass and pressed her against him. Tugged on her lower lip and thrust his tongue inside her mouth again. Jedidiah gave that little moan he loved to hear, the one that said she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And he was lost.
*
“Annie said theyfound a good family who wants Ricky,” Trevor told her a few days later after work.
She knew he’d been talking to Annie but since he’d gone in the other room so he wouldn’t bother her, she wasn’t sure what had been said. “That’s great. I was beginning to worry they weren’t going to find one. Does he like them?”
“Annie thinks so. I don’t know them well but I’ve met them. They seem like nice people.”
“What’s going to happen to the Moores?” Frank and Sandra deserved jail time in Jedidiah’s opinion.
“They’re not going to charge Sandra. It sounds like she was more afraid of the bastard than Ricky was. And Ricky said she’d never laid a hand on him. It was always Frank. She even tried to stop him sometimes but he beat his wife even more than he did Ricky. We were able to get her medical records from various hospital ERs and she was in and out of them on a regular basis. So after a while she quit trying.”
“I guess there’s no point in charging her. She’ll be too sympathetic. He’s obviously the worst of the two.”
Trevor nodded. “Plus Moore’s treatment of her corroborates what he did to Ricky. But all that will come out at the trial.”
“The case is going to trial?” She wasn’t surprised exactly. She’d just thought it would take longer to get to that point.
