Page 47
"Would you quit saying the number like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like it personally offends you every time it comes out of your mouth."
"It does personally offend me. I make good money on this ranch, and I've never once been worth three hundred thousand dollars to anybody for three months."
"You're worth considerably less than that most days," I remind him.
He snorts.
We roll up on the main yard. I catch sight of her in the pen near the barn. She's in a canvas jacket with braided red hair pulled back under a ball cap.
Red hair.
My pulse spikes.
Don't get all crazy again. It's not Lainey.
She slowly moves her hands down Two-Step's injured shoulder while the colt stands calm as anything. His ears flick easily instead of being pinned back the way they've been every time a stranger's gotten near him since the storm.
"That her?" Mason asks, following my gaze.
"Has to be." I park the truck, keeping the engine running. I stare across the yard, past the row of giant spiders we haven't taken down from Halloween.
She works with ease.
Flutters fill my stomach, and for one long, ridiculous second, I imagine her turning around and it being Lainey.
Stop it.
Figures she'd be a redhead.
"You gonna go say hello, or just sit here staring at her like she's a serial killer?" Mason asks.
"I'm thinking."
"About what?"
"I think I'd rather watch her from afar for a bit. See how she works when she knows I'm not here, then see how she is when she knows I am."
Mason snorts. "That's some head games."
"Shut up," I snap, and stay in the truck.
"Suit yourself. I'm going to get something to eat." He gets out and goes to the back kitchen door where Mom probably has hot soup and sandwiches waiting.
I don't move, unable to shake the feeling she's Lainey but knowing I'm wrong. I've been wrong all year, and I don't need to make a fool of myself in front of the therapist who's going to rehab my horses.
She crouches to check the colt's stifle then stands back a moment with her arms crossed. She studies the horse's stance with the kind of focused attention that tells me everything Roy said about her wasn't an exaggeration.
She laughs at something, tipping her head back, and the sound doesn't carry all the way to the truck. But the shape of it, the particular way her shoulders move when she does it, knocks me behind my ribs hard enough that I have to grip the steering wheel to steady myself.
I'm losing my mind.
It's the only explanation I've got, sitting in my truck, white-knuckling a steering wheel over a stranger's laugh from thirty yards away. I know exactly how pathetic it sounds even just thinking it to myself.
Every practical, sensible piece of me knows I should get out of the truck, walk up, shake her hand, thank her for taking this case on short notice, and get the professional introductions over. Instead, I stay frozen, except for my beating heart and the growing sense of déjà vu.
