“Roma?”
“He has to be ridden, right? I’d rather it be me than you.” Silly, maybe; she could obviously handle herself, but he still had this urge to protect her.
She moved toward the tack room. “You’ve ridden before?”
“Not in a while, but my uncle had horses, so I rode quite a bit as a kid.”
“Okay. That’s Roma’s bridle there.” She motioned toward a hook and pointed out the rest.
They saddled the horses, Hannah moving around the barn with way more confidence than she moved around him. Once out of the gate, the horses walked easily beside each other aside from a few sidesteps by Roma. The afternoon sun was at their backs, beginning its descent over rolling hills. Not hills really, more like gentle slopes, just enough to add texture to the landscape.
He glanced over and down at Hannah, as her horse was several hands smaller than Roma. He was struck with a sudden vision of laying her down in the soft grass, making love to her with the sun shining in her hair. “This is nice.”
“I like it. It’s always calmed me.”
The things he was thinking about doing to her would not inspire calm. “Freedom Farm. Did you name it?”
“Yes. It didn’t have any name before.”
“Because it gives the kids freedom?”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
Roma’s ears pricked and he shied as they passed another horse in the last turnout pasture. Winnie walked on unaffected. “So is this your only job, you’re full-time here?” He’d wondered, because she said she was a physical therapist, if maybe she worked somewhere else too.
“Yep, this is it. I’m lucky. I wouldn’t make enough from students to cover a place like this, but it was all left to me when the previous owners passed away.”
He looked over at her. “Left to you? You were related?”
“No. They didn’t have any other family. I spent lot of time out here as a teenager and…I guess they thought of me as a granddaughter. I didn’t expect it, but I’m grateful. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else and there’s so much more I want to do. So many ideas I—” She brought Winnie up short.
Stephen did the same and followed her gaze to the top of the ridge. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I just thought I saw something. Or someone.”
“Is that part of your property up there?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t care for the worry in her voice. “What someones are supposed to be there?”
“People from the city, I guess. Surveying? I don’t know.”
He was still staring at the ridge when she nudged Winnie forward. He had a very bad feeling. “Why would the city be surveying?”
“Oh, um…It’s nothing really. I just got a letter from the city planner’s office recently, and…it turns out they might not have left this to me. Something about trusts and domains. I don’t really know.”
Son of a bitch. So this was the property Dave had been looking at? Had him looking at? “So it’s not for sale?”
“No. Why?”
He opened his mouth to tell her what little he knew, then shut it. He’d get the facts, then he’d take care of it.
—
Had she really just told Stephen something she hadn’t even told her brothers? She didn’t need another person worrying about her. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Right,” he said, not sounding entirely like he meant it.
“There’s a small creek up ahead. Let’s cross that and circle back.” They paused side by side on the shady bank to let the horses drink and she gave Winnie a loving pat.
“Have you always ridden?”
“No. I started when I was seventeen.”
It was a day she remembered well. A drive in the country with Nick, a forced venture from the safety of home. The world had flown by as she stared blankly out the car window. And then she’d said one word. Stop. Even one word was so rare, Nick had stopped right in the middle of the road.
“What? You want to see the horses?” he’d asked.
So completely broken in body and spirit, she still couldn’t say why she’d voiced that one word. Why she’d nodded yes, in answer to his question. But he’d turned in at the gate and in minutes she was limping slowly into the darkness of the barn. She paused at a stall and raised her hand toward a dark brown horse as far as her healing arm would allow. He lowered his head, his velvety muzzle meeting her halfway as if he knew just how much it hurt.
When she came back to the present, Stephen was staring at her intently. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring at me.”
A lazy smile pulled at his mouth. “I like looking at you. You’re beautiful.”
There was no sound above the gurgling water and the wind in the trees.
“You don’t like me to say that.”
No. She didn’t. Because she wasn’t. So much so, it felt like a lie to say thank you. And if he knew—
“Hannah.”
Without warning, Stephen leaned in his saddle and kissed her. A mind-boggling, toe-curling kiss that left her breathless. When they parted, he braced her with a strong hand lest she fall right out of her saddle and into his.
Good Lord. The satisfied smile that lit his face was enough to make a girl forget who she was.
They returned to the barn, unsaddled, and turned out the horses. Stephen moved easily, mouthwatering in jeans and dusty boots, and she tried not to stare. She’d for sure never be able to go to her favorite wooded spot again without thinking of him. But without the horses as a buffer, inadequacy crept in.