She wasn’t wearing her beanie today. Her dark brown hair hung limply around her face. She was pale, her chin pointed, her nose slightly pointed, as well. She was elfin, and he wasn’t tempted to call her beautiful, but there was something captivating about her. Something fascinating. Watching her with the large animals was somehow just as entertaining as watching football and he couldn’t quite figure out why.
“You didn’t grow up around horses?”
“No,” she said, taking a timid step toward the paddock. “I grew up in Portland.”
He nodded. “Right.”
“Always in apartments,” she said. Then she frowned. “I think one time we had a house. I can’t really remember it. We moved a lot. But sometimes when we lived with my mom’s boyfriends, we had nicer places. It had its perks.”
“What did?”
“My mom being a codependent hussy,” she said, her voice toneless so it was impossible to say whether or not she was teasing.
“Right.” He had grown up in one house. His family had never moved. His parents were still in that same farmhouse, the one his family had owned for a couple of generations. He had moved away to go to college and then to start the business, but that was different. He had always known he could come back here. He’d always had roots.
“Will you go back to Portland when you’re finished here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I’ve never really had a choice before. Of where I wanted to live.”
It struck him then that she was awfully young. And that he didn’t know quite how young. “You’re twenty-two?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding almost defensive. “So I haven’t really had a chance to think about what all I want to do and, like, be. When I grow up and stuff.”
“Right,” he said.
He’d been aimless for a while, but before he’d graduated high school, he’d decided he couldn’t deal with a life of ranching in Copper Ridge. He had decided to get out of town. He had wanted more. He had wanted bigger. He’d gone to school for marketing because he was good at selling ideas. Products. He wasn’t necessarily the one who created them, or the one who dreamed them up, but he was the one who made sure a consumer would see them and realize that product was what their life had been missing up until that point.
He was the one who took the straw and made it into gold.
He had always enjoyed his job, but it would have been especially satisfying if he’d been able to start his career by building a business with his brother and sister. To be able to market Faith’s extraordinary talent to the world, as he did now. But he wasn’t sure that he’d started out with a passion for what he did so much as a passion for wealth and success, and that had meant leaving behind his sister and brother too, at first. But his career had certainly grown into a passion. And he’d learned that he was the practical piece. The part that everybody needed.
A lot of people had ideas, but less than half of them had the follow-through to complete what they started. And less than half of those people knew how to get to the consumer. That was where he came in.
He’d had his first corporate internship at the age of twenty. He couldn’t imagine being aimless at twenty-two.
But then, Danielle had a baby and he couldn’t imagine having a baby at that age either.
A hollow pang struck him in the chest.
He didn’t like thinking of babies at all.
“You’re judging me,” she said, taking a step back from the paddock.
“No, I’m not. Also, you can get closer. You can pet them.”
Her head whipped around to look at the horses, then back to him, her eyes round and almost comically hopeful. “I can?”
“Of course you can. They don’t bite. Well, they might bite, just don’t stick your fingers in their mouths.”
“I don’t know,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Except he could tell she really wanted to. She was just afraid.
“Danielle,” he said, earning himself a shocked look when he used her name. “Pet the horses.”
She tugged her hand out of her pocket again, then took a tentative step forward, reaching out, then drawing her hand back just as quickly.
He couldn’t stand it. Between her not knowing what she wanted to be when she grew up and watching her struggle with touching a horse, he just couldn’t deal with it. He stepped forward, wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her closer to the paddock. “It’s fine,” he said.
A moment after he said the words, his body registered what he had done. More than that, it registered the fact that she was very warm. That her skin was smooth.
And that she was way, way too thin.
A strange combination of feelings tightened his whole body. Compassion tightened his heart; lust tightened his groin.
He gritted his teeth. “Come on,” he said.
He noticed the color rise in her face, and he wondered if she was angry, or if she was feeling the same flash of awareness rocking through him. He supposed it didn’t matter either way. “Come on,” he said, drawing her hand closer to the opening of the paddock. “There you go, hold your hand flat like that.”
She complied, and he released his hold on her, taking a step back. He did his best to ignore the fact that he could still feel the impression of her skin against his palm.
One of his horses—a gray mare named Blue—walked up to the bars and pressed her nose against Danielle’s outstretched hand. Danielle made a sharp, shocked sound, drew her hand back, then giggled. “Her whiskers are soft.”
“Yeah,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips. “And she is about as gentle as they come, so you don’t have to be afraid of her.”
“I’m not afraid
