Suddenly, Rowdy ducked through the metal rails and was on the other side, surrounded by the large beasts. I was terrified that he was going to get trampled, but he just nudged them out of his way as he spoke to them.
“Ready to take a ride?” Rowdy asked as he turned around to smile at me.
“Me?” I squeaked out. “Are you nuts?”
“It’s time to put the girls in for the night and I thought you and I could start our talk while I work. But to do that, you’ve got to join me in the barn.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the big building behind him. “You can drive my truck around or you can take a chance and trust me.”
It didn’t take me long to decide and before I knew what I was doing, I nodded my head and got closer to the fence.
“Come here, Pat,” Rowdy said to one of the brown horses and I noticed this one had a white stripe down her nose. He pushed her so that she was parallel with the rail and I saw that she had moved so that she was almost touching it, standing very still and patiently waiting for more instructions. Rowdy moved between her body and the fence and stepped on the lower rail with one foot so he could throw the other leg over the horse. I saw that she stayed still, waiting for his direction before she moved away. “This is Pat Benatar. She was a wild one with a bad reputation when she came to us, but she’s mellowed some in her old age. Climb up the outside of the fence and give me your hand.”
I did as Rowdy told me to do and before I knew what was happening, he had me sitting sideways across his lap on the back of the horse. I didn’t know what to do, so I threw my arms around his neck and held on tight.
“Relax, baby, I’ve got ya. Pat here is a sweetheart and she’ll take us home nice and slow.” Rowdy reached around me and grabbed a handful of the horse's mane and then made a clicking sound with his mouth at the same time I felt his legs move. Suddenly the horse was in motion and we were slowly walking toward the barn, leading the other animals home for the night.
“Relax, Sierra. She knows where she’s going,” Rowdy whispered close to my ear.
“We’re up so high!”
Rowdy chuckled and used his hands to pry my arms away from his neck. He maneuvered me so that one of my arms was sitting in my lap and the other one was wrapped around him at his waist.
“Just relax and roll with her motion. She knows what she’s doing and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I smiled up at him and then peeked around him to see the other horses close behind us.
“Does Leia come out and ride with you?”
“She comes out with me at least twice every day to take care of the horses.” Rowdy told me. “We don’t always ride, but we come and let the girls out to pasture every morning, clean up their stalls and get them ready for the evening. Sometimes on weekends, we’ll saddle a few of them up and ride for a while, but we don’t get to do it nearly often enough to suit us.”
“Lexi is going to shit when she finds out you have horses.”
“She likes them I take it?”
“She’s that little girl that asked Santa for a pony every single year.”
“Well, maybe someday we can get her one. I have my eye on one for Leia right now and if I can, I’m going to buy her and board her here with Nicole’s girls.”
“If you marry a millionaire, you can buy both girls a pony.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to talk about that money thing, sweetheart. I’m not going to be a kept man.”
“I didn’t suggest that at all, I just think it will be great to be able to give my daughter - and yours, too - some of the things I’ve never been able to afford before.” I sighed. “Like a house where she can paint the walls of her bedroom whatever color she wants and a dog and a cat for pets. And somewhere with an attic that we can store Christmas ornaments so we can decorate and have traditions every year that she’ll remember when she’s older.”
“Are you sure you’re not talking about what my daughter and I want, because it sounds an awful lot like my dreams for us.”
“Hmmm, imagine that,” I mumbled, knowing that I was already falling down the rabbit hole and dreaming about what I could do with that much money. “I want to do so much for her.”
“I hear ya, sweetheart.”
◆◆◆
“You live here, too?” I asked Rowdy as we got back into the truck. We had finished ‘bedding the horses down for the night’ as he called it and then walked hand in hand to his truck.
“Yeah,” Rowdy started the truck and motioned toward a small house further up the drive. “We can go there to talk if you’re comfortable with it; if not, we can go have dessert at Martha’s Diner and talk there.”
“Would it be too much if I said I’d like to do both?” I laughed. “If it’s too far to drive back and forth, I understand.”
“Not too much effort at all, Sierra.” Rowdy turned the truck around in the grassy area beside the dirt drive and we headed back in the direction of town. “Tell me something about yourself that a fiancé should know.”
“Are you my fiancé?”
“We haven’t really decided yet, have we?” Rowdy shrugged. “Tell me something anyway.”
“I hate pickles.”
“Okay. All pickles or just dill?”
“Let me rephrase that: I hate pickles on a burger, but only if they’re hot.” I
