on to her calm. Gordy needed orderliness and calm from her. ‘Whoa, Gordy. It’s okay. Whoa...’
He was just scared and in pain. She squatted at his side and, despite his thrashing, got the straps circling his belly unbuckled and the spangled saddle off. Freeing him from the extra weight didn’t help him rise on his own, and she needed to see him on his feet.
He wouldn’t bite her. He’d never bitten her.
Taking a breath, she leaned in, arms surging for his chest and belly to try and help the small stallion to his feet.
‘Jolie, his leg is broken.’ She heard a deep man’s voice, winded but loud. Someone who’d been running too, familiar and unfamiliar even if he said her name. Too busy to question it further, she tried again to lift Gordy. So heavy. Jolie adjusted her arms and tried harder, straining to get the tiny stallion off the ground without putting any pressure on that leg.
He got on his knees, but she wasn’t strong enough to get him all the way up. The position put pressure put on his leg and her favorite friend peeled his lips back and bit into her forearm. The shock of the bite hit her almost as sharply as the pain radiating up her arm.
She must have hurt him because it wasn’t a quick bite. His jaw clenched and ground slightly, like he was holding back something intent on hurting him. He held on, and so did Jolie.
Someone stepped to the other side of the horse and put his arms around Gordy’s middle. ‘On three.’ She gritted her teeth, counted, and the excessively large man lifted with her.
This time Gordy’s back legs came under him and they got him to his feet, or least to the three good ones. She needed to see him standing, assess how bad the break was. It occurred to her that she should be more freaked out about this.
Veterinary medicine had come a long way since the days when a broken leg had been a death sentence for a horse, but Gordy may as well be living in the Wild West. He had a history of leg problems. Jolie remembered what they’d gone through the last time and what Gordy had gone through. Someone would make that terrible suggestion. Someone would say they should put him down... She needed to keep that from happening.
She also really needed him to stop biting. A few deep breaths and she’d be able to control the pain, but it’d be easier if he’d let go. Having her screaming at him would freak the tiny horse out and he was already afraid.
‘Let go now,’ the man said, pulling her attention back to him over Gordy’s pristine white back. She expected to see a vet, or maybe someone who had traveled with the circus in the past...
Ten years had changed his face. Broadened it. Made it more angular. But she knew those eyes—the boy she’d known ten years ago. The boy she’d loved.
Reece wasn’t supposed to be there yet. And he probably wasn’t supposed to be looking like he was about to throw up.
‘I can’t let go.’ Jolie grunted. Speaking took effort. Suddenly everything took effort. Controlling the pain. Controlling her voice. Breathing... ‘He’s got me.’ And letting go might just mean that he fell again, hurt himself worse, and maybe his teeth would take her flesh with him.
As much as Jolie might normally appreciate the value of distraction to help her control wayward emotions, Reece was the wrong kind of distraction. He just added a new dimension of badness to the waves racing up her arm. She didn’t want him there. He wasn’t supposed to come until they were all on the farm, where she’d have room to avoid him. He’d stayed gone for ten years so why in the world would he come to see the show now?
Because she didn’t want it. But here he was, helping with Gordy and being gigantic. Good lord, he was big.
She could use that to help Gordy.
Get the horse and the show back on their feet.
The throng of people gathered around, children in the audience pressed against the raised outside of the ring, getting as close as they could... The weight of all their emotions pressed into her.
It had to be their emotions she was feeling. She’d mastered her own emotions several years ago, and maintained proper distance from anything hairy, she reminded herself. And she’d regain control of them as soon as she got Gordy out of there and Reece the hell away from her.
First things first. ‘We have to get him out of here.’ She needed out of there too.
A single nod and Reece reached for the horse’s mouth while she kept him standing. Large, strong hands curled around the snout and lower jaw and he firmly pried the miniature horse’s jaws apart, all the while speaking to him gently, making comforting sounds that did nothing to comfort her—but which seemed to do the trick with Gordy.
Or the combination of comfort and brute strength did the trick. Gordy released her bleeding arm and immediately Reece slid his arms under the horse’s neck and through his legs to support his chest and hind quarters. Then he did what she’d never seen anyone do before: He picked the horse up.
‘Which way?’ Strained voice to go with strained muscles, and the look of nausea was still on his face. How had Reece gotten so strong? She thought doctors studied all the time and played golf... Even as small as Gordy was, he was still a horse and weighed a good one hundred and eighty pounds. But Reece carried the miniature horse out of the ring. By himself.
Right. Not the time to think about that. Gordy was hurt. She was hurt. The show had stopped. Children were probably very scared and upset. ‘This way.’ She cleared a path and led Reece and his load out the back of the tent, the way she’d come, off toward the stables.
He could carry Gordy to the stable and then go away, let her have her mind back. The stable was Bohannon property, she would just order him out and take care of her horse.
Someone else would step in, get the show moving again, and she didn’t care who that task fell to. As long as the vet came soon.
The stable wasn’t far, but by the time they reached it, Reece was breathing hard. Maybe harder than she was while desperately trying not to feel nothing—not the pain in her arm, and really not the anger and betrayal bubbling up from that dark place she stuffed all her Reece emotions.
Once in Gordy’s stall with the fresh hay she’d put down earlier, Jolie directed, ‘Lay him in the straw.’ That was something she could think to say. One step at a time, that’s as far ahead as she could make her mind work. It took more effort than it might have otherwise done if she hadn’t been bitten and her arm didn’t ache to the point she was considering that maybe the bone had fractured...
The rest of her mental capacity was filled to the brim with the echoes of voices reminding her of Gordy’s history, the way Mack would undoubtedly react, and all the animals she’d lost over the years. Of everything she’d lost...
Ignoring those voices took effort.
Nothing was going to happen to Gordy. He was practically a sibling. Her first mount when she’d been little more than a toddler herself.
Jolie forced herself to still. Reece gently laid the injured but considerably calmer animal in the bedding. ‘I think he remembers you,’ she murmured. Gordy remembered Reece, even if he looked loads different—even if he’d bitten her. He remembered Reece enough to go docilely into the straw.
Still not a good enough reason to keep Reece in the stable. She couldn’t focus
