if I know how she does it.” Lonny, their newest and youngest hand, shook his head. “He was as spooked as I’ve ever seen him.”
“He’s been off his feed,” Cassie frowned consideringly. “Maybe we should get the vet out here to give him a going-over. He could be coming down with a virus.”
Jim reached out to take the lead rope and Cassie stepped back. “You’re getting as good at that as Hawk, Cass.”
She laughed. “No one’s as good as Hawk when it comes to communicating with animals. But I’ve picked up a thing or two from him.”
“You’ve put in a long day. Why don’t you knock off?” The older man handed the horse off to Lonny, who led it away.
Gritting her teeth, Cassie mentally counted to ten before returning evenly, “I’m okay.”
In his forties, Jim Burnhardt was their senior hand, and an invaluable help around the ranch. But he’d gotten into the habit of watching over her like a mama over her chicks in her brother’s absence. Which told her, better than words, that her brother had specifically instructed him to do so.
Jim faced her again, eyeing her shrewdly. “When’s Hawk coming home, anyway?”
“We spoke a few days ago, but he didn’t say when he was returning.” Removing his hat, Jim slicked his hand through his hair. “I was planning on going to town for more feed, but if you’re going to work some more, I can stick around.”
You’d think, Cassie thought aggrievedly, that she hadn’t been working alongside the ranch hands since she was ten. Not for the first time, she wished she could give her brother a swift kick for making everyone around here suddenly see her as an invalid. “Go ahead and pick up the feed. The hardware store called, too, and the rolls of barbed wire we ordered are in. If you leave now, it’s still going to be close to dark before you can get back. Why don’t you just go straight home from town. You can bring the supplies with you tomorrow morning.”
Jim hesitated, clearly torn between the logic of her suggestion and a misdirected sense of responsibility. “That makes sense, but…are you done outside here for the day, then?”
Patience, never her strong suit, abruptly splintered. “For Pete’s sake, Jim, I’m more than capable of—” One look at the man’s stoic countenance had her biting off the rest of her sentence. It was clear from his expression that her outburst wasn’t going to change his mind, and he wasn’t the one she needed to convince, at any rate. Hawk was behind this new suffocating mantle of protectiveness all the ranch hands had donned in his absence. Snapping at Jim wasn’t going to change that.
“Fine.” Her surrender wasn’t managed with particular graciousness. “Tell Lonny and the others they can leave once the chores are done. I’ll go concentrate on paperwork.”
“That’s good, then,” Jim said, plainly relieved. “You probably have plenty of that with the Greenlaurel Horse Sale coming up.”
The fact that he was right didn’t make her feel any better as she headed from the corral to the house. She much preferred spending her time engaged in physical labor. The trouble with paperwork was that it left the mind too much time to think. And those thoughts all too frequently focused on the one man she’d loved, then lost.
At least, she consoled herself, he was alive. The county rumor mill was alive and in good working order. She’d heard Shane was headed home, but details of his health had been maddeningly spare.
She took off her boots in the mudroom before heading through the kitchen toward the den. She’d spent more than a few months caught with emotions swinging wildly between hope and despair. There had been a finality to their last scene that was only partially owed to their breakup. Despite his refusal to believe her, she’d known what he’d been heading toward when he left for Afghanistan.
She just hadn’t known if he’d come back alive.
The dream she’d had about his assignment there had been maddeningly incomplete, a collage of hazy snippets bursting with violence. The shot ringing out in the dead of night…the blood pouring from his body as it tumbled out of the jeep to the ground…
Living for months with those images branded on her mind would be enough to cause stress for anyone. And more than ever she was convinced that the recent changes in her health were due to just that: stress. She’d neither eaten nor slept well following Shane’s departure. The waiting had been agonizing. Surely that was enough to explain the sudden lapses in thought she’d been experiencing the past couple months; the short interruptions in concentration and speech that had gotten Hawk increasingly concerned. Especially after it happened while she was working with the stallions.
She walked to the den and, with a sigh, settled in behind the large desk. She and her twin brother despised paperwork equally, and when he was around, they split the workload. But in his absence, she was forced to shoulder his share as well as her own. It wasn’t a chore she relished.
It was unusual for Hawk to leave the ranch for any amount of time. But when the doctors in Greenlaurel had been unable to come up with a reason for her condition, he’d been determined to find one himself. He’d undertaken the search for their birth mother with the express purpose of discovering something, anything, in their genetic history that would help treat Cassie’s condition.
And he’d been successful, for the most part. He’d managed to trace their birth mother, who was long deceased. He’d even, to her amazement, discovered they had a brother, a triplet, who she’d yet to meet. He’d been stingy with the details. But he had found notes that indicated their mother had experienced spells much like Cassie’s. He’d called Cassie a few days earlier with a recipe for a tea that helped with the worst of the symptoms. The organic drink had accomplished what the endless round of medical tests and medications had failed to do. Unfortunately, she couldn’t convince the hired help of that fact.
An hour went by, and then another. Cassie took a break for a quick dinner of soup and a salad before trudging back to the den. If she stayed at it until bedtime, she’d just about be caught up. With any luck, that would mean she wouldn’t have to do more paperwork until right before the sale, which would be in another ten days. And by that time, Hawk would be home and she just might be able to guilt him into believing it was his turn at the desk.
The Greenlaurel Horse Sale was becoming a major source of income for the ranch. As their reputation as breeders of horses for dressage and jumping had grown, they’d had to do less and less traveling around the country, finding instead that potential buyers were seeking them out. The local sale gave them an avenue to showcase their stock and to place orders. Their sale bills had been circulating for months. Local motels in the area were fully booked for the date. And although Hawk had been vague about when he was returning home, there wasn’t a doubt in Cassie’s mind that he’d arrive well before the event.
She was almost finished double-checking the files on each of the horses they were offering for sale when her fingers faltered, then stilled. A kaleidoscope of colors wheeled past her eyes and her heart began to pound. There was a sensation of speed, as if she were hurtling along atop a locomotive, her surroundings a blur. And then just as abruptly the sensations faded, leaving only brief, fragmented flashes in their wake. The bits formed a confusing mural of images that shifted and swirled before gradually settling into a recognizable form.
When the mental fog lifted, she looked around, disoriented. The first thing she saw was the tea she’d mixed with her dinner and carried in here, unfinished. With a hand that still shook, she reached
