and trumpeted out a cry that made Ciara jump and brought an answering call from the pasture.
“Mo-om!” her son begged, all but dancing in place himself.
The man holding the rope barely glanced at them before turning his back and leading the horse around the side of the barn.
“Really friendly,” she mumbled.
“What?” Mark said.
“Nothing.”
“Can we go watch him turn his horse out to pasture?”
“No, we’ll wait here like the polite people we are.”
“But Mom—” he begged, expression anguished.
“No.”
It had to be five minutes before the man reappeared. He hadn’t bothered hurrying, that was for sure. He’d probably hoped they would go away if he took his time.
She felt a stir of something uncomfortable at the sight of him walking toward them, although she wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t incredibly handsome or anything like that. Nobody would look at him twice if he was standing next to her ex-husband, Ciara started to think. But as this man came closer, she changed her mind. If nothing else, he was...imposing.
Like the already-pastured horse, his hair was brown. Not sun-streaked, not dark, just brown. So was the close-cropped beard that made his face even more expressionless than it already was.
He was large, likely six foot two or even taller, and solidly built. Either he spent a lot of time in a gym, or he did something physical for a living. His stride was long and yet somehow collected, as if he controlled his every movement in a way most people couldn’t.
He was only a few feet away when he said, “May I help you?” in a deep, quiet voice that was civil while also sounding remote.
“That was a quarter horse, right?” Mark said eagerly. “I’ve read all about them in books. Why do you have quarter horses when you don’t have a ranch? They’re best for herding cattle, you know.”
To his credit, the man barely blinked. “I do know. In fact, both mine are trained for cutting.”
“Is that what you were doing today? Why don’t you keep some cows here to practice on?”
Was that a smile glinting in eyes that Ciara decided were gray? “The next-door neighbor—” he nodded to the north “—runs a herd and lets me, er, practice on his.” He held up a hand to stop her son’s next barrage of questions. “And today I went on a trail ride.”
“Oh. What I wanted to know is—”
Ciara cut him off. “That’s enough, Mark.” She met the neighbor’s eyes. “We stopped by to introduce ourselves. We bought the place next door.”
“I saw lights last night.” He didn’t sound thrilled.
“We arrived late yesterday. The moving truck came and went this morning.”
“I see.”
“My name is Ciara Malloy, and this is my son, Mark. He really likes horses and is hoping you won’t mind if he pets yours if and when they come to our fence line.”
She sensed more than heard a sigh. “That’s fine.”
“Do they bite?” she had to ask.
“Only if they think your fingers are carrots.”
Mark lit up. “Do they like carrots? I wanted Mom to buy sugar cubes ’cuz horses like them, but she didn’t. Maybe they’ll come to the fence if I give them something to eat.”
“An occasional treat is fine,” the man said. “And I do mean occasional. Sugar isn’t healthy in large quantities for horses. A carrot or two a day won’t hurt anything.”
“Cool!” Mark exclaimed.
“Do you know how to give a horse a treat so he doesn’t mistake your fingers for food?”
“I can just hold it out like that, can’t I?” Mark demonstrated.
Another near-soundless sigh. “No, you have to remember that horses can’t see your hand when you hold something out. If you have a minute—” he glanced at Ciara with his eyebrows raised “—I’ll give you a demonstration.”
“You mean I can pet them now?” Mark bounced like an excited puppy. “Mom, did you hear?”
“I heard. Yes, that’s fine.”
“Give me a minute.” The man disappeared into the barn briefly, reappearing with a fistful of carrots. Maybe he was nicer than he appeared; he’d obviously guessed that feeding one measly carrot wasn’t going to cut it for her son.
She trailed man and boy around the corner of the barn, seeing the fence ahead and a kind of lean-to with a big enameled bathtub filled with water and a wooden manger beside it. The horses currently stood side by side, both grinding hay in their mouths.
Mark raced forward. One of the horses swung away in apparent alarm, and the other threw up his head.
“Gently,” the neighbor said. “You have to be quiet and calm or you’ll scare them. Keep your voice down. Make your movements slow.”
“Oh. I can do that.” Mark tripped, fell forward and had to grab the fence to keep from going down. Both horses shied and ended up twenty feet away.
Their owner cast a look at Ciara in which she read understandable desperation. If he wasn’t used to kids—
“Gently,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry.” Mark quivered with passionate intensity. “They’ll still come to me, won’t they? So I can feed them?”
“Greed will overcome them,” the man said drily. He whistled and held up the carrots. As speedily as they’d departed, the horses returned.
Ciara stayed a few feet back, watching as Mark learned how to hold out a treat on the palm of his hand, where horses liked to be stroked and how and what they didn’t like. He laughed when their soft lips tickled his hand as they whisked pieces of carrot off it, and laughed again when one blew out a breath with slimy orange bits of carrot that got on his face. He asked what their names were and nodded solemnly at the answer: Hoodoo and Aurora. Both apparently had long, unintelligible names under which they were registered with the Quarter Horse Association, but they didn’t know them. The man had come up with Hoodoo; Aurora was used to that name when he’d bought her. He corrected Mark when he described Hoodoo as a chestnut; for some reason, that coloration was called sorrel when it came to quarter horses.
“Hoodoo is prettier than Aurora.” After a sidelong glance, Mark placed one foot on the bottom rail and his elbows on the top rail in exact imitation of the neighbor. “Do you think she minds?”
“I doubt horses think in terms of pretty. And Hoodoo is actually her son. I did have her bred the once.”
“Will
