The miniature Carson pushed his white cowboy hat back and gave her a careful look before nodding in the direction of the horses. “I’m Brandon. Are those your ponies?”
“Yes, they are.”
“My mom says I’m about big enough to start riding.” His gaze shifted to Derek. “Wow, that belt buckle is cool.”
She glanced up and saw the buckle in question. The one their father had won for a national championship. A belt buckle she’d told Derek to get rid of. He could sell it. He could give it away. She didn’t care. But she did care that he held on to the past and to his hero worship of their father.
Derek shot her a look telling her to mind her own business.
“Thanks.” Derek glanced toward the ponies. “Want to check them out? Carson can list all the reasons why I’m...”
Derek stopped himself with a warning look from Ruby. The last thing they needed was for Derek to antagonize Carson Thorn.
The little boy looked at him, waiting expectantly for him to finish what he planned to say.
“Carson can tell you why I’m the best person to teach you to rope,” Derek finished with a grin.
Ruby watched her brother walk away with the child. She looked back at Carson, watched him watching the two—one tall and lanky, the other small and confident. She hated that looking at Carson brought it all back—the hope, the laughter. The dreams.
The heartache.
Smoke and mirrors, she realized now. It had all been an illusion. The smoke cleared and she’d seen reality the day Carson’s dad had handed her a check and told her to go to college, be someone, but not to count on being a Thorn.
“Did you put up the cameras?” Carson asked as he continued to watch Derek with the child. They had retrieved a rope from the barn. Derek was showing the little boy how it worked and then letting him give it a shot. The lasso flew through the air and fell to the ground short of the target—the fence post.
“No. I have to wait until I can pay an electrician. And why are you really here? The cattle stolen last night?”
“No.”
“Something else?”
“He’s my nephew. Jenna’s son,” Carson said, watching the little boy climb the fence and reach for a buckskin pony the color of wheat.
That wasn’t really an answer to her question. She considered pushing, but why? His answer would probably just upset her. Not only that, but she’d latched on to another issue that proved she couldn’t be in Little Horn and not get all tangled up in the past.
“Is Jenna in town?” Silly question. If her son was in town, she was in town.
“No,” he answered, his firm lips held in a straight and unforgiving line. “She showed up early this morning and dropped him off. I’m not quite sure what to do with him.”
“How long do you think you’ll have him?”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw and shook his head. “I don’t have a clue. She said a few days, but I’m a little worried.”
“About her?” She shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t delve into his life or the uncertainty in his expression.
“Yes. But I’ll call her later and see what we can figure out.”
“If she’s leaving him for any length of time, he should probably be in school.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked down at her. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. She took me by surprise.”
“Ambushed.” She grinned as she said it.
“Something like that.”
“You’ll have to enroll him if she doesn’t come back.”
He nodded but his gaze had drifted back to the boy. “Once I can talk to her and get more out of her than she needs time, I’ll do what I have to do. What are the ponies for?”
“Riding lessons.”
He nodded yet again and headed that way, toward the horses, her brother, his nephew. She followed.
“Where are the security cameras?” he asked as he stopped to watch Derek lift his nephew over the fence and to the ground.
“In the back of my truck,” Ruby answered. “Derek, could you get a saddle for the buckskin?”
Derek let a shoulder rise and fall. “Sure. Brandon, let me lift you back over the fence.”
Brandon shook his head. “I can do it.”
Sure enough he climbed the fence, dropping to the ground next to his uncle. His very solemn uncle, who watched him as if he was some type of alien creature. She guessed to Carson the child was foreign and strange.
He was a child. Carson had probably never been a child. Even as a teenager he’d been older than his years. She imagined as a boy he’d been just as serious.
“Which saddle?” Derek asked as he headed to the barn.
“I only have three. Grab the one you think will work best.”
“What are you doing?” Carson asked.
“Giving your nephew a free riding lesson. And then you can tell everyone what a great time he had.”
“Can I?” he asked.
“Please,” she added. And he smiled, shifting the seriousness from his features, relaxing just enough to make him look younger, less controlled. More like himself.
“It would be a decent thing to do,” Derek added.
“Yes, it would,” Carson agreed. His careful gaze lingered on the six horses in varied sizes from pony to small horse.
After a cautious look at the two of them, Derek walked away, taking his new friend with him. Ruby was left to deal with Carson and leftover emotions that should have been put to rest years ago.
It wouldn’t help to look at him, to look into brown eyes that were at once serious and warm. It wouldn’t help to think about how it had felt to stand this close to him at seventeen, thinking they would always be together.
What helped was thinking about how it felt to leave thinking he might come after her, that he might still want her once he realized how much she’d given up for him.
He hadn’t come looking for her. She’d done her best to forget.
“Do you have a ladder?” Carson shifted his attention away from the horses, away from watching Derek Donovan as he saddled a small buckskin
