path brought him a certain measure of peace.
“Cal? Wait a sec…”
He turned. Dawn was leaning against the trunk of a cottonwood, her hands cupped over her nose and mouth. “The odor,” she mumbled from behind her hands. At his probably perplexed expression—it was just a little fresh dung, for heaven’s sake, and the wind was blowing away from them at that—she added, “Everything smells…stronger right now.”
So much for peaceful thoughts. Not even thinking about Dawn’s breasts was going to do it this time.
“Oh. Uh…you wanna go back…?”
But she shook her head, pushing away from the tree and plastering on a fake smile. “Nope. All better. Let’s go.”
Never mind that she looked like she was gonna hurl for sure.
In the pasture, most of the mares, all pregnant, as well as the ten or so foals he was still hoping to sell before winter set in, stood in sociable clumps of twos and threes, like folks at a barbecue. Cinnamon, a sleek and sassy bay, pregnant with her ninth foal, ambled over to the fence, begging as usual. In this light, the mare’s coat and Dawn’s hair were nearly the same color.
Cal patted the mare’s glistening neck, chuckling when she nibbled at his hair. The mare whuffled, nodding toward Dawn, then back to him.
“Cindy, meet Dawn. She’s gonna have a baby, too.”
He saw Dawn’s attention snap to him, but by then Cindy had cantilevered her massive head over the fence for some loving. Dawn was smart enough, or needy enough, not to turn down the horse’s offer. She linked the fingers of one hand in the horse’s bridle, stroking the mare’s white stripe with the other, an expression on her face like she wanted to somehow sink into the mare’s calmness and never come out. One of the barn cats, out for his evening hunt, rubbed up against her leg, marking her.
“She’s gorgeous,” Dawn said of the mare. “They all are. What are they?”
“Horses.”
That got a laugh. Well, what you could hear around the snort. “No, doofus. I mean what…kinds. Breeds, whatever.”
He smiled. “Quarter horses, mostly. But I’ve got a couple of mutts, too—the chestnut back by the fence is part Tennessee walker. And we think Josie, there—the dapple gray—might have some Arabian in her.”
“How large is the herd?”
“On the permanent roster? Fifteen mares and a stallion I put out to stud. Plus the youngsters. All retired prizewinners or offspring of prizewinners. Good listeners with easygoing dispositions. And they all produce some real pretty foals.”
“And you’re doing okay?” The concern in her voice made him turn to meet her equally concerned eyes. “It can’t be easy,” she said gently, “making something like this work.”
“I won’t lie and say it is. Especially with foal prices taking a hit the way they’ve done the past couple of years. But the stud fees I get for Twister keep me afloat. In fact, I’ve almost finished buying out my brothers. By this time next year, this’ll be all mine.”
He watched her scan the new up-to-date barn replacing the old barns and outbuildings she would’ve remembered from when they were kids. “You’ve really found your niche in life, haven’t you?”
“I guess I have,” he said, trying to peg whatever he thought he’d heard in her voice, even though figuring out what went on inside women’s heads was definitely not his strong suit.
“There’s something, I don’t know, honest and basic about working with horses. You treat ’em right, they’ll return the favor and do their best for you. I get up in the morning, and even when there’s a boatload of work to do, or even when I’m worried about one of my gals for one reason or another, I look forward to the day. How many people can say that? And really mean it?… Dawn? You okay?”
Her forehead lowered to the mare’s muzzle, she muttered, “I’m sorry,” although almost more to the horse than to him.
“For what?”
She gave him a doleful expression.
“Not for being pregnant?” he said.
“Maybe,” she said on a rush of air. “I just keep feeling I should be apologizing for something. For falling into bed with you, if nothing else.”
“Hey. Unless I missed something, that was a mutual decision. One I sure as hell didn’t regret.” She canted a look at him. “No, not even now.”
“Never mind how stupid it was.”
“Is that what you’re thinking? That it was stupid?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Well, that’s just nuts.”
“And now you’re pissed.”
“Hell, yes, if I’m readin’ you correctly. Just because neither one of us expected more’n that one night doesn’t mean it was stupid. Or meaningless.” He leaned his forearms on the top of the fence, trying to tamp down his irritation. Trying even harder to understand it. Cindy, realizing she was no longer the focus of the conversation, clopped off, her black tail swishing.
“Okay, so we got more out of it than we’d bargained. And yeah, I suppose I’m gonna be in shock for a while about that. But that doesn’t mean anybody has anything to be sorry for. Actually, if you’re lookin’ to blame somebody, it wasn’t you who forgot to check the date on those condoms, was it?”
A pained smile crossed her face. “Should I be flattered it had been that long?”
Cal hesitated, then said, “To tell you the truth…I grabbed one out of the wrong box. The one I should’ve thrown out when I bought the new one the month before.”
“You know, I could have lived without knowing that.”
“Thought women wanted men to be honest with them.”
“Not that honest.”
He glanced over. She was leaning against the fence much like he was, but everything about her was tight—her set mouth, her hands, knotted together in front of her, her shoulders, rising and falling in tandem with her shallow, hurried breaths.
Cal gazed back over the pasture, over what had been his life for more than ten years. Building up his breeding business had given him something to focus on after his parents died, something he could count on to bring him satisfaction and pleasure even when his personal life sucked. He would be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he didn’t need this distraction, this monkey wrench in the orderly, safe, relatively painless life he’d made for himself. At the same time excitement tingled in his veins with the realization that the one thing that had eluded him so far—the promise of family—was suddenly within his grasp.
He stole a quick look at the side of Dawn’s face, her expression resolute. Well, the promise of part of a family, anyway. Where he saw hope, however, his guess was that she saw catastrophe. Where he saw opportunity, she clearly saw entrapment.
