he was in the better.
Then, with the light fading outside, he wandered to the back of the house and looked out over the empty yard.
To catch sight of Colleen, pushing a huge wheelbarrow.
What the—?
He was in front of the stable she was in in less than two minutes. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Colleen’s head jerked up at the sound of his sharp voice, and the huge grey horse beside her baulked. Immediately her hand came out, smoothing along the horse’s wide neck to reassure it. ‘Evening stables. What does it look like I’m doing? Belly dancing?’
Eamonn scowled as she smiled at her own joke. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. Isn’t there someone else?’
‘The two girls we have left do most of it before they go home, but I do a wee skip round and check the rugs before I go to bed.’
‘On your own?’
‘Yes, on my own.’ His astonishment seemed to surprise her. ‘I’m pregnant, Eamonn. I’m not in a wheelchair. And keeping moving is good for me.’
‘Wheeling a bloody great wheelbarrow about isn’t.’
‘Are you a gynaecologist now?’
‘No, I don’t need to be. It’s common sense.’ His eyes narrowed as the large horse stepped towards him to investigate. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and spread his feet wider, as if preparing himself for an attack, which made Colleen laugh aloud.
‘I’d tell you Bob doesn’t bite, but I’d be lying. And if you keep your hands in your pockets like that he’ll think you have food.’
Eamonn removed his hands, held his palms out for the horse to nuzzle in evidence of his lack of food, and tilted his head to see past to what Colleen was doing.
She was lifting droppings onto a shavings fork. While he opened his mouth to give out to her again, she spoke in a softly firm voice. ‘Bob, back.’
Bob dutifully stepped back from the door.
‘And another one. Back.’
He stepped back again, leaving enough room for Colleen to deposit what she was carrying into the wheelbarrow she had placed across the open doorway. She looked around the stable floor again. ‘I’ll be done in a minute anyway. I’ve just this row to do.’
‘I’m not happy with you pushing that wheelbarrow around in your condition.’
‘Thoughtful as that is, I’ve survived without your help this far. I can make it to the end.’
‘Are you always this stubborn?’
Her head turned as she fluffed the wood shavings into place, one eyebrow quirking. ‘I’ve always been this stubborn. Don’t you remember that much?’
‘I remember you frequently being a pain in the—’
She laughed. ‘Oh, I was that too.’
He wheeled the barrow out of the way as she came out of the stable, pausing to pat the horse’s neck again before she closed the stable door, bolted the top bolt and kicked the bottom into place.
She then turned to retrieve the barrow. But Eamonn jerked his head towards the next stable. Stubborn only went so far with him. ‘If I can’t stop you then I’m wheeling the barrow. So hurry up.’
‘I can do this just fine without your help.’
The rise of her chin and the glint in her eyes amused him, gave him a small sense of pride at her fierce independence that almost made him smile. Almost. If he smiled she’d think she’d won. And she hadn’t. ‘I believe you. But I’m here now, so learn to live with it. Now, hurry up. It’s bloody freezing out here.’
‘Warmer in Borneo, was it?’
‘Peru. And, yes it was.’He jerked his head again, ‘Go on, then.’
After a moment of hesitation, she sighed, and then moved to the next stable, where a finer darker head was over the door. ‘Get back, Meg.’
Eamonn watched with less surprise as the animal did as it was bid. ‘Do they all jump when you ask them to?’
‘They know who’s boss.’
He wheeled the barrow into place the same way she had at the previous stable, before leaning against the doorframe, watching her movements, and that of the horse, with cautious eyes. ‘You’re still taking a chance going in there, though. You know that.’
‘Everyone who works with horses is taking a chance. It comes with the territory.’
Oh, he knew. Knew better than most people on the street. But then he’d seen first-hand what could go wrong, and that kind of memory tended to stick with a person. The day his mother had taken her bad fall he’d been ten. It had been the last time she had ever sat on a horse, and less than five years later she’d quit trying to like horses for her husband’s sake. And left.
As the old memory seared across his mind and his heart, leaving a dull ache in its wake, he glanced around the empty yard. ‘Don’t any of the stable girls live in any more?’
‘Not since the last foreign groom we had, no. They tend to live in the town. There’s more going on there. The shops are closer—and, more importantly, the pubs.’
Eamonn put the pieces together. ‘So you’re out here doing this on your own with no one even within shouting distance?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She set her fingertips against the horse’s side. ‘Meg, over. Good girl.’
He was scowling by the time she dumped into the barrow again. ‘So you’re telling me you could get hurt and there would be no one here to help you ’til morning?’
‘Pretty much.’ She stopped, leaning on the handle of the shavings fork as she studied his scowling face in the dim light outside the stable. Then she shook her head and smiled. ‘Jeez.’ She fumbled in her jacket pocket and produced a small mobile phone, which she wiggled back and forth in front of her. ‘I can call for help. See? Prepared for every emergency, that’s me. So you can quit fussing over me like an old mother hen. I’m grand.’
‘Well, while I’m here you don’t do this stuff alone.’
‘What are you, now? My guardian angel?’
A brief nod in reply and, ‘For now.’
The firmly spoken words made her eyes widen for a split second, and Eamonn felt a smile build on the corners of his mouth again. The kind of smile that made it all the way down inside his chest. When was the last time he’d smiled like that?
But then it was the first time since he’d come home that he’d felt vaguely in control. More like his usual self. And it was an even longer time since he’d had so capable a sparring partner. A victory was a victory, no matter how small.
Her
