Always Remember (5 page)

“Sam?”

Caught.

“Dad’s in bed.” Jessie leaned against the gate. “Is it almost time?”

The mare neighed and kicked out one leg, raising her head and tossing it as though in answer to the question. Nate stroked one hand across her girth, soothing, reassuring.

“Soon.” His attention flickered to the young man crouched on the hay near the mare’s head. “I was just about to call the vet.”

He straightened and the boy slid forward, his hands replacing Nate’s, comforting the mare. Jessie climbed onto the first rung of the fence and leaned over the edge. “Problems?”

“Might be.” Swinging open the gate, Nate hesitated, his gaze landing on the boy. He leaned forward, one arm braced against the top rung, pinning her between the heat of his body and the cold wooden post at her front, and lowered his voice. “Mind sitting with the boy? He’s a little nervous. It’s his first time, you know.”

“First times are nerve racking.”
First times.
Warmth flooded her cheeks. Did he ever think of the night when they’d uncovered another level to the friendship they both treasured? He’d been cocky and sure in his attempt to goad her into making love with him.

The moment she said yes, the cockiness faded, the sureness died, and he was suddenly as nervous as she was. From under the sweep of her lashes, she peered up at him. He hadn’t moved away from her. Still and steady like a rock. Her rock. “Go on. I’ve done this before.”

“It’s been a long time.”

His gaze met hers, intense and potent — surprisingly hungry for a man who looked delicious enough, a woman would be crazy not to stay the night and serve him breakfast the next morning. Jessie’s attention centered on his mouth, warm and delectable.

 
Once, he’d tasted like all her favorite things — rain in the spring, ice cream smothered with fudge, pizza on a Friday night. She shifted in the small space between his chest and the railing, bumping him back with the edge of her shoulder, and wondered if she was crazy for remembering the past when he stood within reach.

Scrambling up the wooden structure, her heart doing a tap dance in her chest, she peered back at him. “I’ll shout if I see anything wrong, okay?”

Jessie landed with a thud on the opposite side of the gate, her knees absorbing the shock of the hard cement beneath the hay, and slid into the spot across from the boy. Behind her, she heard Nate make his way to the tack room.

The boy glanced up at her and she smiled at him. “Hi. I’m Jessie. Sam’s daughter.”

Awareness washed the worry from the kid’s hazel eyes. “
The
Jessie Adams?”

“Yep. That’d be me.”

“Man, Sara’s gonna to be pissed when she finds out you were here.”

Sara again.

Jessie forced the smile to stay put. No, she wasn’t going to ask about Sara. She refused to even think of the other women in Nate’s life. “And you’d be?”

“Hale. I work here, ma’am.”

Ma’am?
The glint of an earring shone from his earlobe and she took note of the whiskers on his chin. Heck, she wasn’t nearly old enough to be his mother. Big sister, maybe. How old was he anyway? Nineteen? Twenty?

Jessie held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Hale.”

He raised his hand and looked at the dirt on it. A self-conscious flush worked its way up his neck and into his face, and he dropped his hand back to the mare’s belly. “Sorry. Don’t want to get you dirty.”

“I don’t mind a little dirt.” When the boy continued to ignore her outstretched hand, Jessie turned her attention to the mare. “So how’s she doing?”

He ran his hands down the sleek coat. “Nate thinks the foal may be breech.”

She reached out and caught one of his hands, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry. Nate’s been doing this sort of thing forever. He always knows what to do.”

Relief crossed the boy’s features. He stroked the mare again, excitement in his eyes when he glanced back at Jessie. “Yeah, he’s kinda cool for an old guy.”

Jessie nearly lost it right then and there. She swallowed the laughter back, kept her expression even, and wondered if the kid had ever called Nate ‘old guy’ to his face. Probably not.

“Yeah, the old guy’s kinda cool.” She stroked her hand down the mare’s back. “Usually the mares wait till us humans are out of sight before they deliver. Did you know they have control over the delivery of their foals?”

As Hale shook his head, a familiar voice bellowed from out of the semi-darkness. “Jess, can you come here for a moment?”

Tension returned to the boy’s face and a worried frown puckered his forehead. “Guess you better see what he wants, ma’am.”

“Call us if her condition changes.”

“Uh huh.” Lips thinning with resolve, he nodded his head. “Sure thing, ma’am. Everything’s cool. Under control.”

Jessie scrambled to her feet, hurried out of the stall, and collided with a solid object. The impact sent her tumbling backward and she landed flat on her derriere on the hard floor. Stunned, she shoved the hair out of her face and peeled her eyes open.
 

Nate, who else? Before she could pick herself up out of the dirt, he caught her under the arms, lifted her up, and set her down in front of him. As his big hands brushed over the front of her jacket and across the seat of her pants, a shimmer of awareness raced through her body.

Jessie stepped out of reach. “You roared?”

“I did and you came running. I think I like that in a woman.” The barest hint of a teasing smile eased the taunt line of his mouth. He leaned one arm on the top railing of the gate. “How’re you doing in there, boy?”

“Fine, sir. But Morning Glory’s not doin’ so well.”

“Hale?”

The boy gulped and looked up.

“I couldn’t get hold of the Doc. We’re going to examine her ourselves and find out if the foal is breech.”

“W–what then?”

“Well, boy.” His voice softened in an attempt to reassure him. “If she can’t deliver the foal alone, we’ll help her.”

Hale’s shoulders slumped. “I was afraid you’d say that, sir.”

“It’ll be fine, son.” A frown flitted across his brow, brief and barely noticeable except to Jessie. God, how could she still read him so well? “I need Jessie’s help to wash. Holler if you need us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jess? We better move before Hale passes out.”

Nate’s voice was soft, intimate.
Reassuring.
Thank goodness he was there.

As she followed him toward the tack room, a flash of white caught her attention. The stallion poked his head out of the stall. Without stopping, Nate gestured toward the horse.

“That’s Diablo. He covers all the mares in the stable. Not much good for anything else since he won’t let anyone ride him. Don’t get too close to him.”

Jessie followed him into the tack room, watched as he stripped off his jacket, and tried not to notice the way his T-shirt clung to his biceps and chest. He grabbed the bottle of disinfectant soap and headed for the sink to scrub.

“Grab a stack of towels from the cupboard over there, will you?”

She slipped out of her jacket and went in search of the towels. Pulling out an armload, she set them on the counter top and waited, watched as he lathered and scrubbed his hands and forearms, all the way past his elbows. Jessie looked for something to take her mind off the smooth play of muscles beneath the T-shirt. “He called me ma’am.”

“What?”

“Your hired hand. He called me ma’am. And he calls you sir.”

Nate glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “Feeling old, Jess?”

“Not till I got here,” she replied. “Whose kid is he?”

Nate pushed at the tap with his elbow and missed. Jessie reached around him, her hand at the small of his back to keep her balance, her chest pressed against his arm. She stopped breathing — could have sworn he stopped, too — twisted the tap open and quickly stepped back. Watching him rinse off the soap, she tried to steady the erratic beat of her heart.

“Hale wasn’t raised on a ranch. He lost his mother when he was seven, then lost his dad a couple of years later. He lived on the streets of Vancouver till he was thirteen, found himself a gang, then put food in his belly and a roof over his head by stealing cars. When the cops caught him, they did a trace on his relatives. Turns out Harley’s dad had a younger brother that no one ever talked about.”

“So Harley got custody of him?”

“Till he turns eighteen. She tried to straighten him out, but every time they had a fight, he’d run back to Vancouver. So she finally asked me to give him a job for the summer with hopes he’d settle down.”

Straightening his back, he faced her, accepting the clean towel she handed him. She reached around him to turn off the tap, close the soap bottle, and set it aside, conscious of his gaze following her every movement.

“He’s a good kid,” Nate continued. “Seems to like it here. He’s constantly in Sam’s face, asking questions, driving your poor old man crazy.”

“He doesn’t like Hale?”

“Oh, Sam likes him, all right. Just isn’t ready to admit the boy found a home here and a place in all our hearts.”

Her place. Envy grabbed her by surprise. Jessie tamped it down. The kid needed her family more than she did, just like Harley used to.

“You ready?”

She gave him a cocky smile and gestured for him to lead the way. “After you,
sir
.”

“Thank you,
ma’am
, don’t mind if I do.”

As she followed him into the stall, sadness filtered through her. They fell into their old routine so easily. Why did she have to get pregnant that summer and ruin everything?

Dropping to her knees beside Hale, she stroked the mare along the side of her neck. “How’re you doing, Mama? Ready to see your baby?”

Nate knelt on the floor. “I’ll have to examine her, Hale. Do you want to see how it’s done?”

Jessie urged the boy toward Nate. “Go on. I’ll keep her calm.”

“
Morning Glory
. Sara named her Morning Glory.”

Sara again. The boy spoke her name with nearly the same reverence as Nate.

Hale scrambled through the straw to Nate’s side. “What do you want me to do?”

“Watch and learn, son. Someday you’ll have to do this yourself.”

Jessie coaxed the mare’s head onto her lap. She stroked the horse’s neck, murmuring gentle, reassuring words, but her eyes stayed on Nate as he performed the examination. The concentration on his face was fierce. Despite the chill in the night air, moisture gathered on his forehead as he felt for the foal.

“Here’s the legs.” Another long silence was broken by a muttered curse as he finished the exam and sat back on his haunches. Grabbing the towel from his shoulder, he dried off and met her gaze. His eyes were full of concern. “The soles are turned upward. Definitely a breech birth.”

Hale muttered a single expletive, drawing Nate’s attention. Laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he squeezed gently. “Don’t worry, son, I’ve done this before. Everything will be okay.”

Jessie felt her breath snag in her throat as the two men looked at each other — one so young and unsure, the other older, confident of his abilities. They might have been father and son — could have been father and son. Did Hale realize how lucky he was to have been sent to Nate?

Her throat clogged with emotion and she made a silent promise. If the foal lived, she’d somehow find the courage to tell Nate about the baby she’d given away.

Hands on hips, Nate inhaled deeply. “You two ready? I’m not going to think less of either of you if you choose to leave.”

Hale looked a little green and Jessie didn’t doubt that she did, too. But she’d done this before, sat at her father’s side while he delivered a stubborn foal into the world.

She took a deep steadying breath and shook her head. “I couldn’t walk away now, even if I wanted to. How about you, Hale?”

“No, ma’am.” His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. “No, sir. I may end up face first on the floor, but I ain’t leavin’.”

His attempt at humor brought a crooked smile to Nate’s mouth. He turned to Jessie, the grin spreading to his eyes. “Are you sure, ma’am?”

“If necessary, I’ll supply the stretcher for your assistant, sir.”

His smile changed, softened by humor, and she realized how much she wanted to touch him. Just to feel the solid comfort of his presence. Just to ensure herself he wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

She was caught by Nate’s gaze, by the memories they shared, by the awareness passing between them. He wasn’t immune to her, after all. But what difference did that make? She couldn’t go back, couldn’t undo the past.

“Hale, hand me a couple of those clean towels. Jess, keep her calm for me, okay, sweetheart?”

She nodded once, her heart caught unawares by the endearment, but he’d already shifted his attention to the mare. Covering his hand with the towel, he reached inside the horse and searched for the hind legs of the foal. Latching onto them, he braced the soles of his boots against the cement and tugged. The mare bucked.

Softly humming a lullaby, Jessie stroked the mare’s head and divided her attention between keeping the mare calm and the miracle about to occur.

With his strong hands and firm but gentle motions, Nate set about bringing a new life into the world. He pulled the foal’s hind legs downward toward the mare’s feet. First the hooves appeared, then the hind legs. Inch by inch, the baby ventured forth from the safety of its mother’s womb into the chill air. Coated with protective fluid, it lay in Nate’s arms, still and lifeless.

Jessie felt her heart stop, then resume pounding with an intensity that roared in her ears. Beside Nate, Hale sat motionless. A different kind of fear enveloped Jessie as Nate cleared the foal’s mouth. He grabbed a straw from the floor and tickled its nose. The foal sneezed and started breathing.

So did Jessie.

Tears gathered in her eyes and she glanced at the exhausted mare lying on the floor. “Look, Mama, here’s your baby.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nate shifted the squirming foal in his arms and peered down at the genitals. “It’s a filly.”

“Oh, Nate, she’s beautiful.”

He raised his head and saw the wonder on Jessie’s face — tears of joy glistening in her eyes, a silly, wobbly, precious grin that threatened to slip away — and his heart seemed to roll over in his chest. “Prettier than the sunrise, sweetheart.”