The hiking boots she’d pulled from a box in the garage clashed horribly with her black Calvin Klein skirt suit but were far better suited for the puddle-riddled drive and dusty aisles at the barn. She slid into a raincoat and zipped it against the fine mist hanging in the air.
Her stride was long and confident even though she hadn’t been in a stable since she’d followed her father from stall to stall as he mucked. It hadn’t been her thing then, and she was no more comfortable now, but Kristine had given her so much and she was pleased to be able to extend a kindness to her. She was much more at home on city streets looking for a boutique restaurant, or finding an exciting show or exhibition. The few people she saw at the barn grasped travel mugs steaming with coffee probably poured from an old stained coffee carafe. If she drank coffee, it was foam-topped and syrup-sweetened and enjoyed in a comfortable chair with a good book, not standing in the middle of a round corral flicking a wickedly long whip with one hand and taking sips of her coffee with the other.
She was merely a visitor in Kristine’s world, one she had only heard about in the office and occasionally seen in her photographs, and would be happy to hand off the assignment to Robyn. No sign of life around the stall across from Kristine’s, Grace turned her attention to the lock on Kristine’s tack shed where she kept the horse’s food. Bean swung his neck out over the partial door and nickered for the flakes of hay she had peeled from the bale.
“Step back,” she ordered, sliding the latch to free the door. “Your mom says this will save me from another alfalfa shower.” She placed a tentative hand on his chest, blocking the doorway with her body while she maneuvered the hay into the stall. He dropped his head and ran it the length of her body, turning her into a scratching post. She hurled the hay into the stall and stumbled out to slam the door.
After she secured it, she turned to check her skirt. “Damn,” she muttered, finding that he’d lifted her raincoat and used her as a tissue as well. She looked for something in the tack shed to remove the slimy trail he’d left on her skirt. Her watch confirmed that she didn’t have time to double back and change before she was due in her office at the Art Department. Growling, she grabbed a brush from a bucket and whisked it across the fabric in an attempt to be presentable.
She looked around once more for the woman Kristine had sworn would take over Bean’s care and still saw no one. She would have preferred checking in with the woman in person to leaving a note. Her busy brain worried that if Robyn had to extend her trip for some reason, the horses would go hungry. She shooed away the nonproductive concern, knowing that a barn manager would keep such a thing from happening.
Just as she slid Kristine’s padlock back on the tack room door and the note she’d prepared in her hand, Grace spotted a striking woman approaching the stall across from her. Kristine had said Robyn must have Asian ancestry which Grace could clearly see in her coloring, sculpted eyebrows and dense closely-cropped black hair.
“I hope you’re Robyn,” she said, pocketing the note. The woman looked surprised, so she quickly added, “Kristine’s at home this week with the new baby. She said she’d talked to you about caring for the horse but never got your number.”
Grace felt the woman’s gaze shift from her to the stall behind her and back again. She smiled. “Boy or girl?”
“I think it’s a boy.” Grace glanced into the stall. “Does it matter?” Her puzzlement added a terseness into her voice.
Robyn looked puzzled. “The baby?”
“Oh, god!” Grace brushed a few tendrils of hair from her forehead with her forearms, not trusting her hands to be clean. “The baby is a girl. Eliza. Cutest little thing. Seven and a half pounds, almost twenty inches, ten fingers and toes.”
“How long does she want me to look after Bean?”
“The rest of this week, at least. She’s back to work on Monday,” she said, surprised by how quickly Robyn turned the conversation back to the horse.
“Has he been out?”
“You’re kidding me, right? I only signed up for putting food in.”
“Not a stall mucker?”
Grace thought the question might have carried a hint of a tease, so she lingered longer than she had intended.
“And get dirt under my nails?” she asked, studying them.
“Let her know I’ll take care of him. The works,” she said pointedly.
“You’re a kinder woman than I.”
Grace studied Robyn for a moment, taking in her calm. There was a precision about her, no hint of excess in her speech, her practical attire, even in how her hair feathered back from her makeup-free face, nothing to accentuate the palest blue eyes she’d ever seen. She felt time slow for a moment as she tried to place the color. A shallow ocean with white sand…aquamarine…the water only barely reflecting the blue of the sky.
Satisfied, her brain turned back to the long list of things to do. Now that she’d met Robyn, she could check barn duties from it. “You’ll want Kristine’s number,” she said, reaching for the note she had stowed. She hesitated and pulled a business card from her purse instead. It never hurt to give a beautiful woman one’s number, she thought, quickly writing Kristine’s number on the back. “That’s her cell, so don’t worry about waking the baby.”
Taking her leave and utterly caught up in her own schedule, she realized she hadn’t thanked Robyn. Turning back, she found those keen blue eyes glued to her. The corner of her mouth ticked up. “Thank you,” she said. Her body suddenly feeling alive, she adjusted her posture and stride to invite Robyn’s continued appraisal.