Nate kept his eyes on the rear-view mirrors, and he saw Ginger high-tail it down the driveway and across the lane to the shed. She ran the last few steps, and he made an angry sound.
“Idiot,” he chastised himself. But surely the feelings he felt for her couldn’t be one-sided. She had to feel something. Didn’t she?
Nate had been out of the dating game for a while. A very long while. So long that he’d probably go out with anyone at this point.
“Not true,” he muttered. He knew what he liked in a woman, and he liked Ginger. At least he knew what the old Nate had liked in a woman, but he knew the financial sector Nate would’ve never looked Ginger’s way for longer than a few seconds.
He was looking now.
He was different now.
He got out of the truck and decided to face Ginger before retreating to the massive bedroom inside the huge house where he now lived. He went down the driveway and across the lane too, knocking a couple of times on the door.
“Ginger,” he said. “I’m going back to the Annex. Forget I said anything, okay?”
She didn’t answer, but Nate wasn’t going to stick around and add insult to injury. He turned and returned to the truck to get his groceries, and then he walked through the Texas sunshine to the Annex, where he found Jill coloring with Connor.
“I’m back,” he said, setting a few bags on the kitchen counter. He hated this uncertainty streaming through him. He just wanted someone to tell him where to put his coffee and creamer, but the house felt very quiet. “I can take him now, Jill.”
“Great,” she said. “I have to go get the horses ready for riding lessons this afternoon.”
“Oh, I think I’m helping with those,” he said. “What time do they start?”
“Three-thirty,” she said. “You can come watch if you want. I’m sure Ginger didn’t intend for you to start today.” Jill flashed him a smile that didn’t make his heart boom through his chest the way Ginger’s did.
So he definitely liked her. He wasn’t just lusting after her because she was a woman and he was a man who’d been in prison for nearly five years.
Jill left, and Nate abandoned the groceries on the counter. He sat at the table with Connor. “What are you drawing?”
“It’s a leopard,” Connor said. “See his spots?” He pointed with a brown crayon.
“Oh, yeah, I see that,” Nate said, though he couldn’t see spots anywhere on the page. He got up again and started unpacking the bags. “Listen, Connor, I have some things here I want you to take to your room.”
He made a stack of clothes, socks, and underwear, and called the boy over to get them. “Take them to the dresser, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Then I’ll show you the toys I got for you.” He smiled at the little blond boy, his heart squeezing painfully at the parts of Ward he could see.
Connor grinned and hurried down the hall to put his things away. All Nate could think was that at last he’d done one right thing that day by buying Connor some toys.
As he went through the cupboards and drawers and found slots for his things, as he showed Connor how to play Go Fish, as they got settled in their lives, Nate’s thoughts revolved around Ginger.
“All right,” he said just after three. “Let’s go see if we can find the horses.” He reached for Connor’s hand, glad when the boy put his chubby fingers in Nate’s. The simple touch reminded Nate of how much good there was in the world, and he hoped he could experience a lot more of it right here at Hope Eternal Ranch.
The walk along the path, with the bright May sunshine overhead, soothed Nate’s soul. He’d been unsure about coming here, but now, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. He’d gotten a new phone and a new computer, and he needed some time to get them set up. He’d wished he could’ve bought them privately, but he was used to doing everything in the view of someone else.
He just wished it wasn’t Ginger. She’d asked about his money, and he’d managed to put her off in a way that he hoped she wouldn’t come back to it. Nate needed to do a lot more at the bank than he had, but he’d made Ginger sit there for almost an hour, and the vice-president had said Nate could call his personal line to finish the business they’d started.
“Look, Uncle Nate,” Connor said. “Look at all those horses.”
Nate looked up from the dust puffing up from his boots to the sight of dozens of horses. The majesty of them took his breath away, and his steps slowed. Several people, both men and women, seemed to be scurrying around, getting the horses in line and putting equipment nearby.
Nate had no idea how to saddle a horse, and his pulse started picking up speed. And when Ginger stepped around a particularly beautiful brown and white horse, Nate thought someone had turned up the intensity of the sun.
Jill stepped in front of him, and Nate blinked until he focused on her. She had light features, with minty eyes and blonde hair. She spent so much time in the sun that her tan skin didn’t quite go with her fairer features.
“Hey,” she said. “The kids are gathering on the other side of the stables. You could take Connor over there and keep an eye on them, if you want.”
“Okay.” Nate wasn’t sure where the other side of the stables was, and he had no idea what to do with kids. He led Connor away from Ginger, though he desperately wanted to talk to her, and they moved around the horses.
The stables spread before them, a sprawling, single-story red wood building that looked like something from a classic Texas farm. Several aisles led through the building, and he took Connor down the closest one to get out of the heat.
The sound of chattering and children laughing told Nate that he was headed in the right direction. Thankfully, a couple of other adults stood above the heads of the children. And even better, they were Spencer and Nick, the two cowboys Nate had already met.
“Hey.” Spencer grinned at him and turned back to the boy he’d been talking to. The kids that had swarmed into the corral all seemed to be about ten or twelve years old, not that Nate could really judge the age of children. They were a lot taller than Connor, though, and they had really big front teeth.
Connor let go of Nate’s hand, and panic reared through him. “Stay here,” Nate told him. The noise reminded him of the inmates jeering when someone would get in a fight. It happened rarely in the low-security facility, but it happened. Sometimes just an argument would break out about someone talking too loud while others wanted to sleep, and the Unit Officers would have to come tell everyone to be quiet and go to sleep.
Nate backed up a step and looked at Spencer. “This is a lot of kids.”
“Right?” He grinned out at all the little people. “The eleven-year-old introductory lesson is our most popular one.”
So all these boys and girls were eleven. They’d all gotten a memo about what to wear, and they had on long pants, boots, and hats.
“Ready?” Spencer asked, looking at Nick.
“Let’s go.”
“All right,” Spencer said, holding up both hands. The children began to quiet. “I need y’all to settle down.” He paused for a moment as more children stopped talking. “Quiet on down now.”
They did, and Spencer stepped up onto the bottom rung of the fence, so he was even taller than the children. “I’ve just gotten word that the horses are almost ready.” A twitter of excitement ran through the crowd. “We’re going to go over a few rules before we go back, and there’s a lot of us, so we expect everyone to follow the rules. If you don’t, you’ll be right back here, waitin’ for your mom to pick you up.”
He sounded like he meant it too, and Nate watched the children’s faces. They believed him too.
“First, horses don’t like the noise. So we need to use a quiet voice when we leave here. You’ll stand where we tell you to stand. You’ll hold the reins how we show you. There will be someone for every four of you, and you’ll need to remember that person’s name and ask any questions you have. Each cowboy or cowgirl will give you specific things to do once you get back there.”
He grinned out at them. “So who’s ready to ride a horse?”
The children cheered, and Nate caught some of their excitement as it filled the air. He didn’t think the instructions were adequate for eleven-year-olds to know how to ride a horse, but he wasn’t in charge of this group. He didn’t even know how to be in charge of a group like this.
“All right,” Spencer called out. “Three lines, boys and girls. Three lines. Make three lines. One will follow me. One will follow Nick here.” Nick stepped forward and raised his cowboy hat. “And one will follow Nate.”
Nate swung his attention from a cute red-headed girl to Spencer, who looked at him expectantly. He quickly swept the hat off his head too and lifted it into the air. The children began to make the lines Spencer requested of them, and Nate took Connor’s hand again and stepped to the front of a line.
Thankfully, Spencer took his line of boys and girls first, and surprisingly, Nate didn’t have to wait that long to follow him. Spencer split them up and assigned them out to the dozen cowboys and cowgirls waiting with the horses, and Nate became quickly overwhelmed with how many animals stood ready for a ride.
He hung back, because he had no idea where he fit in. He kept Connor at his side so the boy wouldn’t get hurt, and he simply gaped at the sheer number of people and horses.
“It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”
He turned toward the female voice to find a brunette standing there. The same one who’d fed him last night. She nodded toward all the people now talking to groups of four. They demonstrated and instructed, and then the saddles started going on the backs of horses. “It’s completely overwhelming,” Emma said. “And I’ve been around for the first day of eleven-year-old lessons many times.”
“There’s a lot of them,” he admitted. He watched Ginger weave around one horse and then a group of people. She caught Emma’s eye and then looked at Nate—and stumbled.
He wanted to leave, but he’d told Jill he’d come observe today. “Is this what I’ll do?” he asked. “Ginger said I’d do the riding lessons, as well as some fence fixing and something with bird blinds?”
“She’ll want you to watch this class for a week, and then she’ll want you to be Spencer there.” Emma nodded to the other cowboy. “He entertains them while they wait for the lesson to start. He gives them a little speech, lines them up, and brings them back. He organizes everything. Then, the riders take them out, and he’s done for a bit. When the horses and kids come back, he takes care of the horses while the parents pick up their kids.”
“How long are lessons?” Nate asked.
“An hour,” she said. “We do them four days a week. So you’ll get to hear Spencer’s speech four times this week, and you’ll be ready by Monday.” She gave him a warm smile and refocused on the chaos in front of them.
“I’m going to need a riding lesson,” Nate said. “And some instructions on how to take care of a horse after it’s been ridden.”
“Spencer and Nick will get you ready,” she said easily. “You’ll go out with them in the morning and stick to them like a shadow for the next several days.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. The first child swung up onto a nearby horse, and very soon after that, the rest of them did too. They wore the biggest, brightest smiles Nate had ever seen, and he let their joy lift his spirits.
Ginger caught his eye, and some of that happiness leaked out. She nodded toward the stable, and Nate understood her non-verbal communication. He bent down and looked at Connor. “Can you stay with Emma for a minute?” He passed the boy’s hand to Emma and straightened to meet her eye. “I’ll be back in a second.”
As he went toward the stable, he could only pray that he could handle whatever Ginger said to him.