Chloe finally felt as if her life was slowly falling into place.
She was making decent headway with the four boys who were currently staying at the ranch, albeit at a different pace with each one. Initially, she’d felt as if all of the teens regarded her warily and were keeping up their defenses, but mercifully, that was all changing.
Jonah and Ryan had taken less time to come around than the other two. Since they had already made a bit of progress under Sasha’s counseling, it didn’t take them all that long to lower their guard and trust her. She was here a few weeks and they had begun to talk to her about things that were troubling them, as well as some things that they were trying to work out.
She found it rougher going with Brandon and Will. Brandon didn’t want to risk getting close to anyone because he was afraid of ultimately losing that contact, the way he had lost his brother. As for Will, although he clearly yearned for his mother, because of what she had done, he didn’t trust any woman who entered his life.
Although their progress was at slower pace, seeing all four of the teens come around because of her efforts proved to be exceedingly gratifying for Chloe. She felt as if she was actually making a difference in their lives, which in turn added a great deal of significance to her own life. She felt it gave her a real purpose.
And then there were the riding lessons with Chance. She would have never thought, not in a million years, that she’d be proud of the headway she was making with that, but she was.
Chance turned out to be the consummate teacher, which really surprised her. She would have said at the outset of their association that teaching someone to ride wouldn’t have made a difference to Chance one way or another. He had struck her as being the poster boy for the quintessential loner. But it turned out that Chance was nothing if not patient with her.
He was patient with the boys, too, she noted whenever she had the chance to observe them together. And she could see that they began to regard him as the father figure they’d lacked in their childhoods.
For that matter, she thought as she finished working on that day’s notes and looked out the window at the corral where Chance worked with Will, in a way he was the father she had never known, as well.
Except, she reminded herself, she would have definitely never reacted to her father the way she was reacting to Chance.
Chloe sighed.
She was still rather uncertain about all that. Uncertain how she felt about having feelings for him.
She felt as if she was going around in circles.
“You think too much,” she murmured to herself under her breath.
But she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t help analyzing, comparing—remembering. Remembering how it felt to be in love with Donnie—and how that had all ended so heartbreakingly.
Stop it, she upbraided herself. Just enjoy whatever happens as it happens. For heaven’s sake, for once in your life just float, don’t plot.
Chloe shook her head. Easier said than done.
She turned away from the window and went back to her work.
* * *
Like a delayed reaction, it slowly dawned on Chance that for the first time since he’d gotten back from serving overseas that he finally, finally had a renewed sense of purpose. That was something that had eluded him while he’d been in the military and certainly afterward, when he’d returned stateside.
He supposed that was why he had subconsciously drifted from ranch to ranch and job to job. He’d blamed it on restlessness, but he now realized that he’d been searching for a meaning to his life, some sort of a purpose. Working here, at Peter’s Place, with its rescued horses and its rescued kids, was giving him that sense of purpose.
And it felt damn good, Chance thought. The troubled teens he had been put in charge of had essentially come a long way in a short time. He knew in part that was because of Chloe and her sessions with them, but in part it was because of him, as well. And their noticeable evolution gave him a reason for getting up in the morning.
He never thought he’d ever feel that way again. For the longest time he’d believed that opening his eyes each morning, feeling as if his soul had been sucked out by forces he couldn’t grapple with, couldn’t untangle, was going to be his fate until the day he died.
Now he saw firsthand that it didn’t have to be that way. That it wasn’t that way.
That started him thinking.
If being here, working with both teens and horses that the world had all but given up on, could ultimately rescue his soul, maybe it could do the same for other returning soldiers who were trying—and failing—to find a place for themselves in society.
The thought fired him up.
So much so that he decided to bring it to Graham’s attention and see what the man thought of it.
And there was no time like the present.
So, hat in hand—literally as well as figuratively—Chance knocked on Graham’s door.
“Door’s not locked,” Graham called out.
Opening the door to the small bedroom that Graham had converted into his office, Chance made no move to enter. “Mind if I talk to you?” he asked, standing just on the other side of the threshold.
Graham beckoned him forward. “Come on in,” he invited warmly, turning away from his computer. “What’s on your mind? Everything going all right with the boys?”
“Everything’s fine,” Chance told him. Then he fell silent. The words he had rehearsed in his head on the way over all seemed to disappear. He mentally shook himself, getting back on track. “That’s kind of why I’m here.”
But he still stood there like a supplicant before his boss’s desk, looking no doubt very uncomfortable.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Graham suggested, gesturing to the chair before his desk. “Maybe if you take a load off, you’ll find it easier to share whatever’s on your mind.”
Chance took a seat, but he remained ramrod straight. Graham probably thought he looked like an action figure that had been bent into an uncompromising position.
When Chance didn’t start talking, Graham’s face took on a serious look.
Other than at the dinner table or by the horses, Chance wasn’t used to talking to Graham, and he couldn’t read the man’s expression. He just had a feeling his boss was about to say something bad.
“You’re not leaving us, are you?” Graham finally asked him.
It took a second for Chance to replay the question in his mind. “What? Oh, no, no I’m not—unless you’re not satisfied with my work,” Chance qualified, wondering if perhaps the man was looking for a way to break the news to him.
“Trust me, I am more than satisfied with the caliber of your work,” Graham told him. “But something must have brought you in here.”
Chance cleared his throat. While he was used to going his own way, he wasn’t used to being part of a team, and yet that was what he was right now. Part of a team, and making a suggestion that would in turn affect that team.
Chance began to stumble through a response. “Yes, it did.”
“I’m listening,” Graham encouraged.
In order to make his point, Chance realized that he was going to have to do something he absolutely hated—he was going to have to talk about himself. But there was no way around it because in order to sell his suggestion, he could use only himself as an example.
“When I was first discharged from the military, because of what I had seen, I kind of came apart at the seams and was pretty much at loose ends.” Because the story felt too personal to him, Chance kept the details vague and general. “After having seen combat, after watching more than one person’s life wiped out in the blink of an eye, nothing seemed all that important anymore. I certainly didn’t feel like I fit in to the world I came back to.” He moved closer to the edge of his seat, his eyes intently on Graham to see if he was getting his thought across to the man. “There was no place that felt right to me.”
“Go on,” Graham urged when he paused.
“But when I came here, when I started working with the boys you had on the ranch, with kids who were caught between two worlds, and working with the rescued horses that you stocked the place with, things began to fall into place for me. They started to make sense.” His voice took on volume as he warmed to his subject. “I knew why I came back when so many of the other soldiers I shipped out with either didn’t come back at all, or came back with their bodies and spirits maimed and damaged. I found my purpose here.”
“I’m really glad to hear that,” Graham said, and Chance could hear the man’s sincerity.
Then Graham leaned forward in his desk chair. Chance had the feeling he knew that Chance wasn’t finished, that there was more to the reason why he’d come into his office this afternoon.
Chance ran his tongue along his dried lips, stalling. “So I was thinking...”
Graham was the soul of encouragement. Nodding, he said, “Yes?”
Chance took a deep breath. “I was thinking that if I could feel this way, working with kids who needed help and horses that needed their own form of rehabilitation, maybe in the long run this could work for other soldiers, as well.”
Graham kept his gaze even. “Go on.”
He’d come this far; he couldn’t just let his courage flag now, Chance thought. “What would you think of the idea of opening up a Peter’s Place for returning vets?” he asked. Then the next moment, not wanting to put pressure on the man who had given him a second chance to live his life, Chance shrugged evasively and murmured, “It’s a dumb idea, huh?”
“No,” Graham told him with feeling, “I think it’s a great idea.”
Chance was as close to being dumbfound as he’d ever been in his life. He felt his excitement growing. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” Graham nodded. “In all honesty I always thought that the work we did here could have other uses. Not just for troubled teens. Give me a while to see if I can either find funding for a separate place, or if there’s a way to build on to Peter’s Place. You know, incorporate the vets and the teens.”
This was more than Chance had hoped for. He’d come in expecting Graham to at least listen to his idea, but not to jump on it like this. He was more than delighted.
Apparently so was Graham, as he went on enthusiastically. “The Fortune Foundation’s already given us funding to expand the original Peter’s Place—that’s why you and Chloe are here. Maybe I can talk to the people who hold the foundation’s purse strings while they’re still feeling generous and see if I can get them to part with a little more money for this added venture. I certainly think it’s worth a try—and definitely worthy of consideration.”
Graham took a deep breath as he leaned back in his chair. “You have any other suggestions?”
“No, fresh out,” Chance told him, spreading his hands out in front of him, a pleased expression on his face. “That was it.” So saying, he rose, ready to leave.
“Well, what you came up with was damn good,” Graham assured him. “But like I said, let me see what I can do on my end and whose cage I can rattle. And, Chance—?”
Chance stopped on his way out the door, half turned and looked at his boss over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“If you have any other ideas, be sure to come see me with them. I’d be more than happy to hear you out.”
Chance grinned broadly, really pleased with how well this had gone. He’d had bosses who had looked upon him as nothing more than a big dumb cowboy. Muscle on horseback. Any minor suggestions he’d tried to make regarding running the ranch had been quickly disregarded. It was nice to be working for someone who regarded him as a person. “Yes, sir, I will. Thank you, sir.”
“It’s Graham,” Graham said, calling after him. “Graham, not ‘sir.’”
“Got it,” Chance called back, although he had to admit, if only to himself, that it was hard to think of his boss in terms personal enough to refer to him by his first name.
That just wasn’t the way he operated.
* * *
“Well, you certainly look happy,” Chloe observed when Chance walked into the stable a little later that day.
She had arrived a few minutes ago and was saddling her horse. When she hadn’t seen Chance here, she’d begun to wonder if maybe he was tired of mentoring her and spending his late afternoon riding with her.
For her, these riding lessons had become the highlight of her day, but she could well understand if Chance was viewing them as time-consuming nuisances.
Then again maybe she was worried about nothing, Chloe thought, because he was here now and he was smiling.
“I am happy,” Chance declared, still running on the energy generated by what he felt had been an extremely successful pitch. It amounted to his first small victory in a long, long time.
He was still flying so high on his earlier exchange with Graham that he completely forgot all about being on his good behavior with Chloe—something he’d instituted for himself after that long kiss at the lake. Instead, he took hold of her shoulders and kissed her before he could think to stop himself.
He kissed her hard and with enthusiasm that melted into something more, something meaningful and soul searing. It was only after Chance unlocked his brain and began to think that he realized he’d done it again. He’d gotten carried away.
Chloe made it all too easy to do that.
Releasing her shoulders, Chance still didn’t step back immediately. Instead, he forced himself to look into Chloe’s eyes, half afraid he would see condemnation there, but nonetheless hoping against hope that what he would find there would be acceptance.
Having been soundly kissed by this handsome cowboy, Chloe found that, just like the first time, she had to struggle to get air in, struggle not to sound as if she were some addled-brained, incoherent groupie who had just been kissed for the first time.
It took her more than a second to find her mind, which had temporarily gone MIA. When she and her mind were reunited, she was finally able to question him. “Mind if I ask what’s made you so happy?”
“I just talked to Graham about the possibility of establishing another center like this one, to help returning veterans. You know, the ones who feel like they’re caught between two worlds and don’t really belong to either.”
It sounded like a noble suggestion to her, and she was proud of him for making it. “What did Graham say?” she wanted to know.
“That he’d look into it.” The paltry sentence didn’t begin to cover the hope he had attached to the proposed venture.
Chloe felt torn. Torn between being happy for Chance and being unhappy for herself. Because if this suggestion of his worked out and Graham went ahead with establishing a new companion facility to Peter’s Place, this one strictly for veterans, she knew that she’d lose Chance. He’d move on, just as she had been afraid he would.
She admonished herself for being selfish. This would help a lot of servicemen if it came to fruition. But she couldn’t quite help her emotions.
Feeling almost disloyal, she still had to ask, “Does that mean that you’ll be leaving here?”
He honestly hadn’t even considered that possibility. He just assumed that if the center he’d suggested turned out to be a separate one, it would still be built somewhere within the area. It had to be, he silently insisted.
“What? No,” he told her. “I don’t want to leave here.”
“But if you wind up running this new center for Graham,” she began, “wouldn’t you have to?”
But there was so much up in the air that Chance didn’t want to talk about it right now. And he silenced Chloe the only way he knew how.
By kissing her.