A Love Like Ours Read online

  “I did, too, Meg.”

  “He has that effect on people.”

  “Yes,” Lyndie agreed wholeheartedly.

  “I’ve believed in Silver Leaf since that day. Bo and Jake have both tried to talk me into retiring him at different points along the way.” She exhaled, watching the children scattered in her yard. It looked to Lyndie like the game of tag had devolved into a case of kids running around, shrieking for no reason.

  “I’ve never disagreed with Bo or Jake on any other detail of the Thoroughbreds,” Meg said. “But I put my foot down about Silver Leaf. I wanted him to have one last opportunity. I’ve been hoping, really hard, that he’ll make the most of this chance.”

  “He just might. He has great potential.”

  “But we couldn’t figure out how to tap in to it, until you. Bo’s kept me updated, about the way that Silver Leaf’s run for you in practice.” Meg searched Lyndie’s face. “Had you heard that Silver Leaf was my father’s favorite horse?”

  “Jake mentioned it to me.”

  “Silver Leaf was born here at the ranch, and my father watched him grow. Even then, as a colt, my father put a great deal of stock in Silver Leaf. He passed away when Silver Leaf was a yearling, so he never got to see him race.”

  “I’ll do my very best with him on Thursday. For you and for your dad.”

  “I know you will.” Meg reached out and gripped Lyndie’s hand. “I’ll be there to cheer you both on.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Whatever happens, it’ll be a big day for me because thanks to you, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I did the best I could for my father’s horse.”

  “And your horse, too, Meg.”

  “And yours, Lyndie. And Jake’s and Bo’s. He’s ours.”

  Emotion clutched Lyndie so strongly, she almost didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Meg’s words entwined her. “I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I did the best I could.” She yearned to be able to say the same. About the horse.

  And about his trainer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  At the sound of a woman’s voice, Will lifted his head from the computer and the report he’d been typing.

  Amber, he thought with dumb hope. It didn’t even make sense. Amber, here, at his fire station in the middle of the day on a Tuesday? Even so, he left his office and headed in the direction of the bay. He’d been thinking about Amber a lot lately: when he was driving his girls to activities, grocery shopping, filling the dishwasher.

  He rounded the corner and saw Amber standing near the engine with two of his guys, Ryan and Toby. It was her. For the first time on this overcast day, it was as if sunlight was pouring down, making him feel alive in ways he hadn’t for the twelve years since Michelle had left him.

  Over the past few weeks, Will had seen Amber several times. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was developing a crush on her. Man, how embarrassing. Could you call it a crush still when you were forty? He hadn’t had a crush on anyone in a really long time.

  Today she wore pale green scrubs. Her shiny brown hair had been pulled back with a little clip on one side in the front. She carried a rectangular tray holding two apple pies.

  “Captain,” Toby said, “this is Amber—”

  “We know each other.”

  “Hi, Will.”

  “Hi.” He smiled at her and pushed his hands into the pockets of his navy pants.

  “She brought us pie.” Ryan sent Will a look that said he was excited about more than the dessert.

  “I see that.”

  “Celia had these left over,” Amber explained. “When I went by Cream or Sugar just now, she asked me if I could bring them by. She wanted you guys to have them.”

  “Thank you.” Seemed kind of strange to Will that Celia had two freshly baked pies left over at this time of day. It was only twelve thirty. “Will you take the pies into the kitchen for her, Toby?”

  “Oh!” The younger of the firefighters had been too busy gawking at Amber to notice the heavy tray. “Sure. May I?”

  Toby and Ryan were both good guys, single, the perfect age for Amber. So perfect that there was no way that Will was going to take the tray into the kitchen and leave her out here with them.

  “Ryan, would you go tell the other guys that there’s pie in the kitchen?”

  Ryan went to do as he’d been asked, leaving Will alone with Amber.

  “It’s fun to see where you work,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve visited a fire station since I was”—she shrugged—“maybe ten?”

  “Would you like a tour?”

  “I’d love one, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  He took her around the bay, kitchen, dining room, and living area. Pride filled him as he showed her his home away from home and answered her questions about his job.

  Amber’s combination of confidence and down-to-earth sweetness did him in every time. He felt slightly self-conscious around her. He liked her so much that he didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of her.

  Eventually, they returned to where they’d started, near the mouth of the open bay door. “Are you on your lunch break?” Will asked. It would have taken her more than twenty minutes to drive from downtown Holley to the station.

  “Yeah. In fact, I probably better go so I can get back to work on time.”

  “When will you have lunch?”

  “I always bring food from home. I’ll eat it between patients this afternoon.”

  Guilt nicked him. “I’m sorry you spent your whole lunch break coming here.”

  “I’m not. I wanted to.” She met his gaze. Her eyes were very blue, surrounded by those thick, dark lashes.

  You’re too old for her. You’re too old, Will. That he knew it was true didn’t stop him from regretting the truth of it. Where had his years gone? Why couldn’t Amber have been older?

  “See you later,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He shook himself from his daze and stepped back. “Thanks for bringing the pie.”

  “You’re welcome.” She climbed into her car, waved, and drove away.

  Frustrated, he scrubbed his hands down his face. He was a father of two teenage daughters. A captain. A man who’d spent only five years of his entire adult life married and who hadn’t really wanted to care about anyone again after what loving Michelle had put him through.

  “She likes you, boss.” Ryan came to stand next to him, both of them looking outward at the cars passing by.

  “She’s too young for me,” Will answered.

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why don’t you ask her if she thinks she’s too young for you?”

  Will wasn’t sure whether Amber was just being friendly or whether she was attracted to him. He was rusty, but he thought it might be the latter. If so, then their age difference might not bother Amber. But it did bother him.

  “Maybe she’s just looking for someone who’d be good to her,” Ryan said. “Who’s responsible and trustworthy.”

  “You make me sound like the most boring guy alive.”

  “You are.” Ryan’s laugh softened his teasing.

  “I’m sure she can find someone her own age who’d be good to her.” He was trustworthy enough for Amber, yes. The old grandfather walking down the sidewalk with his cane and his terrier was probably trustworthy, too. Trustworthiness couldn’t make either him or the grandfather right for Amber Richardson.

  “She’s a mother, you know.” Ryan said. “As soon as she walked up she told Toby and me how much her son would enjoy seeing the trucks.”

  “Her son’s five. My girls are sixteen and fourteen.”

  “So? All kinds of families can work.”

  Will frowned and Ryan chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Will asked.

  “I’m just imagining how Madison and Taylor would react if you finally started dating someone seriously.”

  “They’d hate it.�
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  “Well? You’ve spoiled them. Do you want them dating boys?”

  “No way.”

  “Do you think your disapproval is going to stop them?”

  Will eyed Ryan, who was proving himself too smart for his own good. “No.” He’d already heard a rumor that Madison had a boyfriend. Just the idea had been keeping him up nights.

  “Amber’s pretty,” Ryan said.

  “I know.”

  “I’d date her in a minute.”

  “Ryan, even that flagpole over there could tell that you’d date Amber.”

  “She’s too pretty for you to pass up, boss.”

  “I’m too old for her.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Forty is the new thirty.”

  Will snorted. “That’s not true.”

  “Age is just a number. Why are you looking at me like that?” Ryan fist-bumped his shoulder. “Age is just a number, boss.”

  “Mom!” Jayden yelled. “Can you kick with me some more?”

  Amber squinted at Jayden from where she and Lyndie were sitting on the grass next to the backyard hero house.

  Jayden dribbled his soccer ball the length of the Candy Shoppe and back, Lyndie’s dogs tumbling beside him. Amber had spent the day working. Then she’d picked up Jayden, hit the grocery store, and kicked the ball with her son for ten minutes after arriving home. Her apartment needed cleaning and dinner needed cooking. This bubble of time to talk to Lyndie and drink delicious coffee felt like a vacation.

  The last thing in the world she wanted to do at this moment? Kick the soccer ball more than she already had.

  “Not right now, honey,” she called. “I’m taking a rest. Give me a few more minutes.” She tucked her coffee mug against her chest and turned to watch Lyndie pat moss into the ground around Jayden’s hero house. That done, Lyndie freed two adorable miniature trees from tiny pots and planted them beside the moss. “Is that a tire swing?”

  Lyndie nodded. “I thought Jayden’s action figures might like it.” She’d fastened a black metal circle to a length of twine. Delicately, Lyndie hung it from the branch of one of the little trees.

  “I’m amazed,” Amber said, “by your creativity. I wish I had in my whole body the amount you have in your pinkie.”

  “Mom? Has it been a few minutes?”

  “It’s only been half of one minute,” Amber called to him.

  Jayden’s shoulders sagged.

  Amber sighed. “I’m an okay mom to Jayden,” she whispered to Lyndie, “but I make a lousy father.”

  “You’re a really good mom, Amber.”

  “But a father would probably enjoy kicking a ball.” Jayden left the soccer ball behind and picked up a stick. He launched a kicking attack against imaginary bad guys.

  Her son had no dad and no siblings. Sometimes being Jayden’s only person felt like a crushing weight. “I went to see Will at the fire station today.”

  Lyndie’s face lifted at Amber’s words. “What? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Amber’s upstairs neighbor looked like a “How to Do Effortless Beach Hair” page out of a magazine. Amber wished she could make Lyndie’s artistic style, with the earrings and scarves and hair, work for her the way it worked for Lyndie.

  “Because it’s not good news. I brought him pies from Cream or Sugar. Pies! Plus, I think I stared at his lips for a full minute. He still didn’t make a move.”

  “He was at work.”

  “He didn’t have to kiss me. He simply could have asked me out.” As if they could sense heartache from a mile away, which maybe they could, Lyndie’s dogs ran over and tilted their heads to stare at her with sympathy. “Well, c’mon.” She patted her lap and the one closest to her climbed on. The other lay next to Lyndie, resting his chin on the top of her flip-flop. “It’s strange, Lyndie, because I really feel something between Will and me. It’s strong, and I think it might be mutual.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Maybe it’s not. I’m worried that my interest in him is blinding me to the fact that he’s giving me I’m-not-into-you vibes. I’m also worried that I might not be successfully communicating I’m-into-you vibes to him.”

  Lyndie retrieved the coffee mug she’d set aside and took a sip. “What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to a gokon this weekend.”

  “Maybe it would be best if we postponed our next date.”

  Amber had never met a single, thirty-year-old woman as reluctant to go on dates as Lyndie James. “You’re not going to talk me out of it,” Amber assured her.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “We’re going. And you’re going to thank me afterward, because you’ll probably be introduced to the love of your life.”

  Lyndie’s expression turned skeptical. “One of my square dancing partners texted me again today.”

  “And?”

  “He’s not the love of my life.”

  Amber chuckled. “We’re going to the gokon, Lyndie. We’re going.”

  The next morning Lyndie stood next to Jake at Lone Star’s track. The time she spent with him after she finished riding had become her favorite time of day. She looked forward to it and enjoyed it even more than coffee. Or Reese’s.

  “That’s the laziest horse I have.” Jake gestured to a black gelding cantering past. “‘He hangs out more often than Mama’s washing.’ Are you too Californian to have heard that saying?”

  “I’m a Texan, thank you very much. My parents are Texans, and I was born in Texas. Texan is stamped on my passport along with a picture of a football and little dangling state flags.”

  “Huh.” He aimed an amused look down at her.

  She could have accused him of having lived a good portion of his life outside of Texas, but that would have brought difficult memories of Iraq and Afghanistan into the conversation.

  They were both leaning into the rail. Jake had one boot planted on a slat, his black Stetson angled particularly low today. He looked big and bad and certain of himself.

  “‘Lazy as a bump on a log’?” Lyndie ventured. “Have you heard that one?”

  He grunted. “Everyone’s heard that one. You’re going to have to do better to impress me.”

  She grumbled under her breath about hard-to-impress cowboys who thought they knew everything.

  “What do you think of Mist Flower here?” The chestnut filly walked up to them with her exercise rider astride.

  “I think that she still hasn’t found her form after her bruised foot,” Lyndie said.

  Whenever Jake asked her for feedback on his horses, he weighed her words thoughtfully, in a manner that Lyndie found enormously flattering.

  “One of the trainers I worked for used to treat bruised feet with bran mash poultice,” she said.

  “What year was that? 1982?”

  Cheeky! “Some old-school ideas still have merit,” Lyndie insisted. “He’d apply bran and cooked flaxseed mash to the sole and wrap it around the hoof with vet-wrap to draw out soreness. I saw it work a few times.”

  Jake gave instructions to Mist Flower’s rider and the two set off.

  Lyndie earnestly wished that she had the power to heal wounded horses, wounded minds, and wounded bodies. She’d repair both Mollie and Jake in a snap. While she was at it, she’d fix Mist Flower, too.

  Lyndie stared at the distant line where the track’s buildings met the sky, ideas cascading into her mind. What if she gave the blond fairy in her fairy story a magical healing . . . ring? Necklace? No, wand. With every sweep of her wand, the fairy would be able to fix what was broken.

  The healing fairy could set out on a mission to fix the gloomy prince. To make things spicy, she’d need to overcome an obstacle or two along the way. Her wand could crack? Yes, and the fairy would have to find a way to repair the wand in order to repair the prince—

  “You’re a million miles away in your head, aren’t you?” Jake asked. The humor in his eyes tempted her to believe that he really had come to like her, despite him
self and despite her quirks.

  “Yes,” she confessed, “I was at least a million miles away.”

  “Dreaming about a story idea?”

  “Yes.” It seemed he could sense things about her, just like she could about him.

  “What kind of a story idea?”

  “Two unicorns and two fairies set out together to rescue a tall, dark, and brooding prince.”

  He let that sink in for a few moments. “The unicorns and fairies sound nice. The prince guy sounds like a bore.”

  Lyndie laughed. “He can be at times.”

  “Why don’t they go rescue a lost kitten or something?”

  “Because one of the fairies believes that the prince is wonderful underneath his gruff exterior. She’s not interested in kittens. She’s dead-set on the prince.”

  “Is rescuing him going to be worth it in the end?”

  “Very much so.”

  They stared at each other as their words ebbed into silence. Heat and longing grew palpable. Lyndie’s breath turned shallow. Was it possible that he—he might kiss her? Maybe?

  He didn’t. He turned back to face the track.

  Foolish, errant wish. If he ever kissed her, which was quite a wild hypothetical, he would not do it at the track during working hours with so many witnesses present.

  Her physical attraction to Jake had started out as entertaining and charming. Harmless. Like riding a bike down a country lane. But lately, both her physical reactions and her emotions toward him had grown large. They felt serious now and potentially harmful. Like riding that same bike down a steep and narrow mountain path strewn with rocks.

  She’d long suspected that Silver Leaf’s improvement would be intertwined with Jake’s improvement. So far, Silver Leaf had accomplished much. Jake, too, had made strides. He was talking with her, after all. He’d seen her mother two times, and both times her mom had talked to him about PTSD. He hadn’t called her lately to try to fire her.

  Lyndie was not a person given to worry. Typically, she battled it only when Mollie had to be hospitalized. Recently, though, she’d begun to worry that she might be investing a bit too much of her heart in Jake.

  She’d see a haunted expression come over his face when he didn’t know she was looking, and she’d want to weep over what the war had done to him. Five minutes later, she’d watch him interact in genius fashion with one of his horses, and pride would pour through her because of what the war had not been able to do to him.