A Love Like Ours Page 8

  Not two hours later, her dog had padded to his dish and eaten his food. Two days after that, he’d been as good as new. Ever since, no one had been able to convince Lyndie that Mollie didn’t have a secret superpower.

  A lot of nevers marked Mollie’s life. She’d never walk or speak. She’d never experience a healthy body. She’d never see the faces of her family or the sun setting over an ocean or the cross. She’d never attain any worldly achievement. But Lyndie was certain that God had looked down, had compassion on Mollie, and blessed her with one special ability.

  The path led them to a view of a tiny valley ripe with ferns. The trees above formed a ceiling of branches, and the earth below smelled dark and rich with the earlier rain. “Oh, this is pretty. Dad and Grandpa did a great job when they put down this pathway for you.” She described the scene to Mollie, all the while picturing how she might re-create it with watercolors.

  She envisioned a whole family of tiny people living beneath the ferns. They could have a village made out of twigs. One of those cute, old-fashioned waterwheels. A mansion of stones. The little boy who’d inherited the mansion could ride around on his trained earthworm—ew. He could ride around on his trained bird, protecting the village from raccoons and humans and floods.

  Lyndie typed her thoughts into her smartphone. She’d add it to the computer file that contained ideas for future books.

  When they completed their walk, Lyndie steered Mollie’s chair in the direction of the ramp her dad had added to the house’s wraparound porch. She settled onto a step and pulled Mollie near so that their knees touched. Leaning forward, she tucked the blanket more snugly around Mollie’s shoulders and straightened her knit cap. “I love the hat on you, sweetheart. It’s purple. You look dashing.”

  Mollie responded with her version of a smile. Though her eyes didn’t look in Lyndie’s direction, they were alert and bright today.

  “Very dashing.” Lyndie kissed Mollie’s hand, a hand that smelled sweetly of the peach soap their mom used when she bathed Mollie.

  Lyndie pulled back and saw that Mollie had puckered her lips.

  Poignant love welled within Lyndie.

  It had not been all hearts and rainbows between the sisters since the day Mollie had healed Lyndie’s dog. Nowadays, Lyndie wished that it had been, but in truth, growing up as Mollie’s older sister had been rocky. In many ways, Lyndie had been an only child, except without the undivided attention. Mollie’s needs had always been more urgent than Lyndie’s and had required the bulk of her parents’ energy.

  Lyndie remembered phases during her childhood and adolescence when she hadn’t wanted to give Mollie the token daily hug her mom required. Anxiety had eaten at Lyndie whenever Mollie had been admitted to the hospital. Resentment, too, because with every hospital stay, Mollie had taken their parents away. There had been days when Lyndie hadn’t wanted to tube feed Mollie or care for her during a seizure or babysit her while their mom did dishes.

  From the start, Karen had taught Lyndie that God had chosen her to be the older sister of a sister with challenges. By the time she’d reached her latter teenage years, that lesson had finally sunk deep. She hadn’t been the best older sister that Mollie could have hoped for. But Mollie had been the best younger sister. For certain.

  An hour later, Lyndie pulled up in front of her apartment, otherwise known as the Old Candy Shoppe. The front door had been painted dark chocolate and recessed directly in the middle of the rectangular facade of beige bricks. Big windows flanked the door on both sides and a mini metal awning divided the first floor from the second. Lyndie had lucked out because all of her upper-story windows were fabulously round-topped.

  A stone path steered her around the side of the house, past climbing ivy. Instead of doing what she usually did, taking the exterior staircase to her door, she made her way into the backyard and knelt near the base of what had been a hollow stump. She and Jayden had made it into a miniature fairy house, with an upside-down red funnel for a roof, faux windows, and a door that swung outward, revealing the hole in the stump where his army figures and plastic dinosaurs could enter. Since calling it a fairy house had insulted Jayden’s masculinity, they’d ended up christening it a hero house.

  Lyndie took the baggie of black-eyed peas she’d swiped from her mom and dad’s place and formed them into a curving walkway leading away from the door of the hero house. She lined both sides of the walkway with golf tees, also pilfered.

  There. Now she needed to take her muse indoors and see if it would cooperate and transfer itself to art paper.

  She climbed the sun-sprinkled stairway to the second story. The moment she opened her front door, Empress Felicity and Gentleman Tobias tumbled out, tails wagging.

  Lyndie dropped to her haunches, grinning. “What good dogs! Aren’t you little sweeties? Aren’t you?” Overcome with joy, both tri-colored spaniels flopped onto their backs and presented their bellies for scratching. “Have you been behaving? You have? Why am I not surprised? If you were any more gorgeous you’d just disappear because God would take you straight to heaven.”

  She fed them both a treat. Oh, why not live a little? She fed them both a second treat, then threw their tennis balls deep into the yard. They pounded down the stairs, high on the weather, treats, and tennis balls.

  Leaving the door open so the dogs could return at will, Lyndie crossed to the windowsill where her rag doll cat lay snoozing. “How are you, Mrs. M?” She ran her palm down the length of the cat’s spine.

  Mrs. Mapleton blinked her stunning blue eyes, then tucked her nose under her paw and went right back to sleep.

  Lyndie bent to pick up a few throw pillows that the dogs must have kicked off the sofa. She’d left her apartment in good shape this morning, a blessing, since she didn’t have much energy in reserve for cleaning.

  The dreamy palette of soft beige and cream accented with sea glass blue that she’d chosen for her open-concept living area soothed her. She liked for her apartment to function as a neutral canvas, perhaps because her paintings and her imagination were always drenched in color—

  Her cell phone rang.

  She freed it from the pocket of her vest. Unknown number. “Hello?”

  A beat of quiet. “Lyndie?” A solemn masculine voice. A voice she recognized.

  Her heart did a funny little dip and stutter. “Hi, Jake.” He was calling her? This was an unexpected first.

  “I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t still sitting in Silver Leaf’s stall.”

  The pirate had called to check on her. He must not entirely dislike her. “No. I’m at home. I only stayed thirty minutes after you left, just like,” you ordered, “we agreed. I’m super obedient by nature.”

  A slight pause. “Obedient?”

  “By nature.”

  “I’ve known unbroken colts more obedient than you.”

  She laughed. He was almost, sort of, bantering with her! “All right. So maybe obedience isn’t my strongest suit. In this case, though, I did exactly what you asked.”

  His end remained silent.

  “In fact,” she continued, “ever since I started working for you I’ve been following your instructions carefully.”

  “Which hasn’t come naturally to you.”

  “I’ve changed since we were kids.”

  “Not that much,” he stated.

  He wasn’t flattering her or flirting with her, yet warm pleasure seeped into her just the same. She could get used to this, to chatting with him on the phone.

  More silence passed than was customary in normal phone conversations. She always kept a glass dish of fresh flowers on her antique farm table. Their scent drifted to her while she waited. Lilies and roses.

  “Have you considered getting a job at Lone Star Park?” he asked abruptly.

  All her enjoyment in the conversation rushed away.

  “I think that you might be better suited to a position there, working for one of the other trainers,” he said.

 
He was trying to—to fire her? Even though she’d given him no reason? “I don’t want a job at the track, working for a different trainer.” He hadn’t called to check on her. He’d called to fire her. The realization pulsed through her like a painful electrical shock. “I want to stay on at Whispering Creek. I’ve only just gotten started.”

  No reply.

  “You’re the best trainer in the southwest.” It was true. The jerk! The blind, insensitive villain! “I don’t want to work for any of the trainers at Lone Star. I want to keep working for you.”

  Still no reply. It was like talking to a piece of lumber. Her heart started to race, her emotions to swirl. With effort, Lyndie fought to keep her voice calm and as detached as his. “Has my job performance been lacking in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would you want me to look for work elsewhere?”

  “Like I said, I think another position might suit you better.”

  “No position will suit me better than this one, I’m positive of that. I’m happy with my job. I’d like to keep it.” She gripped the phone hard and screwed her eyes shut, praying furiously while she waited.

  “I’ll see you at Whispering Creek tomorrow morning,” he said, curt. Then click.

  Lyndie pulled the phone in front of her face and growled at it. Disgusted, she threw it onto a chair and stormed toward the back of her apartment.

  She’d counted on Bo to help her get her job at Whispering Creek. But ever since Jake had hired her, she’d counted on herself to keep her job. She’d done well for Jake. She’d exercised his horses as skillfully as they could be exercised. He himself had watched every second of it. He couldn’t find fault with her job performance, and still he’d rather she leave. Which, frankly, insulted her professionally and hurt her feelings personally. She’d been working with Thoroughbreds for fourteen years. He’d only been working with them for eight. What did he know about what position would suit her best?

  Except . . . except her sense of fairness wouldn’t let her go quite that far. Even at twelve, Jake had been masterful with horses. He knew everything about Thoroughbreds.

  He knew nothing about women.

  Her apartment had two bedrooms. She sailed into the one she’d made into her studio and lowered onto her stool. Nope, couldn’t bear to sit. Back on her feet, she crossed her arms and fumed, staring out the window at her dogs below.

  His call had angered her, but it had also sharpened her purpose. No matter what he thought of her or how often he tried to persuade her to leave, she was dead set on working for him.

  Whether or not he felt the same tug of attraction toward her that she felt for him—which, clearly, he did not—she was going to do an excellent job for him. She hadn’t done anything to benefit Silver Leaf or Jake yet, but she firmly believed that she could.

  She could and she would.

  Then why, despite the brave turn of her thoughts, were her eyes brimming with tears?

  Lyndie spent the following Friday evening exactly the way she preferred to spend her Friday evenings: with a paintbrush in her hand.

  The meet-up event at Fellowship Church that Amber had talked her into attending was still more than a week away, blessedly. Which meant that she had a few more days to carry on with her not-very-social life. She’d grown accustomed to a schedule that included her family, riding, art, and pets. She was familiar with those things and content, for the most part, with her undisturbed peace.

  She’d changed out of her riding clothes and into even comfier stuff hours ago: yoga pants, slipper socks, and a lightweight burnout hoodie. She perched on her stool and used the tip of her brush to swirl pale pink watercolor paint along the top of a fairy’s wing.

  Yes, indeed. Undisturbed peace was wonderful! And would be even more so if Jake Porter would quit stealing into her thoughts.

  It had been three days since he’d tried to fire her. Since that time, he’d treated her the same way he’d treated her on her previous workday mornings. In return, she’d endeavored to treat him the same, too. He’d decided to let her keep her job, for the time being anyway, so she’d been polite and friendly to him. She’d tried to pull him into conversation just as often.

  Inwardly, though, her feelings toward him had shifted. Before he’d tried to fire her, Lyndie’s emotions for Jake had revolved around compassion. She’d felt about him the way she’d feel about an injured lion limping around, doing its best to soldier on. This week, though, the lion had proven that he had teeth. And ever since, she’d been stewing in a peculiar mix of frustration, empathy, hurt, and cautiousness.

  If her libido would quit noticing the lion’s handsomeness, then all the rest would be a lot easier to manage.

  Drawing back, she tilted her head to study her painting. She’d been praying for Jake twice as often as she had before his phone call to her. Again and again, she’d asked God to intervene in Jake’s life. She kept telling God that she was ready to do whatever He might call her to do on Jake’s behalf. She just needed Him to show her what that looked like.

  She dropped the brush into water, picked up a pen, and added a bit more thickness to a unicorn’s tail. After capping her pen, she jabbed it into her bun and left it there. She almost always twisted her hair into a topknot while painting. It got the unruly strands out of her way and made a serviceable pen and pencil holder.

  The watercolor paper mounted on her easel revealed a scene she’d drawn first in ink. A majestic gray unicorn inspired by Silver dominated the drawing’s center. Just beside and behind him stood a smaller chestnut unicorn inspired by Blackberry. A short fairy with wavy blond hair that tumbled all the way to her thighs gazed up at the unicorns fondly, her hands interlaced behind her back. Zoe, in fairy form, hovered in the air in front of the unicorns, her knees bent and feet crossed, her smile broad, her hand outstretched to the animals.

  Mrs. Mapleton rubbed against Lyndie’s ankle. Gentleman Tobias let out a shuddering snore from his spot on the chair in the corner, Empress Felicity asleep beside him. Both spaniels had, as usual, ignored the perfectly good doggie pillow Lyndie had placed on the floor for them.

  Music helped Lyndie’s creativity, and she always chose tunes that matched the mood of the piece she was working on. Sometimes happy, sometimes dramatic or adventurous. At the moment, a track that sounded mystical and contemplative played.

  As Lyndie considered her painting, she leafed through the potential plots she’d come up with for these four characters. She wanted to write a book about friendship and bravery and kindness—

  She gasped softly as an epiphany expanded inside her.

  Slowly, she brought her hands up to her cheeks. She looked in turn at each of the characters she’d painted, her pulse skittering excitedly.

  She . . .

  She may have just stumbled upon Silver Leaf’s secret.

  Chapter Seven

  The moment Lyndie finished riding and cleaning tack the next morning, she went in search of Jake. She found him inside one of the training barn’s two-and-a-half-acre paddocks, working a black filly on a lunge line.

  She knew exactly when he’d registered her approach because his big shoulders hunched beneath his charcoal sweater. Resting her forearms on the fence, she watched him bring the filly from a walk to a jog and back out again. If a horse was beginning to experience leg problems, the transition between the two could reveal the issue first. To a trainer, anyway, who had the experience to spot tiny breaks in form.

  Once he’d let the filly come to a rest, he glanced at Lyndie, his expression inscrutable. “What do you think?”

  “I think she looks fine. What do you think?”

  “I agree.” He unclipped the line from the horse’s halter. “I thought I saw something this morning, but I’m not seeing it now. She looks good to me.” He approached the fence, rolling the line. He’d worn his hat earlier but at some point had abandoned both it and his jacket.

  She wasn’t used to seeing him without his Stetson. Sunlight glimmered
in his dark hair and illuminated the world-weariness in his eyes. Faint lines marked his forehead above straight brows. Without the hat he seemed less protected, since he could do nothing to shadow the scar that crossed his face and ended at the clean, hard angle of his jaw. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  His fierce beauty tangled her thoughts for a second. You’d do best to be careful, Lyndie. This lion has teeth. “An idea came to me last night. About Silver Leaf.”

  He waited for her to explain.

  “He should have been named Casanova,” Lyndie said.

  “Casanova?”

  “Because I think he’s a lady’s man.” She smiled, excited about her theory.

  “I don’t understand.” He let himself out of the paddock.

  She stepped away from the fence and faced him. “His groom, Zoe, is female. Blackberry, the only horse in the barn he seems to have a deep connection to, is female. And now his exercise rider is female.” The sight of it on paper last night, a male horse surrounded by females, had jogged the idea free. It made perfect sense to her.

  Jake was staring at her, though, like it made zero sense to him. His body language told her she’d stepped too far over onto the imaginative side of things.

  Her hunch about Silver was just that—a hunch. But sometimes in life and in horse racing, the future could turn on the knife’s edge of a hunch. “When you moved Silver Leaf from Whispering Creek to the racetrack in the past, did Zoe go with him?” she asked.

  “No. Some employees stay here with the horses in training, some go to Florida, and the rest come to Lone Star Park with me. Zoe’s always stayed here.”

  “What about the exercise riders Silver’s had at the track? Male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “His jockey?”

  “Male.”

  It wasn’t surprising. Though women had made deep inroads into the world of Thoroughbred racing, the majority of grooms, foremen, exercise riders, jockeys, and trainers were still men.

  “You think Silver Leaf will run better for a woman than a man,” Jake said.