Taking the Reins

Charlie found Jake sitting cross-legged on one of the lower bales. Two feet away stood big Mama Cat, twenty pounds of yellow tabby with orange eyes that could shoot fire. Her tail had swelled to twice normal size, and the tip flicked back and forth an inch in either direction.

Usually by this time she’d disappeared up to the top of one of the rafters or gone for the nearest jugular. Charlie was afraid to move. It was another one of those “child in the gorilla cage” moments.

She held her breath as he reached two fingers toward the big tabby. The world stopped while man and cat stared deep into each other’s eyes.

Jake’s eyes were the color of the Aegean Sea in high summer. She still remembered that blue from the vacation she and her parents took to Crete during one of her father’s tours of duty. She’d felt that if she looked over the side of the little boat, the mermaids would pull her down. She felt the same drowning sensation now as she stared into Jake’s eyes.

Good grief!

She’d sworn off men! Definitely no more soldiers. Celibacy was the order of the day. Men wanted to own you, to make you go where they wanted you to go, be what they wanted you to be. Military men, especially. And you better not make any changes in your life while they were off fighting the bad guys. Steve would have preferred she go into suspended animation while he was away.

She turned before Jake could catch sight of the blood suffusing her face. She suspected if he took her temperature, she’d blow the lid off the mercury.

This would not do. One did not get turned on by a student. And a soldier. And a loner with psychological problems. He could have a wife and sixteen kids for all she knew.

Why not react to Sean? He wasn’t that much older, and his hand couldn’t be called a handicap. Or even Hank, the gorgeous macho guy. But neither of them pushed her hot buttons. Actually, she was kind of surprised she still had hot buttons. She hadn’t felt physically attracted to Steve since before his last tour, and he had definitely not been attracted to her.

Jake was holding something between his slim fingers. How long could he maintain his position with his arm extended that way? Would cat or man break first?

Then Mama took a single step, flattened her ears, stuck out her neck and snatched something—a bit of chicken saved from lunch?—from Jake’s fingers. A moment later she was gone in a honey-colored blur.

“That cat is a killer,” she said. “How did you do that?”

“You know she’s pregnant?”

Charlie nodded. “We’ve tried every trick in the book to catch her so we can have her neutered. She’s much smarter than we are. She showed up here a couple of years ago all skin and bones with more battle scars than Galactica. She’s a Tennessee feral cat.”

He unfolded himself from the bale of hay. “Man, is she ever!”

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to offer him her hand to pull him up.

Not so natural to stand closer than she’d intended. She caught her breath and heard his catch, as well. She looked away from those blue eyes, but not before they’d held hers a moment too long for comfort. Aware of her quickened breathing, she turned away and walked down the aisle. She heard him following her, the slight hitch in his step already familiar.

“Tennessee feral cats are an actual breed,” she babbled. “There’s a stuffed one in the local museum. Probably descendants from the cats the Scots traders brought with them in the eighteen hundreds. I’ve no idea whether it’s feasible for a domestic cat to interbreed with a bobcat, but I do know the few remaining representatives of the feral cat breed are all that big, all that beige yellow tabby color and all fierce fighters.”

“Feral cats always regress to that beige tabby color within five generations in the wild.”

“How would you know that?”

He shrugged. “I grew up on a farm where all the barn cats were feral. We never had a problem with field mice or even the pink-eared rats. Everybody worked on my family’s farm, even the snakes.”

“I beg your pardon?” This time she stopped to stare at him.

He grinned at her. “This place is bound to have a couple of resident king snakes to keep the poisonous snakes down.”

“I’d rather not know, thank you.”

“If you meet one, tip your cap, thank him for his good work, and send him on his way.”

“How will I know the difference? What’s more important, how do you?”

“You weren’t born a country girl, were you?”

“No.” She didn’t offer him any further explanation.

“Hey, want company?” Hank, Sean and Mary Anne came down the aisle to join them.

“Where’s Mickey?” Charlie asked.

“Said he was tired,” Hank said. Charlie picked up the faintest trace of a sneer.

“He was,” Mary Anne snapped. “You have any idea how hard it is trying to be upbeat and funny all the time you’re driving a wheelchair?”

Hank held his hands up in front of him, palms out. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m not used to him is all.”

“Get used to this, too, why don’t you?” She yanked off her scarf and glared at them.

Charlie managed not to gasp. The colonel had warned her that Mary Anne needed more reconstructive surgery, more skin grafts on the side of her face and her arms. Most of her scars would eventually be gone or less evident. She had to go through a period of healing both physically and emotionally before her next round of surgeries.

The doctors hadn’t yet reconstructed her right ear. A patch of skin the size of two dollar bills ran red, puckered and hairless down her scalp and along the side of her jaw, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. “Get used to it, people. I did.” She turned on her heel.

“Hey, Mary Anne,” Hank called after her. “The horses don’t care and neither do we.”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Too hot for those long sleeves anyway. Come on back.” He held out his right hand to her.

When she turned, Charlie could see she was fighting tears but she reached out to Sean with her left hand, hesitated, then held out her right, as well. The scars covered only the pinkie side. Without looking down, Sean took the injured hand gingerly in his latex-covered one.

For a moment, no one breathed, then Hank said, “Come on, girl. Time’s awastin’. I want to get my hands on some horse.”

Charlie’s throat tightened. She caught Jake’s eye, and knew he got it.

We’re all damaged. Maybe together we can heal one another.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY HEARD MICKEY’S whir before his wheelchair whipped out the door to the common room and down the aisle toward them. “Hey! Yous guys taking a trip without me?”

“You snooze, you lose,” Hank said. He stopped at the first stall. “Would you look at the size of him? That’s not a horse, that’s a hippopotamus.”

“Hippos are short,” Sean said. “That’s more moose size. Y’all got mooses in Wyoming, don’t you?”

Mary Anne pulled away from him and backed across the aisle.

“Hey, did I grab you too tight?” Sean called.

Mary Anne shook her head, her dark eyes the size of eight balls. “I...I didn’t think they’d be so big.”

The gray Percheron gelding poked his head over the top of his stall gate, delighted by the attention. He looked straight at Mary Anne and snorted—a big, wet, huffy snort.