Time For Love

“A simple search online and she’ll know the truth,” Dylan said, mouth dry.

“I’m betting she won’t look you up.” Flynn’s eyes reflected the guilt Dylan was feeling. “She asked about a sober companion, but then talked herself out of it. Addiction runs in our family. Our mom.” His voice didn’t trail off; it shut off. And it took Flynn a moment to get it working again. “That’s why I don’t want Kathy to do this on her own.”

The sour taste was back, along with the crimping knots in his gut. Children of alcoholics had a higher probability of having emotional problems. Add in an addiction of their own, and their risk of relapsing was higher than average.

“Do we have a deal, O’Brien?” Flynn extended his hand. “If not for me, then for her young son. If Kathy relapses, Truman may never open up to her again.”

The money. Kathy’s opinion of herself. The risks she took with the colt. An image of his own young son’s face, hopeful and trusting, came to mind.

“Please help me help her,” Flynn added. “In secret. At least through the holidays.” A handful of weeks away.

Take the money.

Dylan knew he’d regret this. The lies. The deception. The unanswered questions. He accepted the assignment anyway, with a handshake and a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f3559ac8-3dac-5abf-8c61-100f82befdcc)

“I’M HOME.” KATHY entered the front door, shedding her pink jacket.

No one greeted her. The house smelled of savory pot roast steeped in bittersweet memories.

Her grandfather had passed away four months ago, but memorabilia from his military career still hung on the living room wall—medals, pictures, certificates of service—along with black-and-white wedding photos and baby pictures. Add in the 1970s furniture and color scheme, and everything looked the same as when he’d been alive, except there was no dust, no newspaper piles, no faint smell of hair tonic. Flynn said he’d update the place once he was done grieving. Until then, the house looked the same as it had twenty years ago.

It’d been almost two decades since their mother left them here, since Kathy had sat in Grandpa Ed’s lap while he braided her hair (a skill he’d learned in the military for making horses presentable). He’d told her she was going to be just like all the other girls in Harmony Valley. But she was different.

She was surprised every time she opened the pantry and discovered it was full. She was wary of strangers, even smiling ones in town. And her heart stuttered every time she saw a woman with red hair or heard a female with a smoker’s throaty laugh.

She’d stayed close to home in those early years, under the watchful eye of her grandfather. Eventually, when her mother didn’t come back and Kathy reached her teens, she felt confident enough to push the small-town limits that had kept her safe for so long.

Kathy missed Grandpa Ed’s booming voice as he chastised her teenage self for wearing skirts that were too short. She missed his barked rules and pieces of advice, however unwanted they’d been at the time. She could still feel his strong arms around her when she had come home after only a few months at college, alone, an emotional wreck and pregnant. He’d talked her into keeping Truman. It’d been the best decision of her life.

Until the text messages started...

The screen door banged behind her. Abby, her son’s small, mostly black Australian shepherd, trotted over to greet Kathy.

“It’s you,” Truman said flatly, standing in the foyer. He was eight, but he might just as well have been eighteen for all his sullenness. Everything about him was dirt smudged and disheveled—from his unzipped blue jacket, slightly askew on his thin shoulders, to his sneakers, laces dangling, the color of spent earthworms. “I thought you were Uncle Flynn.”

Her chest felt cavernous, as if somewhere along her alcohol-blazed trail the heart she’d given to her little boy had been lost. “I brought you a chocolate bar.” When he was younger and she’d disappointed him, she would bring him gifts and sweets, and he would fling his arms around her as if she had never failed him. Today she’d had Phil, the elderly town barber, go in and buy the bar for her at El Rosal. Kathy pulled it from her jacket pocket, distressed to find the dark chocolate soft beneath her fingers.

Without looking at her, Truman turned up his nose. “I don’t eat treats before dinner. Aunt Becca says I can only have one treat a day, and I already had cookies.”

Kathy remembered baking cookies with Truman last Christmas in this kitchen. He’d stood on a stool, mixing the dough, chattering a mile a minute. When they slid the cookies in the oven, Truman had hugged her tight and then run to play checkers with Grandpa Ed. If only she’d known how fragile their bond was, she wouldn’t ever have let him go.

“How about a hug?” Kathy dropped the candy onto the low wooden coffee table and extended her arms, knowing they’d remain empty, but still stubbornly hopeful. So very hopeful. “Your mom’s had a long day.”

“I hug you every night at bedtime, like I’m supposed to.” So young to be able to wound her so deeply.

Kathy couldn’t seem to draw a breath.

Abby sat quietly in front of her, soft eyes patient for affection. She’d been Becca’s dog until last summer, when Kathy went into rehab and Truman moved in here. Kathy reached in her pocket for a doggy treat. Presents worked great with animals. With her son? Not so much. Not anymore.

Truman walked past Kathy to the kitchen. “Where’s Aunt Becca and Uncle Flynn?”

“I don’t know,” Kathy said. “I smell dinner, though. We should check to make sure it doesn’t burn.”

He shook his ginger-haired head. “Becca never burns anything.” Another accusation. Another oxygen-robbed moment.

Unlike her sister-in-law, Kathy was a horrible cook. Granted, in the past two years she’d been operating the stove under the influence, but she was convinced you either had the cooking gene or you didn’t. The more Becca’s perfection contrasted against Kathy’s flaws, the stronger Kathy’s desire to get a place of her own became. All she needed was rent money—and Truman by her side.

Becca hurried down the hall toward them, looking put-together-cute in yoga pants and a thin green sweater. For sure, she didn’t smell of manure and disinfectant. “I didn’t hear you two come in. I was on the phone checking on a client.” Saint Becca, the town’s caregiver to the elderly. She kissed the top of Truman’s head.

Kathy’s ears filled with a rushing noise, much like the time she’d got caught by a submerged branch at the bend in the Harmony Valley River and nearly drowned. She turned away.

“Did you meet Felix’s new litter of kittens?” Becca asked Truman.

Kathy couldn’t resist turning back.

Truman beamed. He used to smile at Kathy like that, before she’d lost control of the drinking. “I also saw Bea’s baby goats. She calls them kids.” He giggled.

“I’m going to wash up.” Kathy fled down the hallway. She locked herself in the bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror. What an afternoon. A confrontation with a handsome, heartless stranger, followed by another example of how she’d been replaced in Truman’s life.

She needed...something. She didn’t want a drink. Alcohol didn’t solve anything. But she wanted her son to look up to her and love her, like he used to. Like he did to Becca. She wanted them to be a family again, to have a bond with her son that no one could break. If only he would agree to spend time with her. Alone time. Together time. Precious time. He’d see she was the mother he’d once loved wholeheartedly.

The shower beckoned. She knew the family wouldn’t hold dinner for her. She could eat alone. But that was the coward’s way out. And her grandfather hadn’t raised any cowards. He’d passed on words of wisdom to her and Flynn after their mother left them here for good—pep talks he’d most likely used on the military men who’d reported to him during his career.

She met her gaze in the mirror. “Don’t let life push you around. You can win back Truman’s love and trust.”

She could.

The more often she said it, the better chance she had of believing it.

* * *

FEAR DID AWFUL things to a man. It drained Dylan of energy and hope, and now of morals.

His old man would have said he’d let a horse best him. And then he’d have followed that up with a besting of his own. His dad’s bloodshot eyes had been wilder and more menacing than any horse.

Still thinking of the promises he’d made in Harmony Valley, Dylan drove down Redemption Ranch’s thinly graveled, potholed driveway, illuminated only by his headlights. A small car turned in behind him. He parked in front of his paint-peeling, two-story clapboard house. Motion-activated lights flipped on—one from the front porch, one over the separate garage and one near the corner of the double row of stables. They illuminated his crabgrass and scraggly shrubbery.

Home, sweet home.

Phantom let out a shrill whinny, more a warning than a welcome.

Dylan leaned against the dented tailgate, pushing all his concerns—for the black stallion, Kathy and a damaged colt—to the side.

“Daddy!” A brown-haired, stubby-legged five-year-old boy tumbled out of the backseat as soon as his mother unbuckled him. Zach wrapped his wiry arms around Dylan’s legs. “I want a pony ride.”

Eileen stood at the car, arms crossed, a frown on her face. He’d considered her kind and beautiful once—short wavy brown hair, whiskey-colored eyes and a button nose. And she had once loved him, back when she’d considered Dylan the man who hung the moon, the horse miracle worker whom everyone wanted to hire. “Cutting it close, Dylan?”