Page 29 of Windlass

Stevie’s laugh was strangled. “Fine.”

“You can rent a room from us, if you need to.”

As if Stevie could leave now. She shook her head. “We’re working through it. Oh, the kid’s still here. You should meet her.”

Jaq had emerged from the barn as they pulled in, the evening light elongating her shadow into a narrow finger reaching across the lot, breaking up the awkward conversation.

“Your stable hand?”

“She’s growing on me. Come on.”

Morgan followed Stevie out of the truck. Jaq’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them as they approached, and Stevie smiled encouragingly—or at least that was the intent.

“This is Morgan, the vet I work with,” she said. “If anything ever happens with one of the horses and you can’t reach me or Ivy, Morgan’s number is in the tack room, and this is what she looks like.”

“Nice to meet you.” Morgan stuck her hand out, and Jaq gripped it, her large brown eyes gazing up with something like wonder. Stevie suppressed a snort. Morgan had that effect on people. Being her closest friend for over two decades had given her a large sample size to study.

“Nice to meet you too.”

“I gotta take off, but I’ll see you around—and I will see your ass tomorrow,” Morgan added, patting Stevie on the shoulder.

“She has really cool hair.” Jaq watched Morgan walk away.

“Really?” Stevie eyed Morgan’s short curls. “Okay, yes. She does. You’ve got good hair though, too.”

Jaq raised an eyebrow. “I have the world’s most boring hair.”

“It’s not—okay fine. Same.” She scraped her ponytail into a tighter tail to illustrate her point. “You could cut your hair.”

Jaq shrugged, managing to look tiny in her oversized sweatshirt despite being Stevie’s height. “Maybe someday.”

“If we keep having days as hot as Saturday, I’ll be buzzing my head with the horse clippers. I could give you a mohawk.”

“That’d be cool.”

Would it? Stevie had no idea what was cool to kids. She still felt like one half the time, and yet Jaq made her feel ancient.

“How’s Olive?”

“Good. I worked her on a lunge line like Ivy showed me, and she did well.”

“Thanks. Did Ivy pay you?”

“Yeah.” Jaq scuffed her toe on the gravel. “She told me to ask you if we could use your bareback pad on Freddie for a lesson. She wants to do some balance work.”

Which meant someone had signed the form, forged or otherwise. Stevie filed away the reverent way Jaq said Ivy’s name. Jaq looked like a kid with a crush—and not a crush on Stevie, thank god.

Her glee over this discovery faded as she walked toward the house after visiting Olive. The lights were on and Angie’s car was here, which meant another evening of pretending things were normal. The few that had passed since the weekend had been excruciating. Being turned on all the damn time was not only uncomfortable, but a liability. She’d burned dinner, tripped so badly while getting dressed she’d fallen and nearly concussed herself on her dresser, and her conversational skills had been reduced to a series of mumbles.

She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

“I made pasta. There’s some on the stove for you,” Angie called out as she entered.

“Thanks.” Shedding her things and stripping down to a tank top, tossing her work polo into the laundry, she followed Angie’s voice.

She sat at the kitchen table, sketchbook before her and computer open. A frown creased her forehead. Stevie paused to grab herself a bowl of dinner and slid into a chair.

“What’cha working on?”

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