Page 27 of Soldier Cowboy
“Sean lived in LA? Why?”
“Back when he and Bonnie were trying to reunite the first time. She had to live there for her profession, and hecouldn’tlive there. It was a problem.”
“I see why it would be.”
“Yeah, glad they worked it out. After almost twenty years.”
“That’s too long if you love each other.” She paused because what did she know about love? Not much. “I think.”
“Definitely not ideal.”
“Speaking of love, Delores seems to think your ex-girlfriend’s heart is going to break when she hears you’reengaged.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“It would be sad to keep you away from someone who has always loved you.”
“You let me worry about that.”
He hadn’t denied there might be someone else, but he also wasn’t sharing more. Big surprise there. He was going to be the one to worry about it, which, fine, made sense. But if he was going to be sneaking out to meet a former girlfriend while pretending to be engaged, she should know about it. Probably. If one lovesick old girlfriend found out they were not actually engaged, word would spread quickly. Maybe that was for the best, even if she’d like to pretend for a while longer that soon she’d be a part of Colton’s family.
He wasn’t touching her anymore, not holding her hand or walking too closely. Instead, he walked a respectable distance from her, giving her space. He’d obviously been serious about letting her set the pace of their PDA. She was okay with the distance for now, but not because she didn’t enjoy being close to Colton. It was mostly because she’d become aware that she might be enjoying it a little too much. One thing she’d never do again is lead a man on. And yeah, she understood on one level that Dan’s obsession wasn’therfault, especially since they’d only had one date, but she still blamed herself in some ways. Good to know Colton didn’t judge her. Maybe now she’d try not to judge herself.
Meanwhile, she was living inside a countryside postcard. A long white fence stretched across a grassy plain. Another much longer one divided sections of the property. In the distance, she noticed horses running wild, chasing each other, then stopping to graze. She snapped photos, one after the other, capturing one horse midgallop as graceful as if the wind were pushing him.
“Don’t you keep them in the stables?”
“Those must be Sean’s wild horses. He has a foundation. We don’t have enough land to keep all the ones he’d like to help, so the foundation leases land where the horses can graze and live freely. Most of them are unbroken.”
Unbroken. Jennifer rather loved the word. She would use it somewhere soon, maybe as a title for her next podcast. Whenever she was able to go back to regular life.
“So…no one is ever going to put a saddle on them and ride them? Work them?”
“Probably not. No.” Colton stopped and leaned over the fence, ignoring her camera. “But we do have horses to ride. Or we did. I guess I should check on all that.”
He went quiet for several minutes. Jennifer thought he seemed pretty lost at times, at once seemingly comfortable and at home, at other times an awkward stranger. It was like this for all the returning soldiers, including Joe. She understood more about the subject than she’d ever wanted to know.
“Hey, where did you go?” She pressed a hand to his arm. “Are you okay?”
He met her eyes, shaking off whatever memory had taken him somewhere else. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Is it weird being home again, with everything so different?”
“It’s not all that different. That’s the best thing about our land. It doesn’t change the way people do.”
“That’s true. My brother, Joe, he—”
“Hey, you two!” Sean called out from several yards away. “Want to go for a ride?”
“I know it’s probably a dumb thing to ask, but how’s my horse doing?” Colton said. “I’m hoping she’s still around.”
It was only then that Jennifer realized he might have been stalling. Afraid to look and see for himself whether or not he still had a horse.
The smile dropped from Sean’s face. “I would have told you if she wasn’t.”
“Sometimes a soldier thinks nobody wants to send him the bad news.” There was something in his tone, laced with pain, that told her he’d received bad news before.
She thought of his father, dying while he was away.
