Page 9 of Saving Veronica
“Six minutes tops. She stripped out of the clothes she was wearing, and quickly slipped into jeans and shirts, along with cowboy boots and a red down vest. Not that it’s any of my business, but why would she need to wear three shirts as well as a vest, especially in this heat?”
“She said Hector called and she had to get home and check on Paige, correct?”
“Correct. Not that I’m judging, but my first impression was he was her husband, and Paige was their daughter.” That had been his first impression, until he’d kissed her, and her response to him was not that of a happily married woman.
He looked up when Maggie began laughing.
“Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. See Ronnie has, I guess, because of its size, it would be considered a farm, not a ranch. She has fifty acres that my parents willed her years ago. When she turned twenty, she began fixing up the property and moved there. Hector worked for my husband for years. We have what you would consider a gentleman’s ranch.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, we have horses and land, but we don’t work the land. We don’t run livestock or anything like that. We’ve rented out some of the outlying fields to other ranchers for summer or winter feed for their herds, with the condition that they provide Ronnie with what she needs for her animals, but we don’t have them. We have hundreds of acres. Ronnie only has fifty. When my husband and I pass, years from now, Ronnie will inherit everything we have. Hector went to work for her and he’s her foreman. She only has two horses. Paige is one of them.”
“Paige is a horse?” Finn sputtered on the coffee he’d just taken a sip of.
“Yep, but not just any horse.”
“I’ll admit that I don’t know much about horses, I’ve ridden once, but that was years ago.”
“Okay, a little background on Ronnie. She’s a college student. In a few weeks she goes back to school for her final year. Barring anything happening, next May she’ll have her PhD in veterinary medicine.”
“She’ll be a vet?”
“Yes. She works here in the summers as an intern to earn enough money for her books and things. When my parents died and left her the farm, they also left her enough money for tuition. She used to joke with my husband and I that she only worked here with people, because once she became a vet her patients wouldn’t be able to talk, so she wanted to get enough human contact before that happened.” They both shared a laugh over that.
“Paige?” Finn encouraged the older woman when she paused. He knew it was wrong to try to get to know the younger woman through her grandmother, but at this point, he didn’t care. He wanted to know Ronnie as much as possible. When she got back from her trip, he was going to ask her out. He knew he definitely wanted to get to know her better, especially after that kiss they shared.
“Right, but Sarge comes first. As I said, she was twenty when she started working on the house and barn at the farm and moved there. Between her schooling and working here, she renovated the house and barn. She didn’t have any animals, except for a few barn cats. Her second year there, she took the whole month of August off from here. Ronnie borrowed one of our horses and began walking the trails. Her house was all done as was the barn. Hector came back to live with us, because there were no animals for him to take of there.
“While she was gone up into the mountains, she found a meadow where wild mustangs ran free. When she was gone, Hector or Gerald, my husband, would mount up and head up to check on her. Took her supplies and such. Yes, she camped out for that month. Toward the end, Hector and Gerald were at her place getting ready to ride out to check on her. I happened to be with them that day. We heard something and looked up and there was Ronnie, riding the horse she borrowed from us and beside her, with no saddle, no lead, or no bridle was this beautiful, gorgeous jet-black stallion.”
“Really?”
“Yes, he was lame and had fight marks on him. He was one of the wild mustangs she had been watching in that meadow. She said he got into a fight with the leader and lost. Don’t ask me how, but she was able to bring him home with her. I think a lot of it might have been because he was hurt, but we’ll never know. That was exactly one week before her twenty-first birthday five years ago, and it’s her birthday tomorrow.
“She worked with him every single day from that day forward. Two weeks after she brought him home, she started college again. At one point, Hector was worried and came to get me to talk to her. She had set up a stall as an office and did her homework from there.”
“Keeping close, so the horse would know she was there.”
“Exactly. Then the next year, Sarge disappeared for two weeks. When he came back, he was again lame and torn up, but he had a beautiful gray mare with him.”
“Oh my god, did he go back to that meadow and steal her from the herd?”
“I think so.” Maggie grinned. “Ronnie named her Paige and she was young. She called the vet, and together, they determined that she was only a year old. Again, Ronnie worked with her, and Hector moved into the small foreman’s cabin on the property.”
“Did they get anymore wild mustangs?”
“No. But Paige is pregnant with Sarge’s foal. She’s due to foal in a couple of weeks. When Hector called, and he wouldn’t call unless something was wrong, because that man has over forty years’ experience working with horses, Ronnie would drop everything to see what he needed. But I’ll wait until she gets home from her trip to the meadow to see what happened.”
“Wow. But I have to ask. Why Sarge?” Finn asked, as he got up and refilled both his and her coffee cup.
Maggie laughed. “I don’t know if you know this, but my husband, Ronnie’s grandfather, is General Gerald Pennyworth. Over the years, she’d use military jargon to name animals or some such thing.” Then, she covered her mouth and began laughing, until tear streamed down her face.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, since I barely know you, but since she held you hostage, I feel I owe you. Ronnie came to live with us when she was three. Her mother, Bonnie, was our daughter. When Bonnie was sixteen, she fell in love with the town bad boy and became pregnant. She had Ronnie. We didn’t live here at that time. Gerald was stationed in North Carolina then, but my parents are from here, and when they became sick, I packed up Bonnie and we moved here to take care of them. I didn’t, by the way, leave my husband. We talked about it for months before making that decision. He would continue his military career, and Bonnie and I would come here and take care of my parents.”
“Bonnie only lasted here for a few months. She was still pregnant when she ran away from home and went back to the baby’s father. Everything seemed fine for a year, but then with Ronnie’s birth, they found out it was hard. Instead of coming here to ask for help, or going to his family for help, he robbed a convenient store. He was caught and went to jail for a year. Bonnie then came home with Ronnie in tow. She got mixed up with the wrong crowd and started taking drugs, but when she found out Ronnie’s father was out of jail, she went back to him, taking Ronnie with her. Not six months later, he was back in jail and she came home, again, mixing up with the bad crowd and drugs. When she heard that Ronnie’s father had been killed in jail, Bonnie ODed and died.”
“However, before she died, she bought Ronnie a McCaw bird. It was the only thing Ronnie had from her mother. She named him Kip.” Maggie started giggling.
