Page 55 of Christmas with the Cowboy
“Both Dad and Grandpa have said that, so it must be true.” Lex gave Trenna a conspiratorial smile as she dismounted, then pulled the reins over the mare’s head. “I wish Lilly Mae wasn’t so old.”
“It’s sad to see an animal friend age,” Trenna agreed.
“If she was younger, I’d figure out a way to get her to Bozeman so that I could ride more often.”
“Do you guys have a place for horses?”
Lex shook her head. “But I have a friend with a little farm, and we hatched a plan.” She spoke the last words as if quoting, once again making Trenna want to smile. “I’d keep a horse there, and Gregg would do the family taxes.”
“Gregg’s an accountant?”
“CPA. Pretty much the opposite of my dad.” Lex gave Trenna a quick look. “But he’s not boring or anything.”
“Like your dad?” Trenna asked innocently, earning herself a smile from the girl.
“Right.” Lex pulled the bridle off the mare, taking care with the bit, then looped a rope around her neck prior to putting on the halter and tying her to the ring on the hitching post. “I’m triple teamed, you know.”
“Are you?”
“I have friends that are quadruple teamed, and others with parents that fight with each other all the time, so I’m lucky.”
“You are.”
Lex glanced at Trenna, as if debating whether to engage on a certain line of questions, and Trenna realized that she was holding her breath as she waited for the girl to speak. But when she did, the subject was mundane.
“Do you ride? I mean you grew up on a ranch, right?”
“I do ride. I learned after my father and I moved onto the ranch.” Her dad’s foreman at the time had taken her under his wing and tutored her in horsemanship. After that, she’d joined 4-H and still had quite a few ribbons from various horseshows stowed away on the ranch. Some things were hard to part with.
“When was that?”
“When I was ten. My grandfather had just passed away, so we moved onto the ranch to be closer to Grandmother.” Not that her father had stayed close, but he’d hired a talented foreman who made certain that the ranch was run effectively and efficiently while he was away.
“I wasn’t a ranch kid like your dad. I didn’t get to hay or move cattle or anything. Not—” She almost said,until your dad and I started dating, but managed to bite the words back. “Not really my thing,” she said instead. It wasn’t the full truth, because when Reed had taught her those skills, she’d loved it.
Loved him.
A vision of Reed the previous evening shot through her brain, and Trenna felt her cheeks warm. Not acceptable.
“My mom grew up on a ranch,” Lex said conversationally, thankfully oblivious to Trenna’s flushed face. “But she likes living in town now. She said that ranches are a lot of work and that the weather can ruin you.”
“She has a point,” Trenna said. Obviously, as Reed had pointed out, her ranch upbringing hadn’t been close to what other ranch kids had dealt with, yet she still felt drawn to the life, past and present. She cleared her throat.
“My dad wasn’t a rancher like your grandparents are. He still worked in San Francisco and had his foreman run the place.”
“He wasn’t there a lot?” Lex guessed.
“There was no such thing as telecommuting back then, so he was gone about three weeks out of the month.”
“Then your mom raised you?”
“I lost my mom before I moved there.”
Lex’s look of sympathy made Trenna’s heart squeeze, reminding her that Lex was facing a similar loss.
“I had my grandmother.” Until she was fifteen anyway. “And I saw my dad when he came home.” Which had always been such a huge event. She’d loved seeing her father, pleasing her father. Their only bone of contention had been Reed.
At first, Carter hadn’t known that they were serious, and assumed they were friends, but after a year of steady Reed, he’d put two and two together on his visits home. He’d made some disparaging remarks about Reed and his prospects for the future, asked Trenna to think about her future, but other than that had bided his time, waiting for the relationship to cool.
