Page 36 of Our Sweet Destiny
“I’m afraid I’m not very exciting.” His eyes were serious, and she realized that she wanted to know about him, too. “Have you ever not wanted to work on the ranch?” she asked.
“Never. Taking care of horses and working the ranch is all I’ve ever wanted to do. There’s something very gratifying about breeding such beautiful, powerful creatures and knowing we can handpick the owners.” He leaned back in the booth, and a dreamy look swept through his eyes. “My mother used to say that picking a horse’s owner was as important as picking an adoptive parent for a child. When I was about six, she brought me down to the barn with her to groom one of the horses, and she said, ‘Look into the eyes. Every person, and every horse, carries the souls of the ones before them. In those eyes, you’ll see kindness or you’ll see something else. When that other appears, don’t try to look past it—just move on to the next buyer.’”
Jade had heard stories of her father breeding horses in the years before she and her brother were born, but she couldn’t remember why he’d gotten out of that business and went to work for the agricultural engineering firm until he retired to run the ranch full-time.
“I think your mother and I would have gotten along very well,” she said. “I feel the same way about animals and people.” She remembered how he’d reacted when she’d talked about depression in horses, and it gave her pause.
“You actually remind me a lot of my mother—from what I can remember of her. Like right now, you look like you swallowed a bug, but you aren’t even eating. Want to talk about it?”
Am I that transparent?
“My mother had this one uncomfortable look that I remember, and she only pulled it out on very rare occasions, but when she did, you knew she was on the verge of confronting you about something you’d done—and in my case, I was usually guilty of ignoring my schoolwork in lieu of helping my father with the animals, or my brothers and I had broken something when we were wrestling.”
He smiled, and Jade could see him enjoying the memories. She wished she would have known him as a friend when he was a boy. She had a feeling they would have gotten into all sorts of mischief, and she had to wonder, if they’d been friends, might they have developed into something more as teenagers?
“So, do you want to share what’s behind that worried look?” he asked again.
Honesty has to come first.She swallowed the nerves that tried to steal her voice. “The other day by the feed store, I was asking you about Hope, and you made a comment.”
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “Jade, when you said that, the way you said it, the look in your eyes, it was all so reminiscent of my mom. Your eyes were so serious, and it sounded so natural for you to link animals with human feelings. I grew up with a dichotomy of beliefs between my mother and father, and after my mother died, all of my father’s beliefs fell away. Suddenly he saw exactly what she had, and to this day, that has never changed. If anything, it deepened. Your beliefs, and the way you wore them on your sleeve for all to see, were so close to my mother’s that it…it stunned me for a minute. And by the time I had regrouped, it was too late.”
She searched his eyes for an element of deceit, a feigned reasoning, but what she saw was so much richer than anything she’d ever imagined: pure and simple honesty and regret. She knew she could trust him. No matter what they faced, he’d be honest and his actions would be pure. He had needed her touch as much as she needed to touch him. Her touch had more than its calming effect on him. What she learned was so much more than she’d imagined might be buried beneath that gruff exterior. Rex was a loving, passionate man whose honesty and love came in droves, cushioned with a tenderness that he saved for only those closest to him. She understood that now. Jade felt the moment sear into her memory, and she knew her heart had just crossed a defining moment in not only their relationship but also in her life.
