There were about a million of them milling around, talking and laughing as they waited for class to begin. Most of the students had some sort of physical impairment that Kylie could spot – coke-bottle glasses or a limp or a protruding tongue. A few showed no scars on the outside, and Kylie knew that for these students, the hidden scars were probably even worse.

The scars you couldn’t see were the hardest ones to get over, something she knew all too well.

“Okay, everyone, listen up!” Adam was standing up at the front of the barn, and almost instantly, every pair of eyes were trained on him, and the constant hum of noise disappeared. Kylie was impressed – Adam had obviously been working with these kids for a while now to garner that sort of attention so quickly. “I have a helper here today who I want to introduce you to. Kylie, can you come up here?”

“Oh, sure,” she said, embarrassed as every eye in the place swung towards her. She hadn’t expected this and gave Adam a playful glare as she walked up to the front. He winked at her in return.

He’d obviously been intimidated. She sighed to herself. She really needed to work on that steely-eyed glare…

“This is Kylie VanLueven,” he said to the group. “She’s my secretary back at the clinic, and will also be coming out here to help with the camp sometimes. Can everyone say hi to Kylie?”

“Hi, Kylie,” came a chorus of voices.

She looked at the group of eager faces and couldn’t help but grin back. “Hi! I’m so excited to be here. I can’t wait to get to know you all.”

“Are you Dr. Whitaker’s girlfriend?” shouted one of the boys in the back. Tittering and laughter spread through the kids at the question.

Kylie did a fine impersonation of a goldfish for a moment, mouth agape, not sure what to say, when Adam countered back smoothly, “Wouldn’t you like to know! Quick reminder everyone, today is the last day of school hours. After this, we do summer camp hours. Did you guys all enjoy your last day of school?”

“Yeah!” a couple of the boys shouted, and then pandemonium descended as every student tried to tell Adam and Kylie what had happened that day. From what Kylie could gather, not much had changed since she was in elementary school – they’d had a water day, had eaten ice cream sandwiches, and had cleaned out their lockers. The city fire department had even driven a firetruck over to the school. The firefighters had turned on the siren while shooting a stream of water into the air for the kids to run under, which according to everyone there, was the highlight of the day, even above and beyond the ice cream sandwiches.

Hmmm…ice cream. I could eat some ice cream right now.

She felt her stomach rumble at the thought, but forced herself to concentrate. She could eat ice cream later. Oh yeah…I could eat french vanilla ice cream with blueberries and chocolate syrup and gummy bears and coconut shreds and…

Focus, Kylie! She was supposed to be supervising children, not daydreaming about cookie dough ice cream, with raspberry syrup and—

She forced herself to start walking around, and soon found herself working with a girl, brunette hair in pigtails and braces on her teeth, who quickly began giving Kylie lessons on how to brush a horse. “You have to go from the head to the tail,” the little girl said seriously, flashing a mouth full of metal up at Kylie. “Horses don’t like it if you go the other way. Sonny loves everyone but he loves me the mostest. Can you get the oats out of the barrel? I need to feed him.”

Kylie’s head spun, trying to keep up with the little girl’s stream of thoughts, but hurried over to the barrels that she’d pointed out. Kylie grabbed a small bucket off the top of the stack and a scoop, and filled up the bucket.

“Thank you,” the girl said politely, before turning to the horse, bucket in hand. Sonny began snuffling up the oats in record time, using his lips to suck up every last one in the bucket before plaintively nudging the little girl’s shoulder for more. “Can we give him more?” she pleaded, her big eyes begging Kylie adorably.

Kylie looked down at her and panicked a little. “Uhhh…let me ask Dr. Whitaker. I’ll be right back.”

She hurried across the dusty barn to Adam, who was busy refereeing a dispute between two boys. When he finished and sent them off in opposite directions to get back to work, he looked up with a harried smile.

“Ummm…that little girl over there—” she pointed towards the pigtailed girl who was brushing Sonny carefully from head to tail, “—wants to know if she can give her horse a second bucket of oats.”

“No,” Adam said with a laugh. “Jenny knows better. She’s just hoping that with you being the new person and all, you won’t. Don’t let her talk you into giving Sonny more than one bucket per day. She knows the rules.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, flashing Adam a quick smile before turning to head back across the barn.

“Kylie!” he called out, and grabbed her hand.

She turned back, surprised, even as bolts of excitement shot up her arm. Would she ever tire of being around Adam? It was hard to imagine that happening, although intellectually, she understood that it was possible.

Just like it was possible for the moon to fall from the sky.

“Thanks for the help,” he said softly. “And thanks for asking. Jenny would do almost anything for that horse, and that includes trying to bend the rules.”

“Of course,” she said, and reluctantly pulled away. Leaving Adam’s side was painful, to say the least, but she wasn’t here to make googly eyes at her boss/boyfriend. She was here to work with the kids. She hurried back across the barn.

“Okay, girlfriend,” she told Jenny, “Dr. Whitaker said only one bucket per day.”

Realizing that her attempt to play the new person had failed, Jenny instantly decided to change the topic. “My name isn’t ‘Girlfriend,’” she told Kylie seriously. “It’s Genny with a G.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Kylie hid her grin behind her hand. “Well, Genny with a G, are you ready to saddle Sonny up?”

“Yes, please!” Thrilled that the topic was back to what she loved most of all – riding horses – Genny grabbed Kylie’s hand and began dragging her across the barn to where the tack was stored.

Kylie was a bit rusty on how to saddle up a horse, but with Genny’s guidance, they got it done. Genny led Sonny over to the mounting block and swung up onto his back, grinning like she’d just won the Kentucky Derby. With a click of the tongue and a light tap on the sides of the horse, Sonny began ambling towards the open door of the barn and out onto the worn, dirt oval to join the stream of other horses and riders.

Kylie followed her out into the sunshine and over to the fence to lean against it, watching the horses plod by, grins and shouts from the kids over the sheer joy of it all. A few were working on cantering, which Kylie thought looked like a good way to bounce all of your teeth out of your head if you didn’t know what you were doing, but hell, the kids looked like they were loving it, so who was she to question their choices?

Her eyes were drawn to a slender, Hispanic boy with large brown eyes and a look of total concentration on his face. He was young, of course, maybe ten or twelve years old, but Kylie could already tell he was going to be a heartbreaker when he grew up. Amidst the yelling and laughter of the other students, he seemed overly serious, as if every move he made was a life-or-death decision.

“Kylie, Kylie, look!” Genny hollered, pulling her attention away and back towards the girl bouncing along on Sonny. “I’m gantering!”

Kylie just smiled and waved, hiding her laughter at the mispronunciation. Genny was a force to be reckoned with, even if she didn’t know how to pronounce every word properly.

Way too quickly, it was time to wrap up and the children began leading the horses inside to unsaddle them and brush them down. Parents began arriving, and heroics were shared as the kids began regaling them with all of their derring do.

Kylie watched as Genny began telling her tired-looking mother all about the excitement of the day, waving goodbye to Kylie as she left, never missing a beat in her story.

Kylie then saw the county deputy – April? Abigail? Annie? Something with an A – arrive, holding hands with the oldest Miller boy. They were both way older than Kylie – she’d probably been a babe in arms when they were graduating from high school – but their love for each other appeared to still be just as strong as ever. She wondered when they’d gotten married. Had they been married since high school? Probably. They had that aurora of stable love about them, as if they knew what the other person was going to do or say even before it happened.

The quiet Hispanic boy Kylie had been watching earlier went hurrying over to the couple and began chattering up a storm about riding Ladybug and he’d saddled her all by himself and he rode faster than the other kids and…

She was completely fascinated by the abrupt personality change. Before the Millers had shown up, she hadn’t seen him say a word to anyone, but now, he was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Once he’d finally wound down, Mr. Miller looped his arm around the boy’s shoulders and said with a big grin, “C’mon, Juan, let’s head home. Mom’s got dinner in the oven already, and you know she won’t put up with us being late for dinner.”

“Hey, I heard that,” Mrs. Miller said, laughing. “You make me sound like an ogre!” They continued their playful banter out the door and into the sunlight. Kylie watched them go, her curiosity piqued. Had the Millers adopted Juan? It sure sounded like it.

Once again, she was regretting not being plugged into the Long Valley Gossip Network. There was a real difference between knowing all of the gossip, and being the center of all of the gossip. One was significantly more pleasurable than the other, that was for damn sure.

Finally, all of the kids were gone and it was just her and Adam left in the barn. “So, what did you think?” he asked as he came striding over to pull her into his arms. Before she could say anything, he leaned down and gave her a thorough kiss. “I’ve been waiting for hours to do that,” he told her with a lazy grin when he pulled away.

She couldn’t help the silly answering smile that spread across her face. “Me too,” she said, and then blushed. She still wasn’t used to the idea that Adam Whitaker was her boyfriend. “Anyway,” she said, hurrying on before her face could turn a brilliant tomato red, “I can see why you do this, but also why you’re exhausted from it! These kids…they’re amazing. A real handful, but amazing. Speaking of the kids, what’s the story with Juan? Was he adopted by the Millers?”

Adam nodded slowly. “His parents weren’t stand-up citizens, to put it mildly, and when Juan first started coming to camp, he had a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. He was in the foster care system at that point, and boy, was he pissed at everyone. Defensive, snarky, always having to one-up everyone around him…he wasn’t the most popular kid in the class, let’s put it that way.” They began wandering around the barn and cleaning up, putting stray pieces of tack and brushes away as they talked.

“So in January of last year,” Adam continued, “Wyatt started helping me with these classes, and he and Juan hit it off. Wyatt said that Juan was his mini-me; he understood the attitude for what it was – a front to hide pain and fear behind. Anyway, so after Wyatt and Abby got married last September, they started the paperwork to adopt him.” Oh. So they definitely haven’t been together since high school. Whoops… “He’s living with them full-time but the legal system moves slowly, and the adoption isn’t official yet. They’re hoping it will be this fall. It sure is funny to see a guy that you graduated with grow and change as much as Wyatt Miller has.” Adam shook his head in disbelief. “Actually, Juan and Wyatt have both done a shit-ton of changing, and all for the better. I think we have Abby to thank for that.”

“Hold on, you graduated with Wyatt Miller?” Kylie said, her stomach dropping to around her toes. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that there was an age gap between them, but when Adam said something like that so casually… “But, but Wyatt is old!” she protested.

Adam threw his head back and laughed. “I’ll be sure not to share that assessment with him, or with Abby. She’s only three years younger than Wyatt and me.”

“Sorry,” Kylie mumbled, her cheeks red with embarrassment. “I know that you’re older than me, but sometimes…I guess I just forget how much older.”

Adam pulled her back into his arms, wrapping them around her and snuggling her up against his chest. “An adult is an adult,” he said seriously to the top of her head, his warm breath blowing over the part in her hair, like air kisses. “It’s not like you’re 12 and I’m 28. We’re both adults, and we are legally and morally a-okay to love each other. Just…uh…leave all mention of how old you think someone is when you’re hanging out with my friends.”

Kylie nodded, rubbing her face up against his chest as she did so. “Deal,” she mumbled, suddenly feeling exhausted beyond all reason. “Why am I so tired?” she asked rhetorically around a huge yawn.

“It takes a lot out of a person to grow another human being inside of them,” Adam said seriously, pulling back and looking down at her with concern. “Are you okay to drive home? Or do you want to go inside my mom’s house and take a nap before you drive back?”

“I’m all right,” she insisted, rubbing her eyes. “I’ll go home and sleep this off. It’s not that far of a drive.”

Adam led her out into the brilliant summer sunshine and slid the barn doors closed behind them. “Well, I’m going to be a hovering pain in the ass and follow you back to your place, just in case. If you need to talk to me while you drive, you can always put your phone on speakerphone and we can chat as I follow you.”

“No, no, I’m good,” Kylie insisted. She gave him one last kiss goodbye and climbed into the Marquis. True to his word, he followed her all the way back. She waved goodbye to him as she unlocked the front door and stumbled inside, heading for the couch and dropping like a rock onto it. Her eyes closed and she fell asleep almost instantly, out like a light.

She awoke, disoriented in the darkness. The sun must’ve set long ago, which meant…Oh shit! She sat straight up on the couch, fumbling for her phone where she’d dropped it on the hardwood floor when she’d done her swan dive onto the couch. Yup, 10:22 at night. Dammit. She was late feeding and milking the animals. They were going to be unhappy with her, that was for sure. She hadn’t even managed to get her shoes off when she’d gotten home, so at least she was able to save that step and just hurry out the backdoor towards the barn.

Except, Dumbass and Skunk weren’t lowing their displeasure into the summer night, and the barn door between the pasture and the barn appeared to already be closed. Kylie squinted through the darkness, trying to figure out if it was closed, or if the shadows were just playing tricks on her. She opened up the main door to the barn and stepped inside to find all of the animals bedded down for the night, and pails of milk in the fridge, along with a fresh carton of eggs.

Kylie looked at it all, shaking her head in wonder. If there was one thing Adam was good at, it was showing her that he loved her through his actions, not just his words.

She flipped off the light and closed the door behind her, heading back towards the house, a smile of joy and love spreading across her lips. After six months of listening to Norman declare his love for her, only to find out that he was actually married…protestations of love didn’t mean much to her. Words were easy to say, and completely meaningless if the person saying them was a jackass.

But actions…Adam was thoughtful and kind in a way that Norman could never even dream of being. More than Adam’s inadvertent declaration of love earlier that week, his actions yelled his love for her from the rooftops.

Kylie climbed the stairs to her bedroom, shucked off her shoes, and crawled into bed, still in her clothes. She didn’t care; right now, she could sleep anywhere, anytime.

She drifted right back to sleep and dreamt sexy dreams of a cowboy with whiskey brown eyes, cradling a baby in his arms.