Christine

“Here you go, Bluebell.” Travis emerged from the stable leading a pair of horses. “You ready to ride?”

I flashed him a grin. “Now that kind of depends what I’m going to be riding.”

His startled blink signals a direct hit by my double entendre.

Score!

Christine 1… Travis 0.

“I notice you go out without a hat. Not a good idea to ride without protection.” He tosses a white Stetson in my direction.

Those green eyes of his light with mischief, when I catch his own double meaning, and I lick my lips.

Tied. 1 to 1.

“Nice to know you’re thinking about me,” I murmur, setting the hat in place. Especially since I’d been thinking about him nonstop for the past few days.

Travis gives me a leg up onto a small but sturdy sorrel gelding named Galaxy. With a carefree grin, he mounts a buckskin gelding, with the rather unimaginative name of Buck. Side by side, we move onto the trail without speaking. Early morning sun slants across dew-coated fields of hay ready for harvest, turning them the color of fresh honey.

The silence between us swells to its own life, and with it my own uncertainty. What was he thinking? Why didn’t he talk? Why didn’t I? What was I doing here? As soon as we came to even ground, we opened up to an easy, ground-eating lope. Still we didn’t talk, but the ride began to work its magic and I started to relax. I contented myself with watching Travis.

He sat easy in the saddle, his hand light on the reins. His own movements were the perfect counterpoint to those of his horse, and he didn’t look like he’d spent any time at all away from the ranch. He was taking in the scenery the same hungry way he’d been looking at me earlier. Sunlight flashed off the bright red shirt that pulled a little too tightly across muscular shoulders, but it didn’t seem to bother him and it gave me a bit of eye candy to admire.

Enchanted by his boyish eagerness, I raised my camera and discreetly captured some shots. When he glanced at me, I sent him a sweet smile; fairly certain he hadn’t caught me snapping his picture.

* * *

Travis

Climbing back on a horse had been another given returning to Pine Haven. Like all the other facets of my homecoming, I moved easily into it but once again found myself wondering if it was right. I hadn’t expected the simple act of having a horse beneath me to generate such overwhelming emotion. I wanted to talk, craved the human companionship I’d been finding with Christine, but I found myself fascinated by the land, how much and yet how little it had changed.

And I’d become uncharacteristically tongue-tied with her.

To the north, a series of bluffs came into view, and the trail led us into the shadows of a narrow canyon. The walls were close. When I’d chosen the route, I hadn’t realized how much the tight quarters would bother me. Little twitches between my shoulder blades grew stronger, as the passage between the rock walls grew tighter.

If anything should happen there, the canyon walls would render the handheld radio in my saddlebag useless.

A movement on the bluff above us sent a barrage of gravel sliding down the cliff. Probably an elk or a bighorn. Buck shied and I flinched. The sound of falling debris prickled at my nerves, scraping along old memories and drawing them to the surface. I glanced over my shoulder to warn Christine about the mini-avalanche but she had already guided Galaxy to the far side of the trail. She waved a reassuring hand then tilted her head to look upward, squinting at the edge of the cliff overhead.

“Is there another way out of here?” Her voice trembled, an echo of the tremors in my gut.

“Yeah,” I said, a little more brusquely than I’d intended. “We’ll take a different way home.”

* * *

Christine

The walls of the canyon finally began to open up, the single narrow path widening and flattening into a trail of loose shale. My tension eased.

Slowing the pace, Travis pointed to the left and urged Buck upward through a break in the trees. The path was lined with sediment, washed down from the heights through years of spring rains and winter melts.

Gravel crunched and rolled underfoot as the two horses climbed the steep wash. I never would have chanced it with Cloud. Any second, I expected Buck or Galaxy to lose footing and tumble back to the bottom. So far, though, the seasoned geldings proved sure-footed.

They burst into the sunlight on a high crest.

“Oh, my…” I drew in a deep breath. The view was certainly worth the case of nerves I’d used up on the trail getting to it.

The valley was long more than wide, bordered on two sides by dense pine forest stretching toward the distant shadow of the Absaroka Range. A creek meandered through the center, edged by tall grasses and yellow and white wildflowers.

Each direction held more wonder and I snapped at least a dozen different pictures without moving. “I thought you said this was open range.”

Travis scanned the deserted meadow, a puzzled frown shadowing my face. “It is. It’s where Hawk MC turns the herd out for the summer.”

“Where are the cattle?”

I snapped a picture of Travis looking over the valley. His love for the land was reflected in his expression. He drank in the sight like a very thirsty man drinking from a well.

“That seems to be the question of the moment,” he said after a long time.