The Horse Trainer's Secret Read online

  Regrettably, caffeine was another one of those things that she’d axed almost entirely from her diet. And she’d had a coffee—at least what could probably pass for coffee—that morning. Of course, it had come up again, but it still counted.

  And it certainly hadn’t done diddly to help alleviate the fatigue that seemed to plague her all the time.

  “No thanks.” She managed a fake smile of enthusiasm. “Another lemonade would be great, though.”

  “Make them to go, would you?” He handed over his credit card to the server.

  “You bet,” the teenager said and headed off again.

  Megan told herself she ought to be relieved that their dinner together was coming to an end.

  It made absolutely no sense that she wasn’t.

  “You don’t have to pay for my meal.” She flipped open her purse—basically an oversize wallet on a leather string—and pulled out some cash. “Here.”

  He didn’t take it. And she could see by his expression that he wouldn’t ever take it.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Next time I pay.”

  He smiled suddenly and she realized just how easily she’d committed to a next time.

  She exhaled noisily and returned her cash to her purse.

  At least there was cannoli.

  She bit one in half as she studied Nick’s drawing again. The ricotta filling was just as creamy as it looked and studded with just the right amount of chocolate bits. “Okay, so the parking garage doesn’t look like it’d be an eyesore, but it would obviously be a lot more expensive to build than just surfacing a regular old parking lot.”

  “Yep.” He capped the pen. “But the parking needs to be accessible to the lodge. Either the traditional lot we planned all along or a vertical structure if it’s moved to the other side. The whole reason the lodge is at this particular location is because it involves the least amount of blasting into the mountain. The farther up the mountain you go, the closer you get to April and Jed’s cabin. Too close, and it would mean a lot more excavation. Farther down, excavation is less of an issue, but that million-dollar view is lost.”

  She wasn’t even aware that she’d been leaning her shoulder against his until he pocketed his keys once more.

  She straightened and finished the rest of her cannoli just as their server delivered the to-go cups. Nick popped his whole cannoli into his mouth and signed the credit-card slip for the meal.

  She quickly grabbed the napkin with his drawings as they slid out of the booth. When they made their way out of the busy restaurant, she realized that his cousin and her family had already left, and their booth was already occupied by another family.

  She felt his hand briefly on the small of her back as they went out the door, but then had to wonder if she’d imagined it as they headed for his SUV in the parking lot. She made a mental note of the brightly lit Shop-World when he drove past it. The big discount department store would come in handy for provisions for her dorm-size refrigerator back at the motel.

  Milk, for instance. She was supposed to be drinking milk every day. Unless it was hot and mixed with chocolate—and ideally a generous shot of liqueur—she hated drinking milk.

  She brushed aside the thought. “If you’re concerned that the budget doesn’t extend to a bigger barn, why consider a fancy parking garage that would cost even more?”

  “My job is to figure out solutions.”

  “Thought your job was to not design eyesores.”

  “That, too.”

  She smiled slightly and looked out the side window. Like in many small towns, the highway ran straight through the center of Weaver and it served as the main drag. She took in the storefronts as they passed.

  Feed store. Hardware store. Consignment store. The sheriff’s office.

  Colbys Bar & Grill.

  She looked away from that one.

  He stopped at one of the few stoplights in town. There was a park across the street, complete with a big gazebo outlined in tiny white lights. In the light from the old-fashioned lampposts, she saw a few joggers. A few people tossing around a ball.

  She wondered how much change the town would experience because of the Rambling Mountain development.

  “You know,” she mused, “the barn doesn’t need to have a million-dollar view.”

  He’d draped his wrist over the top of the steering wheel as they waited for the light to change and was tapping the dashboard with his finger. “True.” He sent a smile toward her. “Told you that together we’d create something great.”

  She managed a smile of her own and hoped the dark would hide how weak it probably looked. If he mentioned creating anything together again she was going to lose her mind.

  The light changed, and they soon arrived back at her motel. She was relieved.

  The parking space next to her truck was now occupied by an enormous motorcycle, so he stopped behind her pickup and left his engine idling. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and we can head up the mountain together. I have a conference call first thing, but I should be here by ten. Does that work for you?”

  She wanted to tell him no. That it did not work for her. That she’d just meet him up at the construction trailer. But there was no logical reason she could think of to argue with him.

  So she just nodded and opened her door. “Thanks again for dinner.”

  If she’d simply left it at that, she’d have been fine. But she looked back at him after she’d slid out of the SUV, and her mouth suddenly went dry.

  The last time they’d sat in his SUV in front of her motel room, she’d confidently led the way inside.

  She swallowed and moistened her lips. “Well.”

  He wasn’t smiling now. Just watching her with those amazing gray eyes. “Well.”

  Her skin prickled slightly, and warmth spread through her veins again.

  Invite him in. It’s not as if you can get more pregnant.

  It wasn’t Birdie talking in her head this time. Just Megan’s own hormones.

  She swallowed again. One and done. Remember that. “Thanks again for dinner.”

  “You already said that.”

  She’d never been one to blush even when she’d been young and naive. If she’d ever been naive at all—not with Birdie Forrester raising her. The fact that Megan’s cheeks felt warm now was as unfamiliar as everything else going on inside her.

  Blasted hormones.

  They were making her feel like a lunatic.

  She fumbled the room key out of her pocket. It was an antiquated sort of thing. An actual key attached to an oversize diamond-shaped key ring. She held it up and rattled it. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.” Before she could do, say or even think something else, she shut the SUV door and quickly went to the sidewalk.

  “Megan.”

  She froze when he spoke her name.

  “Wear comfortable shoes tomorrow. Sturdy ones.”

  She had packed flip-flops and cowboy boots. In her opinion they were both comfortable. But only the boots could be considered sturdy. She nodded and continued forward.

  He didn’t drive away. Just remained right there, engine still running, and she cursed under her breath as she fumbled with the key twice before managing to fit it into the lock.

  When she finally succeeded, she nearly fell inside the room as the door swung inward. She caught the doorknob, steadying herself, and gave a quick wave in the direction of the parking lot before shoving the door closed.

  Then she stood there, not moving a muscle, until she heard his truck finally drive away.

  It seemed to take forever.

  Only when she could no longer hear the low rumble of the engine did she exhale. She moved to the drab brown drapes that covered the lone window and peeked out around the edge just to confirm that Nick was gone.

  She let out a reliev
ed breath and flopped onto the far bed. The one that they had not used back in March.

  She’d been in Weaver for barely one day.

  How on earth was she going to make it through the next week, much less the next few months?

  Chapter Four

  He was early.

  The knock on her motel-room door the next morning came a lot closer to nine than ten o’clock.

  “Be out in a second,” she yelled through the door as she pawed around in her suitcase for a fresh pair of jeans.

  Of course, he’d be early.

  And, of course, she’d overslept.

  Her hair was still dripping down her back from her shower, for cripes’ sake.

  She yanked on the jeans, then caught her reflection in the mirror on the wall above the plain wood dresser as she hopped around pulling them up. So far, there wasn’t a single outward sign that she was pregnant. Her jeans fit exactly the way they always had.

  Her breasts didn’t exceed the confines of her modest B cups yet, either.

  Even when she turned to study her profile and tried pooching out her stomach, it looked as flat as ever.

  When Rory had gotten pregnant with Killy, she’d had a visible bump after just eight weeks. But then again, Rory was several inches shorter than Megan’s five-ten.

  Her cell phone rang, nearly startling her out of her wits.

  She grabbed a shirt from her suitcase, snatched up the phone from the nightstand between the two beds and looked at the number on the screen. Her grandmother.

  She wrinkled her nose, debating for half a second and losing. She put the call on speaker and left the phone on the nightstand. “Morning, Birdie.” She pushed her arms into her sleeves. “What’s up?”

  “Heard a story on the news this morning about that new Lambert State Park.”

  She yanked her hair out of her collar and started buttoning. “What about it?”

  “Gonna be a dedication ceremony in a couple weeks. Memorial Day. Governor’s s’posed to be there and everything. She’s been on the news, you know. Talking about how she cares about the little towns as much as she does about the moneymakers like Jackson.”

  Megan frowned slightly. “Birdie, you’re not interested in coming down to Weaver and attending that, are you?”

  Her grandmother snorted. “Just waiting for the chips to fall. Governor seems too good to be true. You know what that means.”

  When Megan finished buttoning her shirt, she left the tail untucked and rooted through her suitcase for a pair of socks. “Anything that seems too good to be true usually is,” she recited. “So why is it interesting enough to make you call?” Despite the fact that weeks could go by between seeing each other in person, Birdie never had much use for phone calls just for the sake of a phone call. There was always a purpose. Always a reason. Megan was like her in that way, too.

  “It isn’t. But I figured I’d make sure you got there okay.”

  She sat on the corner of her unmade bed and pulled on her socks. She eyed the phone still sitting on the nightstand. Birdie had stopped checking on Megan’s whereabouts before she’d turned twenty. “Got here fine. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Birdie’s voice was tart. “A gramma can’t call and check on her only granddaughter now and then?”

  Megan took Birdie off speaker and picked up the phone. She held it to her ear and went over to the window. Pulling aside the drab drapes, she looked out to see Nick sitting in his SUV. He was wearing sunglasses and wasn’t looking her way.

  She let the drape drop back into place and grabbed her boots. A layer of dried mud was still caked around the edge of the soles. She tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder. “You don’t call and check on your only granddaughter now and then.”

  She grabbed the ballpoint pen that sat next to the Bible inside the nightstand drawer and attacked the mud with the tip. Birdie Forrester was an independent woman. She lived alone in a small house on the same small plot of land where she’d raised Megan. But she was in her seventies. And Megan hadn’t seen her in person in more than three weeks. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

  “Yes. Is everything okay with you?”

  She made a face. “Why wouldn’t it be?” A thin line of mud, imprinted with the stitching from her boots, popped off and disintegrated when it hit the multicolored carpet. She grabbed the little trash can next to the dresser and discarded the mud.

  “Don’t be smart with me, missy. You’ve never left Angel River during the busy season before.”

  Megan picked up her second boot, this time holding it over the trash can. “Angel River’s not the same anymore, either.”

  “Because Rory and her boy moved away.”

  Megan jabbed the pen into the dried mud, using it like a little pickax. “I’m coming back, Birdie. If that’s what’s worrying you. I’m just here for a couple months.”

  “I’m not worried,” Birdie scoffed. “That’s a waste of good energy. Well, if you see the governor at that opening, take a picture and send it to me. I’ll show it off to the girls.”

  The “girls” were the group of women Birdie played poker with every Tuesday. And Birdie was the youngest one of the bunch.

  “Will do,” Megan said, but her grandmother had already hung up.

  That was typical Birdie behavior.

  She tossed her phone on the mattress and banged her boot a few times on the edge of the trash can. The boots were cleaner now than they usually were back in Angel River, so she called it good and shoved her feet into them. She stomped twice.

  Comfortable as ever.

  She put a few individually wrapped lemon drops from her rapidly dwindling supply into her pocket, grabbed her room key and her wallet from the dresser and left the room.

  If she had to draw in a few steadying breaths before she reached Nick’s SUV, she was the only one who needed to know.

  “You’re early,” she said briskly when she pulled open the passenger door and slid onto the seat. She fastened her seat belt with a loud click.

  “Good morning to you, too. And I called your room to let you know I was running early, but maybe you were in the shower.” He waggled the phone he was holding. “Don’t you have a cell phone or something?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited, raising his eyebrows slightly.

  She rattled off the number and he stored it in his phone. “But I don’t usually carry it around with me,” she warned.

  He gave her another look. “Thereby defeating the whole purpose of having one.”

  She shrugged. “After losing one in Angel River during a rafting trip and another under a horse hoof, I learned it was safer—and cheaper—to leave it home.” Now it was a habit. “Besides, if anyone wants to leave me a message, they do.”

  “Helps if you listen to phone messages,” he replied. “In any case, I brought provisions.” He set aside his phone and the yellow notepad filled with messy handwriting, and put a white paper bag on the console between the seats. “Help yourself.”

  She could smell the cinnamon even before she opened the bag. When she looked inside, she saw two pecan-studded sticky rolls. They smelled as divine as anything Chef Bart had ever whipped up. And to cap it off, the rolls were still warm. “Where’d you get these?”

  “Ruby’s Diner. Best breakfast in town.” He tapped the coffee cup sitting in one of the SUV’s cup holders. “Coffee’s almost as good as the cinnamon rolls.”

  She put down the bag and reached for the coffee since she hadn’t yet had her one cup of motel-provided instant. The cup was hot even through the corrugated cardboard sleeve imprinted with the Ruby’s logo.

  “There’s cream and sugar in the bag with the rolls if you need it.”

  “Nope. Black is good.” She worked open the little tab on the lid and carefully took a sip. The coffee was strong a
nd rich and delicious, and she sighed appreciatively as it hit her system. It would be her one coffee for the day and it was a doozy, putting the instant swill from the day before to shame. “I forgive you for being early.”

  “I’ll sleep better tonight knowing.” He grabbed one of the rolls from the bag and took a large bite. Then he set it on a napkin, licked his thumb and started up the SUV. “Need to make one stop before we head up the mountain.”

  She thought about asking him why he hadn’t made his stop before picking her up early, but she was too busy nibbling the pecans off one corner of her yeasty roll.

  She needed to find her way to Ruby’s Diner for sure.

  Instead of turning toward the mountain when he reached the highway, he turned the other way. They passed the park again. No joggers this time. He turned down a side street, passed several churches and turned again, pulling to a stop next to a chain-link fence lined with beige material surrounding a construction zone.

  He grabbed his yellow pad, wolfed down the rest of his sticky roll and pushed open his truck door. “Just gotta check a few things. Won’t take long. If you want to see, you can come.”

  “What is it?”

  “Public library.”

  “Your design?”

  “Start to finish.”

  She took another bite of her roll, put it back in the bag, then got out of the SUV. With coffee cup in hand, she followed him through the opening, where a portion of fencing was pushed aside to allow trucks in and out.

  There was a finished sidewalk leading to the building. Nick veered from it to speak with a husky man in overalls who was laying bricks.

  More curious than she wanted to admit, she followed the sidewalk around to the side of the building that looked complete, at least from the outside. Somehow, Nick had managed to combine the modern with the rustic—the end result was all soaring windows and beautiful beams. She walked around the entire building and when she got back to the front, the bricklayer was working alone.