25
R ose gripped the pommel on the saddle and stood in the stirrups to see better. Steam rose from behind the rocks in front of them. Trees surrounded them in a semi-circle, and when she glanced back at where they’d come from, her breath caught in her throat. “Wow. Just wow.”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She nodded, too busy taking in the view of the ranch laid out before them. She could barely make out the cows standing in a circle around feeders. If they hadn’t passed them on the way here, she might have mistaken them for blobs on the otherwise pristine snow. She cocked her head to one side and listened. Instead of the sound of the human population, cars, and phones, the day was filled with birds, trickling streams, and nature. “It’s so quiet.”
“Yeah.” He nudged Trudy forward and headed for the rocks and the spring hidden behind them. “Someday, I’ll bring you back here when the weather is warmer, and we can swim in the springs.”
She instantly regretted that she hadn’t known that was a possibility before they’d left the house. Although, with it being cold enough that she could see her breath freezing in front of her as they rode, it was probably silly to regret swimming or soaking in the hot spring was off the table. But she wouldn’t have objected to seeing Caleb in a swimsuit. Not even a little bit.
You won’t be here for someday, so make the most of today.
As she followed Caleb’s horse, she shook off the reminder. Leaving and dealing with it was a tomorrow problem.
“Woah, boy.” She tugged gently on the reins and the well-trained horse stopped. She patted his neck to give herself a few seconds before she had to figure out how to get down. “Good boy.”
“Want some help getting down?” Caleb grinned up at her.
Saved once again.
“Please.”
He steadied Bluey. “Swing your leg over and slide down. I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
Swing my leg over, as if it’s an easy feat when it’s not something you are used to.
But they couldn’t picnic if she stayed on the horse. It took a couple of movements, but she managed it, and slid free of the saddle. Caleb caught her in his arms, and she slid down his front. Rose’s hands grabbed his waist, and she peered up at him. “Thank you.” Her gaze locked onto his, and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. This need to suck in air must be what authors wrote about in the books she enjoyed so much. She’d never known this feeling was a thing. She’d never side-eye those scenes again.
Caleb’s fingers flexed on her arms before he cleared his throat, released her, and stepped back. “Can you lay out the blanket while I take care of the horses?”
“Sure.” She took the rucksack from him and followed his finger to where a firepit sat close to the steaming pool. The snow on the ground wasn’t as deep as she feared, but she still had to lift her feet higher than normal to reach the firepit.
By the time she’d fished out the blanket and spread it on the ground, wax side down, Caleb was finished with the horses. She watched him curiously as he walked to the rocks and toed something on the ground. Thankfully, he was turned away from her when he bent down, because damn, that man could fill out a pair of jeans like nobody’s business. He caught something in his fingers and tugged. Snow flew as the tarp rose to reveal some chopped wood.
Rose huddled into her coat as she watched him do his thing. “Smart.”
He gathered some logs. “I like to come here, but I don’t always want to go in the water to warm up.” He dumped the logs into the firepit and fished into the rucksack for matches. “I built the pit because it’s easier to light the fire with the blocks as a wind break.” It didn’t take long for a spiral of smoke to rise from the center of the firepit.
Being here with him, surrounded by the quietness of the mountains, she couldn’t help but feel like they were the only people on the planet. “This must be what it was like years ago, before the west was settled.”
“Yeah.” He settled onto his haunches as he babied the fire. “I wouldn’t be lighting a fire right here though or some wild warrior would carry you off to his teepee.”
“They’d send me back pretty quick. I can be rather annoying if I want to be.”
“Nah, Rosey-Posey, you’re too much of a prize. A smart warrior would make sure you fell in love with him and never wanted to leave.” He fed another piece of wood into the fire. “I know I would.”
She blinked at him for a second, trying to figure out if there was double meaning in his words. Because she wasn’t able to figure out if she wanted his words to mean something, she reached for the ruck. “I—um—food?”
“Yeah, I’ve been smelling those cookies all the way up the trail.”
They worked together to put the food in the center of the blanket, then settled in to have their picnic. There was something about the simplicity of the silence between them that brought a peacefulness she hadn’t known she craved. For every moment, every cookie and muffin she and Caleb shared, tension drained out of her.
After filling their mugs with hot chocolate, Caleb produced a pack of cards and held them up. “You game?”
“As long as it’s not strip poker or strip anything, I am.”
“We don’t want anything important to freeze off.” Caleb leaned close to her and whispered into her ear, “I could always keep you warm.”
“Nope. Back up, cowboy,” she teased. “You have more dangly parts that can fall off than I do.”
“Hah. If strip poker is off the table,” he grinned as he sat across from her and shuffled the cards, “what are we playing for?”
She cocked her head to one side, and inspiration struck. “Information.”
“I’m game.” He nodded. “What are we playing?”
Crap, she didn’t play cards much. “Um.” She hadn’t played cards since she was a kid at her grandma’s house for Sunday lunch. “I can play snap.”
“Snap it is.” He dealt the deck into two. “Pick a side.”
She reached for the furthest one. “This one. I picked, so you play first.”
He nodded, and turned over his first card and dropped it between them. She followed suit with the next card. Over and back they went, both keeping their eyes peeled for matching cards. Rose dropped the next card and realized it was a six of spades sitting on a six of hearts. She slammed her hand down on the pile of cards between them, her hand hitting the cards a split second before his landed on her skin. “Snap.”
“You’re fast.”
She grinned at him. “You’re just a slow coach,” she teased back.
“Ask your question.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Tell me a secret you don’t like to admit.”
“Woah, girl, straight for the throat,” he grumbled. “I’m a geek. I love tech, games, and all that stuff.” He wrinkled his nose. “Just don’t tell Dalton or Trev that, or I’ll be roped into working in the war-room.”
“You don’t like to be in the war-room?”
He narrowed his eyes at her and waved to the cards she gathered up. “I see what you’re doing. Play your card, Rosey-Posey. You have to win another round to get an answer to that one.”
She wrinkled her nose and put the new cards under the ones in her hand, then dealt the next card. “Spoilsport.”
“Them’s the rules of the game.”
This time, it only took three rounds before he made the snap before she did.
“What’s your favorite song?”
“Goo Goo Dolls, Iris.”
“Nice.”
Over the next five rounds he learned that she preferred jam to honey, and when it came to scones, cream went on after the jam. Rose learned that he was from Mississippi, dogs before cats, and no pineapple on pizza for him.
Rose slapped her hand onto the cards. “Snap.” She’d forgotten how much fun this was. The entertainment was ramped up by getting to know him. “How did you end up in Montana?”
He refilled her hot chocolate from the flask, stretched his feet out in front of him, and crossed them at the ankles. “It’s a long way from Mississippi, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I knew of Dalton from the Navy. When my time was done and I was too busted up for SEALs anymore, he gave me a place to land. This place belonged to his mother’s family. It was sold after she married his dad, but Dalton bought it back.”
It was awesome that he had friends like the people here. She played a card and leaned over, trying to see around his fingers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the card he was about to play.
“Hey, no cheating.”
“I’m not.” She huffed and played another card. “I didn’t see anything.” Her hand flashed out when he dropped the next card. “What are you most proud of?”
“Being a SEAL.”
He won the next round. “What’s your biggest dream?”
“To own my own business again.”
“You will.”
She lifted one shoulder, keeping her eyes on the game. The next round was hers and she asked, “Why SEALs? How does a nerdy geek from the wrong side of the tracks in small town Mississippi go on to become a hero like you did?”
Rose swallowed down disappointment when he hesitated, as if his answer was off limits. She wanted to know more about him. He knew everything there was to know about her.
“I don’t normally talk about that part of my past.” He took a sip from his mug. “If you were any other woman, it would be off limits.” He pinned her with his eyes. “But for you—I’ll spill the beans.”
Wow, talk about making a girl feel special.
“You don’t have t—” He started talking and she clamped her mouth shut.
“A family secret ripped through our tiny ass town like a rabid Mississippi squirrel. Our name was mud after that.” That must have sucked for them; people could be so cruel. “Us kids were more or less pariahs, never mind my folks. Those damn Christian ladies would come out of church and cross the street to avoid us like we’d caught the plague or something. Our folks got fired from every single job they had. They lost the house, and the younger kids were taken away by the state.”
Her heart ached for the kid he’d been. Rose reached for his hand and intertwined their fingers.
“The only way to fix it was to leave, earn money, and help get them into a house so they could get the kids back.” He shrugged as if he and his brother hadn’t managed to do something epic. “The school principal told me and Kace that we’d never amount to nothin’. He taunted us with it for months, and finally we had enough.”
“And you both said, ‘watch this, Mofo?’”
“Pretty much.” He nodded. “When the recruiters came through, Kace went Army, I went Navy. The rest was pure stubbornness—no give, all grit, and there wasn’t much the military could say or do to make us back down. We learned from the best of them that doing so wasn’t worth it.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and snorted. “Want to know what irony is?”
The game was forgotten, and she gave him her full attention. “Go on.”
“That bumfuck town in the ass end of Mississippi has a sign outside the school these days, boasting of having produced two heroes.” He snorted. “They wouldn’t have spit on us if we were on fire, never mind brought a hose, but memories are selective there, and now they try to claim they shaped us into the men we are.”
“I suppose they did in a way—by being jerks,” Rose muttered behind her mug. “I’d like to give them a piece of my mind for five minutes straight.”
He snorted. “I don’t think I’ve seen you talk for five minutes straight with anyone besides me all week.”
“I said give them a piece of my mind,” she muttered. “That’s not talking—that’s giving them what for. Big difference.”
A fat snowflake landed on her cheek, and he brushed it away. “I don’t think about them so much anymore. Neither me nor Kace go back there, so they don’t get to parade us around like zoo animals.”
Rage for the child he’d been and the horrible situation his family had been in tugged at her heartstrings. She dropped her cards, and before she could think too much about it, she hugged him. “They don’t deserve to ride on the coattails of your sacrifices for this country.”
“I know.”
Despite the serious direction their game had gone, the child inside her that she’d suppressed for way too long was delighted at the snowflakes which now fell steadily around them. “Dance in the snow with me, Caleb.” She scrambled to her feet and tugged on his hand. “Please.”
“We really should go back.” He looked at the sky. “It’s getting dark, and with the snow…”
“Just a few minutes. Please.”
“Come here.” He wrapped her into his arms and they swayed to a tune only they could hear in their heads. “Five minutes, then we have to go.”
Rose snuggled into his chest. “Deal.”