Page 27 of Christmas at the Ranch

Nineteen

Frank, the Evergreen taxi driver, drops me off at Wilder Ranch and tells me he’ll be back to get me later.

“This is better than Uber!” I tell him as I get out of the car, but he shoots me a confused look. “Never mind,” I say, paying him through the window before walking toward the ranch buildings.

Just then my phone chimes. It’s Lani: She’s sent a photo of the babies snuggled up together sleeping, little half smiles on their angelic faces.

Then another image of her mother and aunts, still hard at work cooking for the holidays—today, it’s caldereta, a slow-cooked beef stew with peppers and onions, and ube halaya, which is a purple yam jam, plus stacks and stacks of pandesal, fluffy, soft bread rolls.

We’ve talked and texted a few times over the past few days—but she keeps insisting I need to open up more to Tate about how I’ve felt all these years, the existence of Mariella be damned.

And I just can’t do that. I “heart” both images, then lift my phone to take a picture of the setting I’m in: the snow, the red stables, the herds of horses in the distant paddocks, in their red-and-green-plaid Wilder Ranch blankets.

I lower my phone and see that Tate is in the shot, in the distance, bringing some horses inside, holding two lead ropes in each hand, like he’s a dog walker, not a horse wrangler.

He doesn’t see me. He walks toward the back of the south barn’s doors while I watch him go.

Then I look down at my phone again, at the photo I didn’t know I was taking of him.

I keep it, but I don’t send it to Lani. I don’t know why.

I walk toward the north barn, the closer one.

Inside, it’s warm, the air heavy with the smell of horses, their hay and grain, the leather of their saddles.

Star is already in her stall, back in from the paddock and ready to be groomed.

I don’t wait for Tate; I know what I’m doing.

I lead her from the stall into the aisle and set her up in crossties.

There’s a box of brushes and other grooming tools on the floor outside her stall.

I take out a currycomb and loosen the dirt in her coat, flick it off with the dandy brush, then set about smoothing her golden coat to a sheen with the body brush.

She seems happy to see me, but that could just be because she smells the mints in my pocket, I tell myself, smiling as she nickers and snorts gently, taps one hoof then the other on the interlocking brick of the aisle floor, wanting her treat early.

I speak to her softly, telling her what a good girl she is, asking about her day. I feel like she understands me. And I’m just so happy to be near her. I bury my face in her neck for a moment, wrap my fingers in her mane.

A throat clears, and I pull away, embarrassed to see Tate approaching down the aisle.

“I see you two are getting reacquainted,” he says with a gentle smile as I blush. But he’s all business and moves right on. “You good getting her tacked up?”

I nod. “I know where her tack is from last time.”

“Okay. Meet you in the arena in five minutes,” he says, as if he really is just my riding instructor and I’m just a student.

As if my palms haven’t started to sweat and my heart hasn’t started to race.

As if, as he walks away, I don’t find myself staring at the way he looks in his plaid jacket and dark Levi’s, the way his muscled thighs fill out the well-worn denim.

I thought after our conversation last night I might have successfully exorcised any feelings I still seem to have for him.

We both said it: We’re adults now, not teenagers.

We’re trying, for the brief time I’m here in Evergreen, to be friends—or at least, friend ly .

And, of course, there’s the fact that he has a pretty girlfriend, with her long blond braid and preppy riding clothes—meanwhile, I’m wearing clothes I hand-washed and hung to dry in the bathroom of my temporary apartment, and they still feel slightly damp. Glamorous city girl, I am not.

I couldn’t have turned out the way he imagined I might—if he ever thought of me at all over the years. And I have to allow that not to matter. I’m here for a different purpose. For Star.

Soon, I have her saddled up and am leading her to the arena.

Tate is waiting, as promised. He shoots me a smile from the center of the ring.

“Hey, City Girl,” he says, and I can’t help it; despite my resolve, my heart flutters at his use of that old nickname.

For just a moment, my knees are weak, but then I remember what I’m here to do.

This is about Star. Helping her, that’s all.

I lead her to the mounting block and hoist myself into her saddle.

I look over at Tate, who is leaning against a jump standard, his Stetson low, his hair peeking out from beneath it.

I tell myself he’s just a riding instructor.

He isn’t the first person I ever kissed.

He isn’t someone who, without even trying, I can still remember the exact taste of.

Mints and lemon. I swear I can feel a tingle on my lips, like the ghost of his kiss.

I drag my thoughts back to the present as he calls out to me again.

“Okay, just a walk for now. Let’s take it nice and slow.”

I do as he suggests, and then, after two laps of the ring, he instructs me to ask her for a trot. I find I’m nervous, still, and it’s not because of any doubts I have about my riding skills. With Charlie, it was easier to just focus on riding Star. Now my mind is also on Tate.

“Wrong diagonal,” he says with a raised eyebrow and a half smile—referring to the fact that I’m supposed to lift my body out of the saddle in time with Star’s inside, not outside, leg. “Do I need to teach you the same phrase my beginners have to learn?”

“Oh, yeah?” I call out. “What’s that?”

He says it in a singsong voice. “Rise-and-fall-with-the-leg-on-the-wall. We make a little poem out of it. They never forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten, either,” I retort. “I just…” But I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t admit that it’s because I’m distracted by thoughts of us, limbs entwined in the loft above.

“Okay, change direction now,” he says, and I do—then stick my tongue out at him when I correct my diagonal in the middle of the arena.

“Hey!” he says, laughing. “Don’t make me put you on the ranch school’s naughty list.”

“What happens to the students who get put on the naughty list?” I ask.

“Stall-mucking duty for a week,” he replies.

“Okay, slow her to a walk now, please. I know you probably want to canter now, and I don’t blame you—that would be the logical next step, and this horse has a gait like a rocking chair,” he says.

I nod my agreement. “But I was thinking…” He takes a few steps closer and looks up at me.

Even from this height, this distance, even with a thousand pounds of horse between us, I feel it—that connection, that flash of electricity. Discomfited, I break his gaze and reach down to pretend I need to check the tightness of Star’s girth.

Tate’s voice is softer now, but I can still hear him.

“I’d love to get her back out on the trail,” he says.

“I really would. What you said about the Starlight Ride…it’s improbable, but it would be so great to have her there again.

Still, if it’s not what she wants, I’m not going to force it.

I need to be really sure, though. So I want to listen to her, to watch her.

And I want to do that while someone else is riding her. Someone I trust.”

Someone I trust. It shouldn’t mean so much that he has said this, but I find myself grabbing on to those words and holding them in my heart like a Christmas gift I had been fervently hoping for, but not expecting to receive.

“What if we go for a walk on the trail and I lead her?” he continues.

“It would mean you’re not in control. I’d take off her bridle and use a halter and lead rope.

But it also means I can be close to her, watch her.

I can try to listen to her. Determine what she really wants, what she really needs.

And then I can decide if I’ll keep forcing it, or if she’ll just become one of our horses who we don’t use on the trail. ”

“I’d be fine with that,” I say. “I trust you, too.”

He looks up at me, but just for a split second, so there’s not enough time for me to fall into that electrical minefield. He nods, once, decisively, then says, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

He returns quickly, holding Star’s halter and a lead rope, which is striped red and white like a candy cane. I wait as he removes her bridle and hangs it on the jump standard, then puts on her halter and attaches the lead rope to the little brass ring at her chin. “Ready, girl?” he says to her.

Then he looks up at me, his expression serious. “I’ll do my absolute best to keep her from rearing,” he says. “I’ll hold her head tight and keep her down if anything happens. I’m not going to let her get away from me. We’ll turn around and head straight back here if she seems too upset.”

I nod. “I know. It’s going to be okay.”

“Are you nervous?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “It wouldn’t be fair to her to be nervous. She’d feel it.”

He nods. “She would.”

“She can do this,” I say. For Star, I tell myself.

“I know she can,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. But then he looks away and leads us outside, into the wintry late afternoon.