Wrangling The Cowboy's Heart. Carolyne Aarsen

bay windows.

      A baby grand piano, covered with a flowered sheet, took up the far corner of the room. Jodie was surprised her dad still had it. It was an older one from her aunt Laura, who used to teach piano.

      Jodie’s smile faded as she looked toward the closed door of her father’s office.

      How many times had he pulled her into that room, ordered her to sit in the chair and listen? How many lectures had she endured, with him pounding his fist on the desk, telling her she was a disgrace to his good name? It didn’t take much to resurrect his angry voice berating her, the sting of his hand on her cheek.

      She spun away from the office, striding toward the living room as if outrunning the hurtful memories. She stopped at the window overlooking the yard. From there she saw the wooden fences of the corrals edging the rolling green pastures. Beyond them stood the mountains, snow still clinging to the peaks even in summer.

      During the days of stifling heat in Knoxville, she’d definitely missed the mountains and the open spaces of this ranch. She fingered the curtain, leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the window, the usual daydreams assaulting her. Travel, moving, being in charge of where she went instead of working around other people’s plans for her life. She had spent most of her childhood going where others told her to go, being who others told her to be. Now she was stuck here for a couple months, once again, her situation being dictated by her father.

      She could leave. She knew that. Forfeit her right to a portion of the ranch. But she also knew the reality of her situation. Any money she got from selling the ranch would be a huge benefit. Touring wouldn’t be the financial hardship it usually was.

      And what would Dad think of that?

      She pushed aside the guilt and mixed feelings that had been her steady companions since her father died, then walked over to the piano and pulled the sheet off, sneezing at the dust cloud she created. Lifting the lid, she propped it open, raised the fallboard covering the keys and sat down at the bench.

      She ran a few scales, the notes echoing in the emptiness. Surprisingly, the piano was still reasonably in tune.

      Her fingers unerringly found the notes of “Für Elise,” one of the first pieces she had ever performed, and its haunting melody filled the silence as memories assailed her.

      Sitting at this same piano, her pudgy fingers plinking out notes of the scales as her sisters played outside. Often her time at the piano was punishment for one of her many misdeeds. Between the musical aptitude her grandmother tried to nurture and the many times Jodie got into trouble, she’d spent a lot of time at the keyboard.

      But while music had, initially, been a burden, it had eventually became a release. She took her skills and applied them to writing music, something that she enjoyed.

      And now, as she played in her childhood home once again, the music transported her to better times, better memories.

      The light from the window fell across the keys and, as she often did when she was playing, she looked at the scar on the back of her right hand and how it rippled as she played.

      Jodie abruptly dropped her hands to her lap, one covering the other, the music generating an ache for the losses in her life. Of her mother, when she was only nine. The loss of her plans and dreams in high school. The death of her grandmother a few years ago, and now her father.

      She was here for two months. But once those months were done, she was gone. And after that?

      She closed the lid on the piano with a thunk and got up from the bench. She had learned it never helped to plan too far ahead. That way lay only disappointment and pain.

      * * *

      Finn rode his horse through the corral gate, closed it and then rode up beside Jodie standing by the corral fence. He and Vic had spent a good part of the day gathering Keith’s horses from the far pastures of the Rocking M.

      Jodie had her arms hooked over the top rail, looking the herd over. Yesterday, at the funeral and later, at the café, she’d seemed shut off. Distant. He put it down to the funeral.

      But today she looked more relaxed.

      When they’d had arrived at the ranch, Vic had gone up to the house to let her know they were there. To Finn’s surprise, Jodie had been waiting at the corrals when they returned with the horses. It had taken some time to get them in the old corrals, and Jodie had helped, opening the gates and closing them behind them.

      Now Finn found himself unable to tear his gaze away from her and her thick dark hair shining in the afternoon sun. It flowed over the shoulders of the pink tunic she wore, a flash of bright color against her turquoise-and-purple-patterned skirt. It was the kind of outfit Jodie always favored—different and unusual and just a little out there.

      “So how many of these horses belong to my father and how many to Vic?” Jodie asked.

      “I think about half of the bunch are Vic’s,” Finn said, forcing himself to focus on the job at hand, as he dismounted from his horse and tied it up to the fence with a neat bowline knot. It was early afternoon, but the sun was gathering strength.

      He and Vic had spent the morning riding the backcountry of the ranch, rounding up Keith’s and Vic’s horses and herding them into the sketchy corrals. Vic’s horses were well behaved enough, but Finn was disappointed to see how wild Keith’s had gotten.

      Once again he fought down his own regret. He had been too busy with his job as a sheriff’s deputy, and working on the side, trying to establish his farrier business, to come regularly. In the past year and a half, the only times he had seen Keith was at the Grill and Chill, where his friend sat at his usual table, drinking coffee and scribbling furiously on pads of paper. Every time Finn joined him, he would shove the pads in an envelope, as if ashamed.

      Now Keith’s horses milled in the corral, the close quarters making them reestablish their pecking order. Teeth were bared, heads tossed, ears pinned back, and one or two of the smaller geldings had already been kicked.

      “Some of them act pretty wild,” Jodie said, dismay in her voice and expression.

      “They’ll all need some work,” Finn stated, pushing his cowboy hat back on his head.

      “Work?” Jodie asked.

      “Hooves trimmed, for one thing. Could use some grooming. General care. Some round-pen work to settle them down. Some groundwork to retrain them.”

      Jodie climbed up on the fence, still watching the horses. She seemed more relaxed today than at the funeral. “I recognize a few of them,” she said, her smile lighting up her previously somber face. “We used to ride that one. Mickey.” She pointed to a bay gelding that was shaking his head and baring his teeth at an appaloosa.

      “You might want to be careful on the fence,” Finn warned. “The horses are goofy, penned up like this. They’ve not been worked with for a while.”

      The words were barely spoken when one of the animals screeched, followed by a resounding thump as hooves connected with hide. Another bared its teeth, kicking at the rails. Then, close to Jodie, a roan mare and a pinto started fighting.

      Finn was about to call out to her to get down when both horses reared, hooves flying. The pinto lost its balance and started falling.

      Right toward Jodie.

      Finn moved fast, hooking his arm around her waist and pulling her back just as the horses fell against the fence. The posts and rails shuddered and Finn prayed they would hold as he spun Jodie around, out of harm’s way.

      Horses squealed as they struggled to regain their footing. The boards creaked and groaned. Finn looked over his shoulder. Thankfully, the roan scrambled free and galloped away, a couple others in pursuit.

      Too close, he thought, relief making his knees tremble.

      Then he glanced down at Jodie, realizing that he still had one arm wrapped around her midsection, the other bent over her head. Her hands were clutching his shirt.