The Surgeon and the Cowgirl. Heidi Hormel

called you Houdini. Never knew a pony who was so good at escaping.”

      She took the little animal’s halter and led her back to the pen she shared with Bull, a mean-spirited chestnut gelding that Jessie boarded for her brother. Bull was smitten with Molly but pretty much hated the rest of the world. If he was out, too, Jessie’s morning would be really, really crappy—as if it wasn’t already. She didn’t want to wrestle the big horse back into his stall. Even with Molly around, he could be difficult. She hurried, her knee already aching with the thought of getting the cranky horse to cooperate. Maybe her brother should have named him Payson. She chuckled at that.

      “You won’t think it’s funny if I let go of his halter,” Payson said.

      She clamped down hard on her tongue to stop a screech and said through clenched teeth, “What are you doing here? How did you catch Bull?”

      “I wanted to speak with you before this place filled up with people. When I got to the barn, Molly was standing in front of this big guy. I grabbed him and she trotted off. I wasn’t sure where she’d gone. I figured she’d taken off to find apples.”

      Jessie was stunned into speechlessness. First, Payson had shown up looking for her after last night, and second, he’d voluntarily dealt with one of the horses, especially a troublesome one like Bull. “Molly was trying to keep Bull in? I figured she was the one trying to escape. She does it all the time when she’s in the big corrals.”

      Payson shrugged and Bull leaned down and snuffled his hair. Payson pushed him away. Jessie waited for the horse to take off a finger. Nothing.

      “Let me take him, and I’ll get him and Molly back in their stall.”

      Jessie stepped forward and Bull immediately backed up, pulling Payson with him. The whites of the gelding’s eyes showed. Jessie stopped moving before Bull got more upset. The horse immediately settled and stepped closer to Payson. “Let me take him,” he said.

      Jessie watched her horse-hating ex-husband lead Bull into his stall with Molly trotting after him like the sheepdog she thought she was. Payson gave each animal a hearty pat before he left them in the stall. Jessie stood and watched, speechless again.

      “There are a few items we need to discuss,” Payson said into the silence.

      “Wait. What was that about?” Jessie said waving her arm in the direction of the stall. “You hate horses. When Candy Cane got out one night, and I asked you to help, you said that there was no way you were losing sleep over a ‘dumb animal.’”

      “Jessie, I was in the middle of my residency and had just come off a forty-eight-hour shift. I was exhausted. Plus Candy Cane always came back by morning. You used to say that she must have had tomcat in her because she liked to roam at night.”

      “When we lived out near Carefree that was fine. There weren’t any busy roads and people watched for critters. But then we moved to town so you’d have a shorter drive, which meant we were near a ton of major roads, including the 10. She wasn’t used to that and could have gotten hit.”

      Payson didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, stunning her for a second time this morning. “I didn’t even think about that. You had never worried before when she got out. I thought you were trying to punish me for missing your birthday.”

      She’d completely forgotten that. The week before Candy Cane went missing Payson and she had planned a nice evening to celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday. Then at the last minute he’d been called in to cover an extra shift. “I was upset that we didn’t get to go out that night. It had been weeks since we’d spent any time together, but I understood. It wasn’t your fault.”

      “That’s not what you said. You said that if I had loved you, I would have said no to the shift. But I couldn’t. The only time you could say no to shifts was if you were in the hospital yourself—in ICU.”

      “I said that? I’m sorry. I was being a real witch with a B, as Mama would say. Really, I barely remember the missed dinner,” Jessie said.

      “Amazing what sticks with you. We weren’t as good at talking about our problems as we thought.”