More Than Neighbors. Janice Kay Johnson

the man barely blinked. “I do know. In fact, both mine are trained for cutting.”

      “Is that what you were doing today? Why don’t you keep some cows here to practice on?”

      Was that a smile glinting in eyes that Ciara decided were gray? “The next-door neighbor—” he nodded to the north “—runs a herd and lets me, er, practice on his.” He held up a hand to stop her son’s next barrage of questions. “And today I went on a trail ride.”

      “Oh. What I wanted to know is—”

      Ciara cut him off. “That’s enough, Mark.” She met the neighbor’s eyes. “We stopped by to introduce ourselves. We bought the place next door.”

      “I saw lights last night.” He didn’t sound thrilled.

      “We arrived late yesterday. The moving truck came and went this morning.”

      “I see.”

      “My name is Ciara Malloy, and this is my son, Mark. He really likes horses and is hoping you won’t mind if he pets yours if and when they come to our fence line.”

      She sensed more than heard a sigh. “That’s fine.”

      “Do they bite?” she had to ask.

      “Only if they think your fingers are carrots.”

      Mark lit up. “Do they like carrots? I wanted Mom to buy sugar cubes ’cuz horses like them, but she didn’t. Maybe they’ll come to the fence if I give them something to eat.”

      “An occasional treat is fine,” the man said. “And I do mean occasional. Sugar isn’t healthy in large quantities for horses. A carrot or two a day won’t hurt anything.”

      “Cool!” Mark exclaimed.

      “Do you know how to give a horse a treat so he doesn’t mistake your fingers for food?”

      “I can just hold it out like that, can’t I?” Mark demonstrated.

      Another near-soundless sigh. “No, you have to remember that horses can’t see your hand when you hold something out. If you have a minute—” he glanced at Ciara with his eyebrows raised “—I’ll give you a demonstration.”

      “You mean I can pet them now?” Mark bounced like an excited puppy. “Mom, did you hear?”

      “I heard. Yes, that’s fine.”

      “Give me a minute.” The man disappeared into the barn briefly, reappearing with a fistful of carrots. Maybe he was nicer than he appeared; he’d obviously guessed that feeding one measly carrot wasn’t going to cut it for her son.

      She trailed man and boy around the corner of the barn, seeing the fence ahead and a kind of lean-to with a big enameled bathtub filled with water and a wooden manger beside it. The horses currently stood side by side, both grinding hay in their mouths.

      Mark raced forward. One of the horses swung away in apparent alarm, and the other threw up his head.

      “Gently,” the neighbor said. “You have to be quiet and calm or you’ll scare them. Keep your voice down. Make your movements slow.”

      “Oh. I can do that.” Mark tripped, fell forward and had to grab the fence to keep from going down. Both horses shied and ended up twenty feet away.

      Their owner cast a look at Ciara in which she read understandable desperation. If he wasn’t used to kids—

      “Gently,” he repeated.

      “I’m sorry.” Mark quivered with passionate intensity. “They’ll still come to me, won’t they? So I can feed them?”

      “Greed will overcome them,” the man said drily. He whistled and held up the carrots. As speedily as they’d departed, the horses returned.

      Ciara stayed a few feet back, watching as Mark learned how to hold out a treat on the palm of his hand, where horses liked to be stroked and how and what they didn’t like. He laughed when their soft lips tickled his hand as they whisked pieces of carrot off it, and laughed again when one blew out a breath with slimy orange bits of carrot that got on his face. He asked what their names were and nodded solemnly at the answer: Hoodoo and Aurora. Both apparently had long, unintelligible names under which they were registered with the Quarter Horse Association, but they didn’t know them. The man had come up with Hoodoo; Aurora was used to that name when he’d bought her. He corrected Mark when he described Hoodoo as a chestnut; for some reason, that coloration was called sorrel when it came to quarter horses.

      “Hoodoo is prettier than Aurora.” After a sidelong glance, Mark placed one foot on the bottom rail and his elbows on the top rail in exact imitation of the neighbor. “Do you think she minds?”

      “I doubt horses think in terms of pretty. And Hoodoo is actually her son. I did have her bred the once.”

      “Will you again? That would be amazing.” Her son swiveled enough to look over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be amazing, Mom?”

      “I’m sure it would. Now, say thank you, Mark. We need to get those groceries home.”

      “Do we have to?” His shoulders slumped when he saw her face. “Okay. Now they know me, I’ll bet they’ll come when they see me with a carrot.”

      She mouthed the words “thank you” at Mark.

      “Thank you, mister,” he said obediently. “You didn’t tell us what your name is, did you?”

      “Didn’t I? That was rude. I’m Gabe Tennert.”

      “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Ciara said, holding out a hand.

      He looked at it for longer than was polite before gently engulfing it in his much larger hand. The rough texture of his calluses sent a tingle through her and, she suspected, warmed her cheeks.

      “Thank you for stopping by,” he said, leaving her in no doubt whatsoever that he wasn’t at all glad for their visit.

      “We’re going to get a dog,” Mark told him as they walked back to the van. “Mom said we could as soon as we moved.”

      “If you do, please make sure it’s one that won’t chase horses or cattle.” There was no flexibility whatsoever in that deep voice now.

      That was reasonable, Ciara supposed.

      Mark got in, and she circled to her side.

      “Do you have other children?” Gabe Tennert asked.

      She paused. Somehow, she didn’t think he was hoping she’d say yes. “No, only Mark.”

      He nodded brusquely. “Good day.”

      Before she had so much as gotten the key in the ignition, he had hopped into his pickup truck and began maneuvering to back the trailer into an empty slot inside one of the barns. He didn’t even glance their way as she turned in a circle and started down the driveway.

      Ciara surprised herself by wondering whether he had a wife.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ALWAYS AN EARLY RISER, Gabe was outside forking hay into the manger when the school bus passed the next morning. Without thinking about it, he’d known it was coming; the brakes squealed at every stop, and the Ohlers a couple of properties past the old Walker place had two kids that rode the bus.

      Now he turned, thoughtful, when the bus lumbered on past without stopping next door. Would have made sense, when Ms. Malloy and her boy were in town yesterday, for her to have registered him for school, wouldn’t it? Today was Wednesday, though; maybe she meant to give him the rest of the week to settle in before he started.

      April was a funny time of year to move, when it meant pulling a kid out of school and him having to start in a new one at the tail end of the year, Gabe reflected.