Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy. Kate Pearce

      * * *

      “Mom got all dressed up and let her hair down,” Teddie said as she and Parker rode down the fence line, she on Bartholomew and he on Wings.

      “I noticed. Your mom’s pretty.”

      She laughed. “She thinks you’re awesome, but don’t tell her I told you.”

      “She does?” he asked, astonished.

      “It was the cat,” she volunteered. “She’s keen on brainy people.”

      “It’s a conundrum, the cat,” he replied. “Einstein did thought experiments like that. Most theoretical physicists do. In fact. I follow two of them–Michio Kaku and Miguel Alcubierre. Alcubierre came up with the idea for a speculative faster-than-light speed warp drive. In fact, they call it the Alcubierre drive. One day, it may take mankind to the stars.”

      “Gosh, I didn’t know that. You follow them? You mean, when you go back East to D.C.?” she wondered.

      He chuckled. “I follow them on Twitter.”

      “Oh! Theoretical physics.” She rode silently for a few minutes. “I still want to fly jet fighter planes.”

      “I knew a guy who did that, years ago. He said that when those things take off, your stomach glues itself to your backbone and you have to fight the urge to throw up. It’s like going up in a rocket. The gravitational pull is awesome.”

      “I didn’t realize that. Goodness!”

      “It’s something you get used to. Like the “raptor cough,” if you fly F-22 Raptors.”

      She frowned. “Raptor cough?”

      “That’s what they call it. Nobody knows what causes it. But the guys who fly those things all develop it.”

      “Maybe I can get used to it,” she said. “I love Raptors,” she added with a sigh. “I think they’re the most beautiful planes on earth.”

      He grinned. “They’re not bad. But I like horses.”

      “Me, too!”

      They rode along for a few minutes in silence. Bartholomew took his time, and he wasn’t particularly nervous. Hopefully, being around Teddie relaxed him, because he didn’t try to bolt with her. All the same, Parker was watchful.

      “Will it offend you if I ask you something?” Teddie asked as they were on their way back to the stables.

      “Of course not,” he replied with a smile. “What do you want to know?”

      “We learned at school that all Native Americans have legends about animals and constellations and stuff. Do the Crow have them?”

      He grinned. “We do. My favorite is the Nirumbee.”

      “Nirumbee?”

      He nodded. “They’re a race of little people, under two feet tall. Some of the tales we have about them are violent and gory, but they’ve also been known to help people. I had a Cherokee friend in the service, and he said they also had a legend about little people that they called the Nunnehi.”

      “Do you think they really exist?”

      “Some credible people have claimed to see them,” he said. “My friend swore that he heard them singing in the mountains of North Carolina, where he grew up. And here’s what’s interesting. Archaeologists actually found evidence of a race of little people, no taller than three feet high. It made the major news outlets. They were called the “Hobbit” species, after Tolkien’s race from the films,” he said, chuckling.

      “Wow.”

      “I think all legends have some basis in fact,” he continued. “Like the Thunderbird. It’s a staple of Native American legends, a huge bird that casts giant shadows on the ground. There was a lot of controversy about a photograph, a very old one, of several men holding what looked like a pterodactyl stretched out. I don’t know if it was Photoshopped or legitimate, but it looked authentic to me. I saw it on the Internet years ago.”

      “I’ll have to go looking for that!”

      “I like legends,” he said softly. “Living in a world that has no make-believe, no fantasy, is cold.”

      “I think so, too.” She paused. “Do you speak Crow?”

      He nodded. “A lot of us do.”

      “Is it hard to learn?”

      “Compared to Dutch and Finnish, it’s simple. Compared to Spanish or French, it’s hard.” He glanced at her whimsically. “We have glottal stops and high tones and low tones, double vowels, even a sound like the ach in German. It’s difficult. Not so much if you learn it from the ground up as a child.”

      “I’d like to study languages in college,” Teddie said.

      “In between flying F-22s?” he teased.

      She laughed. “In between that. I could go in the Air Force and go to college, couldn’t I?”

      “You could.”

      “Then I’ll study real hard, so that I can get in.”

      “That’s not a bad idea.”

      She fingered the reins gingerly. “Do you like my mom?”

      He hesitated.

      She glanced at him and saw his discomfort. “Sorry. I just meant she likes you. I hoped maybe you liked her, too.”

      “I do like her,” he said. He sighed. “But you guys are getting over a big loss, a really big loss.”

      “She misses Daddy,” she agreed. “But he wasn’t the sort of person who’d want her to grieve forever or spend the rest of her life alone. He was always doing things for other people. Always.”

      “I wish I could have known him, Teddie,” he said solemnly.

      “Me, too.”

      “You’re doing very well at riding, you know,” he said after a minute.

      “I am?”

      He smiled at her enthusiasm. “Very well, indeed.” He grimaced. “But you may not think so when we get back.”

      She didn’t understand why, until they were at the stable and he reached up to lift her down. She stood on her feet and made a terrible face.

      “You need to soak in a hot tub,” he told her. “It will help the soreness.”

      “Mom never said it was going to hurt so much,” she groaned.

      “It only hurts when you haven’t done it for a while,” he explained. “Riding takes practice. You’re using muscles you don’t normally use, so they get stretched and they protest.”

      “I see.”

      “It will get better,” he promised.

      She drew in a breath. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

      “I’m sure. Go on in. I’ll unsaddle Bartholomew for you and rub him down, okay?”

      “Thanks!”

      “No problem.”

      She walked like an old woman all the way to the house. Katy was waiting on the porch and she made a face.

      “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I should have told you.”

      “It wouldn’t have mattered. Honest. I’d have gone anyway. Parker said I’m doing great! I didn’t fall off or spook Bart even one time!”

      She laughed. “Good for you.”

      “He said I should soak in a hot tub, so I’m going to.”

      “Good idea,”