Her head turned as she fluffed the wood shavings into place, one eyebrow quirking. ‘I’ve always been this stubborn. Don’t you remember that much?’
‘I remember you frequently being a pain in the—’
She laughed. ‘Oh, I was that too.’
He wheeled the barrow out of the way as she came out of the stable, pausing to pat the horse’s neck again before she closed the stable door, bolted the top bolt and kicked the bottom into place.
She then turned to retrieve the barrow. But Eamonn jerked his head towards the next stable. Stubborn only went so far with him. ‘If I can’t stop you then I’m wheeling the barrow. So hurry up.’
‘I can do this just fine without your help.’
The rise of her chin and the glint in her eyes amused him, gave him a small sense of pride at her fierce independence that almost made him smile. Almost. If he smiled she’d think she’d won. And she hadn’t. ‘I believe you. But I’m here now, so learn to live with it. Now, hurry up. It’s bloody freezing out here.’
‘Warmer in Borneo, was it?’
‘Peru. And, yes it was.’He jerked his head again, ‘Go on, then.’
After a moment of hesitation, she sighed, and then moved to the next stable, where a finer darker head was over the door. ‘Get back, Meg.’
Eamonn watched with less surprise as the animal did as it was bid. ‘Do they all jump when you ask them to?’
‘They know who’s boss.’
He wheeled the barrow into place the same way she had at the previous stable, before leaning against the doorframe, watching her movements, and that of the horse, with cautious eyes. ‘You’re still taking a chance going in there, though. You know that.’
‘Everyone who works with horses is taking a chance. It comes with the territory.’
Oh, he knew. Knew better than most people on the street. But then he’d seen first-hand what could go wrong, and that kind of memory tended to stick with a person. The day his mother had taken her bad fall he’d been ten. It had been the last time she had ever sat on a horse, and less than five years later she’d quit trying to like horses for her husband’s sake. And left.
As the old memory seared across his mind and his heart, leaving a dull ache in its wake, he glanced around the empty yard. ‘Don’t any of the stable girls live in any more?’
‘Not since the last foreign groom we had, no. They tend to live in the town. There’s more going on there. The shops are closer—and, more importantly, the pubs.’
Eamonn put the pieces together. ‘So you’re out here doing this on your own with no one even within shouting distance?’
‘Uh-huh.’ She set her fingertips against the horse’s side. ‘Meg, over. Good girl.’
He was scowling by the time she dumped into the barrow again. ‘So you’re telling me you could get hurt and there would be no one here to help you ’til morning?’
‘Pretty much.’ She stopped, leaning on the handle of the shavings fork as she studied his scowling face in the dim light outside the stable. Then she shook her head and smiled. ‘Jeez.’ She fumbled in her jacket pocket and produced a small mobile phone, which she wiggled back and forth in front of her. ‘I can call for help. See? Prepared for every emergency, that’s me. So you can quit fussing over me like an old mother hen. I’m grand.’
‘Well, while I’m here you don’t do this stuff alone.’
‘What are you, now? My guardian angel?’
A brief nod in reply and, ‘For now.’
The firmly spoken words made her eyes widen for a split second, and Eamonn felt a smile build on the corners of his mouth again. The kind of smile that made it all the way down inside his chest. When was the last time he’d smiled like that?
But then it was the first time since he’d come home that he’d felt vaguely in control. More like his usual self. And it was an even longer time since he’d had so capable a sparring partner. A victory was a victory, no matter how small.
Her blue eyes swept to a point above his head.
After a second he tilted his chin and looked upwards. Then he looked back at the deadpan expression on her face. ‘What?’
‘I think your halo’s a little crooked.’
And just like that the victory was taken away from him. A burst of deep, resonating laughter escaped his lips. It had been one hell of a long time since anyone had spoken to him like she did. It was refreshing as be damned.
Colleen rewarded him with a glorious smile in return, ‘Make yourself useful, then, and move the barrow. Back, Meg.’
The smile remained on his face as they made their way down the line of stables. Watching each horse from the corner of his eye, he observed how Colleen efficiently manoeuvred the animals, and did what she had to do with an ease of movement that spoke of confidence and physical ability, even with her ungainly size.
He allowed himself to study her closer.
She was very different from the women he’d known for most of his adult life. When he dated he dated in NewYork—his base for his travels. In New York he had the job that supported his many meanderings around the world in search of something he’d never found. In New York he filled in time between work and trips with the kind of women who dated professionally, who knew what face to present to the kind of guy they were trying to get. They dressed in clothes that accentuated their figures, had manicured nails, and hair that was tamed in such a way it was supposed to look natural. But Colleen…
Colleen was what Colleen was; there was no carefully constructed outer appearance. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and from the exertion involved in her task; her blonde hair was already escaping in long curling strands from the soft band that held it in a single ponytail at the nape of her neck. The long lashes that framed her startling blue eyes were free from mascara—as free as her full lips were from lipstick. In fact the redness of her lips was only due to how she would chew on them with the edge of her even white teeth as she concentrated on what she was doing.
And the rumour about pregnant women seeming to glow was apparently true too. All in all, she was the most naturally gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. And for the first time in his life Eamonn was finding a pregnant woman highly attractive.
What would be the point in that, though? It wasn’t as if anything could come of it. His life was in New York, and the other places he journeyed to, and hers was in this tiny corner of Ireland he’d walked away from. With her horses. And it wasn’t as if he spent a whole heap of time around kids—well, not every day anyway. A purely physical relationship was out of the question too. Because, apart from the most obvious restrictions, she was Colleen. She was practically family.
He was obviously a lot more tired than he’d thought. And he hadn’t had a recent partner to distract him in a while. Something he would have to remedy when he got home.
Eamonn mulled it over as he pulled the barrow back from the door and moved to the next one.
Colleen was obviously a very capable woman. So what had him wheeling a barrow for her and offering to be her guardian angel? Being an angel wasn’t something he was famous for, after all.
Maybe it was simply the age-old gene that demanded that the male of the species protect the female while she carried a child? A genetic thing in Colleen’s make-up that made her attractive to him, so that he felt the need to be protective towards her?
He smiled at the thought. Nah. If that was all it was then he’d be chasing around after every vaguely pregnant woman, opening doors and offering to carry shopping. Though he guessed if he ever took a bus or a train anywhere he would give up his seat. But then he didn’t need to take a bus or a train, he had