through the last time and what Gordy had gone through. Someone would make that terrible suggestion. Someone would say they should put him down... She needed to keep that from happening.
She also really needed him to stop biting. A few deep breaths and she’d be able to control the pain, but it’d be easier if he’d let go. Having her screaming at him would freak the tiny horse out and he was already afraid.
‘Let go now,’ the man said, pulling her attention back to him over Gordy’s pristine white back. She expected to see a vet, or maybe someone who had traveled with the circus in the past...
Ten years had changed his face. Broadened it. Made it more angular. But she knew those eyes—the boy she’d known ten years ago. The boy she’d loved.
Reece wasn’t supposed to be there yet. And he probably wasn’t supposed to be looking like he was about to throw up.
‘I can’t let go.’ Jolie grunted. Speaking took effort. Suddenly everything took effort. Controlling the pain. Controlling her voice. Breathing... ‘He’s got me.’ And letting go might just mean that he fell again, hurt himself worse, and maybe his teeth would take her flesh with him.
As much as Jolie might normally appreciate the value of distraction to help her control wayward emotions, Reece was the wrong kind of distraction. He just added a new dimension of badness to the waves racing up her arm. She didn’t want him there. He wasn’t supposed to come until they were all on the farm, where she’d have room to avoid him. He’d stayed gone for ten years so why in the world would he come to see the show now?
Because she didn’t want it. But here he was, helping with Gordy and being gigantic. Good lord, he was big.
She could use that to help Gordy.
Get the horse and the show back on their feet.
The throng of people gathered around, children in the audience pressed against the raised outside of the ring, getting as close as they could... The weight of all their emotions pressed into her.
It had to be their emotions she was feeling. She’d mastered her own emotions several years ago, and maintained proper distance from anything hairy, she reminded herself. And she’d regain control of them as soon as she got Gordy out of there and Reece the hell away from her.
First things first. ‘We have to get him out of here.’ She needed out of there too.
A single nod and Reece reached for the horse’s mouth while she kept him standing. Large, strong hands curled around the snout and lower jaw and he firmly pried the miniature horse’s jaws apart, all the while speaking to him gently, making comforting sounds that did nothing to comfort her—but which seemed to do the trick with Gordy.
Or the combination of comfort and brute strength did the trick. Gordy released her bleeding arm and immediately Reece slid his arms under the horse’s neck and through his legs to support his chest and hind quarters. Then he did what she’d never seen anyone do before: He picked the horse up.
‘Which way?’ Strained voice to go with strained muscles, and the look of nausea was still on his face. How had Reece gotten so strong? She thought doctors studied all the time and played golf... Even as small as Gordy was, he was still a horse and weighed a good one hundred and eighty pounds. But Reece carried the miniature horse out of the ring. By himself.
Right. Not the time to think about that. Gordy was hurt. She was hurt. The show had stopped. Children were probably very scared and upset. ‘This way.’ She cleared a path and led Reece and his load out the back of the tent, the way she’d come, off toward the stables.
He could carry Gordy to the stable and then go away, let her have her mind back. The stable was Bohannon property, she would just order him out and take care of her horse.
Someone else would step in, get the show moving again, and she didn’t care who that task fell to. As long as the vet came soon.
The stable wasn’t far, but by the time they reached it, Reece was breathing hard. Maybe harder than she was while desperately trying not to feel nothing—not the pain in her arm, and really not the anger and betrayal bubbling up from that dark place she stuffed all her Reece emotions.
Once in Gordy’s stall with the fresh hay she’d put down earlier, Jolie directed, ‘Lay him in the straw.’ That was something she could think to say. One step at a time, that’s as far ahead as she could make her mind work. It took more effort than it might have otherwise done if she hadn’t been bitten and her arm didn’t ache to the point she was considering that maybe the bone had fractured...
The rest of her mental capacity was filled to the brim with the echoes of voices reminding her of Gordy’s history, the way Mack would undoubtedly react, and all the animals she’d lost over the years. Of everything she’d lost...
Ignoring those voices took effort.
Nothing was going to happen to Gordy. He was practically a sibling. Her first mount when she’d been little more than a toddler herself.
Jolie forced herself to still. Reece gently laid the injured but considerably calmer animal in the bedding. ‘I think he remembers you,’ she murmured. Gordy remembered Reece, even if he looked loads different—even if he’d bitten her. He remembered Reece enough to go docilely into the straw.
Still not a good enough reason to keep Reece in the stable. She couldn’t focus with him there. ‘Thank you. Go watch the rest of the show.’ She got in between him and the horse, focusing with all her might on first-aid training for horses.
Reece stood behind her, looking down over her shoulder. ‘Let me look at your arm.’
‘It will wait.’ Gordy might have thrashed himself into a bad intestinal situation...so the next step should be...
Reece’s hands closed around her waist, dragging her attention away from what she should be doing. He lifted her to her feet and secured her left arm with his horse-lifting grip locked around her wrist. Fire and ice, his touch was like peppermint, an utterly inexplicable combination of heat and chill that momentarily cut through the fear of losing Gordy and made her think...so many different things. Primarily it reminded her of one thing: He needed to leave. But Gordy needed to stand up more, and she’d failed at lifting him to his feet twice already.
‘My arm can wait,’ she repeated. And it could wait outside his grasp. She twisted her wrist free, ignored the deep ache the motion caused, and pointed to Gordy. ‘He needs to be on his feet.’
‘He can rest a moment. You’re hurt.’
He sounded so sincere, genuinely concerned... Which was crap, of course. ‘He needs to be on his feet,’ she repeated, ‘resting a moment is the last thing he needs.’ Don’t look him in the eyes. Don’t look him in the eyes.
‘Jolie...’
‘Reece...’ she replied, and looked him in the eyes. Right. No time to waste. She started moving again, toward the stall door so she could get to the supplies and away from him. Something in his touch, in the fact that he had helped them, and the concern in his eyes made her feel weak, muddied her thinking. Roused emotions she couldn’t afford right now.
She knew what needed to happen for Gordy, not him. ‘You can stay here until I get him in a sling. He needs to be in a sling. And don’t think you get to tell me what to do just because you went all strongman and carried my horse to the stable. You don’t get to dictate anything in here. The circus might be yours to destroy, but Gordy is a Bohannon, so I’ll take your help with him, and then you can get the hell out of my stable.’
Not calm. Not calm at all. What had happened to her calm? Her arm. Pain and fear did this to her. That and the weirdness of seeing Reece. But it would all go away again soon enough. Losing Gordy on top of everything else would be a pain she couldn’t ignore. Sling. She needed one of the horse slings.
Flipping open the lid of the trunk where various first-aid implements were kept, Jolie dug through, using her injured arm even if every second the ache grew worse. The only sling