kicked into overdrive at the alarm in Emma’s voice. He made a clumsy dismount, forgetting for a moment that his knee had no plans to cooperate. Zach caught Zeus’s saddle, barely escaping a face plant.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked as she, too, dismounted.
“I’m fine. Worry about the calf, not me.”
Steps ahead of him, she slipped to the ground next to the calf. Pulling her shirttail free from her Wranglers, Emma swiped the animal’s face, and then tickled the nostrils with straw.
The calf sneezed, spreading a shower of fluid all over her.
“Oh, yuck.” She grimaced, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Thanks a lot, little guy.”
Zach laughed. “Nice job. He’s breathing all right.”
Emma stood and backed away from the heifer as the mother sounded a grunt of protest and took over cleaning her calf.
“Whoa. Momma wants you out of there, Emma.”
“Yes. I’m going.” Emma moved and kept moving until she could grab Rodeo’s reins and hoist herself back onto the horse.
Zach carefully swung his leg over Zeus’s saddle, his gaze already taking in the rest of the herd.
“How could you leave all this?” Emma pulled out a bandanna and wiped her face again. Despite her disheveled appearance, there was a wide grin on her face.
“I know you don’t understand, but it wasn’t easy. Toughest decision of my life.”
Their gazes connected and Zach swallowed hard.
“Then why did you?” she asked softly. “We’d been friends since I was seven years old, and suddenly you left without a backward glance.”
He kept his mouth shut, unwilling to open that particular can of worms here and now.
“I guess there’s no point asking why you’ve stayed away for three years, either,” she continued.
Another heifer released a loud mournful wail and Zach turned his horse around. “Saved by the heifer.”
“You can run...” Emma murmured. “But it seems to me that you and I have a lot to talk about.”
Yeah, she was right. If he was going to be here until January, eventually he and Emma would have to talk.
Zach shook his head as he carefully headed toward the birthing cow.
Why was it that although he never gave a second thought to heading into danger as a navy SEAL, the thought of going toe-to-toe with his brother’s widow in Timber, Oklahoma, terrified him?
Emma sluiced cold water over her face and arms, rinsing the evidence of a day’s hard work into the industrial sink of the stables. She shivered and reached for paper towels to dry off. A glance down at her once shiny Ariat boots had her cringing. Something she didn’t want to think about now decorated the hand-tooled leather. Rubbing the soles against a boot scraper in the corner, followed by the hard stomp of her feet on the stable floor, she managed to kick off most of the offending debris.
Though exhaustion dogged her, Emma’s spirits remained energized. There was something satisfying about hands-on ranch work. She missed this. The last two and a half years had seen her cloistered in her office juggling the twins between therapy sessions with children and RangePro issues.
She glanced at her watch and then out the nearest window. The shadows of the day were closing in and she still had a riding lesson before she could head home to dinner and her girls.
“Miss Emma, can my brother, Mick, come with us for today’s lesson?”
Emma turned to meet the hopeful gaze of Benjie Brewer, a ten-year-old with bright red curls and a round face. She resisted the urge to correct his grammar. Her sister, Lucy, was a grammar stickler, whose comeback when they were growing up was always I don’t know, can you?
Emma favored example as the better teacher. “Isn’t Mick on the schedule?”
“Yes. With Mr. Travis, but he’s still working with some sickly calves in the barn.”
“I can take Travis’s lesson.”
The familiar deep rumbling voice had Emma whirling around. Her eyes widened at the sight of Zach standing in the doorway. With his shoulders nearly blocking the sun behind him, the man seemed larger and twice as imposing as usual.
His gait was slower and the limp more pronounced as he closed the distance between them. Her gaze went to his face. The tight jaw clearly said that he was in pain.
After four hours in and out of the saddle with calf birthing in the pasture, she was in pain, as well. But she knew her minor aches were nothing compared to Zach’s and yet he continued to soldier through. What drove the man?
“That work for you, Miss Emma?” he asked as he swiped at his brow with the back of his hand.
With a pointed gaze at his knee, she raised a brow in question.
“The knee is fine.”
“If you say so,” she murmured.
“And I do.”
Emma took off her Stetson and pushed damp and tangled strands of hair from her face before sliding the hat to the back of her head. “Mr. Zach, this is Benjie Brewer. His brother is no doubt hiding around the corner.”
“Mick, you can come out now,” Benjie called.
Where Benjie was pale, short and freckled, Mick Brewer was tall and lean with straight dark hair. His coloring and facial features hinted at a Native American heritage.
“Brothers?” Zach repeated.
Zach took the words from her mouth.
“We’re half brothers,” Mick said. “I’m older.”
“By a year is all,” Benjie returned.
Zach’s eyes rounded as he looked between the boys. He hadn’t missed the irony, Emma noted. They were as different as he and Steve were.
“Can you ride, Mick?” Zach asked.
Benjie blew a loud raspberry.
“I asked Mick,” Zach said drily.
Benjie’s eyes popped wide at Zach’s tone and he inched back.
“’Course I can ride.” Mick swelled up his chest and got in his brother’s face. “Better than this little runt can.”
“Naw, that’s not true,” Benjie defended himself. “You’re the one who rides like a scaredy-cat.”
“Do not.”
“Do, too.”
“Stop.”
All heads turned to Zach as the thunderous words echoed throughout the stables. He held up a large gloved hand. “First rule. Less talking. And there is zero tolerance for name-calling.”
“But...” Benjie said.
“Yes, sir, is the appropriate response,” Zach said, his voice low and nearly a growl.
Emma’s eyes rounded at the menacing tone in his voice.
Benjie blinked and swallowed. Then he inched back several paces. “Yes, sir.”
“Mick, do you have a horse?” Zach asked.
“Yes, sir. We’re all assigned horses to ride and groom.”
“Then I’ll trust you both to saddle up and wait outside.” He looked between them. “Quietly.”
“Yes,