To wait for love to find me. To give it all to one woman. That I would truly feel the magnitude of what it meant to find that one person that was meant for you.
It had also been three years later that the neighboring rancher that had mentored me had been killed in a tragic accident that had taken his life and the life of his wife along with one of their sons. His other son had been too swamped with grief and had sold their land to me. That was the land that was on the other side of county road eighty-one.
That night that my mother had passed, I had also made another vow, that whether my future wife liked it or not, I was rushing her to the emergency room regardless of whether a small cut needed stitches or not.
I wasn’t losing someone else that I loved. Not on my watch.
Thinking about the past used to upset me to a point where I would be in a horrible mood for days, however, I knew that it was upto me to live my life to the fullest I could. And to live it for the ones I had lost.
The horses grazed in the greenery they kicked, bucked, and whinnied. I had finally obtained my dream. But could this all really be called a dream when it was my reality?
The cup of coffee that I held in my hand as I stood leaning against the white post was probably burning my calloused skin; however, due to years of hard work on the land, I didn’t even notice it.
More times than not I would remember doing something to my hand and the pain would never register, not until I had blood pouring from my hand, my arm, or even my leg.
“Boss, everything went well last night, even Champion didn’t stir not once.” My foreman Parker said as he meandered up to the front porch with his own cup of coffee.
Parker had his own cabin that was a little farther from the stables and the bunkhouse that I had built. The bunkhouse held ten rooms, a kitchen, main living room, with their own laundry room.
I knew how hard it was to live in crummy situations and still expect to work and perform to the best of my abilities.
That wasn’t how you kept good hands. On a good day, we had one hand for three horses, on a bad day, we had one man to six horses.
I had been planning on expanding and moving the bunkhouse to house five more rooms and bring on five more hands since my business seemed to be expanding. I was also planning on separating the hands so that one set worked with the client’s horses and the other set worked at another stable that held my own horses and my hand’s horses.
Now Champion is my pride and joy. I bought that horse over ten years ago when at a race the owner didn’t have a clue what he was doing and ran a horse without warming it up first. Champion had turned up lame.
However, after a solid year of therapy for the horse, he came back better and stronger than ever, that owner had offered to buy Champion from me seven times so far.
Over my dead body would I ever sell one of my horses to someone like that who had more money than they knew what to do with and would risk harming something that depended on them for their wellbeing.
“That’s a first.” Champion also hated to be in his stall. He wanted to be able to move when he wanted to move, and now that he was retired and a stud, I agreed with Champion, but it was better for him to be brought to heel every so often.
“Are you planning on going to that sale this Thursday?” The only other person that would know my whereabouts at any given time other than myself was Parker.
“Yeah, a couple of the horses could use forever buddies to help them when their owners are not here. Going to give a couple of old-timers a safe place to land.” I murmured as I took another sip of my coffee.
“I noticed an old grey gelding on the auction list, looked like he has had a rough row to hoe.” In other words, Parker had taken a liking to one of the horses already.
“I’ll check into it.” It wasn’t often that Parker stuck his neck out for any of the animals that weren’t on this property and when he did, I tended to listen.
Because nine times out of ten, Parker was right on the marker.
I had two clients due to show up, one at nine the other at ten.
I made my way to the stables after I rinsed out my coffee cup, I ate my standard breakfast of fried egg, bacon, and cheese on toast with mayo times three.
The rest of the morning I worked with my first client and secretly hoped that my second client wouldn’t even show up.
So far so good, since she still has yet to arrive.
My good mood however had just now ended all because of a screeching halt that was due to the small white car that was driving recklessly up the paved driveway that had cost me my entire winter earnings, but it had been worth it.
Well, it had been worth it until it made this particular person reach me a hell of a lot faster than it would have if that person would have had to dodge potholes.
“Well, I’m off to the stables. That woman gives me the hives.”
“Traitor.” I said it loud enough that I was sure that Susan had to have heard me seeing as her window was rolled all the way down.
