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“I’m still undecided,” she teased.
He rested his hand holding the reins on her thigh. That touch, his body tight against hers, the sense of safety, began to slow her racing heart rate. “If you truly want to help Bentley,” he offered, “you need to stop being so afraid around him. He senses it, and he thinks he should be afraid too.”
She exhaled completely then, forcing herself to chill out. Shep was right—ever since the accident, Bentley hadn’t done anything to hurt her. She knew without a doubt that the accident was her error, not his. She shouldn’t have touched him in the first place. Besides, how could he trust people? Look how cruel they had been to him. He’d obviously had little food. She relaxed, settling against Shep’s chest.
“Better,” Shep murmured in her ear, an obvious smile in his voice.
Tadgh walked forward in a steady gait, heading up toward the hill. Emma began to get curious. “All right, so tell me, since you’re the horse expert and all: What does coming on this walk do for Bentley?”
Shep gave the rope on Bentley’s neck a tug. “Horses need a job to do. Just like people. He needs a purpose. We’re giving him that.”
“With a walk?”
“Not the walk, necessarily, but we’re asking him to follow. That’s his job right now. To follow.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what Shep had planned to do to help Bentley, but a walk certainly hadn’t been something she’d considered. “And that’s good enough?”
He paused. Then, “When someone is broken, they cannot lead. It’s not weakness. It’s the nature of things.” The hinted emotion in his voice told her he wasn’t talking about the horse anymore. “Sometimes you need to follow until you make sense out of why you broke in the first place.”
Her chest squeezed, all the things she wanted to say burning up in her throat. She glanced back toward Bentley again, staring into his warm black eyes, feeling like he was her twin. Scared. Untrusting. Confused. Yup, that was her for sure.
Shep’s hand slid tighter, warm and strong, and that’s when she got it. Just like Bentley, everything might not be okay, but right now, this was enough.
* * *
Mountain views led to deep forests that led to crystal-clear creeks for as far as the eyes could see, and with each step Tadgh took, Shep began to regret his decision to take Emma on a ride. While his mind said one thing, his body want
ed to take her on another type of ride entirely. She all but rested in his lap, her warm, soft bottom close to his erection, his thick thighs hugging hers. Every time Tadgh stepped forward, her hair brushed Shep’s nose. She smelled like sunshine and flowers, and having her this close was a new type of torture he didn’t think he could survive. He swallowed back the primal nature Emma brought out, and he pressed on, believing Emma needed this ride as much Bentley. The freshness of the air, the richness of the earthy scents always grounded Shep.
Emma seemed to need a little of that too. And he needed more time with her.
She’d come into his life in the strangest way possible. Shep had never been one to believe in coincidences. He wanted to find out why she’d made an appearance now, when starting a new relationship was far from his mind. He’d been focused on work and growing his company so much over the past couple of years, to get the government contracts he now had, that his personal life had simply taken a back seat.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“My God, yes. It’s so beautiful here, breathtaking really.” She turned her head slightly and he caught the side of her smile. “It’s easy to forget the world can be a brutal place when you’re out here.”
That, he understood. It’s why often rode out here too. Precisely the reason he’d been the one to find her the morning of her accident. “The world isn’t brutal,” he gently corrected her. “People can be brutal.” Tadgh kept on steady. Bentley remained quiet, the rope slack as he followed, while Shep finished, “They can be cruel to those who don’t deserve it.”
Emma kept silent.
Shep thought that said a lot. He wanted to breach those walls of hers, breaking them down until he knew the Emma before she’d been tainted by pain.
He felt her finally give a long sigh against his chest as she glanced back up in front of her. The silence only lasted a few moments before she asked, “Has anyone ever broken Shep Blackshaw’s heart before?”
“Yes.”
“How did you move on?”
“I picked up the pieces and remembered that her shit belonged to her, and that the reasons we ended were out of my control.”
Her pause this time was even longer, while Tadgh continued on with his fluid gait. When she finally did speak again, her voice hinted at deep sadness. “I think it seems easy to move on, but it’s not, believe me.”
He understood that pain. Change was always hard, and she had given up a lot when she left New York City. “It won’t always be so hard. You’re a good, sweet woman, Emma.” He wrapped his arm around her tighter, holding her close to his chest, hoping that he was saying what she needed to hear. “Don’t forget that.”
He sensed the way his words affected her by the way she relaxed against him. He let the silence overcome them again as Tadgh carefully made his way across the Blackshaw land, with Bentley in tow following quietly. Shep wasn’t worried about the horse. He’d already determined that Bentley wasn’t dangerous to people, he was simply afraid. Shep could work with that. And as Bentley followed, not putting up any fuss, Shep knew the rehabilitation of the abused horse wouldn’t take long. Bentley wanted to find peace, that much was obvious in his soft dark eyes, as obvious as it was in Emma’s eyes.
As Tadgh strode through a small creek, the water splashing up around them, Emma asked, “Have you always been this way?”
