AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hey,” he said, reaching to let the horse smell him. The animal ducked his head and nosed Mike’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not really working right now. I can’t ride you or anything.” He gave the bay a sad smile. Mike couldn’t drive. He couldn’t ride a horse. He couldn’t do a lot of things, and he had the distinct thought that he needed to start learning how to do things one-handed, because his shoulder wasn’t ever going to be all the way better.
He didn’t want to accept that, and he left the bay at the fence and headed for the far stables. Maybe he could lead a horse out to the remote cabin where he’d first kissed Gerty.
The pasture beyond the last stable held several horses, all of them spread out and dotting the area. He put one foot up on the bottom rung and watched them graze. A couple of them looked at him, and a deep, dark black horse came plodding toward him.
Mike smiled at it, but the horse didn’t seem to be looking at him. It nickered and called, and Mike twisted to look over his shoulder.
“Mikey.”
When Gertrude Whettstein said his teenage nickname, Mike didn’t mind at all. He could only stare at the woman standing twenty feet from him. She wore jeans, and she was just as straight up and down as she’d always been. Thin and lithe, strong and sexy, and he wasn’t embarrassed he’d thought that.
She wore her dirty blonde hair in a ponytail high on top of her head, and she tucked her hands in her back pockets, her bony elbows poking out to the sides as she studied him.
He turned fully and stumbled toward her. “What are you doing here?”
Something hard crossed her face. “Am I not allowed to be here?”
“No, it’s just—just—” He couldn’t find the words. “I—the last couple of times I’ve been here, you haven’t been.”
“I’ve been in Texas,” she said. “Montana. Up in Calgary. Around.” She shrugged one shoulder, and Mike sure did like her blue and white tank top. It was simple and beautiful, which was Gerty through and through.
“How long are you going to be here?” he asked.
Gerty looked across the pasture, her shoulders and chest lifting with a big breath. “I don’t rightly know.”
Mike grinned, the world suddenly brighter and more open than it had been five minutes ago. “You don’trightly know?” he teased. He’d never heard her talk like that before.
She faced him again, a smile flickering against her lips. Gerty fought against giving him that grin, something she’d done in the past. She’d present him with it eventually, and Mike moved toward her until he stood only a pace away.
“Go out with me,” he said, feeling braver and stronger than he had since his helicopter had gone down.
“You don’t even know if I’m single,” she said, raising that chin he’d once held in one hand just before he kissed her.
“Are you?” he asked.
Gerty pressed her teeth together, and Mike had his answer. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook, though, and he waited. And waited. A smile came to his face as he…waited for her to tell him she was, in fact, single.
2
Gertrude Whettstein couldn’t resist the gravitational pull to Michael Hammond. She hadn’t seen him in thirteen years, but the tether that had always drawn her toward him had not diminished. Not even a little bit.
Did he know he stood over six feet tall? He must.
Did he know he exuded passion, charm, and confidence all at the same time? Probably not, as he’d never been arrogant about his handsomeness or his brains—and he had plenty of both. So much, in fact, that Gerty had only passed her math classes in the early years of high school because she could send Mikey the problems, and he’d call her and work through them with her.
After he’d left and gone to college, she’d felt too insignificant to call him. He hadn’t reached out to her either, but because of the farm that connected the two of them, she’d known he’d gone to officer flight training and then become a pilot in the Marines. A helicopter pilot.
Did he know that was the sexiest job a man could have? She doubted it. To him, he’d just wanted to first, fly, and second, serve. He’d done both, and she could hardly believe he was standing right there in front of her.
“Gerty,” he finally said, chuckling. He dropped his gaze to the ground, and she knew he didn’t have any idea how adorable that was. She’d asked him about it before, and he’d said he had no idea being more submissive made him more attractive. He looked up at her without truly moving his head, his eyelashes fluttering. “You know how to make a man wait.”
And a man now, he was. She supposed she wasn’t the same thirteen-year-old who’d met Michael Hammond out near these stables for the first time either. He’d filled out in the shoulders and chest; he’d grown a couple of inches since she’d seen him last. He had to shave every day now, and it was obvious that this morning, he hadn’t.
She’d added a few inches to her height since they’d met for the first time, but her spirit felt just as wild as it always did. She hadn’t gained any curves as she’d matured, and she folded her arms and cocked her hip just to give herself some shape that wasn’t straight up and down. “Fine,” she said. “I’m not seeing anyone right now.”
“Then we can go out.”
“No,” Gerty said instantly. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just give into the fire raging between them. “I’m….” She swallowed hard. “I just got out of a relationship with someone I really…liked, and I’m not ready to start dating someone again.”
