AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seeing her brought back memories of the day before. She smiled. The men Ben worked with told him to go enjoy the party and they had spent the evening with Aaron and Betsey under the shade tree. She and Ben talked more in the few hours he had joined them than they had the entire time she lived in Willow Creek.
Her heart started pounding as she stood there. She had told Ben she never owned a horse—that she had owned nothing. Did he…
He would not have done something so…
Her mind started racing. No, Aaron had bought her. That had to explain her being here.
But what if…
Ben’s smiling face popped back into her head, and her heart skipped a beat. She hurried out of the stall, securing the door before running to the house. Aaron was by the stove, pouring a cup of coffee when she stepped inside. He looked her way and set his mug down. “What’s wrong?”
She found it hard to catch her breath but said, “Did you… there is a horse in the barn.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “I’d hope so.”
“No. I mean a new horse.”
When she expected him to say, "he knew," she got nothing but a blank expression.
“I’m not following.”
“A new horse,” she repeated. “A painted mare.”
Betsey walked into the room. They both turned to look at her, and she stopped when she noticed. “What’s wrong?”
“Morning Dove said there’s a new horse in the barn.”
The look on Betsey’s face matched Aaron’s. Morning Dove licked her lips. If neither of them knew about it…
“Show me,” Aaron said. He headed for the door, Betsey right behind him.
She fought the urge to run and her heart was racing when they reached the barn and she showed them to the stall. The mare was still there, still as beautiful as she had been the day before. “See,” she said, when Betsey and Aaron looked in at the horse.
Neither of them said anything for long minutes. Aaron scratched his chin before shrugging. “I have no clue how she got here. She’s not mine.”
Her racing heart made it hard to breathe. Betsey looked as confused as Aaron did.
“I saw her,” she said, opening the stall door and walking inside. “At the Avery Ranch. I…”
“You what?”
The day before replayed inside her head, the conversation between her and Ben coming back as if it had happened only minutes before. “When I was talking to Ben near the pasture fence, this mare was there.” She rubbed a hand over the mare’s mane. “I told him she reminded me of Star Dancer, a horse my father owned before…”
She turned to look at them. “Ben would not have…” She let the words trail off. Her heart screamed that the mare was for her, but even suggesting Ben bought the horse for her was ridiculous. They barely knew each other, so why would he? There had to be some other explanation as to why the mare was now standing in Aaron and Betsey’s barn.
But she is wearing a bow like a gift.
There was a tiny smile curving Betsey’s lips when she turned back to face them. “Aaron didn’t buy her and I can’t afford to buy a horse so if you and Ben were talking about this mare, chances are he’s the one who put her in here.”
She looked back at the mare. Morning Dove had been to Ben’s house a handful of times. It was not a large place. Besides the house, a small barn and an empty chicken coop were the only other things she had seen. “Perhaps he did not have room for her in his own barn.”
Aaron walked into the stall and ran a hand over the mare’s back. “He has plenty of room for her. Since moving Pansy over here, he has an empty stall.”
Betsey walked closer to the open stall door. “You didn’t find a note?”
“No. Just a saddle.” She nodded to it with a tilt of her head.
Betsey inhaled a deep breath before shrugging her shoulders. “Well, she’s not ours so it looks like you have a new horse.”
