AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So where was Rebel?
“Let me go first,” I said, my finger near the trigger of the shotgun as I moved closer to the stall door.
Cade tucked Janessa behind him and stepped back to give me some room as I pulled the door open.
The horse was there, lying on its side on the straw-covered floor. She was still breathing, eliminating most of my initial worries.
But even as I took a tentative step toward her, Rebel didn’t make any attempt to get up. She was looking at me, though, her big, dark eyes slowly tracking my movements as I knelt down next to her.
“She’s alive,” I said, motioning for Cade and Janessa to come closer. “Something isn’t right, though. Is she normally this docile?”
“Oh, God, no.” Janessa shook her head, her brows furrowing as she reached out to rub the mare’s nose. “She normally wouldn’t let a stranger get anywhere near as close as you are now. There’s something wrong with her.”
“We need to get the vet out here,” I said, exchanging a look with Cade over Janessa’s head. “Can you go back to the house and get Justin? He’ll know who to call.”
“Logan Hensley,” Janessa said, shooting me an annoyed look. “He’s the vet we use now that Dr. McHenry retired. He’ll know what to do.”
“We’ll give him a call.” Cade nodded, already moving back toward the stable door. “I’ll be back down here in a few minutes.”
“You should probably go back with him,” I said to Janessa as Cade walked away. “There isn’t anything else for us to do here right now.”
“I’m staying,” she said, taking another moment with the horse before turning back to face me. “This is my ranch. These are my horses. If you guys hadn’t been here, I would have come down here on my own—and it wouldn’t have been the first time, either. Whatever happened here, I want to know. I want to get to the bottom of whatever is wrong with Rebel. And I’m not leaving until I get some more information.”
She held my gaze for what felt like a full minute until I finally nodded. “Okay,” I said simply.
What else could I say?
Again, she was absolutely right. Just because I hated the thought of her putting herself in harm’s way didn’t mean she wasn’t exactly where she belonged. If anything, I was the one who had been out of line—even if I wasn’t about to admit it out loud.
It was just that the thought of something happening to her scared me in a way that no stranger, no intruder ever could. I cared about this girl, whether I was ready to admit it out loud or not. I’d known her family my whole life. I’d known her parents. I’d watched her grow into a beautiful, confident woman who would be more than capable of taking over this ranch when the time came.
So yeah, I cared about her. In a different time, under different circumstances, I would have happily acted on those feelings. And I knew Cade felt the same damn way.
But that just made the whole situation even worse.
We both wanted her.
Neither of us could have her.
And neither of us seemed willing to let her go.
Chapter 6
Janessa
The tension in the air was so thick that it was hard for me to concentrate—hard for me to breathe, really—as my uncle, Cade, Boone, and I crowded around Rebel’s stall and waited for Logan Hensley, the town vet, to tell us what had happened.
I knew from the hard looks Uncle Justin kept tossing my way that he was upset I’d slipped out in the middle of the night. And even though he should have been thankful that Cade and Boone had been here to help, I was pretty sure that fact had only upset him more.
Especially since nobody had told him what had happened until after the fact.
That part felt bad, of course, but… there really hadn’t been any other way. If I’d gone to him first, he never would have let me out of the house. Convincing Cade and Boone that I wasn’t some helpless child had been hard enough. Convincing Uncle Justin?
That would take a little longer. Probably a lot longer.
“Is she gonna make it, Doc?” My uncle asked, finally turning his disappointed stare away from me. “Can you tell what’s happened to her? She was just fine yesterday evening when I came down here to lock the doors.”
The vet didn’t answer right away, and I held my breath as he continued checking over the nearly lifeless mare. When he looked up, he made eye contact with me first. “It’s a good thing you called me when you did. Another couple of hours and she might have been too far gone.”
