Jill had been trying to be smart with Slate, but the man ignited something inside her that sometimes made her brain go on the fritz.
She spotted Slate on the back deck the moment she had a clear view of it, and he saw her only a few seconds later. She grinned from ear to ear, hoping she could pull that back by the time she got to him. She was already making a fool of herself, as she didn’t ride horses everyday the way he did.
He’d been taking lessons for a few weeks now, and he made it a point to practice every day so he could get better. She rode a horse as necessity on the ranch called for it, and that wasn’t very often in her role at Hope Eternal.
“Look at you,” he called as he came down the steps and started to walk toward her.
“Happy birthday,” she called back.
“What are we doing?”
“You said you love watching the sunrise and the sunset. So today, we’re watching the sunrise from atop a horse.” She grinned at him as he took the reins for Scalloped Potato and swung into the saddle like he’d been doing it all his life. He really was the sexiest man Jill had ever dated, and everything seemed so easy for him.
She only knew it wasn’t because he told her of his internal struggles. Extending out the pan of cinnamon rolls, she said, “I asked my mother to bake these for you. I heard through the grapevine that they’re your favorite.”
“Cinnamon rolls?” He looked at her with pure delight in his eyes. “They are. Thank you so much.”
Jill swelled under his praise. “Come on,” she said, turning away before she leaned toward him and fell off the blasted horse. “There’s a great place here on the ranch to watch the sunrise, but it’s a ten-minute ride, and we don’t want to miss too much.”
She led him east as he rode with the reins looped around the saddle horn so he could take out a cinnamon roll. “No raisins,” he said. “Which grapevine told you this?”
“I put Hannah on Luke,” Jill admitted. “And my mother was happy to make them. She loves to bake, and since she’s feeling better now, she said yes before I even finished asking.” She glanced at him and caught him with a bit of frosting in the corner of his mouth. He licked it away and smiled at her. With the golden rays of the sun, and the horse, and the cowboy hat, and the cinnamon roll, Jill thought she might have fallen in love with him right then.
Too soon, she told herself. They’d had some good conversations over the past couple of weeks, but at least half of them had been through texts. She knew better than to think a person was exactly what they presented themselves to be through a message. But she knew Slate in person too, and he was as real as they came.
“I’m glad your mother is feeling better,” he said.
“Me too,” Jill said. “Though now I feel pretty stupid for yelling at the ocean and throwing rocks out into the water—like that really did anything.”
“Hey,” he said, his voice calm and perfect. She looked at him on the next step Aladdin took. “It did. At that moment, that’s what you needed, and it helped.”
“What do you do when you need a release like that?”
He gazed at the horizon, where the sun was just starting to make an appearance. “I drive.”
“That’s what you were doing that same day,” she said, just now getting it.
“Yes,” he said. “It was an amazing thing to be able to get in my truck and drive wherever I wanted.” He smiled and tucked the last of his first cinnamon roll in his mouth. After he finished eating it, he added, “It still is.”
“I bet,” Jill said. She didn’t understand having her freedoms restricted by that, but she understood helplessness. And loneliness. And feeling like she was never good enough. “It’s right past these trees,” she said. “There’s a wide river here, but it’s cut down into the earth a little bit. Feels like you’re on the edge of a cliff.”
She urged Aladdin to go past the tree line, and the horse stopped almost immediately after that. “Here we are.” She slid from the saddle, stumbling forward a couple of steps as she wasn’t all that graceful with dismounting. An embarrassed giggle came out of her mouth as she tossed the reins over a post that had been erected there.
“You guys must come out here a lot,’ he said, putting Potato’s reins around the bar too. The horses started grazing, and Jill stood on the edge of the river and gazed at the sun.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think Ginger’s father did. He put the post there years and years ago.”
“I can see why,” Slate said, coming to her side. They stood that way for a couple of minutes, the silence and the sunrise rendering them both silent.
Once the sun had fully crested the horizon and was painting Jill’s face with warmth, she sighed and turned toward Slate. “What are you doing the rest of the day?”
“Working this morning,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist. She leaned into him and rested her head against his chest as they both faced into the sun again. “I’m going to the shelter this afternoon with the boys. Then dinner tonight.”
“Who’s going to take care of your dog during dinner?”
“Connor is currently fighting with Thomas over who’ll get to play with him.” Slate chuckled, the sound deep and delicious inside his chest.
Jill smiled to herself, beyond glad she’d orchestrated this moment for the two of them.