“Contribute? Contribute what?” Quincy blinked. “You sent in a damn big donation to the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund last year.”
Zach shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I’ve done well with quarter horses. We all have. I’ve got no quarrel with that. I love breeding and training the best, and I always will. But I want to do more—” Zach broke off and gestured with his free hand. “What’s so damned wrong with wanting to make someone else’s life a little better?”
Zach’s brothers said nothing, just stared at him as if they were waiting for his words to start making sense. At least silence meant he’d snagged their attention. He plowed ahead. “Two years. Two frigging years I worked my ass off, learning everything I could so I might do this. Now you want to flip me shit? Well, you can shove it where it’ll never again see daylight. The people these guide horses are going to help will never see daylight again. Ever. Think on that. Blindness isn’t fussy, and it strikes every day. People are blind, and service animals make things a little easier for them. Go home to your wives and your cushy little lives and your small-mindedness. I have better things to do than argue with you about my choices.”
Quincy rubbed a hand over his face and blinked. “I don’t have a wife.”
Zach shot him a searing look. “That’s all you’ve got to say, Saint Quincy? When was the last time you slept with a woman?” He turned the burn of his gaze on Clint and Parker. “Neither of you is without sin, either. Married now, and doing everything right, but there was a time when you didn’t. Maybe I screwed up longer than you, but that sure as hell doesn’t give you a free pass through the pearly gates.” He tugged on the halter handle. “Come on, Rosebud. The company around here is starting to stink.”
As Zach turned to walk away, Clint spoke. “Hold up there a minute, little brother.”
Zach glanced back. “Why? So you can chew my ass some more? Forget it. If you want a piece of me, make like a frog and jump on it. Otherwise get off my land.”
Clint jerked off his hat, then plopped it back on his dark head. “Give a man a second, all right? I’m trying to figure out how to apologize.”
“That’ll be the day,” Zach sneered. “You never say you’re sorry. You damned near choke on the words.”
Clint settled a thoughtful gaze on the tiny palomino. Typically of him, he bypassed saying he was sorry. “A horse is a horse. I don’t guess size really matters.”
Like Clint, Parker had to fiddle with his hat before speaking. It was a trait of the Harrigan brothers, handed down to them by their father. “Clint’s right. It’s a horse, and maybe we were out of line to get all fired up. It’s just ...” He looked to Quincy for help.
“We were just shocked to see you on the news, especially when everything went wrong like it did,” Quincy said. “Okay, so maybe all of us initially thought you were doing something harebrained again. It’s not like this would be the first time. And you sure as hell could have given us a heads-up before you took her out in public.”
Zach clenched his teeth. An inability to apologize without flubbing it up was another Harrigan trait that he was not happy to share with his brothers.
“Scratch that,” Quincy quickly added. “Harebrained wasn’t a good choice of words. I meant ...” He shot a look at Clint. “Your turn, big brother. I’m mangling it.”
Clint sighed and kicked halfheartedly at a clump of grass. “Like I’m a slick talker?”
Parker took a second stab at it. “We didn’t understand. About this being so important to you, I mean. It’s not like none of us has ever messed up with a horse in public. Shit like that happens—no pun intended.”
“That’s right,” Clint agreed. “We’ve all messed up a time or two. What you’re doing makes some sense, now that you’ve explained. Any man worth his salt has moments when he wants to do something more with his life, something that’ll really count.”
Quincy nodded. “If you can train that”—he broke off and swallowed hard—“horse to assist a blind person, hats off to you. It really might make a huge difference in someone else’s life, and that’s a commendable intention.”
Zach wanted to cling to his anger, but it dissipated as quickly as it had come, and with it went the stiffness in his body. “It wasn’t a momentary urge that came over me. The idea took hold and wouldn’t turn loose. Do you think I enjoyed cleaning up horse shit in front of a camera? Whatever went wrong with Rosebud in that pharmacy threatens the future of all guide horses. What if that footage goes to the syndicates?”
All three of his brothers looked horrified at the prospect.
“Sweet Lord,” Quincy said, “let’s hope not. The whole world will think we’re a bunch of crazy fools.”
Parker studied Rosebud, his mouth twitching at one corner as he struggled not to smile. “I gotta say, though, she does kind of grow on you. Rosebud, huh? Once the wife sees her, it’ll be all over. You know Rainie. She’ll fall madly in love, want one for herself, and I won’t have it in me to tell her no.”
Zach’s heart twisted because he was still stuck on the pharmacy incident and how it might affect public opinion of guide horses overall. “Yeah, well, maybe you can adopt one of the minis that may soon be banned as service animals because I fucked up.”
“That won’t happen,” Parker rebutted. “And if it does? We’ll donate to a pot and lobby like hell to get the decision reversed.”
Clint nodded. “Count me in. She is cute. Loni will probably want one, too.” He rolled his eyes. “First thing we know, we’ll have midget horses everywhere.”
“The proper term is miniatures,” Zach said. “They aren’t dwarves or midgets. They’re a recognized and respected equine breed today. Rosebud is a blue-ribbon champion, and she cost me a pretty penny.”
Clint shrugged. “Okay, I got it.”
“No more wisecracks, then,” Zach warned. “She’s a horse, just like every other horse on this ranch, except that she’s much smaller and a lot smarter.”
“Smarter?” Parker scowled. “Smarter than a cutting horse? Bullshit.”
Zach sighed. Parker was never going to wrap his mind around this idea. “No bullshit, just fact. I’ve never seen a horse learn as quickly as she does.” Zach bent to stroke Rosebud’s fluffy forelock. “In another six months, she’ll blow your socks off.”
“She scarcely comes up to the tops of my socks,” muttered Parker. “But hey, okay. I’m on board.”
Zach’s brothers ventured forward to pet the mini. Quincy glanced up questioningly before he touched her. “Is it okay? I heard you say on TV that contact isn’t allowed.”
“Only when she’s working,” Zach replied. “Go ahead.”
Quincy hunkered down to get at Rosebud’s eye level. After searching the mini’s gaze, he muttered, “I’ll be damned. She really is a horse, blind spot and all.”
Clint laughed. “A horse is a horse.” He went down on one knee to run his hands over the palomino’s legs, then leaned back to give her body a long study. “She’s got beautiful conformation, perfection in miniature.”
Rosebud nuzzled Parker’s thigh for petting. Parker laughed and scratched behind her ears. The mini angled her head sideways and leaned into his fingers. “Just like any other horse, a hog for affection.” He looked at Zach and extended his right hand. “Are we good? Apologies accepted?”
Zach shook with him, and then said, “Oh, to hell with it,” and hooked an arm around his brother’s shoulders to give him a hug. “Apologies accepted, you hardheaded ass. Just remember, from now on big horses aren’t the only game in town.”
“Apparently not,” Parker conceded. “Just do us a favor and try not to embarrass us again when cameras are pinned on you.” As he drew back, he playfully slapped Zach’s shoulder. “Has it really been two years since you’ve been to bed with a woman?”
Zach laughed. He and his brothers were tight, but Zach’s encounters with females, no matter how rare in recent months, needed to remain private. “Let’s just say sex is no longe
r my mainstay in life.”
Quincy and Parker exchanged skeptical eye rolls, and Clint grinned. “If you’re going to train a guide horse, don’t do a half-assed job of it. Turn it into another coup for the Harrigan clan.”
“I will,” Zach promised. “At least, I’m going to try. It’s no easy task to teach her some of the things she has to learn.”
“Like what?” Quincy asked.
“Leading me around overhead obstacles, for one. She’s short, so I have to teach her to watch for stuff I may hit my head on.”
Quincy shot the little horse a startled look. “Are you shitting me?”
After his brothers left, Zach couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as he led Rosebud toward the house. He felt as if he’d just gone through a rite of passage. Until now, he couldn’t remember a single time when his brothers had ever looked at him with respect. Maybe, he decided, he should fire up and tell them to shove it more often.
But no. Clint had been nothing less than honest. Until Zach had decided to do this, he truly had acted like a jughead much of the time. Rosebud, or at least the thought of Rosebud, had turned him onto a different path, and over the last two years he’d grown up, setting aside his swinging-bachelor ways to concentrate on something that really mattered. The longer he was away from the whole bar scene, the less he missed it. He still dropped in for an occasional beer, but not often.
It felt good. He might not have a wife and kids, but he had a purpose, something to drive him. He rested his hand on Rosebud’s head as they approached the steps, twelve of them, which led up to the deck of his veranda. Zach drew Rosebud to a stop, wondering why in the hell he’d built a house with a daylight basement. Rosebud hadn’t gotten the hang of stairs yet, which was undoubtedly his fault. He was screwing up somehow in his teaching methods. Over and over, he’d watched a video of a trainer teaching a mini how to handle risers, but so far, Rosebud, who caught on to everything fast, wasn’t getting it. She’d start out fine, and then she developed four left feet.
As Zach began working with her to climb the steps, he asked himself for at least the hundredth time why he didn’t build a ramp. The answer was always the same. With a ramp, Rosebud wouldn’t master stairs as quickly, and it was an important skill for her to learn. Rosebud drove that point home by planting a hind foot squarely on his toe.
Luke proved to be difficult about dinner. He didn’t want hamburgers. He preferred fish. Mandy put the beef back in the fridge and fixed Luke’s favorite, an apple jelly and horseradish salmon recipe, which was surprisingly delicious. When she served the meal, Luke sniffed the air. “Is that salmon?” he asked, making a face. “We had salmon last week. How about some variety?”
Mandy slammed her fork down on the table with such force that Luke jumped. “Luke, you’re being impossible! What do you want from me?”
She regretted the question immediately. Luke’s mouth pulled into the thin line she knew from experience meant trouble for her. Her brother hung his head, as many blind people often did. “I want my eyes,” he said flatly. “Give me back my eyes.”
Mandy’s stomach contracted into a football-size knot of pain. As she removed the plate of food from in front of him, her hands shook so that she nearly dumped the contents in his lap. It was her fault her brother was blind, but must he remind her of it constantly for the rest of her life?
“If not the salmon, what do you want to eat?” she asked tautly.
He sighed and gestured limply with one hand. “I’ll just eat the stinking fish.”
For a moment, Mandy had the unholy urge to throw the food at him. But when she glanced at his scarred face, her temper flagged. Luke did make her life difficult on a daily basis, but when she looked at it objectively, how much more difficult had she made his?
She set the plate in front of him again. “I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted. Normally you love it.”
Her brother groped for his fork. “Yeah, well, same old, same old. I’d just like something different every once in a while.”
Here was something different: She was about ready to clobber him. Instead she sat across from him and tried to eat her meal. She couldn’t look at Luke, so she stared at the beautiful china plate. Her mother had had that pattern, which was still horrendously expensive if purchased brand-new, and had used it when she set a gorgeous table each evening for her perfectionist husband. Mandy had always loved the dishes and regretted that she’d been forced to leave them behind when she and her brother became wards of the court. She’d bought a few pieces of the china over time, at thrift stores and garage sales. Some of it was chipped, but it gave her a sense of family and tradition. She guessed everyone needed that, even if the family in question had been dysfunctional and her memories of childhood were mostly awful.
Though the salmon was moist, it caught in her throat. Luke cleaned his plate. Mandy felt so miserable she ate only a few bites and put the rest under plastic wrap.
“I want to go to bed,” Luke informed her as she started to clean up the kitchen.
“Right this instant?”
“Yes, right this instant. I’m tired.”
Mandy looked at the skillet and dishes, which would be difficult to scrub if left to sit. No matter. If Luke was tired, she had to settle him in for the night. She could deal with the kitchen later. Besides, she’d be able to call in a sitter and leave the house earlier.
It took nearly a half hour to get Luke into bed. He dawdled, dropped things, wasn’t satisfied with the first set of pajamas, and then wanted a drink, his way of getting back at her because she’d dared to argue with him. He said his pillowcase stank, so she changed it. She forgot to put his slippers out, and he complained that she never remembered all the things he needed during the night. He wanted ice in his water. His arm itched, so she rubbed cortisone on the spot. The horseradish in the salmon glaze had given him heartburn, and he asked for antacid tablets. Then, to top it off, he didn’t want to listen to a recorded book tonight. He wanted Mandy to read to him.
She opened a John Grisham novel to where she’d left off days before and began to read. Luke appeared to be staring at the ceiling. Mandy could only wish. He was completely, totally blind.
“Mands?” he said softly.
Mandy broke off in the middle of a sentence. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry.” He gulped. “I shouldn’t have pissed on the wall and said all that stuff. I wanted to tick you off and hurt you, and I probably did. I’m sorry.”
With quivering hands, Mandy marked her place and closed the book. When they quarreled, Luke never apologized. This was the first time. “I’m sorry, too. I don’t mean to harp; really I don’t. I just want so much more for you than this.”
“I know.” His voice went thick. “I want more, too, but a dog isn’t the solution.”
Mandy thought of Rosebud, but this wasn’t the appropriate moment to broach that subject. Luke needed a couple of days to recharge before she started in on him again.
“I know your fear of the dogs is real,” she settled for saying, “and maybe it isn’t practical of me to think you can simply get over it.”
A surprised expression settled on his face. “Has an alien taken my sister’s place?”
Mandy laughed softly. “It’s me, the harping sister. I’ve just been thinking, you know? Maybe a dog isn’t the only solution. It’s worth checking into. Don’t you think?”
Luke took a moment to answer, his surprised expression giving way to wariness. “Sure. Maybe you can get me a potbellied pig. I’ve heard they’re as smart as dogs.”
A tingling sensation crawled up the nape of Mandy’s neck. Had Luke been listening to the news spot about mini horses, and this was his way of poking fun?
“There’s a plan,” she settled for saying. “Will you be okay if I bring the sitter in for a while tonight after you’re asleep?”
“Why? Where are you going?”
Luke didn’t like it when Mandy went out to have fun, and she’d long since forgone the privil
ege, because something dreadful always happened while she was gone. “I’d like to do some research to see what might be available out there by way of an assistance animal for you.” That much was true; Mandy would be checking into another kind of assistance animal. To avoid telling an outright lie, she chose her next words carefully. “The library would be a great place to do that. They don’t close until nine.”
“Can’t you do research online?”
“I could, but I think a librarian might be able to steer me in the right direction, saving me time.”
Luke seemed to accept that. “No dog,” he reminded her, “even if it’s toothless and doesn’t have a tail.”
Mandy reopened the novel and began to read. When her brother drifted off to sleep, she set the book aside. After drawing the covers beneath Luke’s chin, she smoothed his hair and quietly left the room. When she reentered the kitchen, her shoulders sagged. What a mess. But it would have to wait until later. She stepped over to the small table where she kept the phone and punched in the number of the sitter, hoping against hope that the older woman was free to come over. Mandy breathed a sigh of relief when the lady said she could be there in less than ten minutes.
Mandy tried not to think about Zach Harrigan’s possible reaction when she paid him a surprise evening visit. On TV, he had seemed nice. Hopefully he wouldn’t get in a grump when he learned why she was knocking at his door. If he did, oh, well. If she settled for calling him, he might hang up on her. In her experience, it was a lot harder to get rid of someone face-to-face, and there was absolutely no way that she was going to let someone else stake a claim to that little horse if she could secure it for her brother.
It took Zach and Rosebud nearly an hour to get in the house, and by then, Zach was exhausted. He suspected the horse was, too. The first thing Zach did was call his brother-in-law, Tucker Coulter, a renowned vet who specialized in equines. He and Samantha lived on an adjoining parcel of land now known as the Sage Creek Ranch.