Christmas Kisses with My Cowboy - Diana Palmer Page 0,21
run on it. You might not like being talked about. . . .”
He actually laughed. “I’ve been talked about for years. I don’t mind gossip. If you don’t.” He hesitated. “That lawyer’s coming out here next month, isn’t he?”
“He’s a pest,” she said shortly. “He invited himself and I can’t convince him that I’m not interested.”
“No worries, kid,” he teased. “I’ll convince him for you.”
She smiled slowly. “Okay,” she said.
He chuckled. “I’d better go help Teddie saddle Bartholomew before she ends up in a pile of something nasty.”
She smiled from ear to ear. “She’ll love riding. Until she gets off the horse,” she added, because she knew how sore riding made people who weren’t used to it.
“You could come, too,” he invited.
Her eyes were full of affection and something else. “Next time,” she said.
He nodded. “Next time.”
He turned and went toward the stable.
* * *
“Mom got all dressed up and let her hair down,” Teddie said as she and Parker rode down the fence line, she on Bartholomew and he on Wings.
“I noticed. Your mom’s pretty.”
She laughed. “She thinks you’re awesome, but don’t tell her I told you.”
“She does?” he asked, astonished.
“It was the cat,” she volunteered. “She’s keen on brainy people.”
“It’s a conundrum, the cat,” he replied. “Einstein did thought experiments like that. Most theoretical physicists do. In fact. I follow two of them–Michio Kaku and Miguel Alcubierre. Alcubierre came up with the idea for a speculative faster-than-light speed warp drive. In fact, they call it the Alcubierre drive. One day, it may take mankind to the stars.”
“Gosh, I didn’t know that. You follow them? You mean, when you go back East to D.C.?” she wondered.
He chuckled. “I follow them on Twitter.”
“Oh! Theoretical physics.” She rode silently for a few minutes. “I still want to fly jet fighter planes.”
“I knew a guy who did that, years ago. He said that when those things take off, your stomach glues itself to your backbone and you have to fight the urge to throw up. It’s like going up in a rocket. The gravitational pull is awesome.”
“I didn’t realize that. Goodness!”
“It’s something you get used to. Like the “raptor cough,” if you fly F-22 Raptors.”
She frowned. “Raptor cough?”
“That’s what they call it. Nobody knows what causes it. But the guys who fly those things all develop it.”
“Maybe I can get used to it,” she said. “I love Raptors,” she added with a sigh. “I think they’re the most beautiful planes on earth.”
He grinned. “They’re not bad. But I like horses.”
“Me, too!”
They rode along for a few minutes in silence. Bartholomew took his time, and he wasn’t particularly nervous. Hopefully, being around Teddie relaxed him, because he didn’t try to bolt with her. All the same, Parker was watchful.
“Will it offend you if I ask you something?” Teddie asked as they were on their way back to the stables.
“Of course not,” he replied with a smile. “What do you want to know?”
“We learned at school that all Native Americans have legends about animals and constellations and stuff. Do the Crow have them?”
He grinned. “We do. My favorite is the Nirumbee.”
“Nirumbee?”
He nodded. “They’re a race of little people, under two feet tall. Some of the tales we have about them are violent and gory, but they’ve also been known to help people. I had a Cherokee friend in the service, and he said they also had a legend about little people that they called the Nunnehi.”
“Do you think they really exist?”
“Some credible people have claimed to see them,” he said. “My friend swore that he heard them singing in the mountains of North Carolina, where he grew up. And here’s what’s interesting. Archaeologists actually found evidence of a race of little people, no taller than three feet high. It made the major news outlets. They were called the “Hobbit” species, after Tolkien’s race from the films,” he said, chuckling.
“Wow.”
“I think all legends have some basis in fact,” he continued. “Like the Thunderbird. It’s a staple of Native American legends, a huge bird that casts giant shadows on the ground. There was a lot of controversy about a photograph, a very old one, of several men holding what looked like a pterodactyl stretched out. I don’t know if it was Photoshopped or legitimate, but it looked authentic to me. I saw it on the Internet years ago.”
“I’ll have to go looking for that!”
“I like legends,” he said softly. “Living in a world that has no make-believe, no fantasy, is cold.”