You didn’t even want to speak to Luke when he was here for his father’s funeral, and now he’s working for you?”
“Long story.”
“I’ll bet. So where are you off to so early?”
“I need to walk Goliath,” she said, unraveling herself.
“And then you’re going back to bed?”
She paused. “Eventually.”
“Last I checked, this is Sunday.”
“Don’t start.”
“Isn’t Luke at the shelter? Staying in the caretaker’s apartment?”
“Yes.”
“You’re paying him to take care of things on Sundays, right?”
“Right.”
“Then stay home. Sleep in. Have a cup of coffee. Read the Sunday comics.”
“I will.”
“If you do those things in the afternoon, it doesn’t count.”
“This is his first Sunday. I’ll just do a quick check-in.”
“Sure you will.” Rita shook her head and went into the building.
Rita was right, of course. But that didn’t make Shannon any less driven to drop by to make sure everything was okay. Just for a minute.
When she got to the shelter, she didn’t see Luke in the kitchen or the office. She went outside and glanced down at the barn. The horses weren’t anywhere in sight, which meant he probably had them in the barn eating.
Maybe he’s working out.
Because of that, she thought twice about going down there. Staring at him one more time wasn’t going to accomplish anything except to make her look as shallow about sexy men as Freddie Jo was. But she did want to check on Molly, a restless saddlebred mare somebody had brought them yesterday. She had ribs like the tines of a fork and the wary look of an animal who still wasn’t sure about her surroundings. The people who owned the property she was found on had vacated the house and abandoned her in the pasture, leaving her to subsist on five acres of scraggly, rain-starved grass. What was wrong with some people that they treated an animal like a pair of old shoes they were tired of and just tossed away?
When Shannon reached the barn, Luke was nowhere in sight. Molly still had some grain in her bucket, but she moved to the back of her stall when Shannon approached. Shannon sighed. It was going to take months of assurance and endless buckets of food before she was ready to be adopted.
Then Shannon heard a soft voice.
She left the mare’s stall and walked around the outside of the barn, where she saw Manny in the small corral behind it. Luke was with him, his back to Shannon, leaning his forearms on the fence and watching him as he ate. Too short for the grain bins in the stalls, Manny had to be fed out of a bucket. And the corral was a better place for him to eat than in a stall, anyway. The smaller the space he was confined to, the more defensive he became and the more likely he was to bite.
Shannon started to say something, only to hear Luke’s voice again.
“So how’s it going, buddy?” he said. “Better every day, huh?”
Shannon froze, then took a couple of silent steps backward and ducked back around the doorway into the barn, then peeked out to watch. Manny continued to eat, but his ears flicked toward Luke with interest.
“You’re a dinky little thing,” Luke said. “I could dangle you from my key ring.”
Manny lifted his head, chewing, one eye trained watchfully on Luke, his tail switching nervously.
“Carry you around in my pocket.”
Another ear flick.
“Set you on my dashboard and watch your head bobble.”
Manny dipped his head into the bucket again, but by the way he snuffed around, Shannon could tell he was finished with his grain.
“I know what happened to you,” Luke said softly. “But I’m not that guy.”
Manny raised his head, but that wary look was still in his eyes.
“Oh, so you want me to prove it?”
To Shannon’s surprise, Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out a carrot. He offered it to Manny through the fence. Manny regarded it for a moment, then took a few steps forward, stretched out his neck, and closed his teeth around it, chomping off the bottom half and crunching it between his teeth. Miraculously, he didn’t take Luke’s finger along with it.
“Now, see?” Luke said. “That’s worth coming closer for, isn’t it?”
Manny swallowed, then turned back to Luke, looking for more. Luke held out the rest of the carrot, which the horse took calmly. As he chewed, the nervous twitching of his tail relaxed into a routine back-and-forth swish to chase away flies.
“The bad days are over, buddy,” Luke said. “Shannon’s not going to let anything happen