“Not a strand.” Liv started for the trailer, but Andie stopped her.
“We’re not done.”
“No?”
“Got to go back for our horse gear.”
The horse gear consisted of a saddle pad cover, bridle, breast collar, leggings and various beribboned tail barrettes—all sparkly red.
“This clashes with Beckett’s coloring,” Liv said as they made their second trip back to the truck.
“Don’t think that hasn’t been brought up. Next year they’re talking turquoise or blue to complement all the horses.”
“Where does the money come from?”
“Various fund-raisers. And we have a few sponsors. Like me.”
“You’re responsible?”
Andie hunched a shoulder. “I like to live my childhood dress-up fantasies in public. What can I say?”
The practice was a long one. Linda was stressed since their first performance was only a week away and the team kept messing up the pattern. There was no slowing to a trot, though, so Liv spent the evening flying around the arena, hoping for the best...and kind of enjoying herself. She’d finally come to terms with the fact that she was no longer part of a sedate parade team. She was now a Rhinestone Rough Rider with the spangles to prove it.
On Linda’s whistle, Liv pulled Beckett to a sliding halt, performed a rollback in perfect sync with Andie and then thundered off in the opposite direction.
“Way to go!” Margo called as she passed.
“Thanks,” Liv yelled back, even though she was now too far away for Margo to hear. Shae, who’d always called her a chicken on horseback, would have been amazed at how far Liv had come.
Shae... Now, there was something to think about besides Matt and her father. Liv had to keep her promise to her mom and try to rein in her stepsister the next time they had a wedding meeting. Linda blew the whistle and Liv reversed course again.
She’d think about Shae later.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING was Liv’s first day off from the clinic, and she slept in—if one could count staying in bed until six-thirty as sleeping in. She heard Tim moving around in the kitchen as she crossed the hall to the bathroom and was glad that he was no longer heading out to the tractor at the crack of dawn. The weather had cooled over the past several days as a stormy weather pattern approached and he no longer had to try and beat the heat.
“Beautiful,” Liv murmured as she caught her first glimpse of herself in the mirror. She’d showered off the arena dust the night before and had gone to bed with her hair wet. Now she was paying the price. Bent, alien hair. She reached into the drawer for an elastic and pulled her hair into a ponytail, then doubled it over and caught it again, making a messy bun that would have had her mother sending her back to the bathroom to fix it had she seen it.
Well, she couldn’t see it. No one could see it because Liv was spending the day at the back fence.
Tim was gone by the time she got to the kitchen. The carafe was full of coffee, though, and scrambled eggs were waiting in the warming oven. Maybe he really did feel better. Maybe it just took a while at his age to totally recover from whatever had knocked him for a loop.
Damn, she hoped so anyway.
She made toast, ate her eggs, did the dishes, then filled a travel cup with coffee and headed out the door toward the barn where the small tractor was parked. Tim finally had it running and she could use it to fix that fence.
Humming a little as she walked out, she stopped dead, almost dropping her cup, when she saw Matt’s truck parked under the elm tree.
Not right.
The passenger door was open and Matt was dropping tools into a bucket. Liv started marching toward him. He closed the truck door and hefted the bucket just as she came to a halt a few feet away from him.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, looking him up and down.
“Helping Tim.”
For a moment, she simply stared. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s pretty simple, Liv. I’m going to tighten the back fence so that Beckett doesn’t go visiting the neighbors again.”
“I’m going to do that.”
“You’re free to help. We’ll get done twice as fast that way.”
He walked toward his tractor, putting on his gloves. Liv hesitated a moment, then jogged after him. He stopped abruptly and turned toward her. Liv skidded to a stop, ending up closer to him than she’d intended. “I