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“That had to be hard, standing up to your mother. We’re programmed to do the opposite, so it takes guts, and the certainty that you’re right. Good for you.”
He said it like he meant it, with approval. And it warmed her, probably far more than it should have.
They remounted, Ry giving her a leg up, a procedure that was more than a little unsettling. It really had been a long time, if a simple helping hand set her pulse racing. Of course, when that hand belonged to the sexiest guy she’d seen in a long time…
They rode for a while, Kaitlyn savoring the feel of the horse’s movements, the fact that she was riding at all, and that it was here, in this country she loved. Only something that powerful could keep her camera out of her hands. As they started down another hill she gave him a curious look, decided what she wanted to know was innocuous enough.
“So, you all work the ranch?”
He nodded. “Between us and the hands we have come in, we get it done. Of course Mom’s worth about three hands all by herself. The woman’s indefatigable.”
She quashed another pang of envy. Her own mother had worked hardest at making sure she had the easiest life possible, which meant little effort and lots of booze.
They went up another rise, and Ry pointed toward a cabin in the distance, with a couple of outbuildings and what seemed to be a lot of fencing. “That’s Chance’s place.”
“Where he works with the dogs?”
Ry nodded. “One of them, Dodger, a German shepherd, turned out so well our neighbor’s borrowing him to help round up some horses. He’s been down to just the one for a while, because he was a hard case, but he’ll be picking up a couple new ones soon.”
“I so admire that,” she said.
“He’s quite a guy, that brother of mine,” he said, in a tone that told her he felt the same way. “And Ariel’s been…a godsend. She pulled him—and Tri, the worst case he ever took on—out of a dark place. We were all worried.”
She liked how open he was about that, and about crediting the woman his brother had found.
But then, she liked a great many things about Rylan Rafferty.
Chapter Thirteen
They got backto the main house just as Lucas arrived home from school. Ry watched as his mother came out to greet the boy, and she gave them a wave when she saw them riding in. He realized with a jolt that the boy was now a little taller than she was.
“I swear,” Ry muttered, “that kid’s grown another inch since Christmas.”
“That’s Lucas?” Kaitlyn asked.
He nodded. “When he got here, he was a couple of inches shorter than Mom.”
“How long ago was that?”
He had to think back, to remember the day Keller had found the starving boy stealing raw eggs to eat from the chicken coop behind the big barn. “A year ago back in November.”
“And he’s been here since?”
Ry nodded as they rode up to the house. Lucas watched them approach, and Ry noted the boy seemed wary of the newcomer. But he always had been. After the tragic loss of both his parents, ending up in the system and eventually running away from the group home he’d been in, he’d been mistrustful of everything and everyone.
He’d been particularly suspicious of Sydney at first and working their way through the shock of finding he wasn’t completely without blood family had been complicated by the developing relationship between her and Keller, the man he’d come to look at as a father figure. Ariel had also made him cautious, but he soon accepted her for what she’d done for Chance and the dogs, in particular Tri. He wondered how the boy would react to Kaitlyn.
Ry felt a little jolt, a combination of surprise and confusion. This wasn’t the same. Sydney and Ariel, they had been destined to become part of the Rafferty family. Kaitlyn was…just a visitor. On a job. No, not the same at all. A few days and she’d be gone, never to be seen here again. He didn’t know why the comparison had even occurred to him. He must have just been focused on Lucas’s reaction, and Sydney and Ariel were the others it had been most obvious with.
But Ry also noticed that now, after a bit more than fourteen months here, the boy reacted more watchfully than as if he were personally scared. As if he considered the ranch his home now, a place to be protected. And even though Keller, and then Sydney, had done most of the work to get the boy to this point, it brought a certain satisfaction to Ry that surprised him a little.
“Hey, Lucas. Suck to be back in school after the holidays?” he asked cheerfully as they pulled up at the house.
“No more’n usual,” the kid said. “Lots of homework already, but some of it’s on cool stuff, like the solar system and space and stuff.”
Ry dismounted, glanced over at Kaitlyn and saw that she’d slid down off the tall Latte without too much trouble. She pulled the smaller gear pack she’d taken with them out of the saddlebag.
“Lucas, meet Kaitlyn Miller. Kaitlyn, Lucas Brock.”
