Page 76 of Cowboy Daddies

He chuckled. “I remember trying to get you to go horseback riding on an excursion once. You flat out refused because horses were terrifying.”

She frowned, forehead furrowing as she tried to remember what he was talking about. Finally, it dawned on her. “First, that was our honeymoon, and I didn’t even want to leave the room, if you recall.”

“True.”

“Second, I mean … they are pretty scary at first. They’re just so big, but once you get on them it’s like … I dunno, magic.”

“I can’t argue with that, sweetheart.” His saddle creaked as he shifted so he could lean over and tug her ponytail playfully. “I’ve always loved everything about horses. Since the first day I got here, you couldn’t pry me away from them.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “Speaking of… how come you never told me about this place? About when you lived here before.”

He drew in a deep breath and his whole body seemed to tense up. “I-it was a lot to talk about, I guess. And it didn’t really seem relevant. I mean, when I moved to the city my whole life changed.”

There was more to it, she knew it. “Okay, but these people treat you like family. Not like someone who worked for them, but like you’re actually family. All you ever told me was that your parents were gone, and I didn’t want to bring up a painful subject but…”

His eyes focused on the spot between his mount’s ears, and they stayed there through a long silence. Then, just when she was about to try again, the cowboy at the head of the pack gestured to turn them down a side trail. They crossed a shallow stream, and went up a hill, before Carter was ready to talk.

“After my parents died I got dumped into the foster care system. I didn’t have any close relatives, a few cousins out in California, but no one who wanted me. And being a foster kid sucks most of the time. I guess there were a few good families, but I kept getting moved around. Every time I started to settle in, my social worker would show up, and I’d have to shove all my stuff in a trash bag so I could move on to the next place.”

It had to be painful for him to talk about, and she regretted bringing it up. What a sad life for a kid, she thought. “If you don’t want⁠—”

“It’s okay, Allegra. I should probably have told you years ago. Anyway, long story short, I started getting in trouble. Small stuff first, and then bigger stuff. Eventually I ended up in court, and they were threatening to send me to juvie.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

“Wow, but you didn’t end up in juvie?” She couldn’t even picture it. Her husband was such a rule follower—if he hadn’t been, Pa might have walked in on something very different in that tack room.

“Not quite. There was this program for high-risk teens and the courts, at the time, were really invested in seeing if it helped. So, I got sent here with a bunch of other angry, lost kids.”

“So, you weren’t really an employee. You were a … prisoner?”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t say we were prisoners. There were no locks on the doors. We could leave any time … if we wanted to walk twenty miles and risk breaking probation. But yeah, when I first got here, I was technically sentenced to stay until I was eighteen.”

It was her turn to be quiet. She knew she should probably say something, but honestly, she was having trouble taking it all in.

After a few minutes of quiet, he continued. There was a lot more to the story. He told her how he’d struggled at first, like they all had. There had been fights, anger, even one attempt to run away. He explained how, over time, he’d started to find peace in the work.

By the time he was eighteen, he’d made a place for himself. The anger had washed away with the sweat, and he was practically a different person. “I asked if I could stay on, as a hand, and they thought it over and agreed with some conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“First, I had to get my GED and I did. It took a while because I’d missed, basically, half of high school with all the moving around. Pa tutored me nights and weekends, and I got there eventually. Oh, and I got paid the same as the other guys, but half of it had to go into a savings account, which they supervised until I left.”

Her respect for the older couple went up a few notches. They’d gone out of their way to help Carter make a better life for himself. “It sounds like you had a good thing here.”

“I did.”

“I’m surprised you left,” she said cautiously.

He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher, and was about to say something, when another couple, Lydia and Brian, caught up with them. They’d been keeping a slower pace as they talked, and a lot of the others had passed them up already. Eventually they’d be at the end of the line, and she was fine with that.

Carter’s mouth closed, as they waited for them to pass. Only, instead of just moving up the line, they hung around and made small talk for a little while, much to Ally’s frustration.

“The riding part isn’t so bad,” Lydia explained. “But my thighs are already killing me. I’m going to be walking funny later, and not for a good reason.”

Allegra was dying to hear the rest of Carter’s story, but since Lydia was one of the women she’d started to bond with, she struggled to be polite. It was an effort that involved a lot of fake smiles, and a promise to meet after dinner at the hot tub. “A good soak will help your legs,” Allegra promised.

“You’re so right. If it wasn’t for the hot tub I would have given up by now and gone home,” Lydia said, laughing.

Brian snorted. “This whole thing was your idea in the first place!”