Read Online Here to Stay by Catherine Anderson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Catherine Anderson
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movements in one day. No worries . She didn’t seem sick otherwise, only a little tired, but so was he.
It took Zach forty-five minutes to get her back into the house. For the first time, he considered putting a potty bag on her for the rest of the evening. But that was cheating. Zach didn’t want to insult her by using one. Horses were intelligent, and as a trainer, he knew they had a tendency to measure up to your expectations.
By the time Zach got the harness off the horse, he was too tired to reheat his dinner or even bother eating it. After scraping the manure off the mat into an outdoor trash can and doing a dance in the dark with a stiff garden hose, he hung the mat over a porch rail to dry, poured the now-warm beer down the kitchen drain, and tossed the bottle into the recycle bin. Then he opted to crash on the sofa downstairs in case Rosebud needed to make another emergency trip outdoors. He peeled off his shirt, boots, and socks, rested his head on a sofa pillow, and covered himself with the afghan his stepmother, Dee Dee, had made for him. The mini came to stand near the couch. Zach gave her nose a scratch, closed his eyes, and was promptly out like a light.
Mandy stared through an intimidating blackness at the sign beside Zach Harrigan’s front gate, illuminated by the headlights of her previously owned Honda Element. NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATORS wILL BE PROSECUTED. Knotting her hands over the steering wheel, she considered her options. She rolled down the driver’s window and tried pushing the intercom button, but no one answered. Darn it . If she gave up now and settled for calling Mr. Harrigan, he’d probably hang up on her. For Luke’s sake, she had to get inside that gate to talk to him, and she needed a prosecution-proof reason for doing so.
Mandy backed her vehicle out onto the road, nosed it over to the shoulder, and cut the engine. After groping under the front seat for a flashlight, she exited the car, hurried to the rear doors, rummaged through her metal box of emergency tools, and then circled back to lift the front hood. Within seconds, she had one of the battery cables disconnected. She put the tools away, wiped her hands on a rag, and closed the rear doors. Mission accomplished . Though Mandy hadn’t been around her mom for years, Sharyn Pajeck had still managed to impart tidbits of wisdom to her daughter that had stayed with Mandy into adulthood. No red-blooded male alive from age fifteen to ninety can turn his back on a woman with car trouble . Mandy wasn’t clueless about automobile mechanics. Taking a car to a shop for simple maintenance cost the earth, so she did a lot of stuff herself. But for tonight, it suited her purposes to play dumb.
She used the anemic beam of her little flashlight to see as she picked her way over the rutted ground to the gate. Mentally haranguing herself for wearing pumps instead of flats, she’d just stepped up onto the third rung and was about to throw her leg over the top rail when another vehicle approached. Caught in the act . The glare of the headlights nearly blinded her. Mandy watched in startled amazement as a huge diesel pickup stopped only a few feet away and a stocky, vertically challenged man who definitely wasn’t Zach Harrigan climbed out. He strode purposely toward her.
“This land is posted,” he informed her in a gravelly voice. “You climb over that gate and you’re likely to have an up-close-and-personal experience with Smith and Wesson.”
Mandy’s father had owned a pistol, but otherwise, she’d never been around weapons very much. She had lived in cattle and horse country all her life, though, and knew Smith & Wesson was the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. Thinking quickly, she said, “I’m not looking for trouble, only some help. My car died on me.” That was the truth—if she failed to mention the deliberately loosened battery cable. Swinging one hand to encompass the dark landscape, she added,
It took Zach forty-five minutes to get her back into the house. For the first time, he considered putting a potty bag on her for the rest of the evening. But that was cheating. Zach didn’t want to insult her by using one. Horses were intelligent, and as a trainer, he knew they had a tendency to measure up to your expectations.
By the time Zach got the harness off the horse, he was too tired to reheat his dinner or even bother eating it. After scraping the manure off the mat into an outdoor trash can and doing a dance in the dark with a stiff garden hose, he hung the mat over a porch rail to dry, poured the now-warm beer down the kitchen drain, and tossed the bottle into the recycle bin. Then he opted to crash on the sofa downstairs in case Rosebud needed to make another emergency trip outdoors. He peeled off his shirt, boots, and socks, rested his head on a sofa pillow, and covered himself with the afghan his stepmother, Dee Dee, had made for him. The mini came to stand near the couch. Zach gave her nose a scratch, closed his eyes, and was promptly out like a light.
Mandy stared through an intimidating blackness at the sign beside Zach Harrigan’s front gate, illuminated by the headlights of her previously owned Honda Element. NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATORS wILL BE PROSECUTED. Knotting her hands over the steering wheel, she considered her options. She rolled down the driver’s window and tried pushing the intercom button, but no one answered. Darn it . If she gave up now and settled for calling Mr. Harrigan, he’d probably hang up on her. For Luke’s sake, she had to get inside that gate to talk to him, and she needed a prosecution-proof reason for doing so.
Mandy backed her vehicle out onto the road, nosed it over to the shoulder, and cut the engine. After groping under the front seat for a flashlight, she exited the car, hurried to the rear doors, rummaged through her metal box of emergency tools, and then circled back to lift the front hood. Within seconds, she had one of the battery cables disconnected. She put the tools away, wiped her hands on a rag, and closed the rear doors. Mission accomplished . Though Mandy hadn’t been around her mom for years, Sharyn Pajeck had still managed to impart tidbits of wisdom to her daughter that had stayed with Mandy into adulthood. No red-blooded male alive from age fifteen to ninety can turn his back on a woman with car trouble . Mandy wasn’t clueless about automobile mechanics. Taking a car to a shop for simple maintenance cost the earth, so she did a lot of stuff herself. But for tonight, it suited her purposes to play dumb.
She used the anemic beam of her little flashlight to see as she picked her way over the rutted ground to the gate. Mentally haranguing herself for wearing pumps instead of flats, she’d just stepped up onto the third rung and was about to throw her leg over the top rail when another vehicle approached. Caught in the act . The glare of the headlights nearly blinded her. Mandy watched in startled amazement as a huge diesel pickup stopped only a few feet away and a stocky, vertically challenged man who definitely wasn’t Zach Harrigan climbed out. He strode purposely toward her.
“This land is posted,” he informed her in a gravelly voice. “You climb over that gate and you’re likely to have an up-close-and-personal experience with Smith and Wesson.”
Mandy’s father had owned a pistol, but otherwise, she’d never been around weapons very much. She had lived in cattle and horse country all her life, though, and knew Smith & Wesson was the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. Thinking quickly, she said, “I’m not looking for trouble, only some help. My car died on me.” That was the truth—if she failed to mention the deliberately loosened battery cable. Swinging one hand to encompass the dark landscape, she added,
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