One Mother Wanted. Jeanne Allan
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want to remember.
As if she’d ever forget.
By the time she was ten, Allie knew every nuance of Zane Peters’s walk. She’d memorized his low-pitched laugh and his slow and easy way of talking. The way he’d drawled her name and called her honey had sent shivers down her spine. She’d teased him, telling him he was a Southern boy, not a true Westerner.
The accent came from his Texas-born mother. Dolly Peters had ridden the barrel-racing circuit where she’d become fast friends with Mary Lassiter, and like Mary, had married a rodeo cowboy. The difference was Buck Peters quit the rodeo and came home to his family’s ranch near Aspen. Buck and Dolly had moved to Texas when Dolly’s aged parents needed them, and now they operated the Texas ranch Dolly had inherited while Zane raised and trained horses and ran some cattle on the Colorado ranch.
Her thoughts always circled back to Zane. If Allie hadn’t agreed to her mother’s request to wait, she and Zane would have been married almost eight years now.
Or divorced.
Loving Zane hadn’t blinded her to his flaws. He had a reckless streak and took too many chances. Allie had been away at school, but reports filtered to her about his partying. She’d worried about him drinking too much and driving too fast on the curving mountain roads back to his ranch. Home on a holiday visit, she’d nagged him; he’d accused her of not trusting him and of asking friends to spy on him. The argument had escalated until she’d ripped off her engagement ring and shoved it in his shirt pocket. Told him to go away, that she’d never marry him.
If he’d apologized, begged her to take back the ring... He hadn’t. Without a word, he’d left her standing in front of the ranch house. She’d watched him tear out the gate and down the dirt road, driving so fast his truck fishtailed on the curves.
Her throat ached with angry, unshed tears. She didn’t want to think about Zane. The shock of his betrayal. The wrenching pain. The slow, agonizing realization that her life had drastically changed.
Resentment flared. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered. He looked... She searched for an acceptable word. He looked well.
The phone rang sharply, startling her and providing welcome respite from unwanted, bitter memories. When she answered, silence greeted her. “Hello? Hello? I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t hang up, Allie. I’m calling about a horse.”
Allie’s brain went blank, rendering her incapable of uttering a word.
“I have this filly who needs help. She’s a good-looking two-year-old who’s been mistreated. I’ve watched her in the pasture, and she’s quick and smart. She might make a good little cow pony for Hannah in a few years. I don’t think there’s an ounce of vice in her, but she’s terrified of people. I’d like you to work with her. I’m willing to pay whatever you want.”
The uncharacteristic fast-paced flow of words told her how nervous Zane was. Let him be nervous. She was hanging up.
“She needs you,” Zane said quickly, as if reading Allie’s mind. “A man goes near her, she gets the shimmering shakes so bad, her hide’s going to fall off. I can’t use her, and even if Hannah would let me, I can’t sell her. It’s not the filly’s fault she learned to distrust men.”
“No, it takes a man to teach a female that men are the lowest of scum.”
A stark silence met her bitter retort before Zane asked, “Will you help the filly?”
“No.”
“You didn’t used to hold an owner’s behavior against an animal,” he said evenly.
Allie wanted to scream he’d destroyed the person she used to be. She said nothing, wrapping the phone cord so tightly around her fist, her fingers ached.
“So much for all your animal-rescue rhetoric.”
How dare he try to shame her into helping him?
“Don’t worry. Your friends won’t find out from me you refused to help an animal in need.”
Allie yanked the phone cord tighter around her fingers. His subtle blackmail wouldn’t work. Zane could call any number of people to help him with a horse. She had a tour business to run.
Amber strolled into the living room and jumped lightly up onto Allie’s lap. Curling into a furry ball, the three-legged cat gave Allie an unblinking yellow-eyed stare. Allie had found the cat abandoned and half-dead beside the highway.
Zane exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
Stroking Amber’s neck, Allie knew she couldn’t ignore the filly’s plight. “I’m taking a family with a blind child up Independence Pass tomorrow to the Braille trail and to the ghost town of Independence. I won’t be able to get to the Double Nickel until after four. That gives you plenty of time to trailer the filly over to Hope Valley and be gone.”
“I’m not trailering her anywhere. She went crazy coming here. Luckily she didn’t injure herself, but I’m not putting her through that again. I’ll move her to the round pen by the barn.”
Allie didn’t want to go anywhere near Zane’s ranch. She didn’t want to see Zane again. Amber rolled on her back, presenting her stomach for Allie to rub. The cat bore no resemblance to the pitiful near-skeleton Allie had brought home from the veterinarian’s office. Then, Amber had lashed out in a fear-crazed fury at every kind overture.
Taking a deep breath, Allie buried her fingers in Amber’s fur. “I’ll look at her tomorrow, but I’m not making any promises. There’s no reason for you to be there. I’ll call you with my answer.” Allie put down the phone. She’d leave a message on his answering machine. After she found someone else to work with the filly.
Even with Amber’s contented purring, thirty minutes passed before Allie quit shaking.
CHAPTER TWO
INCREDIBLY stupid didn’t begin to describe Allie driving to Zane Peters’s ranch. Ahead of her tourists in a rented vehicle rubbernecked at the palatial homes while the September sunlight sparkled off the creek rushing beside the road. Two deer stood motionless in a mowed field watching a flock of magpies erupt into the sky. The black-and-white birds circled to land on a dead stag high up the ridge. Clumps of aspen trees splashed the hillside with gold.
Curves of the road and breaks in the trees provided glimpses of the Elk Mountains. Normally the sight of the rugged peaks raised Allie’s spirits and brought her peace. Not today. Not when she couldn’t quit wondering why Zane Peters had telephoned her. Not that his reasons mattered. She’d agreed to see the horse for the horse’s sake. Not to renew any kind of relationship with Zane.
Allie had dressed to make that point perfectly clear, digging the stained, worn jeans from the dirty clothes hamper. Moonie had slept on her shirt, an ancient one of Worth’s.
Driving slowly into the ranch yard, Allie parked by the barn. She had no intention of going anywhere near the house.
The horse in the round pen dashed to the far side where she stood stiffly facing Allie.
Allie shut the car door and leaned against her sport utility vehicle admiring the paint filly. Large patches of white splashed her black shoulders and flanks and blazed down her face. The filly’s well-muscled shape and compact build showed why Zane thought she’d make a good stock horse. With her beautiful head, the filly was the kind of horse little girls fell in love with.
And big girls. To Allie, the colorful paint horses symbolized a mythical, magical, romantic Old West.
The paint maintained her vigilance, never taking her attention from Allie. Allie could read the fear and distrust in the filly’s stance, in her stiff mouth, flared nostrils and wide-open eyes. The horse wanted to flee; the enclosed pen gave her nowhere to go.
Allie didn’t need the increased flicking of the filly’s