“How long does it take?” Riona asks me.

“Could be a couple hours. Could be all day.” I chuckle. “Could be forever if Grady doesn’t calm that horse down a little.”

Grady is dogged and tenacious, but he doesn’t always know how to connect with a horse. He treats each one the same. And no horse is the same.

Once Penny and Brutus are comfortably eating, I walk over to the ring with Riona.

The Appaloosa is highly agitated, trying to rear up but prevented from doing so by Grady’s grasp on its mane. The whites of its eyes show as it tries to jerk its head away from Grady’s grip.

“Where’d you get that one?” I ask him.

“From the Fosters. Name’s Star. She’s been running wild with her mother and brother on their land, ‘cause Allan Foster broke his leg and hasn’t had a chance to do shit all with her. Jemma Foster sold her to me cheap ‘cause she says she’s too vicious to train.”

As he’s talking, the horse rips its mane free with one sharp toss and starts galloping around the pen. Grady has to jump up on the rail to keep from being trampled as Star circles round again.

“Fucking hell,” Grady shouts, barely pulling his legs up in time.

“You want some help?” I ask.

“You think you’re still the horse whisperer when you barely seen one in three years?” Grady laughs.

“I think I remember ‘em all right,” I say.

I look over at Riona. “You okay if I take over here for a bit?” I ask her.

I know I don’t have to follow her around every minute while we’re on the ranch. We’re in the middle of nowhere, fenced off from the world. She’s safe here.

But it feels strange to leave her alone for any amount of time after we’ve been attached at the hip so long.

“Go ahead,” she says. “Your sister told me I can borrow her laptop. If your internet is decent, I can probably log in to my google docs and get some work done from here.”

“Alright,” I say.

Riona heads back toward the house, and I feel a strange pull to follow after her.

But Star is still galloping around the pen, snorting furiously, and Grady already looks hot and flustered, with the job barely begun.

I slap him on the shoulder. “Go ahead and grab some water. I got this.”

I drop down into the pen, standing in the center so the horse can get used to me. I stay still and relaxed, holding up my hands and saying, “Woah. Calm down, now,” in a low, comforting tone.

Eventually Star drops down to a trot, though she’s still skittering around me, eyeing me warily.

“Relax. Relax,” I say.

As she starts walking, I take hold of her mane, but gently. I let her keep moving, walking around me, giving her the freedom to lift and shake her head as she likes.

Eventually, when she’s calmed down a little, I touch her face and ears, and run my hand down her neck, so she gets used to being touched around the head.