To Cord’s amusement, she sniffed the contents—in Tina’s opinion, he played fast and loose with expiration dates—before coming back to the table and sitting down in Mimi’s chair at the other end. She settled herself for a few minutes, watching fondly as Carly loaded her brew with plenty of sugar and sloshed in a generous dollop of cream.

It was an ordinary moment, but suddenly something warm and bittersweet welled up in his chest and overflowed. He didn’t try to identify the emotion, he just let it ride.

Despite the coffee, Carly soon began to yawn.

Tina smiled. “Let’s go home,” she said, rising from her chair.

Carly visibly registered the word home, nodding, eyes closed. “Okay,” she agreed.

Cord stood, too, out of long habit, and waited while Carly said goodbye to the dogs, then snatched up her grubby backpack, ready to go. She was at the door before she stopped and turned to Cord, starting to shrug out of his jacket. “I almost forgot to give this back.”

“Keep it for now,” he said.

She considered that briefly, then nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“The car’s unlocked,” Tina told Carly, after a brief and awkward silence. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Carly paused, then went out.

“Who is this child?” Tina asked, as soon as she and Cord were alone.

Cord shoved splayed fingers through his hair. Sighed. “I’m not sure,” he replied honestly.

Tina’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I’ll tell you what I know, which is damn little, by the way, but not tonight, if that’s okay with you.” He was bone-tired, though he knew sleep would be elusive, if it came at all.

“Of course it isn’t okay with me,” Tina answered sweetly, “but since you look as if you’ve been dragged backward through a knothole, as my grandmother used to say, I’ll cut you some slack.”

Cord laughed. “That’s mighty big of you, Tina,” he teased.

“Just this once,” Tina was quick to respond. “Tomorrow, we talk.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed, feeling even wearier than before. The next day would be full, since he had a private client scheduled to show up bright and early for a one-on-one version of his basic horse-training course.

Damn if he hadn’t forgotten all about that.

“It slipped your mind, didn’t it?” Tina chided, though kindly. She could have made a good living as a phone psychic, the way she went around reading people’s thoughts. “That you’ve got a student coming first thing tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah,” he confessed. “It did.”

“Well, then, you’d better get some rest. You have a reputation to maintain. The man who knows all there is to know about horses, and then some.” Tina approached, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Too bad you don’t understand people, as well.”

“Hey,” Cord objected, a little miffed. “I ‘understand people’ just fine.”