“Wyatt’s right,” she told the horse. “You and I have a lot in common. But, you know what, Violet? As broke as I’ll soon be, I won’t let you become the equine equivalent of a foster child, getting bounced from one bad home to another.” A sense of purpose burgeoned in Erin’s chest. “If Uncle Slade decides to sell you, I’ll be first in line to make an offer. Strike that. I probably need to tell him right now that I want you. He may just make a phone call and strike a deal over the phone. I can’t let that happen.”

The horse made a deep, rumbling sound. Erin wondered what it was called. It was conversational in tone. Not knowing the proper term for all the noises equines made drove home to Erin how ignorant she was about the species.

“I’m going to learn, though, Violet. For your sake, I’ll learn.”

* * *

Blackie’s prediction that Julie probably had a twenty-four-hour bug was way off base. He’d held her head over a plastic bin most of the night and morning, and now as afternoon arrived, she was still hurling. At some point, she’d put on some satin pajamas, but those had become casualties of war at about three a.m. Now she had no more fresh nightwear. All of it was going through a wash cycle.

Lifting Julie’s head from the pillow, he pressed the rim of a glass to her colorless lips. “Try just a sip, honey. It’s 7-Up and should settle your stomach.”

Julie took a dutiful sip and promptly lurched sideways, digging her fingers into the edge of the mattress as she hurled it back up. Blackie grabbed the damp washcloth he’d commandeered from her bathroom and dabbed her lips as she sank back against the pillows again. She’d grown so pale that her face was nearly as white as the pillowcases. Not a twenty-four-hour bug. If that were the case, Julie would be sipping fluids at this point and maybe even munching cautiously on toast fingers, which were one of his specialties.

“Just sleep if you can,” he told her.

Yesterday she had kept telling him he didn’t need to stay, and she’d worried aloud that he might catch whatever she had. But today she was too weak for that. He’d found her a large University of Oregon T-shirt that she said she used for gardening. A pair of black leggings hugged her slender legs. Blackie was glad that she’d had the strength to change clothing by herself, which had allowed him to hide like a coward in the hallway until she was covered again. He didn’t think he could handle seeing her naked. Well, he would have handled it. But he had a feeling the view would have gotten chiseled into his memory cells, and he didn’t need that.

Just then his cell phone rang. He adjourned to the hallway so he wouldn’t keep Julie awake while talking. He wasn’t surprised when he saw Erin De Laney’s name pop up on the screen. He’d called her with an update on Julie’s condition last night, using Julie’s phone, and during that conversation, he and Erin had exchanged contact information.