Chapter One
“I can’t.”
The sting of rejection was sharp, like a knife. Lorelei reacted to it instantly. Like a cobra, she coiled herself then struck; her words just as venomous as the cobra’s bite.
“Liar. You won’t. There’s a difference.”
Turning to go, she let out a long sigh. Defeatedly she told him, “You say you won’t be with me because you know yourself too well and you’ll always leave.” Lorelei angrily spun back around to face him. “Do you think what you are doing is any better? Which do you think hurts worse?” Her anger sputtered out as the tears came to her eyes and her voice broke. “If you loved me like you say you do, you wouldn’t leave. But I’m not going to fight with you. I’m letting you go.” She shook her head sadly. “I do it every damn time you want her and I’ve loved you through it all. That will never change. I’ll wait for you… no matter how many times you leave.” The last she said quietly, as if she were speaking only to herself. She gave him one last heartbroken look then turned and walked out, quietly closing the door behind her.
The rest was up to him.
She’d dreamed of him again. She’d been dreaming of him for sixteen years. She stayed in bed, holding his image in her head as long as she could. As the image faded from her mind, she felt the familiar sting of tears. Shoving all thoughts of him aside, she quickly got out of bed, determined to not shed any tears for lost yesterdays. Pulling her robe on over her pajamas, Lorelei made her way through the dark. She quietly descended the stairs.
Starting a pot of coffee, she leaned against the counter, trying to think of anything but the past. She failed, as she knew she would. Once the pot was full enough, she poured a cup of coffee, returned the pot to the burner and made her way out to the porch to watch the sun rise. She sat in one of the two wooden rockers that flanked a small wooden table, pulling her feet up under her. She held the steaming mug in her hands and watched as the sky turned from black to purple to red; letting her mind wonder back over her dream. That argument was the last time she had seen her kids’ father. She had long ago made peace with the knowledge that he wasn’t returning. And so Lorelei, her two children and her parents had decided to move away and start a new life.
It was a well-known fact in Lorelei’s hometown that her children had been born out of wedlock and that their father had ran off with another woman. Wanting to protect her children from this knowledge for as long as possible, Lorelei and her parents had moved to New Hope, Nevada. They told anyone who asked that her husband had been killed in a car wreck before she could tell him she was pregnant.
In reality, she hadn’t seen Clay in almost sixteen years. He had run off with some woman he’d met at a bar. He had been bouncing back and forth between Lorelei and Cheryl for over a year before he left with her, but it still rankled. She had tried so hard to make their relationship work. They had been together for almost three years before he met Cheryl. In her heart, she had still been with him for the next year even though he had only been with her part-time. The argument in her dream was the night before Clay and Cheryl skipped town. Again.
And almost two months later, Lorelei found out that she was pregnant. Almost four months pregnant. With twins. She had no idea what to do. But she did what she always did; she survived. And six weeks after the twins had been born, Lorelei and her folks packed up everything they owned and moved to New Hope with the hope that they could start over.
Lorelei couldn’t understand why she was still dreaming about him after all these years. She hadn’t seen the man since 1990 and here it was, 2006. And it wasn’t like she was still pining over him. She had met a wonderful man three years ago and they had been seeing each other exclusively since.
Shaking her head to bring herself back to the present, Lorelei finished her coffee and went back inside to get ready for the day. She loved living on the ranch, even if it did mean her day started at dawn every day, Sunday through Saturday. But she wouldn’t change it for the world.
“Hello, gorgeous.”
Lorelei smiled as she heard Samuel’s voice. She always looked forward to seeing him. She straightened from checking Dream, one of her pregnant mares. “Hello yourself, handsome.”
She quickly moved out of the stall and slid the bolt to lock the gate. Sam pulled her into his arms and gave her a hungry kiss. “How is she doing?” he asked, once they had come up for air.
Turning so she was facing the stall with Sam’s arms around her, Lorelei leaned her head back against his chest. “She’s doing well. I expect her to drop her foal within the next three days. There’s two more I’m expecting to foal in the next week. And that’s just the beginning babies of the year. Chris said he counted twenty-five pregnant mares in Chief’s band this year. Not too bad for his second year with his own herd. This mare is one of the two that are carrying Steel’s foals. And the other mare I’m watching is the one carrying Dynamite’s. I don’t expect her to foal for another couple months but I’m keeping a close eye on her since she’s had trouble with her last two foals.” Lorelei smiled up at him. “I bet you can’t wait to see how your two new stallions do. As gorgeous as they are, they’re bound to throw gorgeous foals. Given their bloodlines, you know these foals are bound to be top performers.”
Sam hid his amused smile in her sable hair. Lorelei was always trying to reassure him about his choice to cross his Bar 7 stallions with her Triple T mares. He had known of the Triple T ranch for about six years now. And he’d kept a close eye on the foals that had come off the ranch. Most of them were either top money winners or they produced top money winners. It had been his attention on the ranch that had allowed him to meet Ms. Lorelei Callahan three years ago.
When the Triple T had first started nine years ago, Lorelei had solely boarded and trained other people’s horses. It wasn’t until about five years ago back that she’d began breeding Quarter Horses and raising Hereford cattle. But she didn’t quit training horses for folks. She just began including her own stock in her training programs.
Sam had wound up with a half wild filly that he needed broke and, as he had his own business to run, Sam didn’t have the time to train her himself. So he had brought her to the Triple T. To Lorelei. That visit led to many more over the next few weeks. Lorelei was well aware of the Bar 7 and the outstanding bloodlines Sam had.
She asked Sam to go with her whenever she went to look at new stock. Gradually, they began going to dinners and spending significantly more time together. Sam came to care for not only Lorelei, but her children as well. And last year, he had asked Lorelei to marry him. She had turned him down, saying she wasn’t ready to take that final leap yet. So Sam had backed off and they had continued to see each other romantically and grow their businesses together.
Sam ran a select breeding program. He had multiple stallions that he bred to his own mares as well as outside mares, for a fee. He kept mares separated in different pastures according to age and state of pregnancy. His stallions he kept separated as well, each one in their own enclosure to discourage fights. When he was ready to breed, he would separate each of the mares he had carefully chosen and pen them one at a time with the stallion he had chosen, usually for around three days. This allowed him to control not only the mixing of bloodlines, but also the number of foals each spring.
Lorelei on the other hand, used a range breeding approach like the ranches of old. She ran a herd of about thirty mares on a large piece of fenced land and had one stallion to take care of them, much like the way the wild mustangs had lived. She carefully chose which mares to include in that herd, but once she added them, she never removed them unless circumstances forced her to. They brought the herd in each fall and separated all the foals, then released the herd again. This guaranteed the Triple T well-bred stock, but also no guarantee as to the number of foals each year.
Sam, with the help of Lorelei’s business partner daughter Aimee, had convinced her to keep a few of their best mares at the barn after last fall’s roundup. These they had bred to two of his stallions with the hopes of bringing new blood into the Triple T herd once the foals were old enough. The Bar 7 and Triple T were both known for outstanding bloodlines as well as for producing top performers on the national show circuit. By mixing their top performing bloodlines, they were aiming for at least one champion roper out of one of the crossings.
Of course, Sam mused to himself, he also liked the idea that the more entwined their businesses became, the faster they could make the final merger of their private lives as well. He fully intended to ask Lorelei to marry him again, after the fall round up was over and her life settled down some.
All year she stressed over finding buyers for her foals, trying to estimate how many foals she would have. She also had to decide which foals to keep and train versus which ones to sell after they were weaned. Sam didn’t understand how she could still enjoy all the stress after doing it for the last four years.
He enjoyed the relative ease in which he conducted his farm. With his breeding program, he made sure that he had no more than five foals by each stallion each spring. Majority of the time he would sell all the colts as soon as they were weaned, unless he happened to get an exceptional one that he wanted to keep and breed.
The fillies were his hardest decisions. He never bred a daughter back to her father, so he kept a rotating number of mares and fillies. Since he waited until a mare was four years old to breed her, he had to make sure that he had enough breed-able mares to get him through each season. He would breed each mare once to a different available stallion every year to see what offspring they would produce. If he found a combination he liked, he kept that mare only for that stallion. If he didn’t find a stallion that he liked her paired with, after four years the mare was sold.
Sam kissed the top of Lorelei’s head again before they headed out to the corral to see how Aimee, Lorelei’s daughter, was doing with the horse she was training. They watched her for a few moments, both with arms resting on the top fence rail and a booted foot on the bottom rail. As they watched, Sam decided on something he had been debating on for a few weeks.
“You know Aimee wants to focus on business classes once she starts high school this fall, right?” He glanced over at Lorelei before turning back to the horse and young woman in the corral. “What would you think of her picking up a few ranch business type classes at the local community college as well? Before you say no, hear out my idea.”
Lorelei closed her mouth, resisted the urge to tell him that she thought college was too much for a freshman in high school, and went back to watching Aimee.
“I’m willing to pay for one class each fall and one class each spring. She’ll have summers off from studying. But there will be some stipulations. Her GPA is to remain 3.0 or higher at both schools. And I’m going to have her analyze my farm and see where we can improve. For the time that she spends at my place, she will earn a ten dollar an hour consultation fee. I’m leaving it up to you, as her mother, whether she keeps those wages to spend as she likes, or to apply them toward her school costs.” Sam pushed away from the fence, his brown eyes searching her blue ones. “At least say you will think it over before you veto it. I think she could benefit from it. And if she consults for the Bar 7, I might be able to get her a few jobs at other stables.”
Lorelei looked back toward her daughter. She was going to be fifteen in June. That was three months away. They could do some looking into it at least. See what schedule they could arrange. Lord knew the girl already had a head for business. It had been her ideas that had enabled them to go from just training other people’s horses to raising their own. And at the time, she’d been nine years old! “Have you said anything to her yet?”
Sam debated a moment. “It was her idea. She came to me a few weeks ago asking about looking over the farm, seeing if she could devise any new procedures to save or make more money. She asked if I would be willing to pay her, because she was interested in attending college courses on the subject and was going to use her pay to cover the tuition and books. Said it was something she wanted to do without you having to pay for it.” Sam smiled and shook his head. “It was her independence that got me. I told her I would think it over and get back to her. She probably thinks I forgot by now.”
They were standing near the gate of the corral and Aimee had wrapped up her training session. As she began walking toward them, Lorelei pushed off the fence, turned and took a few steps toward the barn, then turned back to Sam who now had his broad back against the fence. “Let me look into it some and we’ll go over the details later. You can tell her the surprise on her birthday.” With a conspirator’s smile toward Sam, she turned and headed back to the barn to finish her daily chores before starting in on her own training projects of the day.
Love this, look forward to reading more
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!!! I haven't got very far, but I hope that you will enjoy the rest just as much!
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