Still, I’d had it, I’d gone with it and there I was.
“That okay with you, Rees?” I asked, she tore her eyes from Fin and looked at me.
“Uh…sure,” she replied softly.
“Great,” I said, flicked the reins to Fin who caught them easily and swung my leg around forward. I pulled my other foot out of the stirrup, twisted at the last second and, using the pommel to control my fall, I expertly slid down Moonshine’s side.
Fin instantly moved in but I caught his forearm.
He looked down at me and I got close, tipping my head back and keeping his gaze captive.
“Precious cargo, Fin,” I whispered very quietly.
“I know,” he whispered back the same and my fingers tensed around his forearm.
“I know you know, honey,” I kept up with the whispering. “And a good thing to do is let her know you know it too.”
He held my eyes, his flaring with something I liked and it made my stomach do a little flip.
I’d seen that before a lot over the years but I was stunned to see it so early from Fin.
Darrin’s eyes flared like that when he looked at Rhonda. Anytime he looked at her when she was being Rhonda and her quirks were showing. Darrin didn’t love his wife despite her idiosyncrasies. They were what drew him to her. My brother was a man who had a deep, protective instinct. So deep he had tons to spare. So he found himself a woman who needed him, a woman he could protect daily as well as love. A woman he could look after.
I didn’t think Rees was like Rhonda.
What I got from that flare in my nephew’s eyes was that he was like Darrin.
He liked Rees and he wouldn’t let any harm come to her but more, he was thrilled to be given the opportunity to demonstrate this.
I totally, completely loved my nephew. I knew this from the instant he was born. But I rejoiced in it then, looking into his eyes because it made me understand that Darrin wasn’t really dead since that part of him was alive in his son.
He nodded.
Instead of crying, I grinned.
Then I let him go and stepped away calling, “Give me forty-five minutes, an hour. Yeah?”
Fin was adjusting the stirrups for his extra height and he muttered, “Yeah.”
I looked up at Clarisse and saw her watching Fin like he was not Finley Holliday adjusting the stirrups on a saddle but a Hollywood movie star working out shirtless with weights.
When Fin was done, without delay, he put a boot into the stirrup, a hand to the saddlehorn in front of Rees and he swung up behind her like he did it every day of his life.
Clarisse visibly shivered and her lips parted.
That’s my boy, I thought, grinning like a lunatic because I couldn’t stop.
Fin wrapped his arm around Clarisse and she bit her lip. I suppressed a giggle.
“Later, Aunt Dusty,” he said to me.
“Yeah…uh, later, Dusty,” Rees added.
“Later, guys,” I replied then heard Fin click his tongue against his teeth as he put his heels in my baby girl and she started walking.
I stayed where I was and watched Fin clear the barn. Then I stayed where I was and held my breath as Fin leaned his chest slightly into Rees’s back forcing her forward, his arm got tight and his heels dug in.
Then I watched as they galloped through the fallow field.
Only then did I turn to the house.
*
“You good?” Clarisse heard Finley Holliday’s deep voice ask in her ear as she felt his warm chest pressed against her back, his arm tight around her belly.
“Unh-hunh,” she answered.
“Good,” he muttered and she felt that in her belly.
They clomped through the half-frozen dirt of his fields, not fast, not slow, Fin holding her tight.
That day started with her opening her eyes excited about her party, her friends coming over, presents and knowing Fin promised to “stop by”.
It became garbage when her Mom told her she “forgot”, she was sorry and she couldn’t help it but she would “make it up to her”.
The weird part was that, for once, her Mom actually sounded sorry. Really sorry.
But Clarisse didn’t care. Like usual, her Mom had ruined everything.
Then cooler than she ever thought she’d be cool Dusty Holliday rode right up to their back deck on a horse. A beautiful horse. Dusty’s gorgeous hair down. Her clothes all western cowgirl awesome.
And now she was riding on Dusty’s horse over Fin Holliday’s land tucked warm and tight and safe against the best looking boy in school.
And as they did, she didn’t care about the decorations, the party, the cake, her friends. She was glad it was going to happen and it was cool Dusty was helping out and she looked forward to shopping and baking a cake with her.
But nothing could make that day any better.
Riding with Fin holding her close, it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning and it was already the best day of her life.
*