A Fair to Remember by Barbara Ankrum

lot. He doesn’t trust people now.” She flicked the line again to keep him moving. “But here he is. It’s just us and him. We are the only herd he’s got right now. But he can’t quite see how to make it work. That’s what we’re doing. Giving him a way in.”
    Zabar changed directions, his ears back, his coat slick with sweat. “It’ll take him a while to really consider us potential friends.” She turned to him and offered him the line. “Wanna try?”
    It took Jake a few attempts to spin the line out just right, but it was a bit like fly fishing and he got the hang of it. There was something almost hypnotic about it. Settling, even. And it reminded him how much he’d loved working with horses as a kid.
    Another lifetime ago, he’d spent a summer on the Carrigan’s cattle ranch as utility horse wrangler. Mostly he’d saddled and groomed the horses the cowboys used. But he’d done his share of riding and had come to fully appreciate them for the amazing creatures they were. Even Zabar, damaged and scared as he was, knew strength came in joining up, not being separate, a concept Jake knew only too well from his years at war.
    He glanced at Livy. She was in her element here. Exactly who she was meant to be. Whatever that bastard of a husband had done to her to wreck her confidence and kill her dreams couldn’t beat down the Olivia he knew. He loved her. He’d always loved her since the day they’d first met, when she’d sat down at a window booth at the Main Street Diner and he’d made her laugh. Last night had proved to him whatever had been between them once was still there, despite the convoluted journey their paths had taken. He’d just need to find his own way ‘in’ with her.
    She caught him watching her and blushed, glancing at the others watching from the corral fence.
    “Eyes on Zabar, Lassen,” she said, for his ears only.
    He grinned and complied. “I was just thinking about you, half-naked in the moonlight, Canaday.”
    Her color deepened and she followed the horse’s movements around the ring. “Maybe we should forget last night happened.”
    “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
    “Jake…”
    “Scared it might be good?”
    She turned her face away from him, watching the horse.
    “You liked it. Don’t deny it,” he whispered back and the memory of it sent a flash of heat through him.
    Those eyes of hers flared back to him. “See that? The old Jake, the one I knew, would just let it go. He’d take my word for it and know I had my reasons and just let it go.”
    She was right, but that Jake was long gone.
    He tipped his head closer. “As I recall, that strategy backfired last time.”
    “Strategy? You had a strategy ?”
    He lifted one eyebrow in reply.
    “You and I were”—she lowered her voice again—“… babies . We don’t even know each other anymore.”
    “Fixable.”
    “I am not discussing this.”
    “Okay,” he said, watching Zabar as he trotted anxiously, looking for a door. “But don’t blame me later when you decide that discussion should’ve happened now.”
    “Eye contact, Lassen. With the horse.”
    “Yes, ma’am. What am I looking for?” Jake asked.
    “That,” she said, as the horse cocked his ears toward them and dipped his head. “When he starts licking and chewing, you’ll know he wants to come over. Be friends.”
    At least somebody does.
    “Good,” she said a minute later. “Stop looking at him, keep tossing the rope for another minute or two.”
    When the horse started nodding, dipping its head down as if he wanted to graze, she said, “Now turn away from him and see what happens. Just walk away.”
    Almost instantly, Zabar stopped running and stood, indecisively at the outside edge of the ring. Then he followed them, moving closer and closer until he could reach out to sniff Jake’s sleeve and hers. And in the next minute, he was pressing his muzzle there, like a dog leaning in for a pet.
    Liv turned and patted the horse’s neck. “Good