Rock Bottom Ranch by Leigh Macfarlane

Author:Leigh Macfarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horses, rodeo, cowboy, ranch, country living, british columbia, cowboy romance, barrel racing, small town romance, therapeutic riding
Publisher: Leigh Macfarlane

Chapter Fourteen

The storm she and Jen had predicted rolled in later that afternoon, then broke sometime around five. The wind picked up toward the tail end of their ride, tossing the horses’ manes and bending the tops of the trees. Clouds rolled in with the wind, settling heavy and thick, deepening the shadows in the forest they rode through. Despite the wind, the clouds had taken a day which already felt overly warm and turned it into a kind of muggy sauna.

The approaching storm also turned the horses skittish. Fortunately, they were almost back at the barn by then, because the weather made the last fifteen minutes of an already adventurous outing even more interesting.

Still, they arrived back at the barn without any further incident, and the electricity in the air charged up the teens, too, so the group had the horses untacked and groomed even more quickly than usual.

Without Tim, they’d ditched the campfire plan, although with the wind, that wasn’t going to fly, anyway. Instead, Pearl sent the kids up the hill with Jen. There were games and a ping pong table up there in the lodge, and she figured that would keep them all occupied for an hour until they were all picked up and on the way to their homes.

Once Jen had trooped up the hill with the group, Pearl had turned her attention to the three horses still needing care. She stripped the gear off Mia’s chestnut, run a brush across the horse, picked dirt from the trail out of the animal’s hooves, then walked her down to join the other horses in the paddock. On her walk back up the hill to the barn, Pearl wondered how things had turned out at the hospital. It hadn’t looked to her like Lucy’s injuries were too serious, but you never really knew.

The rain started falling while she was still in the field, and as she walked past the riding arena it started coming down full force. There was no gentle pattering of warning drops, just giant sluicing buckets dumping down from the sky. It pelted the skin of Pearl’s bare arms, and with a quick hoot of laughter, she scrambled for the barn door.

She made it without getting soaked completely through, but even still, the rain made a mess of her hair, leaving it hanging limply around her face. Her tank top, too, was pretty much drenched, and the thin material clung to her curves.

Dripping, she stood in the doorway of the barn a moment and watched the sheets of rain streaming down. There was a wildness to the weather that something inside her responded to. The staccato sound it made on the barn’s tin roof filled her ears, and as she watched, the van for the kids rumbled down the drive, headlights on. Jen’s Honda followed it down the hill, wipers swiping violently from side to side. Pearl stood a moment longer, watching them go. Then the wind hit the wet skin of her forearms, covering her in goosebumps.

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