A Convenient Proposal(45)

“Whew.” She looked scared and excited at the same time. “It’s farther from the ground than I thought.” Wiggling a little, she settled in. “And the reins?”

“Like this.” He showed her how to position the leather straps through her fingers. “Just leave them loose for now. Dorsey won’t go anywhere until Cowboy does. So I’ll park you right here—” he led her a few steps ahead “—until I get on, and then we’ll ride.”

He mounted Cowboy without using the block, and found Arden staring at him when he sat down.

“How do you do that from the ground? He’s so tall.”

“Practice—I’ve been doing this since my head only came to the bottom of the stirrup.” He brought Cowboy alongside Dorsey. “The hard part’s done. Now we just sit and look at the scenery.”

Griff couldn’t have asked for a nicer morning. The horses behaved, and Arden gradually relaxed until she looked as if she belonged in the saddle. He’d missed the farm in his months away, so reacquainting himself with the nooks and crannies, the hills and dells and groves, was a pleasure all in itself.

Arden didn’t talk a lot, but a woman who lived alone would not, by nature, be a gabbler. He didn’t know any of her habits very well, although sometimes he felt as if she’d always been part of his life. Their minds seemed calibrated to fit together, so he wasn’t always explaining his jokes or why he’d made a particular comment. She simply understood.

And though many mysteries remained hidden behind that beautiful face, they bothered him less and less. He didn’t need to know everything about her. What she brought to the here and now was enough.

Not even considering the fantastic sex. If she wasn’t pregnant now, it wasn’t because they hadn’t tried.

The thought cast a shadow over his sunny morning. Arden had come to Sheridan because they’d made a deal. He would get to show her off and she would get pregnant. Whether or not they enjoyed their time together was, in fact, irrelevant.

Griff had a hard time remembering that detail. He liked her more with each meeting, in private or in public. He craved making love to her the way an alcoholic craves liquor. She could become very necessary in his life, very fast. Except she would be planning to leave town once Zelda and Al had left for their honeymoon.

“I think you’ve run the gauntlet this week,” he said, distracting himself from the prospect of a future without Arden Burke. “First, a family dinner—though not every relative we could call on was present.”

She laughed. “Oh, heavens. How many more could there be?”

“Hundreds. Then the ultimate embarrassment with my mother and a family argument.”

“Let’s not go there.”

“You survived lunch and shopping with the sisters, even meeting the ex. Plus horse surgery and Miss Patty’s reminiscences.”

“There’s this weekend still to come, though.”

The cocktail party and the dinner. “Let’s not go there today, either. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve crossed the first set of hurdles, and you cleared every single one.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Has anything come up that I need to fill you in on? Any questions or comments we should cover?”

She rode in silence, letting Dorsey choose her footing across the steep slope of the hill as they headed toward Cripple Creek. Once they’d crossed the stream, with Dorsey stepping carefully across the rocks, Arden stirred in the saddle.

“I was surprised to learn that Kathy wears hearing aids.”

He hadn’t expected that comment. “Since babyhood, as a matter of fact.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“She caught bacterial meningitis, though we never figured out how. We were just lucky we didn’t lose her. When she finally did recover, our parents gradually realized she couldn’t hear well. The hearing aids help, and she’s a whiz at lip reading. All of us learned sign language, thinking we’d need it, but we almost never use it with her.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed.” Arden stared straight ahead. “She seems to understand even when she’s not looking at you.”

“Her hearing is about forty percent, I think. So if the surroundings aren’t too noisy, with too many voices, she makes out pretty well.”

“I see.” Arden nodded, but still didn’t look at him. “So she won’t pass her…problem…on to her child.”