To keep himself from sounding like he was completely useless, he added, “I’ll be busy as hell in a few days, though. We’ve got a squad of recruits coming in, and they need more wrangling than a hundred heifers in a thunderstorm.”

  “Is that so?” She smiled at his words, so he laid the cowboy on a little thicker.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be busier than a squirrel on the first day of nut-hunting season.”

  She snorted. “Working harder than a rowboat going up Niagara Falls?”

  He laughed. “Now you get it.”

  “What do you do with these recruits?” she asked. “Besides teach them how to handle their service animals.”

  “I don’t actually do much of the dog stuff,” he admitted. “When the recruits come, they meet a bunch of the dogs and take turns with them, practicing basic commands and teaching them a few tricks. That’s mostly so Adam and Emma can get a feel for what dog might be best for which veteran’s needs. Jake and I are there to reinforce the basics and keep an eye out to make sure no one is mistreating the dogs or sneaking them food.

  “And we’re there to listen. Hang out. Part of the appeal of our program is that we’re also vets, so we’ve been through some similar experiences, and we get the crap they’re trying to deal with as civilians. That’s pretty hard to find out in the real world. We’re not there to be therapists or counselors, just friends.” It was okay as long as he only had to listen, not share.

  “And this horse therapy thing. That’s supposed to be part of the listening and relating stuff?”

  “I guess. I haven’t researched it because I don’t want to do it. I think there’d be a bunch of training for me if it was going to be a formal thing.”

  “Why don’t you want to do it?”

  Tanner tried to laugh it off. “Oh, honey, there’s a whole passel of reasons I don’t want to get involved in that sort of thing.”

  She held up a hand and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry. Not my business.”

  “No, it’s…it’s okay.” If she’d have pushed it, kept asking, he’d have pushed back and not answered, but there was something about Jen, about her goodness and kindness and openheartedness that made him want to pour it all out there. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t open that box, so he gave her a little—the dust on the top, but it was something.

  He rubbed the space between his eyebrows and said, “When I was rodeoing, I didn’t ride bulls or broncs. I’m too big for that. The little guys tend to do better there, but I was pretty good at calf roping. I learned to rope because I had visions of grandeur, working with my dad on the ranch, bringing home the bacon…er, steak.” His dad. Big, strong, and in control of the world. He didn’t smile at the memory. “But when Dad saw how good I was, he pushed me to get into junior rodeo. He had his own vision, which had me going to college on a rodeo scholarship.”

  “Wow, you must have been really good,” Jen said.

  Good and selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed. “Dad was pretty militant about my schedule, school, practice. He’d been a marine sergeant and you know what they say—once a marine, always a marine. I…rebelled.” To put it mildly. To put it honestly would be more than he could bear to see in Jen’s eyes. She’d asked why he didn’t want to do the horse thing, though, so he had to tell her. Maybe then, when she knew at least part of his backstory, that understanding look in her eye would turn to judgment, and he’d be able to get over his stupid crush before he made a fool of himself.

  “Anyway, I decided I wasn’t going to college, and I didn’t care about winning. I started doing stupid shit, like skipping practice, getting mouthy with the officials, generally making a nuisance of myself. Somehow, though, I kept winning.” Because deep down, he loved it. Loved riding Bullet, roping, winning.

  Jen had gone still, listening to him talk, and he grew self-conscious. The scar on his cheek, which he rarely noticed, began to pull uncomfortably. But he was also aware of Jen. Of her big eyes, her scent, the curl that had escaped from her ponytail.

  His throat tightened, but with a deep breath, he got through the rest of it. “Anyway, I got drunk before the championship and almost missed my turn. Then when I went, my reflexes were off, and I gave Bullet the wrong cues. He was so well trained, he listened to me instead of his own instincts and went right when he should have gone left. Then when I tried to correct, he lost his footing, fell… It was bad.”

  “Were you hurt?” Jen asked.

  “Me? I had a couple of broken ribs. Bullet, though—he was messed up. Without getting too technical, he had a really bad sprain. Almost had to be put down.” Probably should have been. It might have been kinder than to leave him alone to become a sad, beaten-down nag, alone in the pasture at the ranch. But once again, Tanner had only been thinking about himself, about what he wanted, and he had wanted to keep his horse.

  “My dad agreed to let me keep him, but I had to do the rehab. Hours every day working with Bullet to get him back in shape. But I was still acting like a damned little kid, so I half-assed it and Bullet didn’t recover fast enough and my rodeo scholarship chances were shot. I couldn’t have worked as well with another horse, even if we’d been able to afford one. My dad was pissed, I said I didn’t want to go to college anyway, he said I’d never amount to anything if I didn’t go to college. I said, ‘Screw you, I already enlisted in the army,’ which pissed him right off, being a Marine…”

  Tanner stopped then. He didn’t need to share the corollaries to that story—about how he’d had a girlfriend but had flirted and made out with every rodeo princess he met when he competed, and what came of that, what he’d learned about his dad during one of those competitions, about what happened with his dad after he’d come back from his deployment, charred and damaged. The fact that he’d hurt his horse and then not cared for him ought to be enough to take that look out of Jen’s eyes.

  Instead, she stepped into him, slipped her arms around his waist, and hugged him. “I’m so sorry that happened,” she murmured into his shirt. Her touch, the comfort she offered, was so unexpected, so surprising, that tight feeling came back to his throat, his chest.

  He awkwardly patted her on the back.

  She stepped back and looked into his eyes. “I can understand why you might be hesitant to get involved with horses again. That’s a heavy weight to carry around.”

  He blinked. That wasn’t exactly the response he’d expected. He cleared his throat. “At any rate, I’m going to have to start working with Bullet again as soon as he’s got some meat back on his bones. Need to at least make sure he’s safe to have around humans and dogs. So yeah. You’d better take advantage of me while you’ve got me here.”

  She raised an eyebrow, and he realized what he’d said. His whole damned face and neck were burning, not just his scars.

  But she grinned and said, “I’ll just have to do that,” and tugged on a pair of leather gloves, which were surprisingly sexy considering they were made for stretching barbed wire. “Now. What should I do with you?”

  Chapter 13

  “Ahweeee!” Splash!

  A warning siren—complete with doggy breath—sounded right next to Tanner’s head, jolting him from sleep and rewarding him with a face full of slobbery kisses.

  “Thanks a lot.” He reached over and turned off his alarm.

  Tanner wiped his face and sat up as Trixie did a doggy version of the Cupid Shuffle around—and on—his bare feet. “Ouch!” He looked around for his boots and thought fondly of the nights when he just wore them to bed.

  It wasn’t the combat-boot nights, but the cowboy-boot nights—after a long day at the rodeo, camping out with his teammates, a saddle for a pillow—now those were some great nights. As a matter of fact, he’d been dreaming about one of those rodeo weekends, celebrating a good score, full of hot dogs and snack-bar popcorn, exaggerating the near-misses as well as the wins. Those were good nights, even with the mosquitoes and sunburn, when he was young and strong, and it was fun to be scared to death.

  He froze, realizing he didn’t remember the last time he’d thought about his rodeo days fondly. As a matter of fact, he didn’t realize he even had those memories until just now. All he’d ever brought up before—on the rare occasions that box cracked open—were the bad times. The times his dad told him he was ashamed of him. The times he’d embarrassed his mom or hurt his girlfriend. Maybe that’s what talking to Jen about that stuff had done for him. Made space for some good stuff.

  Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Didn’t people usually keep the bad shit under the good stuff?

  Trixie paused in her breakfast dance to bark at Tanner and get him going.

  “Shh. I’m moving.” He carefully reached his bad arm out to grab his jeans. He might have overdone it at Jen’s yesterday, needing to prove—to himself, anyway—that he could still work hard. It wasn’t as bad as some of those earlier days, when the scar tissue covering his shoulder felt so tight, he wanted to cut it loose with a knife. Today he only felt like crying a little as he pulled up his Levis and shoved his feet into his boots—he’d come back and get socks and a shirt before going out to work. But now he had to get Trixie fed before she woke every other living creature on the ranch.

  As Trixie was wolfing down her breakfast, Tanner heard a whinny coming from the other side of the bunkhouse. “I hear ya, Bullet,” he muttered, feeling a wave of nostalgia for the mornings he was wakened by the sound of his horse whinnying from the paddock, demanding his morning rations and a day filled with attention from Tanner.

  The sky was gray, the air thick and heavy. A few drops of rain plopped on Tanner as he refilled Bullet’s water tub. He didn’t care much for rain even without thunder and lightning, but he tried to shrug it off. It would go away eventually. After a scoop of grain and a quick check to make sure the horse was secure in his new stall, Tanner convinced Trixie to follow him back inside so he could get his own breakfast, which he was looking forward— “Damn it, Jake! Did you eat the last of the Cap’n Crunch?”

  “Sorry.” The voice came from directly behind him.

  Tanner would have jumped out of his skin if it wasn’t so tightly bound to his damaged body. Instead, he only whacked his knee on the doorframe when he turned to see Jake standing there, pajamas rumpled, and blinking sleep from his eyes. The only thing detracting from Jake’s toddler-on-steroids look was the stubble on his chin and the scar on the side of his head.

  His irritation gone, Tanner asked, “Are those penguins on your jammies, dude? Did you steal those from a Hallmark Christmas movie?”

  Jake looked down and shrugged, unfazed by Tanner’s teasing. “My grandma sent them to me. Besides, the purple pig ones are in the laundry.”

  The outside door to the kitchen opened, admitting Marcus, his support dog Patton, and the sound of a couple dozen dogs clamoring for their breakfast. “Heads-up. Adam called and he’s going to be here with the recruits ahead of schedule.”

  Tanner cursed. Jake’s eyebrows gathered, and Tanner knew his friend was thinking about the change in his schedule. His recovery after the head injury that had rearranged his wiring was nearly miraculous, but sometimes the little things tripped him up.

  “Come on, I’ll help with the dogs,” Tanner said, giving up on breakfast.

  “It’s my week,” Jake pointed out. “You’re on KP duty for humans.”

  “Yep, but today’s menu called for cold cereal, and we’re out of Cap’n Crunch,” Tanner said. “Might as well help you.”

  Forty-five minutes later, watching storm clouds gather, Tanner wondered what had made him volunteer to get dragged around a pasture by a recently rescued Newfoundland, while trying to avoid land mines of the excremental variety. Half of the dogs here were so new they didn’t know how to behave on a leash, and Tanner’s ability to fake patience was a bowl of Cap’n Crunch short this morning.

  A roll of thunder preceded a few drops of rain, then a few more. “Hurry up, pooch,” he told the dog whose leash he held. “Get your business done before you freak out about the weather.”

  Sore muscles and all, Tanner found himself wanting to dig a few more fence postholes today. He’d had a good time with Jen yesterday, talking about nothing—and then talking about some things, working together to make sure her little homestead was getting closer to usable. Too bad that wasn’t his reality.

  His reality was standing in an increasingly chilly rain, waiting for a dog to take a dump.

  Well, yeah, there were a lot of things that sucked more than what he was doing right now. There was war. There was getting your life blown up and your skin barbecued. There was surviving that shit and realizing you’d have been better off dead.

  Tanner tipped his head back and let the rain wash away his self-pity. It would come back, it always did, but there was something about being here on this ranch that kept him from putting a gun in his mouth. Recently, he’d realized he actually wanted to live, if only to steal a few minutes of fantasy about a girl with long, lean limbs and a streak of dirt across her cheek.

  The dog he was with finally did her thing and tugged Tanner toward the open door of the barn/kennel, turning her head to give him an anxious look when he didn’t rush to follow her. Ridiculous human, acting a fool in the rain. When they got under the roof, she gave a great shake and splattered Tanner as though to emphasize her disgust. Trixie, who’d been lounging in the dry barn showing off to the dogs who hadn’t earned off-leash privileges, barked at her.

  “They’re here!” Jake jerked his head toward the driveway, where a short school bus chugged into the farmyard. “Go get dressed.”

  Tanner jogged across the open space to the bunkhouse. Fortunately, his recruit-greeting uniform was clean and hanging on the back of his door. He left his soggy stuff in a pile on the bedroom floor to deal with later and struggled into clean jeans and a Big Chance Dog Rescue T-shirt.

  Within seconds, he was in the wide-open space that served as front yard, parking lot, and parade grounds, but was still later than Marcus, who held up a clipboard and a handful of canvas tote bags while juggling an umbrella. “You the checker or the gifter today?”

  “Gimme those bags,” Tanner said, taking them from his friend, who gave a grateful nod and let his free hand rest on the brace harnessed to Patton’s strong golden-retriever back. Marcus didn’t need the dog much, but when it rained, or when it was especially cold, Tanner knew he ached, and today was one of those days.

  “Where’s Jake hiding?” Marcus asked.

  “Finishing up with the dogs,” Tanner said.

  Jake preferred not to meet all the new people at once, as the noise and confusion stressed him out (for some reason the noise and confusion in the kennels soothed him), so he’d been exempted from their little swearing-in ceremony.

  The bus stopped a few feet away, the occupants inside gathering their belongings after their long ride from Dallas.

  Lizzie and Emma came out of the ranch house carrying golf umbrellas even though the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Lizzie stood by the door of the bus, greeting Adam as he opened the bus door.

  Tanner wondered what it would be like to see Jen coming through the front door, waiting to greet him like some sort of returning hero. It was a good thing he’d told her he’d be busy for a few days with these recruits, because if he kept going to her place as he had been, he was likely to hope for that sort of greeting and get his heart broken.

  “Okay, let’s do this quickly so we can keep you guys dryish and get you settled in,” Adam said, as he followed D-Day down the steps.

  The six new recruits tramped off the bus and got lined up, while Tanner sorted through the bags he held, making sure the names on the tags were in alphabetical order. In addition to a lot of paperwork and dog training gear, each bag held a T-shirt with a recruit’s name on it, which they’d be expected to wear for the first day until everyone knew one another’s names.

  Adam began to speak. “Okay, recruits, you’ve made it to the Big Chance Dog Ranch, home of the Big Chance Dog Rescue. You already know that you’re all veterans, and we thank you for your service. We’ve been where you are now and understand the challenges that come with the transition to civilian life, especially for those of us with physical and mental scars. A service dog isn’t going to cure you. It won’t make everything the way it was before. Taking care of these animals is a lot of work. These dogs are not pets, and the training never stops. But if you’re willing to put in the work, and understand this isn’t a magic pill, we hope your service animal will help you find a new normal that works for you.”

  For some of them—like Tanner—that new normal might be surviving in a holding pattern between regret and shame, but hopefully most of them could find some peace and happiness.

  Tanner was still sorting through the bags—the Hernandez shirt was in the Chen bag, but the Chen shirt wasn’t in the Hernandez bag.

  Adam continued, “The Big Chance Dog Rescue was formed a couple of years ago because I found myself out here on my granddad’s land, trying to decide between hanging myself or becoming a hoarder-slash-hermit or a homeless alcoholic.”

  There were a few uncomfortable chuckles from the recruits.

  “Yeah, I can joke about it now, but at the time…I didn’t know what to do with myself. After I left the army, I didn’t feel like a real person anymore.” He paused and put a hand on D-Day, who leaned against Adam’s leg. “But then a woman I’d known in high school decided I should help her train this ridiculous dog she’d found, and before I knew it, I was so busy working with D-Day here that I forgot how miserable I was. Friends I’d served with showed up, along with a few more dogs, and we realized we were all going to make it. It seemed selfish to keep it to ourselves. There are many other service dog organizations, and we don’t claim to have anything special, but we do have a mission. We’re grateful we can pass it along to you.”