Wyoming Sweethearts by Jillian Hart Page B

dispensed.
    “Have fun!” The teenager called out. Clearly she had high hopes for their “date.”
    The horses plodded forward lazily. It was a perfect summer afternoon. Not too hot, but hot enough to make the ice cream taste like an icy luxury. Not too windy, just a light puff of air stirring up the scents of earth and grass and horse. The noise from the main street increased as they circled the lot to the exit lane. Colorful booths and awnings stretched as far as the eye could seeup the street. A red banner strung from light poles read, “Welcome to Wild Horse, Wyoming’s Pioneer Days Festival.”
    “When do you have to be back to work?” he asked.
    “Cady said not to hurry.” She leaned back in her saddle, tilting her face toward his. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
    “That’s an affirmative.” He gave his ice-cream cone a taste and let the strawberry sweetness melt on his tongue. “Nothing like hitting the festival on the first day. We’ll get the best view of stuff and it’s not crowded.”
    “Yes. Wait until tonight.” She gave her cone a twirl, neatly catching all the drips. “I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed all this. I got caught up chasing after things that didn’t last, at least not for me. Now that I’m home, I’ve forgotten how special this all is.”
    “Small-town festivals?”
    “Yes, and small-town life.” She sighed as the horses plodded leisurely down the empty section of the street. “Before I was always so busy and focused. When I was on the ice, I had to shut out everything else. There was only practice.”
    “And the falls? That ice looks like a hard place to land.” He had to quip; it was who he was. It was easier to joke than ask harder questions.
    “I don’t miss the falls.” She had a wonderful laugh, reserved and whimsical. “But I miss the skating. I trained and I trained. It took me an extra two years to squeak in college courses so I could get a degree. Between skating and school, I didn’t do a whole lot of living. I put off everything. Fun weekends, vacations, seeing movies and even the idea of marriage and a family.”
    “Are you second-guessing the choices you made?” He knew how that could be.
    “No. I can’t imagine following any other dream. It simply hurt when it ended.” She looked wistful and not bitter, retrospective and not sad. “If the accident hadn’t happened, I would still be skating.”
    “What was your favorite part?” He took a big bite of ice cream and let it melt in his mouth, watching as she licked a dab of chocolate ice cream off her bottom lip. She was as sweet as could be, trying to eat her cone before it dripped all over her.
    His chest warmed with new emotions, which had to be admiration and respect—certainly nothing romantic. He was a lone wolf. Lone wolves didn’t do romance.
    “The competitions were way too stressful to be my favorite part. The travel was tough because we were focused on our training and our performances.” She frowned in concentration and gave her melting cone another lick. “It was the day-to-day skating I loved. Being on the ice when it was just me soaring. I felt like I did when I was little skating on Gran’s winter pond. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”
    “You didn’t only lose a vocation, but a calling. Something you loved.”
    “Yes.” She turned those incredible, honest eyes at him. “But there are worse things to lose in life. How about you? What have you lost?”
    “My older brother a few years back.” He bit into the sugary cone, crunching as he gathered the courage to let down his guard. “Tim was an Army Ranger killed in action.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “Me, too. It was a hard blow for everyone in my family.”
    “How did you handle it?”
    “Mostly, I felt lost. Drifting. As if everything I’d thought about myself and about life changed.”
    “Trauma will do that to you.” Empathy layered her words.
    “The earth had been knocked out from beneath