“Baby—”

“Let me go.”

His lips found my ear. “Spätzchen, you need to listen to me.”

“That wasn’t right. You’re not mine. You’re hers.”

His body grew solid all around me. “What?”

“You ran after her.”

“I ran after my dog.”

I blinked at the dirt-floored corridor between the stalls.

He touched his lips to my earlobe and then kept them there, saying gently, “I knew you’d think that but I couldn’t correct you when you wouldn’t answer the fucking phone.”

Slowly, I turned my head his way, and slowly he lifted his to look into my eyes.

“You . . . ran after . . . your dog?”

“Ranger’s home,” he stated.

I blinked up at him.

He gently slid me off his cock and I took the hint, unhooking my legs from his hips. He set me to my feet but held me close, still pinned to the wall until he knew I was steady on them.

He moved away only enough to hitch up his jeans and then he bent and grabbed my panties.

I automatically lifted a hand to take them but he didn’t offer them to me.

He shoved them in his jeans pocket.

My lips parted.

He bent back and grabbed my pajama bottoms. He shook them to get the dirt off, his brows drew together as he gave them a look, then he handed them to me.

Brushing Johnny repeatedly because he stayed in my space, I put them on.

I was tying the drawstring when he said, “Trash.”

It was a statement that formed a question.

“Tack room.”

That was my answer.

He took my hand and shifted us to the tack room, opening the door. He walked with his jeans undone, dragging me with him.

He then treated me to the intimacy of him disposing of a spent condom in my trash.

There was something about this, something huge, something powerful. A shift in our relationship where the veil was pulled down and it was no longer about guarding important secrets until you knew they were safe to share or just getting to know each other a little better.

It was about fitting into each other’s lives.

He righted his jeans and belt then looked into the room.

“Jesus,” he murmured.

I looked into the room.

The tack was mounted on two opposite walls in a fashion that wasn’t only organized and orderly, but attractive. The narrow floor space between had a clean, oval, braided rug on it. In the two back corners, at angles to each other, were two armchairs. A faded chintz one I got in a yard sale for two dollars. And a fabulous, mahogany leather club chair I bought at an estate auction for twenty-five. The light fixture was tin, antique, beat up and fabulous and cost me a buck fifty at an antique store, and a margarita night plus my guacamole for a girlfriend who was an electrician to rewire it.

On the back wall there were four precisely placed pictures, two on either side of a big window, and I’d paid a small fortune to have each one of them professionally framed in the exact same frame.

All of them with huge mats surrounding cheap, drugstore produced snapshot pictures of the day Mom took Addie and me to a state park and we rode horses on a trail. One picture of Mom and Addie. One of Mom and me. And two of all three of us together, standing in front of a horse, smiling, goofing and looking happy.

“Trust you to have a tack room that’s nicer than most folks’ living room,” Johnny muttered.

I looked from the room to him.

“Johnny.”

He looked to me, said firmly, “Right,” then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the leather club chair.

He sat in it.

Then he sat me in it, that being me in his lap.

“Caught up with her and my dog,” he began without preamble.

I sat in his lap, and unsure I wanted to, unsure of anything, I listened.

“Since I wanted my dog back, told her we needed to find a private place to talk. She wanted the mill. I agreed to the mill because that way I could just let Ranger in his new home when we were done and I didn’t want to drag shit out by discussing where we were going to discuss shit. She followed me there in her car. I called you on the way there.” His expression turned annoyed. “You didn’t answer.”

“Um . . .” I muttered.

“Needless to say, when I got there and told her I wanted my dog back, this did not go over well. I’d told her we weren’t going back, what’s done is done, but apparently that didn’t get through. Me saying I wanted her to return Ranger made it get through. She was upset and I couldn’t just tell her to get gone but leave my dog. I did find times to call and text you during her being upset. But again, you didn’t answer.”

“Uh . . .” I mumbled.

“Things degenerated, because she couldn’t miss me trying to call and text you so she wanted to know about you, and since I wasn’t giving her a shot, she jumped to conclusions about Brooks bein’ our kid. Assuring her that didn’t happen but not assuring her that you and I weren’t what she assumed we were didn’t go over very well either. When it came out that it had only been a few weeks and she’d actually called right after we met each other, things degenerated further with a lot of her asking what ifs about if she’d just called a couple of days earlier. And again, it didn’t go over very well when I said what if was moot since I found someone, the connection we have runs deep, we’re both intent on exploring it and I was all in for that happening.”

I stared at him, no longer feeling unsure about listening.

I was listening hard to every word he said.

He kept saying them.

“It would have ended there and I would have come to you, except folks talk, and they were talking, so by the time Margot and Dave got to the festival, what happened on that picnic blanket with the three of us was running rampant. Margot got in a snit, Shandra isn’t Dave’s favorite person either, so they decided to load back up in their car, show at the mill and give Shandra a few pieces of their minds.”

“Oh boy,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Margot laid into her and the result was mincemeat. She ground her to a pulp. I’d tried to be as cool with her as I could, but in that situation there is no way she’d think I was being cool. So Shandra had already taken a few lickings from me, and with Margot wading in she became a mess.”

“Yikes,” I murmured, beginning to feel sorry for Shandra.

I hoped Margot never was moved to make mincemeat of me because I figured she had a talent with that.

“Yeah,” he again agreed. “But Margot wasn’t done, because she jumped to conclusions about the fact Shandra and me were at the mill and she had a few things to say to me too. About Shandra and about you. Shandra hearing from Margot the depths of the wreckage of me she left behind meant she got it in her head that she might be the only one to salvage them, and even shredded she gave that a go. Me and Margo disabusing her of this considering you’d entered the picture and did it with staying power was insult to injury. She lost it, took off, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and most the night looking for her to make sure in her state she didn’t wrap herself around a tree while alternately trying to get you on the phone. I found her late, got her back to her folks safely, left her there and decided to sort you out this morning. You being you led us to straightening shit out the way we straightened it out, which, spätzchen, I’m not complaining since what we did against that wall was hot as fuck. And here we are.”