Mandy felt like an escapee as she walked the back way from the team’s compound over to her house on the adjoining property. Her dogs, Yeller and Blue, the golden retriever and blue heeler she and Rocco had rescued, ran around off-leash, loving the hike across Ty’s property, down a ravine, then up the hill on her land.
She crossed the front of her property to the area where her therapeutic riding center would be located. It had been close to completion last spring, before everything had happened. When Rocco had moved them from her property to Ty’s huge spread at the beginning of summer, she hadn’t thought they’d be gone as long as they had, but then, nothing that had happened in the last few months had gone according to her carefully laid plans.
The work that Rocco and her brother and the other members of their team did as consultants for the Department of Homeland Security was critical. She just never thought their lethal enemies—both homegrown and international terrorists—would have such a strong foothold in her little corner of Wyoming.
She’d hoped to open her center during summer, but now that season had come and gone.
She looked over the wide terraces of the valley where her stables, arena, and corrals would be located. The debris from the explosion had been cleared away long ago. The construction had started over, but had been paused once again when Fee was abducted. Now that she was safely back with the team, Mandy hoped it would resume soon.
In the meantime, Ty had made his stables available to her so she could continue training her horses. She’d even taken on a few hippotherapy clients. It felt as if much of her life was back on track—except one critical element: Rocco was still battling PTSD, and he probably would for a long time to come.
She knew he often visited her old barn when he needed time alone, which, increasingly, was more time than he gave her or his son. The old structure was a hazard. She wished he’d found another place to hang out. No one was in her house. He could have gone there. But he didn’t, and why he didn’t bugged her.
Curious about his secret hideaway, she stepped into the cool, musty interior, fearing the building would pick that moment to collapse. Her dogs were sniffing around the nearby corrals; she hoped they decided to stay outside. But no, they followed her inside. The stairs leading up to the hayloft were rickety. Some of the treads were loose—one was even missing. The dogs jumped over the wide gap and reached the upper level ahead of her. Thankfully, they weren’t running around wildly; the place was a danger to them as well. Perhaps they could smell the decaying wood and knew to be cautious.
The hayloft was bare except for a chair, a trunk, and a light powered by a long extension cord to an outlet outside. What a grim place to hang out. It was like looking at the inside of Rocco’s soul.
She touched her belly, where their child was growing. In just months, their baby would be born. The baby deserved to have the best life Mandy and Rocco could provide; a broken father was not the best they could do.
Over the last few months, she’d given Rocco room to try to figure out how to fix the broken pieces of himself. She looked around the depressing space. This was not mending him; it was breaking him further…and keeping that breakage hidden from her and his team.
She knew she could decide all she wanted that it was time for Rocco to stop looking backward and to start living in the now, that it would be far less painful to him and that his healing could begin, but knowing those things and convincing him of them were a million miles apart.
She went back downstairs and out into the warm September sun. She wanted to pull the barn down. Just level the whole thing and make Rocco face his reality, but that wasn’t the right approach either.
She sat on the front stoop of her house, pondering her options. She’d tried giving him space, time, patience, discussion, silence, and gentle understanding. She hadn’t wanted to risk ultimatums, because that would just drive his madness into ever more secretive hiding places.
Maybe she should visit the shrink in town. Ivy said he’d helped her work through some issues, and that he was a veteran, so he’d understand what Rocco was going through. She wandered over to the shade of a giant cottonwood—a tree that had been in her side yard ever since she could remember. Autumn was fast approaching. She was looking forward to the change in seasons, though the temperature shifts between one season and the next in this part of Wyoming were extremely variable. She never knew if each day would be hot like late summer or cool like autumn. The nights were the same, hot and cold. Like Rocco.
He was a storm of a man.
Their baby would be born in the spring. She had roughly six months to get their lives in order. She was in for one hell of a fight—and winning was her only option. In Rocco’s emotional absence, she’d become a surrogate parent to his son. It was time to start fighting for the life she wanted. And what she wanted was for them to be a family.