Country Roads(22)

“A what?”

“Her blouse. I think it’s by an artist named Reuben Villar, who occasionally makes one-of-a-kind clothing. He always insists on a photograph of the purchaser to make sure his creation will suit them and vice versa.”

“He sounds like a control freak.” He stood up and balanced a stack of dirty cups on one forearm.

“Of course he is. He’s an artist.”

As Paul picked up another pile of dishes, Julia and Tim walked back into the dining room. “Careful! You’re going to drop something!” Julia squeaked, diving toward him as he started toward the kitchen.

Tim caught her wrist with a chuckle. “Paul has the manual dexterity of a circus juggler. He’s never even lost a butter knife.”

“If the lawyer thing doesn’t work out, you’d make a terrific busboy,” Julia said.

The candlelight gleamed in the strands of her hair, shimmered over the silk of her blouse, and twinkled like dancing imps in her eyes. He nearly dumped all the dishes on the ground so he could wrap himself in the glow surrounding her. “Busboy was my fallback career if I didn’t pass the bar exam,” he said before he forced himself to follow Claire.

“Or a magician,” Claire said as she held the kitchen door for him. “He made money by entertaining at children’s birthday parties when he was a teenager,” she explained as Julia came in behind him.

Putting down the dishes in his right hand, he dug into his pocket and palmed a quarter. As Julia walked by, he reached behind her ear and pretended to pull the coin out of her curls. “Do you always carry change in your hair?”

She laughed delightedly, and he felt the bitterness of the afternoon’s disappointment begin to drain away. He should have known better than to fight the limits of his life.

“That metal sculpture you have in your garden is fantastic,” Julia said, as she put the remains of the cake back in its box. “Tim said the local farrier did it. I’d like to talk to him.”

“Blake’s not big on socializing,” Claire said. “Your best bet is to hang around Healing Springs Stables when a horse is due for shoeing. In fact, we should go for a trail ride together. The mountain paths around here are beautiful.”

Paul watched in fascination as Julia’s skin went from pale cream to delicate pink. “Well, er, that would be nice. Except I don’t know how to ride.”



The varying expressions of shock on the three faces turned toward her made Julia’s flush burn even hotter. She hated to admit this fact about herself. “I never learned.”

She was not allowed to.

Her stepfather, a skilled equestrian, had put her on a horse when she was six. She had been excited until the horse moved, and she looked down at the ground whizzing past far below her. Panic closed up her throat so tightly she couldn’t breathe, while a cloud of darkness spread over her vision. She woke up cradled against Papi’s chest as he frantically called her name while the horse grazed peacefully beside them. No one realized it, but that had been her first seizure.

Although her family believed it was nothing more than a panic attack, when she asked to ride again, Papi refused. He was too traumatized by what he thought he had done to his little stepdaughter to attempt it.

Wanting to please her new daddy, she began to draw the horses she couldn’t ride, trying to grind her terror down by understanding them in little pieces: their hooves, their manes, their slender legs and big bodies, their huge, liquid eyes. Then she fell in love with their power and beauty.

A few months later, she was watching the antics of a new foal, her drawing pad balanced on her knees, when the next seizure sent her tumbling off the fence she’d been sitting on. Her uncle found her rolled up in a ball inside the pen, sobbing, as the foal’s mother gently snuffled at her.

It was no longer a panic attack. It was epilepsy.

She’d lost count of the times she’d opened her eyes to find the anguished faces of her parents, her uncle, or her stepbrothers hovering over her. No matter how she tried to reassure them, her seizures distressed and terrified them, leading her relatives to cosset her in an effort to avoid another episode.

As she scanned their astonished expressions, she knew she was not going to tell anyone in Sanctuary about the electrical storms that used to wrack her brain. Two years ago, the doctors had agreed to let her stop her antiseizure medication. She’d been fine since then, so there was no need to risk the pity or withdrawal the information always evoked.

“But you paint your horses with such perception!” Claire looked the most flabbergasted.

Julia wanted to shrink down and crawl away under the door. Until she felt the solid warmth of Paul’s arm circling her shoulders and pulling her against his side. He ran his palm up and down the silk covering her arm in a gesture of comfort. “It just makes your pictures all the more amazing,” he said.