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eye.”
    Bridget studied the fast-moving horses that milled in front of them and shook her head, unable to differentiate one from the other. “What’s a bright eye?” she asked.
    “It’s when they’re curious,” he said, pointing to a black horse with a white star on its forehead. “Watch this one. This is one I’d buy. Look how curious he is about us. He’s looking us over, reserving judgment, but he’s not out and out scared like most of the others.”
    “I don’t blame them,” she said. “I’d be scared, too.”
    “You, scared?” he asked. “I can’t imagine that You put yourself in the path of a wild kid on a bike, you barge into his house and ask a stranger to be a Wild Mustang Man. What does scare you?” he asked.
    She shrugged. Nobody had ever called her brave before. “I don’t know. Snakes, spiders. Failure.” This conversation was getting too close for comfort. She didn’t want to talk about failure. She didn’t want to talk about herself. She wanted to talk about horses. It was much safer. “Imagine being penned up after a lifetime of freedom,” she said. She felt his curious gaze on her, but she stared straight ahead at the black horse in the corral.
    “Does freedom mean so much to you?” he asked.
    “I guess it does. I guess that’s why I started my own ad agency. To have the freedom to do what I want.”
    “Is this what you want to do?” he asked.
    “Of course it is. I’m having the time of my life.”
    “What about marriage, kids?”
    Bridget swallowed hard. Just when she’d come across so convincing. He could have gone all day without asking that one. The questions were making her nervous, the last one especially. As nervous as those horses there, wondering what was going to become of them.
    “No time for marriage and kids,” she said lightly. “They’re just not compatible with my job. When I work, I work around the clock. It’s a competitive business. Always somebody else trying to take away your business when you’re not looking. Besides, nobody gets everything they want,” she said as an afterthought. As if he needed her to tell him that
    Up until recently she’d thought she might get everything—an interesting job followed by or in tandem with a husband she loved, a home and kids. Now that she knew it wasn’t going to work out that way, she was free to pursue her career with all her energies. Which was not a bad thing. No, not at all.
    “No...they don’t,” he muttered under his breath, then he turned his back to the horses. “I’m going to the office now and fill out the paperwork on the horse I want and pay the fees. I assume you have a ride back to town.”
    So that was it The end of this question-and-answer session. He’d cut her off before she had a chance to ask him anything. Like what was he afraid of, how much did freedom mean to him and what it was he really wanted to do. He’d taken steps in the opposite direction before she realized what was happening. He was leaving.
    “Wait,” she called, elbowing her way through the crowd. “When will you be home? Can I come by and take some pictures?”
    He shrugged without turning around or even breaking stride, and she finally gave up, stopped in her tracks and turned toward the parking lot, realizing that she’d gotten all she was going to get out of him for now. And that he’d somehow found out more about her than most people knew, her friends included.

 
Chapter Three
     
    Josh drove home slowly, with one eye on his horse trailer and his newest wild mustang. He was pleased about the horse. She was the right age, between two and three years old, and had good potential. Two of the first four horses he’d bought some ten years ago were still working. The other two were retired in the pasture, and they’d earned it. Countless others had been trained and sold and had provided him with a decent living.
    He could ride, he could break horses, he could train them. But what he was best at, what he