10. Castles in the Cornfield

When they woke up again, Blaze started up with the argument right where their bickering had left off like he hadn't even taken a breath, which was when they'd fallen asleep in the guest bedroom the night before with his huge body spooned around hers. "Get packed. We need to leave."

"No." Sarah wasn't being contrary for the sake of it. She'd just made up her mind and was as stubborn as a barnyard mule sometimes. "I'm staying right here."

"They're coming. Last time, they were going to kill you."

"I'll be more alert. I won't be distracted by some hottie in a tight tee shirt."

"I—that's not—You can't be alert every minute!"

"Remi will help me. Maybe I'll sleep in the barn so they won't find me in the house."

All morning long, Sarah started the chores and Blaze finished them—washing the breakfast dishes, weeding the garden, haying the stock, collecting the eggs—and Blaze yammered on about how she had to pack and leave the farm.

Lord, he acted like he hadn't told her just the night before that they had no future together, that he was planning to return to Chicago as soon as possible.

Not that that was a problem.

He could stay or go as he pleased.

And she shouldn't get her panties in a wad about how he'd said he liked her a few days before, but now, for some unknown reason, he'd changed his mind.

Wasn't that just like a man, really, changing his mind.

"We need to take the animals back over to Abigail Yoder's," Blaze told her in his annoyingly commanding deep tone as they were each currycombing one side of Charlie and talking over the big Quarterhorse's chestnut-haired back.

She retorted, "I'm not keeping you here. You go."

"I won't leave you alone!"

"No one's saying you should stay."

"Of course, I'm staying."

"You don't have to."

Charlie twitched his withers at their arguing, as he was a peaceful horse who preferred soft speech and nose rubs.

Blaze growled, "I got you into this mess, and I'm going to make sure you're safe before I head back to Chicago."

The barn straw crunched under Sarah's boots as she moved down the horse, scraping the dead hair and skin cells out of his coat with the currycomb. "I'm not your responsibility."

"We need to leave now, before they get here."

"Leaving was the wrong thing to do last time."

"Leaving too late put us, your horse, your cow, your cat and dog, and your neighbors in jeopardy. Let's bug out earlier this time so we can lay a trail away from the people and beasts you care about."

"I know they're coming. I'll call my neighbors for reinforcement and make a stand."

"Why would you risk your life for this farm?"

"Because it's my farm!"

She really was losing her Christian patience with this man. She should breathe deeply and pray for grace because gosh darn he was getting on her nerves.

Blaze said, "I want you to think about the farm, Sarah. Your parents left it to you, yes, but they also obligated you to it. It was their dream, and they're gone. What's your dream?"

The not-knowing was a gray fog in her head as she scraped dandruff off the horse. "I always dreamed of having the farm."

"Did you?" His intense blue gaze over Charlie's back was the harsh light of a third-degree interrogation, even in the sunlit barn. "What else did you dream of?"

Sarah's mind searched for answers like stumbling through the Hermitage Museum as a child with her Russian cousins, barely able to understand what they were saying and comprehending absolutely nothing that was written in the curly alphabet on the cards.

The other farm coalesced in her mind, the farm in her dreams where half the corn had been plowed under for paddocks, the farm she'd laid out with corn husks on the fertile soil because she'd never been to a beach to build sandcastles. "Horses?"

"Horses. That's interesting," Blaze said, his voice wavering like he was musing about it, which was better than his constant haranguing for her to leave. "When I asked you what you'd change about the farm if you had the money, you wanted horses."

She took a flathead screwdriver from her boot, flicked packed manure out of Charlie's hoof, and inspected his hoof and shoe for cracks or nicks. "Yeah. I like horses."

"But why horses?" he asked.

"Because—" Because the outside of the horse was the best thing for the inside of a person. "Because horses help people."

"So, it sounds to me, and tell me if I get this wrong, that you want to help people."

Sarah cleaned Charlie's hind foot on her side before she dipped under the horse's neck and elbowed Blaze out of the way to clean his other two. "I don't know the first thing about helping people."

"A major university is just a half-hour away. You could take psychology or social work classes if you wanted to."

"I barely graduated from high school because the farm took so much time that I was half a credit short. My counselor made up some baloney about ‘work experience' so I could walk with my class."

"You could start at a community college. There's several within half an hour."

"The last thing this farm needs is student loan debt. And besides, I probably couldn't do it. Farming is the only thing I'm good for."

"You jumped at the idea of helping veterans even though you disguised it by saying it was patriotism. You agreed to it immediately even knowing we didn't have the money."

She frowned and pried a pebble from under Charlie's shoe that would have caused a problem. Charlie's hooves were on the long side, like noticing you'd probably need to trim your toenails in a few days. The farrier would need to come, yet another bill to add to the red numbers on the spreadsheet. "Maybe it was patriotism."

"What if I'd said that the people who needed to come out here were refugee children traumatized by war?"

"Of course, I would want to try to help children and war refugees."

"Or even a distressed mother horse," he said.

Smart aleck."Well, that was just one time."

"I have a feeling that no matter who needed help, you would want to help them."

Sarah couldn't figure out what to do with her hands, fluttering in front of her like crows eating the corn. "Well, yeah. Maybe."

"You want to help people, not grow corn."

"Well, of course," Sarah wondered aloud as Charlie's hoof stomped to the floor, and she jumped back to avoid her toe getting mashed. "Of course, I don't grow corn just to add to the mountain of feed corn out there somewhere. I grow corn for livestock and people. I sent out milk and eggs for people because some people need raw milk or A2A2 milk. It's the people."

"That makes sense based on what I know about you, Sarah. Now, if you want to spend your life helping people, the only real questions are how and if the farm will help you do that. If it won't, it's time to let it go."

And that's how all this psychoanalysis fit in with Blaze manipulating her to leave the farm.

Sarah gasped. "Oh, I couldn't."

Blaze tilted his head, and his gaze didn't let her wiggle an inch. "Why not?"

"Because it's my farm! What if I sold it to some city boy, and it's the wrong decision? And what would I do with Charlie and HowNow if I didn't have a barn to keep them in? They wouldn't fit under a single bed in a shared dorm room."

Even though the image of her horse and milk cow curled up under a bunk bed like cats was funny.

"So you're keeping the farm because your pets need their own big house out in the back of your big house?"

"I have a commitment to Charlie and HowNow!" She smacked Charlie on his flank, and the tall bay tossed his head and shook his black mane, his rope halter flopping on his big head. "When I make a commitment, it's forever, which means these two furry jerks are my responsibility. So no, I won't sell my farm."

"Forever, huh?" he asked, staring straight at her.

Dear saints in heaven, she hoped Blaze wasn't about to spout off an example of her being irresponsible. She wasn't perfect. No one was. She'd probably screwed up, and Logan had probably told him about it. "Yeah. Forever."

He looked at where his arm was casually draped over Charlie's neck. "Nothing is forever."

"It's as forever as I can make it. Why shouldn't it be forever?"

"Things change," Blaze said quietly, all the urgency gone from his voice. "People change."

"Iwon't," Sarah said. "Or if I do, it won't be to break my promise to these fluffy nutjobs."

And when she said break my promise and Blaze winced, Sarah regretted that she'd mouthed off. "I'm sorry. Logan broke his promise to you, didn't he?"

"It's not important."

"It is."

"We have more important things to talk about."

"Do we?" she asked.

Blaze flapped his hand in the air in the general direction of the barn doors, Remi and the chicken coop, and his Aston Martin car now hidden in the cornfield and covered with a green tarp strewn with cornstalks. "Yeah, we need to plan how to get out of here. We need to plan where to go. We need to plan what to do once we get there. We don't need to talk about me."

"It sounds like you do."

"But you don't want to hear about all this."

"Sure, I do. That's what friends are for," she said.

Blaze's mouth scrunched up like he was repressing something by sucking on a sour candy.

"What did he promise?" she asked.

"We all promised, and we've kept those promises until now."

"Logan and the others," she guessed, watching flickers of emotions play over his face, winces and furrows between his dark eyebrows.

"We were the throwaway kids at school. Our families didn't really want us or were gone. We stayed over the holidays at school except for those few weeks we had to go somewhere else, usually at Christmas, when we crashed at your grandfather's in Manhattan."

"I'm sorry about that. Your parents were already gone when you were at school, right?"

"Yeah." His flat voice reminded her of reciting telephone numbers. "I thought my friends had my back. When the world was empty of anyone who gave one jack shit about me, they were supposed to be there. I've ridden to their rescues financially and literally so many times, and they to mine, and now they're gone."

"You don't suppose it was a misunderstanding somehow, do you?" she asked, hoping to take this heaviness from him.

Blaze shook his head. "They were holding guns on us. Twist confirmed he hacked my bank accounts, and Micah and Logan were going to kill you."

Sarah laid her hand on top of his. "I'm sorry Logan betrayed you. I really am, but it means you don't owe him anything. You don't have to stay here and protect me. I'm on my own. It's okay. Your debt to Logan is done."

He glanced up at her out of the corners of his eyes. "It hasn't been about Logan for a long time, Sarah. I won't leave you here to face them alone."

"I have my friends here. You don't have to stay."

"Everyone else in this world is corrupted. You can't die. The world would be so much worse if something happened to you."

That's when Blaze turned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his broad chest.

He bent and rested his chin on top of her head. "If I can't convince you to go somewhere safe, kitten, I'll stay here and defend you."

"But you have a house and your counseling work over in Chicago," she said, pushing a little because he didn't have to do this. "This isn't your farm. It's mine, so it's my problem."

"And you are my problem."

She snorted at him. Horses snorted when humans did something preposterous, and she wasn't too ladylike to emulate. "And what if something happens to you?"

The dry humor in his tone was an improvement from the wistfulness when he'd been talking about his friends. "I am a US Navy SEAL. I made my peace with my eventual end during Basic Underwater Demolition School when I was twenty. If anything, it's been delayed longer than I'd thought. I'm staying, and we'll see this through together."