Free Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) by Sandra Marton Page B

answer was, he would. Of course, he would. She knew that better than anyone. There’d been a horse in her childhood, a sad, broken-down creature, her best friend, her only friend…
    An hour later, she’d been the owner of a pair of horses. She’d shipped them to her place in upstate New York.
    And fallen in love with them both.
    She’d gotten them excellent veterinary care, hired a boy who loved horses to look after them. She’d spent every possible weekend with the animals, nursing them back to good health, winning their trust and, in turn, trusting them in ways you could never trust people. The horses calmed her, it was as simple as that, and when she’d stumbled across an article in a magazine about equine therapy, even though she’d discarded as pure BS all the mumbo jumbo shrinks proposed for dealing with emotional trauma or childhood disorders or whatever you wanted to call simply not sucking it up and getting on with life, the idea that working with horses could help troubled kids made sense.
    Having Baby in her life when she was a kid had helped her. Not for long, but for a while.
    Cheyenne switched on her hair dryer, bent at the waist, brushed and dried her hair until it was a fall of shiny black. Then she stood straight, pushed the slightly damp locks away from her face, and stared at her reflection in the mirrored wall.
    Her appraisal was dispassionate, that of a pro for the product she sold.
    A long, lean body. Up-tilted breasts. Curved hips. Long legs.
    Her hair was straight and glossy, her cheekbones razor-sharp. She had thick, sooty lashes, a nose that was, as one photographer had gushed, more interesting than perfect, and a wide mouth above a determined chin.
    The body was Mama’s: a small-town beauty queen who ended up with a pocket full of failed dreams.
    The rest was her father’s: a reservation Romeo with failed dreams of his own.
    Not that she’d ever seen her father, but in her sober moments, that was how Mama had described him. Black hair. Thick lashes. Proud nose. Full mouth.
    “Fell for him while I was workin’ in a diner near Fort Laramie,” she’d said in her whiskey-rough voice. “Easy on the eyes. Looked like Cochise musta looked in his day.”
    Cheyenne had heard the Cochise comparison endless times and when she was ten or eleven, she’d foolishly pointed out that Cochise had been an Apache and her father, according to Mama, had been Cheyenne.
    Mama, drunk as usual, had backhanded her.
    “Smart ass kid,” she’d said.
    “Oh, sweetie,” she’d sobbed the next day when she saw Cheyenne’s black eye, “I’m so sorry,” but by then Cheyenne had learned apologies were meaningless whether they were for beatings or for being warned to make Mama’s latest boyfriend happy…
    “What in hell are you doing?” Cheyenne demanded of her reflection.
    That was all history.
    She had escaped Wyoming, escaped Mama, escaped the life she’d been born to and created her own life, one that she, alone, controlled.
    And she was wasting time.
    The Horse Sense fundraiser started in less than an hour. The timing was bad—she’d stayed in Wilde’s Crossing a day too long—but until almost the last minute, she’d toyed with the idea of baling on the fundraiser and then she’d realized no, she couldn’t do that. The Horse Sense board was counting on her to greet guests and convince them to open their wallets and give generously to the foundation.
    She knew she wasn’t a real supermodel anymore, but nobody outside the business did.
    She had to get dressed, look glamorous, and get into the mood to be Cheyenne McKenna, whose face had graced magazine covers.
    Plus, she wanted to see the expressions of the people on the Horse Sense board when she told them she was giving them a ranch and she’d foot the cost of reconstruction.
    Just thinking about it made her smile.
    She took a dress from its hanger, a long fall of silk in shades that ranged from the palest blue to the deepest sapphire, and