Their lives were so brief.

Some briefer than others. Some didn’t even live to see twenty-one summers, let alone enough sunrises to fill a life.

No! Lenobia’s mind skittered away from that memory. The cowboy was not going to awaken those memories. She’d closed the door to them the day she’d been Marked—that terrible, wonderful day. The door wouldn’t, couldn’t open now or ever again.

Neferet knew some of Lenobia’s past. They’d been friends once, she and the High Priestess. They’d talked and Lenobia used to believe they’d shared confidences. It had, of course, been a false friendship. Even before Kalona had emerged from the earth to stand by Neferet’s side, Lenobia had begun to realize there was something very wrong with the High Priestess—something dark and disturbing.

“She’s broken,” Lenobia whispered to the night. “But I won’t let her break me.”

The door would remain closed. Always.

She heard Bonnie’s heavy hoofbeats thunking solidly against the winter grass before she felt the brush of the big mare’s mind. Lenobia cleared her thoughts and projected warmth and welcome. Bonnie nickered a greeting that was so low it almost did sound like it should come from what many of the students were calling her—a dinosaur, which made Lenobia laugh. She was still laughing when Travis led Bonnie up to her bench.

“No, I don’t have any wafers for you.” Lenobia smiled, caressing the mare’s wide, soft muzzle.

“Here ya go, boss lady.” Travis flipped a wafer to Lenobia as he sat on the far end of the wrought-iron-backed bench.

Lenobia caught the treat and held it out to Bonnie, who took it with surprising delicacy for such a big animal. “You know, a normal horse would founder on the amount of these things you feed her.”

“She’s a big girl and she likes her some cookies,” Travis drawled.

As he spoke the word cookies the mare’s ears pricked toward him. He laughed and reached across Lenobia to feed her another wafer. Lenobia shook her head. “Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled,” but the smile was obvious in her voice.

Travis shrugged his broad shoulders. “I like to spoil my girl. Always have. Always will.”

“That’s how I feel about Mujaji.” Lenobia rubbed Bonnie’s broad forehead. “Some mares require special treatment.”

“Oh, so with your mare it’s special treatment. With mine it’s spoiling?”

She met his gaze and saw the smile shining there. “Yes. Of course.”

“Of course,” he said. “And now you’re remindin’ me of my momma.”

Lenobia lifted her brows. “I have to tell you, that sounds very odd, Mr. Foster.”

He laughed aloud then, a full, joyful sound that reminded Lenobia of sunrises.

“It’s a compliment, ma’am. My momma insisted on things bein’ her way or the highway. Always. She was hardheaded, but it balanced because she was also almost always right.”

“Almost always?” she said pointedly.

He laughed again. “There, see, if she was here that’s exactly what she would’ve said.”

“You miss her often, don’t you,” Lenobia said, studying his tanned, well-lined face. He looks older than thirty-two, but in a pleasing way, she thought.

“I do,” he said softly.

“That says quite a lot about her,” Lenobia said. “Quite a lot of good.”

“Rain Foster was quite a lot of good.”

Lenobia smiled and shook her head. “Rain Foster. That is an unusual name.”

“Not if you were a sixties flower child,” Travis said. “Lenobia, that’s an unusual name.”

Without thinking, the response tripped from her tongue. “Not if you were the daughter of an eighteenth century English lass with big dreams.” The words had barely been spoken and Lenobia clamped her lips together, closing her errant mouth.

“Do you get tired of livin’ for so long?”

Lenobia was taken aback. She’d expected him to be surprised and awestruck by hearing that she’d been alive for more than two hundred years. Instead he simply sounded curious. And for some reason his frank curiosity relaxed her so that she answered him with truthfulness and not with evasion. “If I didn’t have my horses I think I would get very tired of living.”

He nodded as if what she’d said made sense to him, but when he spoke all he said was, “Eighteenth century—that’s really somethin’. A lot’s changed since then.”

“Not horses,” she said.

“Happiness and horses,” he said.

His eyes smiled into hers and she was struck again at their color, which seemed to shift and lighten. “Your eyes,” she said. “They change color.”

His lips tilted up. “They do. My momma used to say she could read me by their color.”

Lenobia couldn’t look away from him, even though anxiety rolled through her.

Thankfully, Bonnie chose then to nuzzle her. Lenobia rubbed the mare’s forehead while she tried to still the cacophony of feelings this human’s presence stirred. No. I will not allow this nonsense.

With a reinstated coolness, Lenobia looked from the mare to the cowboy. “Mr. Foster, why are you out here and not within assuring my stable is safe from prying fledglings?”

His eyes instantly darkened, returning to safe, ordinary brown. His tone went from warm to professional. “Well, ma’am, I had a talk with Darius and Stark. I do believe your horses are safe for the rest of this hour ’cause there’s two very pissed-off vampyres drilling them in hand-to-hand combat—with a big focus on showing them how to knock each other off their feet.” He tilted his hat up. “Seems those boys don’t like it any better than you do that their fledglings are being bothersome, so they’re gonna keep ’em mighty busy from now on.”

“Oh. Well. That is good news,” she said.

“Yep, that’s how I see it, too. So I thought I’d come out here and offer you something truly pleasurable.”

Was the man actually flirting with her? Lenobia squelched the nervous thrill she felt and instead leveled a cool, steady gaze on him. “I cannot think of any possible way for you to offer me pleasure.”

She was sure his eyes started to lighten, but his gaze remained as steady as hers. “Well, ma’am, I assumed that would be obvious to you. I’m offerin’ you a ride.” He paused and then added. “On Bonnie.”

“Bonnie?”

“Bonnie. My horse. The big gray girl standing right there nuzzlin’ you. The one who likes cookies.”

“I know who she is,” Lenobia snapped.

“Thought you might like to ride her. That’s why I came out here with her all saddled up for ya.” When Lenobia didn’t speak, he tilted his hat and looked vaguely uncomfortable. “When I need to relax—to remember to smile and breathe—I get on Bonnie and gallop her. Hard. She can move for a big girl, but it’s a little like ridin’ a mountain, and that makes me smile. Thought it might do the same for you.” He hesitated and added, “But if you don’t want to, I’ll take her back inside.”

Bonnie nudged her shoulder, as if offering the ride herself.

And that decided Lenobia. She’d never turned down a horse before, and no human, no matter how uncomfortable he made her, was going to cause her to start.

“I believe you could be right, Mr. Foster.” She stood, took the reins from him, and flipped them over Bonnie’s widely arched neck.

She could tell she’d surprised him by the way he moved. He was on his feet in an instant.

“Here, I’ll give you a leg up.”

“No need,” she said. Lenobia turned her back to him and clucked to the mare, encouraging her to walk forward along the back side of the bench. Moving with a lithe grace that came from centuries of practice, Lenobia stepped from the ground to the seat of the bench, and then the iron backrest, easily finding the stirrup and swinging up, up, and into Bonnie’s saddle. She noticed immediately that he’d shortened the stirrups of his wide Western saddle to accommodate her much shorter legs, so even though the seat was too big, it felt comfortable rather than awkward. She looked down at Travis and had to smile because he seemed so very, very far below her.