Katy shook her head, setting the golden curls flowing down her back to bouncing. “John is never abrupt like that. He was downright rude.” She shook her head again, this time more with sorrow than indignation.“Maybe he had something on his mind.” Zeb MacCallister propped a lean shoulder against the post holding up the porch roof that aproned his house. From this vantage he could see the corrals that surrounded three sides of the two-story main barn like a woman’s skirts. In the paddock to the west, Manda had one of this year’s crop of colts, haltered and on a lead line, following behind her like a docile dog. He knew for a fact she’d just begun to work with the young one the day before. Talk about a gift—that ornery young girl could gentle an animal faster than anyone he’d ever seen.“Zeb, are you listening to us at all?”“Sure enough, sugar.” His drawl, laced with warm molasses, made both his wife and sister giggle. Only when he’d been somewhere far away in his mind did he slow his Missouri drawl like that.
