and Ruler lifted his head to roll a baleful eye at her before finally beginning to move forward.
It seemed miles to the barn, though it was only several hundred feet. Trudging in the freezing rain in her best shoes and long dark dress—which were meant for socializing and not warmth— made the walk almost unbearable. Finally, she pressed her hands against the closed door of the barn, taking deep, panting breaths and searching for the latch with numb fingers.
To her amazement, the door slid open from the inside, and a tall, dark-haired Amish man stared down at her with a grim look. She blinked her eyes, licking surreptitiously at a splat of rain that dripped past her mouth, then spoke the first thing that came to her mind.
“Jacob Wyse. What are you doing here? Today’s the—” she broke off as his handsome face tightened beneath the brim of his black hat.
“The wedding?” he snapped. “Right. But wedding or not, I’d like to know why you’re fool enough to have a horse out in weather like this. You surely must have seen the rain coming.”
He brushed past her to grab Ruler’s reins, and she sagged backward out of the way as the horse followed Jacob like an obedient lamb, leaving her to cling to the barn door with limp hands and suppressed words of ire on her lips at his assumption that she was some sort of weather vane.
“Come in here out of the cold,” Jacob ordered from the dim interior of the barn. She tried to make haste to obey, though her legs seemed too numb to move. He finally came back and hauled her into the shelter without ceremony, sliding the door closed with a strong arm. He sat her down on a bale of hay and returned to Ruler where he ran caressing hands over the animal’s back with a dry rag and made soft, soothing sounds in his throat.
Lilly tried to slow her breathing as she listened to the sudden quiet of the barn, insulated by bales of hay and stacks of feed bags. Although she was soaked to the skin, she couldn’t seem to think to do anything about it and surveyed the interior instead. She recognized Jacob’s bay gelding, Thunder, in a stall, munching at some hay, while another horse’s head appeared over a half door near the far wall. Then she glanced up at Jacob as he finished wiping Ruler down and led him with ease to an empty stall. He filled the hayrack, turned back to her, and sighed.
“Why are you here?” he finally asked, looking at her like she was an unwanted bug at a picnic. Indeed, considering her bedraggled appearance, she probably looked more hag than girl. But there was nothing she could do about it at the moment, so she slipped off her soggy bonnet.
“I asked you the same thing. Though, in my case, it’s rather obvious that the storm brought me here. Shelter for my horse, you know.”
He shook his head, and she tried to ignore the pull of interest that she felt being so close to him. Jacob Wyse was, in face and form, the most attractive man in the community. she’d thought so ever since they’d been in school together and she’d watched him tend to a stray and starving dog that some other boys were trying to drive away. Jacob had stared the boys down one by one, then went to lift the animal into his strong arms, never knowing he was also stealing Lilly’s impressionable young heart at the same time. But now at twenty-four, Jacob’s tall muscular form, rich hazel eyes, and dark chestnut hair with lighter streaks from the sun were all the more appealing. Still, he’d never spoken more than a few words of any consequence to her in all the time she’d known him.
In the community where everyone knew everything about everyone else, it had been well understood for years that Jacob Wyse only had eyes for the beautiful Sarah King, and every other girl was just part of the mountainous landscape. But today, Sarah King was getting married … to another man.
Lilly snapped her attention back to him when she realized he’d been speaking.
“Wh—what?” She shivered, trying to subdue the urge to let her teeth chatter.
“I said, for the third time, that you’re soaked. Go back into one of the stalls and take off as much as your decency will allow. I’ll find you a stable blanket.”