Promise Canyon Read Online Free PDF Page B

said. He nodded at his paperwork. “He hired himself an assistant. Big guy. A Navajo.”
    Yaz looked up then and connected eyes with his granddaughter. He smiled just slightly. “Is that a fact? Why’d he come here?”
    Lilly almost blushed; she had no idea because she didn’t ask him about himself at all. He had asked her questions, general flirting and being friendly she supposed, but all she knew of him was that he was Navajo and could carry two bales at a time. “I didn’t really talk to him. Just to say hello, that’s all.”
    “Is he good with horses?”
    “Yes, he… Grandpa, on my way home I found a sick horse by the road. Probably colic. I called Nathaniel and he came out with Clay—that’s the new guy’s name, Clay. They came right away but what we found out, the people who owned that pasture where the mare was and the house and barn that went with it, they cleared out and left their animals to starve. Nathaniel says they’re seeing more of that sort of thing all the time because of the economy and unemployment.”
    “People who were having a hard time before are having a harder time now,” Yaz said.
    “He said sometimes they have to choose between feeding their children and their animals. But there are rescue groups! Why wouldn’t they call a rescue group?”
    Yaz looked up at her, his dark eyes gathering a little moisture, the flesh below and at the corners crepey and wrinkled. “Even the rescue groups are stretched to the limit. Then there’s pride and shame,” he said. He leaned back in his old desk chair. “When a man is running out on his debts, he doesn’t usually say goodbye.”
    “You’d think whoever did that could’ve swallowed enough pride to let someone know the animals were left behind,” she said.
    “You’d think,” he agreed. “The horse going to be all right?”
    She shrugged. “Nathaniel was treating her with pain medication and mineral oil when I left, even though there’s no one to pay him.”
    Yaz looked down at the clipboard again, paging through her collection of deliveries. “Well, at least she got the best, and at a bargain.”
    “True,” Lilly agreed softly. “You’ll want to meet the new man—he grew up around Flagstaff.”
    A smile hinted at the corners of Yaz’s mouth. “It will be good to see a neighbor, even an inferior neighbor.” The Hopi and Navajo had long lived side by side, alternately getting along and squabbling. “I look forward to knowing him. See you on Sunday.” That was the day they set aside to eat together at his house. It was a traditional house—Lilly cooked. She also made sure her grandfather’s house was clean and his laundry done.
    So much for her nontraditional ways….
    “Sunday,” she echoed, leaving the warehouse.
    Her heart was still heavy, however. It was likely Lilly had an issue with this business about the horse for more than one reason. Lilly’s mother had abandoned her when she was an infant, leaving her with her grandparents on the reservation in Arizona. Lilly’s grandma had passed when Lilly was nine and while Yaz was grief-stricken, he was not intimidated by the prospect of raising her alone, without the help of a woman. In fact, it was possible he’d risen to the occasion. He seemed to relish his parenting duties. And at thirteen, the boy she’d loved had run out on her, leaving her high and dry, and with bigger problems than she knew how to deal with. Abandonment was an issue for her and she knew it.
    It was that same year that Yaz brought her to California. He heard about the sale of the feed store from a friend of a friend, and for his entire life on the reservation he’d been saving and investing for just such an opportunity. That had been fourteen years ago. She hadn’t moved out of her grandfather’s house until she was twenty-five and that had been a difficult transition; he clearly wanted her to stay with him forever or at least until she was married.
     
    While Lilly was on her way to her