CHAPTER 1

Georgina Crawley was riding shotgun with her right hand twisting and gliding through the air outside the rolled down window in her aunt Amy's new Dodge Ram 4x4 truck. Georgie, as she preferred to be called, a thirteen year old pistol of a kid, feared little of anything as far as her new family of two and a half years could tell. Her adoptive great grandpa, Jack Bartlett, once said that he figured she would walk up to the Devil himself and kick him in the shin, if he dared to cross her. She had constantly been chattering about this much anticipated weekend of trail riding with Amy at Jack's fishing cabin for months while waiting for her aunt to finally get back home from France. Not much was being said in front of her regarding Amy's long absence from her lifelong home in the foothills to the Canadian Rockies at Heartland Ranch, but she was sharp enough to know that Amy's fiancé, Ty Borden, came home many weeks before her and that Lou, her adoptive mother and Amy's older sister, cried for days because something had gone terribly wrong on their working trip to Europe.

Amy Fleming was now considered a world class horse trainer. She made the most of a job offer by a young Prince from the UAE by leading his previously troubled World Championship show jumpers through a respectable four month long season while travelling all across Europe, which also included a stay in Abu Dhabi for a show put on for the Prince's benefit. The adventure was the opportunity of a lifetime for the rural Alberta born ranchers' daughter and it paid off with many high end business connections with the best breeders in the world. It also cost her the fiancé she had been planning to marry, in addition to him being the best friend she had ever known.

After the world jumping championship tour was finished, she accepted another job offer which would have taken her away from home for months at a time, without even thinking to ask Ty how he felt about it. He eventually told her that he could not live a life wishing for his wife to come back home and there obviously would not be room in her life for the farm they had wanted to buy, the business they wanted to start together, or for kids. Ty broke her heart when he told her his plan to go back to Alberta to start over without her. He made sure that her grandpa and Lisa were there to look after her and take her to Lisa's villa outside of Paris after he was gone. Lisa spent the next ten weeks showing her new step-granddaughter the ins and outs of taking over her high end horse trading business she was planning to soon retire from. It was more likely an extended healing mission designed to help the jilted fiancée to recover from the huge disappointment of her breakup.

"Looks like you are enjoying yourself," Amy said to her passenger.

"This is soooo cool, I looove your new truck!" she replied.

"Me too! It's about time I got my own wheels. Grandpa's old Chevy is getting a little too worn out for us to go on these longer trips like this. Now we can ride in style and not worry about being able to get back home without having to be towed, since we don't have anybody to keep it….," she faded at the stinging thought of the one who used to take care of things like that.

"Yeah, I know, to keep it running," the young girl caught on to the accidental reference to Ty.

The driver tried to keep the moment from going flat, "This is goanna be great, Georgie! Just us girls and our horses with nobody else around to bother us. I soooo need this right now!"

"Meee tooo!" Georgie smiled at the idea.

A shiny new horse trailer carrying an injured thoroughbred backed up to the door at the rear of the Hudson Veterinary clinic. The owner, a wealthy Alberta business man who struck it rich in the natural gas industry, had high hopes for Scott Cardinal, the clinic's owner and surgeon who was experienced with equine leg trauma, to find a way to save the prized animal.

"Dr. Cardinal, I sure hope you can do something for him. It just makes me sick to think of him hurting like this," said the man.

"We will do everything we can to help him, Mr. Carson. I can't promise you anything, but if there is anything to work with when we get in there to see the bone, that it isn't shattered into fragments too small to repair, we should be able to at least get him back on his feet to live a long happy life making babies at your ranch."

"Yeah…Ok, Doctor, but I sure do wish that new clinic down in Okotoks was up and running. I hear they are going to have the best of everything there to work with," he speculated.

Scott hesitantly replied, "Yes, that's what I hear. I guess we will have to wait and see."

Ty walked out of the clinic with Cassandra, Scott's feisty assistant, to get Aladdin out of his trailer and into his new stall to prep him for surgery the following day.

"As a matter of fact," Scott pointed Ty out to the man, "my colleague here is working with the people who are building the clinic. He has been to the UAE to see the original clinic and many of their techniques. We hope to be able to collaborate with them very closely, once they are up and running."

"That's great news, Doctor, I just wish we had their help right now," Mr. Carson worried.

"Mr. Carson, I assure you that Aladdin is in the best of hands right where he is," said Ty. "I have personally assisted Dr. Cardinal in many surgeries just like the one we will do tomorrow, and if your horse has any bone left to work with, he will make the repair as well as anyone."

"I sure hope you are right, son," said the owner as he turned toward his truck.

"I've been getting that a lot, lately," Scott later confessed to his protégé. "My clients are eagerly awaiting the new technological marvel of equine medicine to open.

"Don't worry about it, Scott, I am sure that we can find a way to make everything work out, by working together somehow," Ty assured him.

Scott had been waiting for the subject of Amy's returning to Hudson a few weeks ago to come up, but so far her former fiancé had not offered so much as a peep acknowledging the event. "I guess you heard that Amy is back in town?"

"Yeah, that's what I hear, Scott," the younger man dismissed the comment.

"Ahhhhh, what are you going to do when you run into her?" Cassandra pried. "That's goanna be soooo awkward!"

"I plan to do nothing, except to say hello, if I have to."

"That's kind of cold, isn't it?" the girl continued to aggravate the sensitive situation.

"What am I supposed to say, Cass? It isn't like I can ever say anything I haven't already said, or that I can somehow fix our friendship. I would guess that we would both rather just stay clear of each other the best we can," he assumed.

"I suppose that would be the most convenient for you two, but life has a way of screwing with you…..it's like a rule," reasoned the assistant and sometimes self-proclaimed philosophical advisor.

"A rule?" he asked.

"Yeah, you know, just when you think everything is going OK….WHAM, everything goes to hell before you know it!"

"Well, Cass, that's a great view of life from an optimist such as yourself, and I think that is a reference to Murphy's Law," he informed his co-worker.

"Murphy-schmurphy, I'm just saying," defending her analysis.

Lou Fleming-Morris, the eldest sister of the Bartlett-Fleming-Morris clan whose ancestors had settled Heartland Ranch one-hundred fifty years ago, bent down to retrieve a fresh batch of cookies from the oven with her four year old daughter, Katie, eagerly watching from the small breakfast table in the center of the room. "Look, Katie, don't these cookies smell good?" Katie threw a fit when Georgie left with Amy, thinking she was big enough to go on the girls' only trip with the horses, and Lou figured that a batch of her favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies would make her world here at the ranch a happy place to be, for a while, anyways.

Jack walked through the front door of the house and said, "Boy, Katie, those cookies sure do smell good! How about you and me get a glass of milk and see if we can test them for your momma, just so we know that it is OK for the rest of the family to eat them?"

Katie grabbed the cookie closest to her from the plate, and after inspecting it to see that it was indeed perfect, she offered it to her great grandpa for him to eat.

"Did Amy and Georgie get started on that camping trip?" he asked Lou.

"Yeah, they're on their way. That is why we had to bake cookies, because this one wanted to go too!" she replied.

"Oh, I see. Well then, Katie, maybe you can ride with me into town and help me pick up some supplies at the Maggie's, what do you think?" he said as he winked at the girl.

She enthusiastically nodded her approval and stuffed a whole cookie into her mouth, having to comically figure out how to chew such a big bite, and causing the two adults to crack up at the sight.

After Aladdin was stabled and ready for his night of rest, Ty picked up his keys to the old Norton motorcycle he had ridden to work that morning for the first time in a long while and announced that he was headed out to his new apartment for the evening. Riding down city streets was far less appealing to him than the back roads he normally rode while living at Heartland, but this was his new life and he hoped he would soon get over missing the old place so much.

He rode southwest until he was approaching the open country of the foothills. He was headed to the ranch that belonged to the professor from the University of Calgary who was in charge of the high tech North American clinic being built in Okotoks. Dr. Hartman offered his guest house to Ty as his home base until he eventually found a place of his own. Only half focused on the task at hand, his thoughts wandered to the days he and Amy spent riding toward the mountains from this spot as he pulled up to the last stop light before he turned south on the old Cowboy Trail toward his destination. He was drained of energy more than he thought he should be, but he hoped a hot shower and a couple of beers would fix anything that was ailing him after he tended to the animals and relaxed a while before turning in for another of a long string of restless nights.

Georgie reached over to push the buttons on the stereo which was playing Amy's favorite country tunes.

"Georgie, stop it! I was listening to that song!" Amy complained.

"Com'on, Amy, that song is old….we need to find something better," said the fidgety teenager.

"OK, well, just don't wear my buttons out so soon. They are goanna have to last a lot of years!"

They were the first in line to turn left from the stoplight toward the road leading into the mountains when an unusual sound approached from their right. Amy was no stranger to the hum of a vintage motorcycle. She had ridden with Ty on the back of his old Norton all over these foothills and into the mountains, and the sound was eerily familiar to her. Georgie saw him first, and when she realized that she was looking at her long lost friend across the intersection her mouth dropped into an Oh shape as she looked toward Amy to see if she had noticed as well. When his light changed Ty swung around the intersection directly in front of them and Georgie unbuckled her seatbelt and stuck her entire torso through the window opening to try and get his attention.

"Georgie! Get back in here!" she yelled.

"Don't you want him to see us?" the confused girl asked.

"NO, I don't! Now, buckle up, before I strap you down myself!"

The next hour into the mountains was much more subdued between the two female travel companions.

"Amy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad." Georgie said apologetically. "I just know that you have been really sad, and maybe if you talked to Ty, you would feel better," she explained.

"It doesn't work like that, Georgie. Ty and I don't have anything to talk about anymore. Those days are over."