Spartan showed no signs of co-operation. The gelding's hooves drew a circle around the pen as he trotted on, and Amy wasn't sure if it was the way she followed him or her thoughts that made her head spin.

She had gotten up early that morning - not that she had slept for more than few hours on the previous night anyway -, got in her clothes, tied her blonde hair to a ponytail and then put on some mascara, all while trying to ignore the plastic bag Caleb had given her night before. The real estate papers Amy had discovered were on her writing table, as if she expected them to somehow tell her the full story behind the prints that Ty had kept at his trailer. The only thing she needed to think about right now wasn't the size of the farm or the potential the real estate agent saw in it, but why Ty had had those papers and why he had never brought them up in a conversation during these last four months.

Perhaps Ty had not been too sure about their future either and had expected the papers to tell him which way to go too.

But no matter how hard she tried to ignore the papers while she was working with Spartan, she couldn't. The horse picked up her mood and tried to signal it to Amy by not playing by the rules.

"C'mon, boy. Not again. Please, I need this", Amy tried to plead the horse to work with her, but the black beast kept throwing his head up and down like he was mocking her owner. It didn't do any good with Amy's current struggle with the low self-esteem.

"How's it going?" Jack wandered around from the barn and peeked in between the bars that surrounded the pen. Amy sighed and stopped circling, letting Spartan do whatever he wanted. Whatever Amy was trying to do wasn't going to happen, not today.

"I don't know what I'm going to do, Grandpa", she sighed, almost choking back tears. The old man looked at her sympathetically.

"Don't worry, Amy, it'll take time for you to settle back. You got all the time in the world with Spartan, he's not going anywhere", the old man pointed toward the horse. He knew the connection Spartan and Amy had always shared, and also that being apart for months from your horse was like being apart from your partner; these two needed to re-connect.

"But that's exactly the problem", Amy said and walked out of the pen, closing the gate behind her. "Ahmed is coming back to Canada tomorrow. I'm meaning to quit my job as a headtrainer and keep doing what I used to do, but seems like I've lost the touch; I can't even work with Spartan - and he knows me better than anyone, so if I can't even connect with him, how am I supposed to connect with any other horse? He should be able to trust me, help me out."

"Maybe that's exactly it; he knows you better than anyone. He can sense something's bothering you. Even I can tell that. And I'm guessing it has nothing to do with that prince or your plans", Jack said and took off his gloves. Amy looked down and fiddled her fingers, wondering if she should tell about the papers to Grandpa since he was already onto her. Eventually she figured that it was better to speak about it than let it bottle up, especially if it was what kept her from working with horses. She could ride them, but it had never been about riding horses with her - it was about the unity she felt with these beautiful creatures.

"I visited the trailer yesterday."

"Ty's trailer…?" Jack checked.

Amy nodded.

"And…?"

"Ty wasn't there. Caleb was. And he gave me this bag of things that Ty had left behind, things that he figured I might want. There were these real estate papers about that farm he found with you early last year. Our dream ranch", Amy's voice faltered.

"Oh?"

"I have a feeling he might have wanted to buy that ranch with the money we won with Charger. We sort of talked about not buying it before things got more complicated and we would fall apart…" Amy said.

"Then why did you go to France if not for that ranch?" Jack asked.

"Because of our future, because I wanted to contribute something for it too", Amy explained, but deep down knew she wasn't telling the whole truth. It wasn't just about the money, it had been about the opportunity too. "We could've used the money Ty got from the Futurity Race but it would have been his and not ours. Our dream together, the business, the clinic, it was what I was heading toward. As much I loved that ranch, I didn't think it was realistic to assume that it would still be available by the time I would get back. But we would have had money, so we could have found another one or build a new place. Now… it doesn't matter anymore", she shook her head.

"So, why do you seem so upset about it then, if you had already given up on that ranch?" Jack wondered, since it wasn't hard to see Amy's bottom lip was pouty and her eyes were full of frustration.

"Because he never said anything about it to me. He had those papers when I left France, I saw the dates on the corner of those prints, yet he never said anything!" Amy sighed.

"And why do you think that is?" Jack wanted to let Amy do her own thinking.

"I don't know, that's what bothers me. But I can't even ask him, because I have to wait for him to get back to me. I guess this is some sort of twisted karma…" Amy couldn't help but feel like her not talking to Ty back in France almost equaled to this secret Ty had kept from her.

"Why don't you just go back to the trailer then?" her grandfather asked.

"Because when I said he wasn't there I meant he had moved out", Amy explained further. "And Caleb won't tell me where he is living now."

"Well, he wanted to make a clean cut", Jack recalled, nodding to himself, "that would explain it."

"I know, but things between us aren't finished yet, we still need to talk about everything that has happened or neither of us is able to move on", she sighed and started to fear maybe that wouldn't happen and she would end up being a bitter basket case. But didn't Ty want to talk too? Amy figured he must've had a lot of things to say, things that he had been thinking about over these months, even before she had left to Europe.

"You have to be patient. Not just with Ty but Spartan too", Jack told her granddaughter and squeezed her shoulder gently. "Even if things won't start rolling right away after you end your work relationship with Ahmed - well, no one's gonna die. Maybe you got used to that hectic lifestyle at France, but things around here go with their own pace. If you really wanna get back to this, then you have to get back to state of mind too. It's like we've always said; horses are on their own schedule and if you work against it, it's not gonna end up well. You have to remind yourself that. Not just with horses, but with yourself too. If you force something, it won't happen. Let it come to you."

Amy nodded, feeling disappointed that her grandfather didn't have the answer she so eagerly yearned for, but at the same time a voice inside her kept telling her Jack was right: she needed to stop making some things happen when she couldn't control them fully anyway. She couldn't force Ty to talk to her and she couldn't just lure her gift back by making Spartan run around the pen.

"Time to get Spartan back inside, I guess", Amy turned to the horse who was now in the middle of the pen, digging the sand with his hoof out of boredom. "Maybe I'll take the rest of the day for myself. I'm no use for anyone like this…"

"Don't beat yourself up too harshly, it's only been few days since you came back", Jack said. "And you know, sometimes it's okay to take time for yourself too. If you can't be good for yourself, you can't be good for others either."

"I try to remember that. Thanks, Grandpa", she walked to give him a quick hug before she got back to the pen. "Okay, boy. You win. Let's go back inside."