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“Get up,” Colt said tersely into the sudden quiet. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the horse.
Behind him, he heard Bethany climb on the fence, up and over. Colt backed away, still holding the horse with his gaze. Then he vaulted over the fence and jumped down, landing lightly beside her.
Bethany’s face was ashen. She was scared. He couldn’t blame her; she could have been trampled.
“You all right?” he asked sharply.
She nodded and closed her eyes for a long moment. “I’m okay. Thanks.”
“What were you doing?”
“Trying to put a halter on him.”
“Who spooked this horse? Not you, I take it?”
She lifted a shoulder and let it fall, but she wasn’t as nonchalant as she seemed. A slick of perspiration beaded her forehead, and he thought he detected a slight trembling of her upper lip—a very sensual upper lip, it seemed to him.
“You’d have to ask Mott Findley.”
“Who’s he?”
“My neighbor. I took Sidewinder from Mott in trade believing I could help him, but I’m thinking he’s hopeless. Sometimes I’ll be making progress, then something sets him off. If he can’t catch on to what a good horse is supposed to do on a ranch, I’ll have to get rid of him.”
Colt knew what that meant. The roan was well on his way to becoming poodle food. With a marginal operation like the Banner-B, a horse wasn’t worth the feed and vet care it took to maintain him if he couldn’t pull his weight.
He moved closer to the fence, leaned on it. The sinking sun felt good spread across his shoulders. The roan, a gelding about fourteen and a half hands high, had the powerful hind-quarters and deep chest of a good quarter horse, a breed developed for cutting cattle and roping steers. To say this horse was skittish was an understatement—he was downright dangerous. Colt hadn’t seen a horse in such bad shape in years, not since Ryzinski’s. He didn’t have to think about it for more than a moment.
“You mind if I have a try at him?”
Bethany chuckled mirthlessly. “Not if he’s going to kill a perfectly good ranch hand.”
“I know what I’m doing.” Colt turned around and looked at her. She was covered with dust, but she didn’t seem to mind. She’d bundled her hair into a barrette at her nape and tucked her thumbs inside the waistband of her jeans. It drew them tight around her belly. Nice.
“You think you can calm him down, go ahead. Just don’t take any chances.”
“I figure I can help him some,” he told her. She didn’t say anything, so he climbed up on the fence and studied the roan. The horse was blowing air in long huffs and eyeing Colt with trepidation, his ears laid back along his neck. His sleek coat gleamed in the sun.
“What’s his name?”
“Sidewinder. Like the rattlesnake.”
Colt wasn’t sentimental about animals. He wasn’t sentimental about anything anymore. But Sidewinder was an animal caught in a prison, and Colt identified with that. Worse, the animal had no one to help him get out. And a horse only knew to run when threatened. A horse didn’t fight. Block his flight, and you terrified the animal. The horse was beside himself with wanting to be free.
Trouble was, this horse would never be free. He was expected to work. If someone didn’t show him how to work, he’d soon be a dead horse. Nothing free in being dead.
Colt’s shirt was sweaty and stuck to his skin; he stripped it off in one swift motion and flung it over the fence. He alit from the fence, dropping into the corral. Bethany moved closer, but he didn’t look at her. The only power that would hold Sidewinder was the strength of his gaze, and this wasn’t the time to waste it.
The horse rolled his eyes, shook his proud head and took off at a trot, but that was what Colt expected. He strode to the center of the enclosure and kept his body turned fully toward Sidewinder, maintaining eye contact. What has someone done to you? he said silently. He’d never known if horses knew what people were thinking, and he wasn’t sure it mattered if they did. He didn’t need any special ESP with Sidewinder because his body language would do the job. It had never failed yet.
Sidewinder took off at a gallop, and Colt let him run off some steam, facing him all the while, finally allowing himself to break eye contact. Soon he noticed that Sidewinder kept the ear on Colt’s side still, and Colt knew that the horse was trying to understand the situation. In Sidewinder’s world, Colt was a new person presenting a new scent and a new attitude; Sidewinder was intelligent and wanted to know what was going on.
The horse made several more revolutions of the corral. He was amazingly beautiful as he ran, a magnificent horse. Bethany looked on doubtfully from the other side of the fence. Colt couldn’t blame her for being skeptical.
It took a while, but Colt finally recognized the signs. Sidewinder licked his lips and pretended to chew. The horse was ready to calm down.
“Maybe you’d better come out of there,” Bethany said behind him. “He’s looking agitated.”
She’d misread the signs. Lots of people did. Bethany clearly thought that Sidewinder was gathering himself for an attack. Well, her thinking was not unusual.
“He’s fine, just fine,” he said. To his satisfaction, Sidewinder dropped his head and kept trotting. This was a signal.
Colt now broke eye contact and changed his body position. Sidewinder stopped running. The roan stood, his flanks heaving, watching. Colt didn’t move.
“Colt—” Bethany said urgently.
Colt shook his head slightly and she knew enough to keep quiet. The horse took a tentative step forward, then another. He stopped again. Colt waited.
Then Sidewinder, the horse that had almost trampled Bethany Burke less than a half hour ago, walked slowly to him and stood submissively at his side.
Colt spoke to him then. “Good boy,” he said as he reached out and stroked Sidewinder’s nose. The horse remained alert, but allowing himself to be stroked was an admission of trust. Colt kept stroking, moving his hand downward to rub the horse’s neck. This horse was no problem horse. He just hadn’t been handled right.
“Never have I seen anything like that. It’s incredible,” Bethany said from her perch on the fence. She sounded awestruck.
“Tomorrow we’ll try a saddle,” Colt said. He patted Sidewinder’s neck and made a slow turn. The horse followed him when he headed for the gate.
Bethany met him on the other side and waited while he closed and latched it. “Lordy, Colt, what is it you do?” she said.
Colt was feeling pretty good about what he’d accomplished. “Secret,” he said. He didn’t let on how psyched he was.
“Will you really try a saddle tomorrow?”
He peeled his shirt off the top rail of the fence. It had dried stiff, and he didn’t want to put it on so he crumpled it into a ball.
“And maybe more.” Until those final moments, he hadn’t realized how exhilarating it was to be doing what he did best. He’d been aware of Bethany Burke. He’d wanted to impress her. But that wasn’t the main thing.
Bethany studied him, and he wondered if she was assessing more than his resolve. Her gaze dropped to his bare chest, a movement that looked involuntary. Or was he reading too much into this? Maybe he’d better stick to reading horses.
“Well, cowboy, that was some show. I’d like you to tell me how you do it. I mean it.”
“I can show you much better than I can tell you,” he said. “Meet me here tomorrow afternoon at the same time.”
“Is it okay if Frisco watches?”
“How about just you?” So far Frisco had been all hiss and vinegar, and the idea of the old guy’s spectating held no appeal. Colt was determined to cement his place here before setting himself up for criticism. A job was a job, and he intended to keep this one. It was far enough away from Oklahoma, for one thing, and there was plenty to do and no competition. The Banner-B suited him.
“All right, then, just me.” Bethany smiled at him.
Smiles from beautiful women had been few and far between in the last few years, and it was all Colt could do not to turn his considerable charm on her.
Bad idea. He’d save it for the horse.
“I’ll be out planting posts tomorrow early,” he said. He deliberately tacked a gruff edge to his words.
“Fine.”
With a curt nod, he left her. Next, supper with the Neilsons. Maybe he could soften up the old coot by being friendly with the kid. Eddie liked him, he could tell.
COUNTRY MUSIC WAS PLAYING on the radio, something whiny and sad that made Bethany feel mopey just listening to it. She rattled around in the kitchen, cobbling a meal together from leftovers because she didn’t feel like cooking. To make things even worse, she was nursing a bruised shoulder, an unpleasant souvenir of her dust-up with Sidewinder.
While her food warmed in the microwave, she wondered what was going on around the Neilsons’ supper table. Frisco was probably whittling invisible notches in that chip on his shoulder, and Dita would be making cheerful table conversation. Eddie—well, Eddie was Eddie.
What would Colt McClure add to the mix? He wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality. And anyway, why did she care?
Well, she did care. She desperately wanted the new hand to work out. Not to prove Frisco wrong, but to make life easier at the Banner-B for all of them. After she’d left the corral that afternoon, she’d ridden out to the new fence line and checked on the work Colt had done. He’d dug more fencepost holes than she’d imagined one man could do in a single day. And what he’d accomplished with Sidewinder was nothing less than phenomenal.
Bethany was glad that the old system of breaking a horse’s willpower and creating subservience through fear had fallen into disrepute. She hated pain and cruelty of any kind. These days, the trend in horse training was to use more humane methods than trainers had employed in the past.
She and her own horse, Dancer, worked as a team, and next to Frisco, Bethany considered Dancer her best friend on the ranch. Consequently when Sidewinder first arrived in trade from Mott Findley for some extra bales of hay that she’d grown last year, when the horse had turned out for some reason to be skittish and afraid, she’d thought that teaching him was a mere matter of showing him love and thereby developing trust. So far, all her high-minded theory had achieved for her was a near-death experience courtesy of a terrified horse that was worth less than spit.
But Colt McClure knew something she didn’t, something that would save Sidewinder. He had a rare gift. And Bethany was eager to learn his secret.
She’d been so preoccupied with all she’d had to do today that she’d clean forgotten that Colt needed sheets for his bed. After supper, she loaded the dishwasher and then rummaged in the linen closet until she found what she was looking for. Colt would probably still be eating with Frisco and his family, so she’d drop the sheets off and afterward take a long walk the way she often did late in the evening.
That rascal Jesse roused himself from his spot alongside her old slat-bottomed porch rocker and followed her as she headed toward the barn, her arms full of neatly folded sheets and an extra pillow.
“Dumb dog,” she said to him, nice as pie even though she didn’t feel it. “Trying to ruin my sunflowers. Seems like after all I’ve done for you, you could show respect for the things I love. How am I ever going to get flowers started around the house? What am I going to do with you, Jesse James?”
Jesse, outlaw that he was, wagged his tail enthusiastically and lifted his leg on the truck tire.
Bethany, thoroughly put out, kept walking. “Like I said, Jesse, you’re a dumb dog. But maybe not so dumb. You’ve got Frisco on your side at least.” When he saw that Bethany was going nowhere more interesting than the barn, Jesse wandered away toward the bunkhouse, which was so decrepit and rundown that it wasn’t in use anymore.
The barn was big and more ramshackle than Bethany would have liked, but repairing either it or the bunkhouse was out of the question as long as she continued to have serious cash flow problems. Still, the barn was comforting in its familiarity. As she wrinkled her nose against the dust motes swimming in the last rays of the dying sun, Colt’s horse stuck his head over the door to his stall and pricked his ears. He was a beautiful black quarter horse, sleek and well-kept.
Her own horse, Dancer, nickered and blew in recognition at the sight of her, but her arms were full and Bethany couldn’t get to the carrot she’d stashed in her back pocket. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised. Dancer snorted and bumped her nose against the gate to her stall.
All was quiet overhead in Colt’s apartment. Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden steps as she made her way upstairs. The door hung wide-open, which didn’t surprise her much. Anybody would want to get a cross-draft going in such airless quarters.
“Colt?” she called.
No answer. Inside the tiny room, an oscillating fan positioned on a table blew air across the top of a chipped enamel pan heaped with ice cubes. A primitive air conditioner? It made sense, but not when Colt wasn’t there. And where’d he get that much ice? The apartment refrigerator was the small square kind college kids used in their dorms, and it made minuscule ice cubes.
She stepped into the room, thinking to leave the sheets on the bed. But before she could set them down, she saw a photograph resting on the mattress. It was tattered around the edges, as if someone had repeatedly taken it out of a wallet for a closer look.
The picture was one of those glamour photos. It was of a young woman with dark hair teased into what Bethany thought of as Mall Bangs and deep soulful eyes made comical by too much eye makeup. Despite the hair, eyes and the studded leather jacket with the collar turned up, there was something arresting about the girl’s expression. She looked as if under all that bravado she was hiding an underlying sorrow. Then again, it might be the photographer’s lighting. Whatever it was, she was very pretty.
Bethany was so absorbed in the photograph that she didn’t hear Colt until he entered the room. She wheeled around, startled. And then she saw him.
Her new ranch hand was buck naked and dripping from the shower. His hair was slicked back, darker wet than it was dry, and the water had curled the hair on his chest into tight little burrs. He looked as startled as she felt—thank goodness, certain strategic body parts were modestly hidden by the towel he held in front of him.
She dropped the sheets. Also the pillow. She was totally unprepared for the wave of lust and helplessness that washed over her at the sight of him. Colt McClure was magnificently built, from the solid muscles of his arms and chest to the hard rippling ridges of his abdomen. And below that—she looked away, refusing to speculate on what was behind the towel.
Their gazes caught and held. Bethany could not pull her eyes away. Colt, completely unabashed, merely quirked his eyebrows and said, “Hand me the jeans on that hook behind the door, would you?”
The spell broken, Bethany groped behind her, felt cloth and yanked blue denim. She tossed the jeans to him and bent over to gather up the sheets. When she straightened, he’d wrapped the towel around his waist.
“I—um—well, I brought the sheets,” she said, swallowing hard.
Colt cleared his throat. “I think you better excuse me for a few seconds,” he said, and he disappeared into the bathroom.
She wanted to run, but that would betray her embarrassment. She told herself that the thing to do was act as if nothing unusual had happened. This was a ranch. She was accustomed to stallions mounting mares, to bulls servicing cows, to misguided but amorous female dogs seeking out Jesse James.
But she wasn’t used to naked men.
When Colt emerged from the bathroom, she was nonchalantly shaking dust off the previously clean sheets and pillow.
“These got a little messed up,” she said, wondering if her cheeks were flushed. They certainly felt that way, and the air blowing across the ice cubes in the pan didn’t help much.
Colt wore only jeans, and his hair was still wet. It was wavy, something she hadn’t noticed when it was dry.
He reached for the sheet she was folding, and the fragrance of fabric softener and dried lavender wafted up from the soft percale. The scent brought back memories so sweet that they pierced her to the heart and left her aching inside. Justin had always liked the way she folded dried lavender sprigs from her little garden into the sheets, and they had spent many, many nights making love on those sheets in their double bed beneath the eaves of the bedroom they’d shared in the ranch house, the same room where his father had been born.
She surrendered the sheet. “I’d better be going,” she said as she watched Colt’s big hands smooth wrinkles out of the fabric. Thankfully she heard footsteps on the stairs and backed toward the door. She knew it wasn’t Frisco because the tread was too even to fit his unsteady gait, and for a moment, Bethany thought it might be Dita. But it was only Eddie, toting a bucketful of ice cubes.
“Mom sent these,” he said, holding out the bucket.
Colt grinned at him, man-to-man friendly. “Much obliged, Eddie. Set the bucket by the table.”
“Anytime you want ice or company, Mom says hang your red bandanna out the window.” Eddie brushed fine pale hair out of his eyes and turned to Bethany. “Hi, Bethany. Dancer wants a carrot and I don’t have one.”
Bethany was flooded with relief. Eddie had provided a rescue of sorts. She pulled the carrot out of her back pocket. “You’re in luck,” she said, dangling it in front of him.
Eddie grabbed at it, eyes asparkle. “Can I give it to her?” He was like a child, all enthusiasm. It was one of the things Bethany loved about him.
“Of course you can.”
She turned to say goodbye to Colt, but he had scooped the photograph up from the bed and was sliding it into his wallet. He looked preoccupied, thoughtful.
Bethany didn’t speak after all, just high-footed it out of there. Colt called out a goodbye, but not until she and Eddie were most of the way down the stairs.
AFTER THEY’D FED DANCER half of the carrot and given the other half to Colt’s horse as a kind of welcoming present, Eddie started back toward the Neilsons’ and Bethany headed for the stand of tall cottonwoods beside the creek. There she sank down on the mossy bench Justin had built for her during her first year at the Banner-B.
Sometimes she’d had to get away from the heat and dust and cattle and the rowdy hands they’d employed in those days, and this was where she’d sought refuge. Here, where the Little Moony Creek meandered slowly around slippery boulders and purled over shiny rocks; here where she could pull off her boots, spraddle her legs in unladylike fashion and dabble bare feet in the cool, refreshing water. In the spring, cottony seeds drifted down from the trees and caught in her hair, and in the summer, shiny triangular leaves cast welcome shadows across her upturned face. At night, myriad stars peeped through the lattice of foliage above, and now they were winking at her against the backdrop of a velvety blue sky. Winking seductively, it seemed to her tonight.
“Well, now what?” she said out loud. Frisco would have called it dingbat behavior, but sometimes Bethany talked to Justin in this special place. It kept her from getting too broody, too introspective. And it was a way to think over the pros and cons of a thing, like the time early on when she’d gotten it into her head to sell the ranch to Mott. She’d been disabused of that notion when Mott came to call and suggested that he could warm her on cold nights, which was when she had worked herself into such a hot temper that she’d thrown him out.
She was much too young for all the responsibility the inheritance of this ranch had placed on her, and she was the first one to admit it, though she excelled at putting up a brave front. After Justin died, she hadn’t thought she could go on without him. She’d had to grow tough and hard in order to cope. Sometimes she got tired of being tough and hard, she longed to be soft and sweet the way she used to be. That sweetness was what Justin had loved about her, and she wondered if he’d still love her now that she was a different person. But then, love didn’t die, Justin had always said. He had been positive of that, and because Bethany was the one he’d loved, she’d been sure of it, too. That undying love was why she liked to think that maybe Justin heard her out when she had a problem.
The problem was Colt McClure. Maybe she should have known better than to resort to the mail-order method of hiring, but what was she to do? Mott Findley was telling everyone that she couldn’t pay her bills. No hand worth his salt dared to take the chance of not being paid for services rendered at the Banner-B when there was plenty of work available on nearby ranches. It further complicated matters that she was a woman and Frisco was a grouch.
