A Cowboy's Wish Upon A Star

But he was impatient, walking past her to glare at the floor behind her. “What did you cut yourself on?”

She turned around to see little round, red smears where she’d stopped to greet each horse. “It must have been a rock outside. I stepped on a couple of rocks pretty hard.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

He glanced at her and had the grace to look the tiniest bit embarrassed. “Good that it wasn’t anything sharp in the barn. If it had been a nail or something that had cut you, then it could cut a horse, too.”

“Thanks for your concern.” She said it with a smile and a little shake of her chandelier earrings. “Nice to know the horses are more valuable than I am.”

“Like I said earlier, it’s my job to take care of every beast on this ranch. You’re not a beast. You should know to wear shoes.”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that. She couldn’t exactly insist she was a valuable beast that needed taken care of, and she certainly wasn’t going to admit she’d run outside in a panic. Actors who panicked didn’t get hired.

“Come on. I’ll get you something for the bleeding.”

He walked away. Just turned his back on her and walked away. Again.

After a moment, she followed, but she hadn’t taken two steps when he told her to stop. “Don’t keep bleeding on the floor.”

“What do you want me to do?” She put both hands on her hips and faced him squarely. Who cared if it didn’t show off her figure? She’d lost this audition already.

“Can’t you hop on one foot?”

This had to be a test, another trick to see if she was a dumb blonde. But Travis turned into a side room that was the size of another stall, one fitted out with a deep utility sink and kitchen-style cabinets.

He wasn’t watching her to see what she’d do, so maybe it wasn’t a joke. After a moment of indecision, she started hopping on her good foot. The cut one hurt, anyway, and it was only a few hops to reach the sink.

Travis opened one of the cabinets. It looked like a pharmacy inside, stocked with extra-large pill bottles. He got out a box of bandages, the adhesive kind that came in individual paper wrappers. The kind her mother had put on her scrapes and cuts when she was little.

I am not going to cry in front of this man. Not ever again.

He tapped the counter by the sink. “Hop up. Wash your foot off in the sink.”

“Why don’t you come here and give me a little boost?”

He stilled, with good reason. She’d said it with a purr, an unmistakably sexual invitation for him to put his hands on her.

She hadn’t meant to. It had just popped out that way, her way to distance herself from the nostalgia. Maybe a way to gain some control over him. He was giving her commands, but she could get him to obey a sexual command of her own if she really turned on the charm.

Whatever had made her say that, she had to brave it out now. Sultry was better than sad. Anything was better than sad.

She tossed her hair back, her earrings jingling like a belly dancer’s costume. She turned so that she was slightly sideways to him, her bustline a curvy contrast to her flat stomach.

“The counter’s too high for me. Give me a hand...or two.”

Come and touch me. Her invitation sounded welcoming. She realized it was. He was nothing like the sleek actors or the crazy DJs she’d known, but apparently, rugged outdoorsman appealed to her in a big way. You’ve got a big green light here, Mr. Cowboy.

“Too high for you,” he repeated, without a flicker of sexual awareness in his voice. Instead, he sounded impatient as he cut through her helpless-damsel act. “I already watched you hop up on Mrs. MacDowell’s counter tonight.”

Of course the counter height had been a flimsy excuse; it had been an invitation. She refused to blush at having it rejected. Instead, she backed up to the counter and braced her hands behind herself, letting her crop top ride high. With the kind of slow control that would have made her personal yoga instructor beam with approval, she used biceps and triceps and abs, and lifted herself slowly onto the counter with a smooth flex of her toned body. People would pay money to see a certain junior officer do that in a faraway galaxy.

Travis Chalmers made a lousy audience. He only turned on the water and handed her a bar of soap.

She worked the bar into a lather as she pouted. Even Deezee wouldn’t have passed up the chance to touch her. Actually, that was all Deezee had ever wanted to do: touch her. If it wasn’t going to end in sex, he wasn’t into it. She’d texted him ten times more often than he’d texted her between dates. His idea of a date had meant they’d go somewhere to party in the public eye or drink among VIPs for a couple of hours before they went to bed together. There’d been no hanging out for the sake of spending time together.

Sophia held her foot still as the water rinsed off the suds. She’d mistaken sex for friendship, hadn’t she?

“It’s not a deep cut. You should heal pretty quickly.” Travis dabbed the sole of her foot dry with a wad of clean paper towels, which he then handed to her. Before she could ask what she was supposed to do with damp paper towels, he’d torn the paper wrapper off a bandage and placed it over the cut. He pressed the adhesive firmly into her skin with his thumb. There was nothing sexual in his touch, but it wasn’t unkind. It was almost...paternal.

“Do you have kids?” she asked.

For once, he paused at something she’d said. “No.”

You ought to. There was something about his unruffled, unhurried manner...

Dear God, she wasn’t going to start missing her father, too. She couldn’t think about parents and sister any longer. Not tonight.

She snatched her foot away and jumped lightly off the counter, landing on the foot that hadn’t been cut. She held up the wad of damp towels. “Where’s the trash?”

“You need those paper towels to wipe up the blood on your way out. I’ll get you something to wear on your feet.”

On her way out. She was dismissed, and she had to go back to the empty house in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t want Travis to fetch her boots; she wanted him to carry her. He was a man who rode horseback all day. A cowboy who stood tall, with broad shoulders and strong hands. He could carry her weight, and God knew Sophia was tired of carrying everything herself.

She wanted his arms around her.

But she’d failed this audition. He wasn’t interested in her when she was either bossy or cute. He wasn’t fazed by her sultry tone, and he didn’t care about her hard-earned, perfect body. He wasn’t impressed with her in any way.

She gingerly stepped into the center aisle to see where he’d gone. Across from the medical room was another stall-sized space where it seemed saddles got parked on wooden sawhorses. The next room was enclosed with proper walls and a door, with a big glass window in the wall that looked into the rest of the barn. She could see a desk and bookcase and all the usual stuff for an office inside. She felt so dumb; she hadn’t known barns had offices and medical clinics inside.

Travis came in from the door at the far end of the aisle from the door she’d used. He dropped a pair of utilitarian rubber rain boots at her feet. “These will get you back to the house. Return them tomorrow, before sundown.”

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