Marriage at the Cowboy's Command

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“Breathe, Daniel. Don’t forget to breathe,” Luke whispered.

Then horse, boy and man were flying, airborne, united, and Luke’s own soul rushed after them. He hadn’t felt this alive in years.

What if the kid was his son?

No sooner had the trio melted into the haze of the horizon than a knot of longing formed in Luke’s throat. Should he have let Daniel back on the beast so soon? The boy had said he was fine, and he was with Manuel. But was the boy okay? What if he had a concussion?

Acute parental anxiety was new to him and made him feel foolish. The kid probably wasn’t even his. But whether he was or he wasn’t, Luke’s concern caused beads of sweat to break out on his brow.

Had Caitlyn wanted him gone so he wouldn’t find out about Daniel? Was that why she’d been afraid? If so, she was far more deceptive than he’d believed.

Luke wanted answers, and he wanted them now. Grabbing his cell, he punched in Hassan’s number. It was probably midnight Hassan’s time, but Luke didn’t give a damn.

As always, Hassan’s voice was warm with paternal interest in a way that Luke’s biological father’s never had been.

“Raffi. You had a safe journey? No problems?”

“Only one. I just met Daniel.”

There was a long silence before Hassan finally spoke. “I saw him at Keeneland. He looked so much like you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was right? He is yours, then?”

Three

As soon as his limo had returned to Caitlyn’s ranch and braked in front of the house, Luke flung open his door. He felt torn by the conflicting emotions raging inside him. He wished he’d never come to Texas; he was glad he’d come. He wished Hassan had leveled with him from the beginning; he was glad he’d seen the boy with his own eyes. He was furious at Caitlyn and yet filled with tenderness for her bravely defiant little son. He was in such an irrational state, he knew she was the last person he needed to talk to, but he wanted her to know that if the kid was theirs, he wouldn’t walk away from her or Daniel.

“The boy looked so much like you,” Hassan had said over the phone. “I couldn’t forget about him and do nothing. That is why I helped her. That is why I sent you and nobody else. If you are family, so are they.”

“You could have told me.”

“I was so struck by him when I saw him, I knew you would be, too. I know what it is … to nearly lose a son. I wanted you to see him for yourself. To be struck by him as I was.”

Oh, Luke felt struck, all right.

“There are some things a man must see and feel for himself, decide for himself,” Hassan had said.

Fisting his hands, Luke stormed toward the round pen and frowned when he found Lisa instead of Caitlyn. The young woman leaned against a railing, watching and listening to the commotion in her gooseneck trailer.

“Where’s Caitlyn?” he demanded.

“Ah, back so soon.” Lisa batted her long eyelashes boldly as she fingered the falls at the end of her quirt.

“Caitlyn better not be in that trailer with your horse!”

Her brows snapped together. Sucking in a miffed breath, she quit fiddling with her quirt. “Why not? She knows what she’s doing. Why, she’s almost got Ramblin’ Man loaded. And in record time. He can be a brute, that one.”

Luke’s fury and impatience vanished. The thought of Caitlyn in that tiny trailer with a huge, unpredictable stallion that had to weigh well over a thousand pounds made his gut clench. Was she suicidal? He wanted to scream at her to get the hell out of there, but of course he couldn’t do that without endangering her even more. So, instead, he moved soundlessly around the pen, taking a circuitous route so as not to spook the stallion. He’d wait behind the trailer until she’d safely loaded the horse.

When he reached his destination and she still hadn’t come out, his heart began to thud more forcefully. Then he heard her soothing voice, along with the nervous clatter of Ramblin’ Man’s hooves.

Why couldn’t the beast just load?

“No bees today,” she was saying in that feather-soft purr. “Nothing for a big boy like you to be scared of. Come on, baby, just one more step and you can go home. Don’t you want to go home?”

And then Luke’s cell phone rang.

Before Luke could shut it off, the horse had exploded, his head banging into the roof, which caused him to react even more wildly. Hooves banged. Caitlyn screamed. Ramblin’ Man, his eyes round, burst from the trailer faster than a rocket off a launchpad, dragging Caitlyn behind him by a slender foot. Somehow she’d gotten tangled in the longe line.

Easy to do in such tight, dimly lit quarters, he thought grimly.

With a cry of sheer terror, Lisa leaped out of the round pen so she could watch the drama from the other side of the railing without risking her own neck.

It had been a while since Luke had dealt directly with horses, but he remembered that when a fifteen-hundred-pound horse wanted to take one step, five men against his chest couldn’t stop him. Ramblin’ Man wanted out of the pen, and if somebody didn’t get him under control, he’d trample Caitlyn or drag her to death first.