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The steam from his coffee softened his rough-carved features and made his gray eyes go misty. For one heart-stopping moment during dinner tonight, she lost herself to that gaze. Chase Wells did have the most fascinating way of looking at her over a coffee cup, of following her every move with his eyes. Eyes that crinkled at the corners, and eased up into companionable crescents when he was relaxed. It was an intimacy unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
Not even in the most romantic setting, nor over the most expensive bottle of wine.
She vaguely wondered if that feeling was…desire. If so, she’d have to put a stop to it. She couldn’t afford to become emotionally attached. Not now. Not when she was this close to getting what she wanted.
She heard the back door slam and looked over her shoulder. Chase’s face was contorted with pain, and he had a handkerchief wadded against the back of his hand. Mallory dropped the coffee cup back into the dishwater and grabbed a tea towel.
“What did you do?” she asked, moving toward him.
Chase looked up, apparently surprised she was still in the kitchen. “Oh, I…um—” he grimaced, peeling the bloody handkerchief away from his hand “—got my hand caught in one of the stall doors. Stupid of me.”
Mallory blinked.
Again?
Chase Wells may have been one of the most ruggedly handsome men she’d ever met, but he was also one of the clumsiest. Yesterday, he tripped over a feed bucket and twisted his ankle. The day before he got tangled in a loose cinch strap and caught his shoulder on the tack-room door.
His house was a virtual potpourri of medical supplies. She was constantly moving gauze bandages, Ace bandages, ice packs, heating pads, iodine and antiseptics out of the way.
“Let me see,” she said, peering down at the damage. “You did this in a door?” she asked skeptically.
“Oh…uh…one of the horses got a little feisty, is all. We both went for the door at the same time.”
“Looks like the horse won,” she said dryly, her fingers carefully circling thick bones in his wrist as she led him over to the double sink. “We better wash it off and get some antiseptic,” she advised, automatically turning on the faucet and putting his hand beneath the running water. The warmth of his flesh and the icy-cold rush of water aroused a strange sensation in her middle.
“I’m fine. It’s just a little old scrape,” he groused, resisting her ministrations.
She looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“I know. But—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t need a nursemaid,” he ground out.
Mallory paused and imperceptibly pulled back. “Oh, really?” He winced as she went right ahead and examined his four scraped knuckles and the deep, ragged scratches. Without offering one nuance of sympathy, she reached for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured a generous amount over his wounds. “Then I promise not to,” she said, leaving him to drip dry in the sink as she went to find the gauze bandages.
When she returned, he was staring thoughtfully at the tepid dishwater in the other side of the sink. “You weren’t washing dishes, were you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” She patted his hand dry with the hand towel before slathering ointment on his scrapes. “I consider it a fair exchange for dinner.”
“Right. I’ll bet you’ve never had meat loaf in your whole life.”
Her lips twitched, and she tried not to laugh. She gently wound a length of gauze over his knuckles, but she could feel his eyes on her and it was disconcerting. “No,” she said finally, “I was raised on escargot, lobster with drawn butter and roast duck with orange sauce.”
“Figures.”
Sighing, she rolled her eyes, then tied off the bandage and tossed the gauze on the counter. “You don’t like me very much, do you.”
“Not true. I think you’re the nicest little millionaire—or is that millionairess?—I’ve ever met.”
She looked at him. “Chase,” she said finally, her hand fluttering to his arm, “is it really the money? Does it make you uncomfortable?”
Chase’s mouth went dry. He fumbled with a dozen different answers. None of them would do. The fact was Mallory had been nothing but pleasant. She laughed and the world smiled. She touched him and his heart yammered in his chest.
He looked down at the hand across his forearm.
He couldn’t tell her that was how she made him feel. This constant yammering, whenever she was near, whenever he heard her voice or her laugh.
“I suppose I owe you an apology. Maybe I’m a little inexperienced handling someone of your caliber.”
Mallory’s eyes widened in mock horror. “Handling my…caliber? That does have something to do with guns, doesn’t it? I’m not that explosive, am I?”
Chase’s mouth curled. “Honey, you are one pistol packin’ mama.”
“What?”
“An expression,” he said quickly. “An American expression. For someone who knows how to get what she wants. A little spitfire, someone unpredictable and maybe a little tough.”
“You think I’m…tough…like meat?”
His eyes moved over her lips, and he wondered, insanely, what it would be like to nibble the softness he saw there. “No, not a piece of meat, not at all. All I see is…nice,” he revised. “Tough, as in…determined. Yes, determined, I’ll give you that.”
“Mmm. You make that ‘pistol packin’ mama’ thing sound…desirable.”
Desirable. Not a word choice he needed to hear. Chase hesitated, painfully aware they’d moved imperceptibly closer to each other. His hip was against the countertop; hers was, too. Their bodies seemed to move with a will of their own, leaning, straining nearer. His breathing was shallow, his nerve endings tingled with anticipation.
It would only take one move.
One.
He vaguely wondered if, in Narwhal, they beheaded red-blooded American men for compromising unmarried women?
It just might be worth it.
Mallory drew a deep, cleansing breath, and Chase noticed it was just enough to make her breasts shudder beneath her silky white top.
So. The heady game they were playing was getting to her, too.
“It is desirable,” he said huskily. “It’s also sexy as hell.”
Her eyes widened, as if she was startled and taken completely off guard by the suggestive comment.
“I have to finish the coffee cups,” she said abruptly, turning back to the sink and plunging her hands into the dishwater. “Then I’ll take a walk before it gets dark and get a little fresh air. Will you join me?”
Chase stared at her profile. The upturned nose, the graceful curve of her jaw. No. Absolutely not. Being in the dark, with a little moonlight and few freckles of stars in a blue-black sky, with a woman like Mallory—a woman who made his hands itch and his blood pound—was an invitation to trouble. “Nah,” he said, brushing aside the invitation. “Go ahead. I’ve got some reading to catch up on.”
Mallory tossed the coffee cups in the dish drainer and pulled the plug on the sink. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
A hint of disappointment clouded her features.
She probably wasn’t used to being rejected, he thought irritably as he reached for last week’s stock market analysis. Either that or she liked to call the shots on everything, even a tumble through the sheets.
Yet, when she strolled out the back door and into the gathering dusk, it was he who experienced the greatest regret.
Chase couldn’t concentrate; nothing he’d read made any sense. Mallory was probably fine, but he shouldn’t have let her go out by herself. He glanced at the clock. She’d been gone almost an hour, and it was dark. Maybe she’d started talking to one of the hands; they followed her like lapdogs whenever they had the chance. Gabe, a fresh-faced twenty-year-old, loved to brag to her about his bull-riding exploits. Tony, with a couple of drops of Spanish blood running through his veins, had started wearing clean shirts and peppering his sentences with “señorita” every time she was near—as if he’d been raised across the border instead of in Boise.
Tossing the paperwork on the table, he stretched his legs, crossing one booted foot over the other. He may as well admit it, the woman was wreaking havoc with his senses and with his life. When she went home, he imagined he and his ranch hands would feel as if someone had taken the plug out of the fourteen-karat sunshine she seemed to spread.
She sure knew her horses, he’d give her that. She may have claimed she didn’t want blue-ribbon horseflesh, but all her petty criticisms said otherwise. He grinned, remembering her lame excuse for not wanting Pritchett, the last mare he’d offered her.
Her ears were just a little “too pointy.” Yep. Pointy ears would get you every time.
Chase flexed his hand and studied the bandage, remembering the way Mallory’s fingers brushed against the sensitive spot inside his wrist as she examined his palm. His flesh still tingled, nearly blotting out all the pain.
Huh. The way Peggy Sue was having at him, she made him look like a beat-up cowpoke who didn’t have one lick of horse sense. Yesterday she’d stomped on his instep, the day before she’d charged him, catching his shoulder against the wall. The duplicitous little vixen had astounding strength, even though she was so sickly, most days she could barely hold her head up. It was time to make a decision about what to do with her—and the sooner the better. She was beginning to be a risk, even a liability. His reasons for keeping her were beginning to dwindle and fade.
He flexed his hand again and grimaced. He didn’t know why he was spending so much of his time thinking about Mallory, because it was Peggy Sue who was leaving her mark on him.
Painfully he hauled himself out of the chair and dragged his weary body over to the door. Snagging his hat from the peg, he pulled it low over his eyes. “Time to find the little woman,” he muttered.
The moment he stepped out on the back porch and saw that the sliding door to the east barn had been pushed open, a feeling of dread washed over him. The overhead light inside the barn was on. He immediately forgot his pain, and his boot heels barely hit the stair treads as he picked up the pace.
The moment he slipped inside the barn he knew. He could hear Mallory’s soft, crooning voice. He heard Peggy Sue whicker in answer. His heart did a double-time dance in his chest, and his blood went cold.
If anything happened to her…
The door to Peggy Sue’s stall was open. Chase’s knees went weak.
Barely breathing, he inched down the alleyway, until he was even with her stall.
Peggy Sue immediately tossed her magnificent white head, going wild-eyed, as her nose curled to expose bared teeth. The filly, even though she was on the small side, carried herself with a regal, haughty stature. Her alabaster coat faded into steel gray dappling over her rump. Her long mane and tail, also white, was tangled and dirty.
“Whoa, baby, what’s the matter?” Mallory murmured. With her back to Chase, she stood at Peggy Sue’s withers, and ran a hand down her neck. In her opposite hand she held a currycomb.
“Mallory,” Chase said quietly, “get out of that stall now.”
Mallory whirled, surprised by his entrance. “I found her, Chase,” she said breathlessly, her face animated. “The one I want. This is it! This is the horse I’ve been looking for!”
Behind her, Peggy Sue startled, her front feet coming a foot off the ground.
“Mallory, I said get out of that stall. Now.”
Mallory lost her balance and stumbled as Peggy Sue bumped her shoulders, her back. But Mallory, unfazed, squared off, planting her feet. “She’s wonderful, she’s spirited, she’s—”
“She’s going to kill you. Now, get out.”
Mallory’s eyes flashed and she straightened. “Don’t be silly,” she laughed. “I don’t care what this horse costs. I have to have her. She’s all I’ve ever imagined—and more.”
Chase’s muscles tensed. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Mallory.”
“Oh, but I do,” she said, leaning back and affectionately sinking her shoulder blades against Peggy Sue’s neck. Chase’s eyes briefly shuttered closed, willing the animal not to swing around and take a sizable bite out of her. “This horse is the thing legends are made of,” she said, her voiced filled with awe. “She’s a descendant of European stock. Her neck. Her head. Her coloring.”
“That horse,” Chase warned, his voice low, the cadence carefully measured, “is the meanest, orneriest she-devil this side of the Mississippi. She’s got mixed blood in her. Mustang and Morgan. And she’s not for sale. She’s sick and mean and crazy. Now, either you get out of that stall, or I’m taking you out.”
Mallory’s face fell. “Chase, she’s sick…I can see that…but this animal’s spirit…”
“Mallory, I’m warning you.”
She stared at him, then she tried a different tack. “Chase, she’ll have the best vets! The best of everything. I’ll see to it. Hey, girl, when I get you home…” She playfully slapped Peggy Sue on the shoulder.
Peggy Sue jumped, a dangerous whicker rumbling through her gaunt white sides.
“Don’t,” Chase spat, clenching his hands. “You’re going to spook her, and then there’ll be hell to pay.” He stepped one foot inside the stall.
Peggy Sue whirled her great head in his direction, as if daring him. The motion knocked Mallory off her planted feet, and the currycomb sailed across the stall.
“Mallory, for your own safety and well-being—”
Peggy Sue laid her ears back, giving the illusion that two flat wings flanked her forelock. The knotty protrusion on her forehead was exposed, and it vaguely resembled a devil’s horn. Chase had nightmares about her goring him with it. The vet said he didn’t think the bone malformation caused her pain—yet pain was the only logical explanation for the mare’s rages, her unpredictable behavior. Ever since Skylar had died…
As if reading his mind, Peggy Sue’s eyes went hard, glassy, as she fixed her relentless gaze on him.
Chase drew a deep, cleansing breath and experimentally moved his shoulder. He had firsthand knowledge that Peggy Sue could go berserk before either of them could bat an eyelash. He prayed for the strength to whisk Mallory away. God knows, the horse could kill her.
He took another step, this time on his bad leg, the one she’d kicked the bejeebers out of a week ago.
Mallory looked up at Peggy Sue’s unforgiving countenance. The shadow of a doubt immediately crossed her brow. “All right, all right,” she said quickly. “I’ll fill her grain bucket and then…” Mallory moved to the front of the stall, leaving the space between Peggy Sue and Chase wide open.
Peggy Sue saw the moment as an opportunity. The muscles in her neck and her shoulders twitched with anticipation. She pawed the ground and lowered her head.
“Easy, girl,” Chase intoned, lifting a hand.
Pivoting on her hind legs, Peggy Sue reared four feet off the ground. Mallory gasped, but held fast, instinctively putting her hand up to catch Peggy Sue’s halter.
Peggy Sue snorted, shouldering Mallory aside, so she could have at Chase. She faced him, blind with rage, as she cornered Mallory at the back of the stall.
Chase dashed forward, concerned Mallory would fall victim to Peggy Sue’s slashing hooves. The animal was deadly. He’d have to have her put down; she wasn’t right.
He moved toward the manger, and Peggy Sue’s rump swung away from Mallory as she followed him.
“Mallory, get out of the corner,” he ordered. “Now!”
Mallory slipped around Peggy Sue, and Chase moved farther into the stall so Mallory could exit. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. I’m fine! You don’t understand,” she said behind him. “She’d never hurt me. It’s her nature, she knows I’m—”
Looking over his shoulder at Mallory, Chase never saw it coming. But he heard Peggy Sue whirl before her two rock-hard hooves caught his side and propelled him against the wall. In the recesses of his mind, he heard Mallory scream—and in one insane flash of recognition he felt inordinately grateful it was he who had taken the blow. The air whooshed out of him, collapsing his lungs into aching sacks of tissue.
It was then he knew the ultimate meaning of “being hit by a two-by-four.” The pine walls of Peggy Sue’s stall smashed against his backside; he slowly slithered down them, as if the bones had been removed from his body, and he sank onto the straw-covered floor in a mangled blob of body parts.
“Chase! Chase!”
His hearing had been rearranged; it was if the sounds were coming from deep inside his head. His eyes fastened on the strangest things—a loose nail protruding from the manger, a small split in Peggy Sue’s hoof, the dainty toe of Mallory’s boot, the curve of her jeans as they stretched over her bent knee. He lay there, wondering if he was breathing, wondering if that was what made him hurt so much.
“Chase, answer me!”
Over the scent of straw and manure and horseflesh, he smelled her sweet perfume. Wildflowers on a summer day. The overhead light circled a mane of blond hair, and he looked, dumbly, into the most angelic face he’d ever seen.
“You are so beautiful,” he mumbled thickly, tasting blood, his teeth feeling loose in his head. He heard the shrill, agonizing warning of a horse named Peggy Sue.
Mallory looked up and over her shoulder at the monstrous beast that pawed the air above them. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” she said, slipping her hands beneath his armpits and dragging him from the stall. She dumped him on the hard-packed dirt floor.
His eyes shut, he heard the gate close with a bang and the latch pin sliding into the slot. He lay there, fading in and out of consciousness.
Peggy Sue continued to fuss, her back hooves splintering the boards of her box stall. He’d have to patch it up again. My God, that was one contrary horse.
He felt hands flutter over him, touching him. Sliding down his arms, his legs. Loosening his belt, unsnapping his shirt. For a moment, Chase wondered if these were heavenly ministrations. Maybe someone was putting him back together. It didn’t matter, it was glorious and comforting. Whatever was happening kindled a tingling that surfaced through the pain. He wanted more of it. He didn’t want it to stop.
He struggled to open his eyes. Colors blurred together in a haze of pain and pleasure. Focusing on a full, sensuous mouth, he vaguely recognized lips that belonged to Mallory. For a moment that surprised him, and he wondered what had happened to Sharon, his ex-wife. She should have been yelling at him by now.
“Talk to me,” Mallory whispered, her hands stirring anxiously over his chest, his shoulders, his neck. “Tell me you’re okay. Talk to me,” she implored. “Say something. Anything.”
He opened his mouth but only coughed, pitifully strangling on a rush of air.
“I’m so sorry. I should have known.” Her voice caught as she stroked his temple, his cheek. “What can I do? Tell me.”
Chase went all sappy inside, then he said the first idiotic thing that went zinging through his muddled head. “Could you…could you…kiss it and make it better?” he mumbled.
She stared at him for a split second before swiveling a glance up at that idiotic horse, Peggy Sue, who was locked inside the box stall. For a moment it appeared indecision raged inside Mallory’s head, then her lips swooped down over his, covering them with sweet, sweet heat. Fireworks exploded behind his eyelids…and he knew he’d died and gone to cowboy heaven.
Chapter Four
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