Outlaw Hartes: The Valentine Two-Step / Cassidy Harte And The Comeback Kid

Until she didn’t have a thought left in her head except more.

She had no idea how long they stood there locked together. Time slowed to a crawl, then speeded up again in a whirling, mad rush.

She would have stayed there all night, lost in the amazing wonder of his mouth and his hands and his strength amid the rustle of hay and the low murmuring of horses—if she had her way, they would have stayed there until Christmas.

But just as she twisted her arms around the strong, tanned column of his neck to pull him even closer, her subconscious registered a sound that didn’t belong. Girls’ voices and high-pitched laughter outside the barn, then the rusty-hinged squeak of a door opening.

For one second they froze, still tightly entwined together, then Matt jerked away from her, his breathing ragged and harsh, just as both of their daughters rounded the corner of a stall bundled up like Eskimos against the cold.

“Hi.” The girls chirped the word together.

Ellie thought she must have made some sound but she was too busy trying to grab hold of her wildly scrambled thoughts to know what it might have been.

“We came out to see if you might need any help,” Lucy said.

Ellie darted a quick look at Matt and saw that he looked every bit as stunned as she felt, as if he’d just run smack up against one of those wood supports holding the roof in place.

“Is something wrong?” Dylan’s brows furrowed as she studied them closely. “Did…did something happen to the foal?”

She’d forgotten all about Mystic. What kind of a veterinarian was she to completely abandon her duties while she tangled mouths with a man like Matt Harte? She jerked her gaze to the stall and was relieved to find the pregnant mare sleeping, her sides moving slowly and steadily with each breath. In a quick visual check, Ellie could see no outward sign of her earlier distress.

She rubbed her hands down her skirt—filthy beyond redemption, she feared—and forced a smile through the clutter of emotions tumbling through her. “I think she’s going to be okay.”

“And her foal, too?” Lucy asked, features creased with worry.

“And her foal, too.”

Matt cleared his throat, looking at the girls and not at her. “Yeah, the crisis seems to be over, thanks to Doc Webster here.”

“She’s amazing, isn’t she, Dad?” Lucy said. Awe that Ellie knew perfectly well she didn’t deserve in his daughter’s voice and shining in her soft powder-gray eyes.

Finally Matt met her gaze, and Ellie would have given a week’s salary to know what he was thinking. The blasted man could hide his emotions better than a dog burying a soup bone. His features looked carved in granite, all blunt angles and rough planes.

After a few moments of that unnerving scrutiny, he turned to his daughter. “I’m beginning to think so,” he murmured.

Nonplussed by the undercurrents of meaning in his voice, Ellie couldn’t come up with an answer. She flashed him a quick look, and he returned it impassively.

“Are you sure you don’t need our help?” Dylan asked.

She wavered for a moment, suddenly desperate for the buffer they provided between her and Matt. But it was cowardly to use them that way, and she knew it.

“No,” she murmured. “I’d just like to stick around a little longer out here and make sure everything’s all right. Both of you should go on back to the house where you can stay warm.”

“Save us a piece of pie,” Matt commanded.

Lucy grinned at her father. “Which kind? I think there are about ten different pies in there.”

He appeared to give the matter serious thought, then smiled at her. “How about one of each?”

“Sure.” She snickered. “And then I’ll bring in a wheelbarrow to cart you around in since you’ll be too full to move.”

“Deal. Go on, then. It’s chilly out here.”

Dylan sent her mother another long, searching look, and Ellie pasted on what she hoped was a reassuring smile for her daughter. “It was sweet of you both to come out and check on Mystic, but what she really needs now is quiet and rest.”

“Okay.”

“But—” Lucy began, then her voice faltered as Dylan sent her a meaningful look.

“Come on. Let’s go back inside,” she said, in that funny voice she’d been using lately. She grabbed Lucy’s arm and urged her toward the door, leaving Ellie alone with Matt and the memory of the kiss that had left her feeling as if the whole world had just gone crazy.

* * *

Dylan clutched her glee to her chest only until they were outside the barn and she had carefully shut the door behind them, then she grabbed Lucy’s coat, nearly toppling her into the snow. She pulled her into a tight hug and hopped them both around in wild circles. “Did you see that? Did you see it?”

“What? Mystic? She looked fine, like nothing had happened. Your mom is really something.”

She gave Lucy a little shake. “No, silly! Didn’t you see them? My mom and your dad?”

“Well, yeah. We just talked to them two seconds ago.” Lucy looked at her as if her brain had slid out.

“Don’t you get it, Lucy? This is huge. It’s working! I know it’s working! I think he kissed her!”

“Eww.” Lucy’s mouth twisted in disgust like Dylan had just made her eat an earwig.

“Come on, Luce. Grow up. They have to get mushy! It’s part of the plan.”

Her mouth dropped open like she’d never even considered the possibility. For a moment she stared at Dylan, then snapped her jaws shut. “How do you know? What makes you think they were kissing? They seemed just like normal.”

Dylan thought of her mother’s pink cheeks and the way Lucy’s dad kept sneaking looks at Ellie when he didn’t think any of them were watching him. “I don’t know. I just think they were.”

She wanted to yell and jump up and down and twirl around in circles with her arms wide until she got too dizzy and had to stop. A funny, sparkling excitement filled her chest, and she almost couldn’t breathe around it. She was going to have a father, just like everybody else!

“I can’t believe it. Our brilliant plan is working! Your dad likes her. I told you he would. He just needed the chance to get to know her.”

She pulled Lucy toward her for another hug. “If your dad likes my mom enough to kiss her, it won’t be long before he likes her enough to marry her. We’re going to be sisters, Luce. I just know we are.”

Lucy still couldn’t seem to get over the kissing. Her face still looked all squishy and funny. “Now what?”

“I guess we keep doing what we’re doing. Trying everything we can think of to push them together. Why mess with it when everything seems to be working out just like we planned?”

* * *

As soon as the girls left the barn, Ellie wished fiercely that she could slither out behind them. Or hide away among the hay bales. Or crawl into the nearest stall and bury her head in her hands.

Anything so she wouldn’t have to face the tight-lipped man in front of her. Or so she wouldn’t have to face herself and the weakness for soft-spoken, hard-eyed cowboys that had apparently been lurking inside her all this time without her knowledge.

And why was he glowering, anyway, like the whole bloody thing was her fault? He was the one who kissed her. She was an innocent victim, just standing here minding her own business.

And lusting over him, like she’d been doing for weeks.

The thought made her cringe inwardly. So she was attracted to him. So what? Who wouldn’t be? The man was gorgeous. Big and masculine and gorgeous.

Anyway, it wasn’t like she had begged him to kiss her. No, he’d done that all on his own. One minute they had been talking, the next thing she knew he pulled her into his arms without any advance warning and covered her mouth with his.

She shivered, remembering. The man kissed like he meant it. Her knees started to feel all wobbly again, but she sternly ordered them to behave. She had better things to do then go weak-kneed over a gruff, distrustful rancher who seemed content to remain mired in a rut of tradition.

Still, he had unbent enough to let her treat Mystic, despite his obvious misgivings. He deserved points for that, at least. Of course, then he had completely distracted her with a fiery kiss that washed all thoughts of her patient out of her head.

But no more. She took a deep breath. She had a job to do here. The mare wasn’t out of the woods yet, and she needed to make sure Mystic didn’t lose her foal. To do it, she needed to focus only on the horse and not on her owner.

“I’d better take another look at Mystic to make sure the contractions have completely stopped.”

“You think she still might be in danger?”

“Like I told the girls, it’s too early to say. We’ll have to wait and see.”

With a great deal of effort, she turned her back on him and focused on the horse again. Somehow she managed to put thoughts of that kiss out of her head enough to concentrate on what she was doing.

She was working so hard at it, centering all her energy on the horse, that she didn’t hear Matt come up behind her until she turned to pick her stethoscope out of her bag and bumped into hard, immovable man.

She backed up until she butted against the horse and clutched her chest. “Oh. You startled me.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Look, Doc. I owe you an apology. I had no business doing that.”

She deliberately misconstrued his meaning. “Startling me? Don’t worry about it. Just make a little more noise next time.”

“No,” he snapped impatiently. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about before. About what happened before the girls came in.”

Heat soaked her cheekbones. “You don’t have to worry about that, either.”

He pressed doggedly forward. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was crazy. Completely crazy. I, uh, don’t know what came over me.”

Uncontrollable lust? She seriously doubted it. Still, it wasn’t very flattering for him to look as astounded at his own actions as a pup did when he found out his new best friend was a porcupine.

“You shouldn’t have,” she said as curtly, hoping he would let the whole thing drop.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she watched that muscle twitch along his jaw again, but the blasted man plodded forward stubbornly. “I apologize,” he repeated. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good. Then let’s get back to business.”

“I just don’t want what happened here to affect our working relationship.”

“We don’t have a working relationship, Matt. Not really. We’re running a school carnival together, but that will be over in a few months. Then we can go back to ignoring each other.”

“I’d like us to. Have a working relationship, I mean. And not just with the stupid Valentine’s carnival, either.” He paused. “The thing is, I was impressed by what you did for Mystic. Hell, who wouldn’t have been impressed? It was amazing.”

Okay, she could forgive him for calling their kiss crazy, she decided, as warmth rushed through her at the praise.

He rubbed a hand along Mystic’s withers, avoiding her gaze. “If you’re interested, I’d like to contract with you to treat the rest of my horses.”

She stared at him, stunned by the offer. “All of them?”

“Yeah. We generally have anywhere from twenty to thirty, depending on the time of the year. The ranch hands usually have at least a couple each in their remudas, and I usually pay for their care, too.”

She was flabbergasted and couldn’t seem to think straight. How could the man kiss her one minute, then calmly talk business the next while her hormones still lurched and bucked? It wasn’t fair. She could barely keep a thought in her head, even ten minutes later. How was she supposed to have a coherent conversation about this?

“What about Steve?” she finally asked.

“Nichols is a competent vet.” He paused, as if trying to figure out just the right words. “He’s competent, but not passionate. Not like Ben. Or like you.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “Steve does a good job with the cattle. But to be honest, I’m looking for a little more when it comes to my horses. I can’t expect somebody to spend thirty thousand and up for a competition-quality cutter that’s not completely healthy.”

He smiled suddenly, and she felt as if she’d just been thrown off one of those champion cutters of his. “I’d like to have a veterinarian on staff who’s not content with only one tool in her toolbox. What do you think?”

She blew out a breath, trying to process the twists and turns the day had taken. The chance to be the Diamond Harte’s veterinarian was an opportunity she’d never even dared dream about. She couldn’t pass it up, even if it meant working even more closely with Matt.

“Only your horses?” she asked warily. “Not the cattle?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, Steve seems to be handling that end of things all right.”

Steve. She gave an inward wince. What would he think when she took the lucrative Diamond Harte contract from him? It would probably sting his pride, at the very least.

On the other hand, he had no qualms about doing the same thing to her countless times since she arrived in Star Valley. If she was going to run her own practice, she needed to start thinking like a businesswoman. They were friends but they were also competitors.

“Do we have a deal?” Matt asked.

How could she pass it up? This is what she wanted to do, why she’d traveled fifteen hundred miles and uprooted her daughter and risked everything she had. For chances like this. She nodded. “Sure. Sounds great. When do you want me to start?”

“Maybe you could come out sometime after the holiday weekend and get acquainted with the herd and their medical histories.”

“Okay. Monday would work for me.”

“We can work out the details then.” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “And, uh, if you’re at all concerned about what happened here today, I swear it won’t happen again. I was completely out of line—a line I won’t be crossing again. You have my word on that.”

She nodded and turned to Mystic, not wanting to dwell on all the reasons his declaration made her feel this pang of loss in her stomach.

Chapter 8

Hours later, Matt sat in his favorite leather wing chair in the darkened great room of the Diamond Harte, listening to the tired creaking of the old log walls and the crackle and hiss of the fire while he watched fat snowflakes drift lazily down outside the wide, uncurtained windows.

He loved this time of the night, when the house was quiet and he could finally have a moment to himself to think, without the phone ringing or Lucy asking for help with her math homework or Cassie hounding him about something or other.

Ellie Webster would probably call what he was doing something crazy and far-out, like meditating. He wouldn’t go that far. His brain just seemed to work better when he didn’t have a thousand things begging for attention.

When the weather was warm, he liked to sit on the wide front porch, breathing the evening air and watching the stars come out one by one—either that or take one of the horses for a late-night ride along the trails that wound through the thousands of acres of Forest Service land above the ranch.

Most of his problems—both with the ranch and in his personal life—had been solved on the porch, on the back of a horse or in this very chair by the fire.

And he had plenty of problems to occupy his mind tonight.

Ellie and her daughter had gone home hours ago, but he swore if he breathed deeply enough he could still smell that sweet, citrusy scent of her—like lemons and sunshine—clinging subtly to his skin.

She had tasted the same way. Like a summer morning, all fresh and sweet and intoxicating. He thought of how she had felt in his arms, of the way her mouth had softened under his and the way her body melted into him like sherbet spilled on a hot sidewalk.

He only meant to kiss her for an instant. Just a brief experiment to satisfy his curiosity, to determine if the reality of kissing her could come anywhere close to his subconscious yearnings.

So much for good intentions.

He might have been content with only a taste—as tantalizing as it had been—but then she murmured his name when he kissed her.

He didn’t think she was even aware of it, but he had heard it clearly. Just that hushed whisper against his mouth had sent need exploding through his system like a match set to a keg of gunpowder, and he had been lost.

What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t the kind of guy to go around stealing kisses from women, especially prickly city vets who made it abundantly clear they weren’t interested.

He’d been just as shocked as she was when he pulled her into his arms. And even more shocked when she responded to him, when she’d kissed him back and leaned into him for more.

He sipped at his drink and gazed out the window again. What was it about Ellie Webster that turned him inside out? She was beautiful, sure, with that fiery hair and those startling green eyes rimmed with silver.

It was more than that, though. He thought of the way she had talked so calmly and without emotion about her childhood, about being abandoned by both her parents and then spending the rest of her youth in foster homes.

She was a survivor.

He thought of his own childhood, of his dad teaching him to rope and his mom welcoming him home with a kiss on his cheek after school every day and bickering with Jess and Cassie over who got the biggest cookie.

Ellie had missed all that, and his chest ached when he thought of it and when he realized how she’d still managed to make a comfortable, happy life for her and her daughter.

Despite his earlier misconceptions, he was discovering that he actually liked her.

It had been a long time since he had genuinely liked a woman who wasn’t related to him. Ellie was different, and that scared the hell out of him.

But any way he looked at it, kissing her had still been a damn fool thing to do.

He must be temporarily insane. A rational man would have run like the devil himself was riding his heels after being twisted into knots like that by a woman he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have.

But what did he do instead? Contract with her to take care of his horses, guaranteeing he’d see plenty of her in the coming weeks, even if it hadn’t been for the stupid Valentine’s carnival their girls had roped them into.

It was bound to be awkward. Wondering if she was thinking about their kiss, trying to put the blasted thing out of his own mind. He was a grown man, though, wasn’t he? He could handle a little awkwardness, especially if it would benefit his horses.

And it would definitely do that. He’d meant it when he told her he’d never seen anything like what she’d done to Mystic. He never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. Something had happened in that barn while she was working on the horse. He wasn’t the sort of man who believed in magic—in his own humble opinion, magic came from sweat and hard work—but what she had done with Mystic had been nothing short of miraculous.

Maybe that was one of the reasons for this confounded attraction he had for her—her wholehearted dedication to her job, to the animals she worked with. He respected it. If not for that, he probably wouldn’t have decided to go with his gut and offer her the contract to care for all of his horses.

He had given up plenty of things for the good of the ranch in the years since his folks died. It shouldn’t be that hard to put aside this strange attraction for a smart-mouthed little redhead with big green eyes and a stubborn streak a mile wide.

Especially since he knew nothing could ever come of it anyway.

The room suddenly seemed colder, somehow. Darker.

Lonely.

Just the fire burning itself out, he told himself. He jumped up to throw another log onto it, then stood for a moment to watch the flames curl and seethe around it. It was an intoxicating thing, a fire on a snowy night. Almost as intoxicating as Ellie Webster’s mouth.

Disgusted with himself for harping on a subject better left behind, he sighed heavily.

“Uh-oh. That sounded ominous.”

He turned toward his sister’s voice. She stood in the doorway, still dressed in her jeans and sweater. “You’re up late,” she said.

He shrugged. “Just enjoying the night. What about you? I thought you turned in hours ago.”

“Forgot I left a load of towels in the washing machine this morning. I just came down to throw them in the dryer.”

“I can do that for you. Go on to bed.”

“I already did it. I was just on my way back upstairs.”

She stood half in, half out of the room, her fingers drumming softly on the door frame. He sensed an odd restlessness in her tonight. Like a mare sniffing out greener pastures somewhere in the big wide world.

In another woman he might have called it melancholy, but Cassie had always been the calm one. The levelheaded one. The soft April rain to Jesse’s wild, raging thunderstorm.

Tonight she practically radiated nervous energy, and it made him uneasy—made him want to stay out of her way until she worked out whatever was bothering her.

He couldn’t do that, though. He loved her too much, owed her too much. If something was bugging her, he had an obligation to ferret it out then try to fix it.

“Why don’t you come in and keep me company?” he invited.

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“No bother. Seems like we’re always so busy I hardly ever get a chance to talk to you anymore.”

She studied him for a moment, then moved into the room and took a seat on the couch, curling her long legs under her. “What were you thinking about when I came in that put that cranky look on your face?”

It wasn’t tough for him to remember, since that stolen kiss in the barn with Ellie Webster had taken center stage in his brain for the last six hours. For one crazy moment, he debated telling Cassie about it. But he couldn’t quite picture himself chatting about his love life—or lack thereof—with his little sister.

“Nothing important,” he lied, and forced his features into a smile. Knowing how bullheaded she could be about some things—a lot like a certain redhead he didn’t want to think about—he decided he’d better distract her. “What did Wade Lowry want when he called earlier?”

Cassie picked at the nubby fabric of the couch. “He wanted me to go cross-country skiing with him tomorrow into Yellowstone.”

Could that be what had her so edgy? “Sounds like fun. What time are you leaving?”

He didn’t miss the way her mouth pressed into a tight line or the way she avoided his gaze. “I’m not. I told him we had family plans tomorrow.”

He frowned. “What plans? I don’t know of any plans.”

In the flickering light of the fire, he watched heat crawl up her cheekbones. “I thought I’d help you work with Gypsy Rose tomorrow,” she mumbled. “Didn’t you say you were going to start training her in the morning? You’ll need another pair of hands.”

And he could have used any one of the ranch hands, like he usually did. No, there was more to this than a desire to help him out with the horses.

“What’s wrong with Lowry? He’s not a bad guy. Goes to church, serves on the library board, is good with kids. The other ladies seem to like him well enough. And he seems to make a pretty good living with that guest ranch of his. He charges an arm and leg to the tourists who come to stay there, anyway. You could do a whole lot worse.”

She made a face, like she used to do when Jess yanked on her hair. “Nothing’s wrong with him. I just didn’t feel like going with him tomorrow. Since when was it a crime to want to help your family?”

“It’s not. But it’s also not a crime to get out and do something fun for a change.”

“I do plenty of fun things.”

“Like what?”

“Cooking dinner today. That was fun. And going out on roundup with you. I love that. And taking care of Lucy. What greater joy could I find? My whole life is fun.”