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She jerked her hand away. She wasn’t quite fast enough, though, to rise to her feet without Chase’s assistance. He got hold of her good arm and steadied her.
Chase didn’t want to see all the color drain out of her face again, the way it had earlier. He’d cracked enough bones himself to know she had to be hurting. She wasn’t about to admit it, though, or go rest. Chase understood the need to keep on going when it made more sense to quit, and he was beginning to get the idea that this woman had an oversize helping of pride.
She pulled away. “Mr. McGuire, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your hands to yourself.”
Would she, now? “Well, I can’t quite promise to do that, ma’am. Not when you’ve been hurt and are maybe a bit too stubborn to admit you need a hand now and again. But I’ll keep what you said in mind.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, “and you know it. A man like you is well aware of—”
“Just a minute,” he said. “That’s the second time you’ve said that—‘a man like me.’ Now, I know we’ve never met. I’d remember. So you must have heard some gossip...or else you’re getting me mixed up with someone else. Like your husband, maybe?”
She looked as startled as if he’d reached out and slapped her. “I didn’t—you—did you know Jimmie?”
“I ran into him a couple times. Look, I know some rodeo wives get a bad feel for the rodeo and everyone connected with it, especially if their husbands stay on the circuit as much of the year as Jimmie did.”
She just gave him a hard, baffled stare and turned and started across the yard. Chase was left to pick up his bag and follow. Had she reacted that way because she’d been so much in love with the good-looking bum she’d been married to? Or did she already know plenty about Jimmie Callaway and just not want to discuss it?
The kennel was a long, cinder block building on the other side of the paddock, about twenty yards from the stable. It was painted white, with trim the same dark green as the little house they’d just left, and typical of what he’d seen so far. Not fancy, but sturdy and well maintained.
Chase automatically slowed when they reached the pole fencing surrounding the paddock so he could look over the four horses inside. Two of them he marked immediately as the sort of plodders she might put a beginner up on for those lessons she’d mentioned. He wouldn’t mind getting a leg over either of the other two, though. “That’s a fine-looking dun,” he said, referring to a mare with a coat a few shades lighter than Summer’s own golden brown hair. “She’s mostly quarter horse, isn’t she?”
Summer paused and glanced back over her shoulder at him, her blue eyes still chilly. “Mostly. She’s unregistered, but her dam had a lot of Thoroughbred in her.”
He nodded. The mare had the dainty ears and face of a Thoroughbred and the muscular hocks of a quarter horse. At that moment she perked up those pretty ears and ambled toward them. “I’ve seen some fine horses with that mix. She’s yours?”
The compliment pleased her, but she didn’t want to be pleased. Not yet. She turned to greet the horse. “Honey-Do and I have been together a long time. I started training her with my father’s help when I was nine. The two of us learned barrel racing together. She’s pushing twenty now, so mostly I use her for Western pleasure these days.”
“Honeydew?” he asked, trying to figure out the reason for the name. “Like the melon?”
“No.” Summer reached out her good hand to the horse, who had her neck stretched out, obviously confident of getting attention. Summer gave the horse a good, brisk rub up the jawbone and along the cheek strap.
Those lovely, capable hands of hers could do a number of things well, Chase felt certain. He could think of one or two in particular he’d like. He could, but he’d better not. Not if he was going to keep his hands off her.
“She started out plain old Honey when I first got her, for her color. I was nine,” she said, and spared him a slight smile, “and not especially original. Pretty soon, though, her name became Honey-Do as in, ‘Honey, do this,’ or ‘Honey, do that.’ Because Honey does just about anything you ask of her—don’t you, sweetheart?” she finished, her voice dropping into a croon.
Everything about her warmed up around animals. He couldn’t help wondering what it would take to get her to heat up for him. “What about the paint with the roan markings?”. he asked, setting down his duffel. “Is he yours?”
The raw-boned gelding he referred to was a big, ugly brute, maybe seventeen hands high. The animal looked up just then from pulling bites of hay off the bale set in the center of the paddock. When he saw that another horse was getting attention, he snorted and trotted over, using his weight to push Honey-Do aside and stretching out his own big, Roman nose.
“For my sins, he is,” Summer said. “He’s a two-year-old, so he’s not much on manners yet.” She turned sideways so the inquisitive horse couldn’t nudge her bad shoulder, then had to push his nose away when he started to lip the sleeve of her shirt. “Some cowboy wannabes out of San Antonio bought him and his mother when he was a colt, then lost interest. They sold the mare easily enough, but the future was looking pretty dim for Horatio here when I heard about him three months ago. I picked him up dirt cheap because they didn’t really want to sell to the knackers. I’d planned on training him fast in the basics and selling him, but I guess that’s not going to happen now.”
“I don’t know why you couldn’t do just that,” Chase said, leaning on the top pole to give the jealous Horatio a good scratch behind the ears. “He’s not exactly a pretty face, and he’s too big for arena work, but his gait looks smooth. I bet he’d make a fine working horse.”
“Timing,” she said succinctly. “In order to make any money on him, I need to get him trained before he eats up my profit. All I can give him is the basics. Like you said, he’s not pretty enough for the arena, and I don’t know how to train him for range roping or cutting, so I couldn’t expect to get any great price for him.”
Chase thought about that. “You’ve had him on the longe line?”
She nodded. “He’s stubborn, but he’s bright and not easily spooked. He walks, trots and lopes on the longe now, and you’re right about his gait. I’d just gotten him used to the bridle and was ready to move on to the saddle when this happened.” With a nod of her chin she indicated her sling. “Now he’ll forget what he knows before I can start working him again.”
“You do much training?”
“Right now it’s just Horatio and Maverick. That’s the Bates’s sorrel gelding—the one that dumped me on my shoulder yesterday. They wanted me to get him over some of his bad habits, so I’m working him as well as boarding him.” She stared out over the paddock, a frown pleating her brow.
“I’ll train them.”
That brought her head around fast—too fast, judging by the way she winced. “I’m not paying you trainer’s wages.”
She was a suspicious one, wasn’t she? He smiled. “You don’t have to. I figure I might find training a couple of ornery horses a nice change of pace after mucking out stalls and shoveling dog poop.”
Her brows lifted skeptically. “You want to train them—just for fun?”
“Sure.” He turned and eased a little closer to her. Close enough to make her just a bit uncomfortable, close enough to see the slight, involuntary flare of her nostrils, as though she were catching his scent. “Of course, I might have some other sort of motives mixed in there, like hoping to make you feel real grateful to me. But you’re too bright to fall for something like that, aren’t you? So I guess I’ll have to settle for what I said. A change of pace. A bit of a challenge.”
Beneath the frown that lingered on her face lay a sort of puzzled awareness. Her eyes were just a hint wider. A hint uncertain. “I guess if you worked Horatio, you could take a percentage. When I sell him. That would be fair, wouldn’t it?”
“Fair?” He did what he’d been wanting to do all morning, and ran his fingers down one long strand of hair, playing with it. “Doesn’t seem like it would be all that fair to you.” He rubbed the hair between his fingers, savoring the smooth, silky feel of it.
“Don’t.” Her voice was steady enough, but her eyes gave her away. He saw anger there. Confusion. Arousal. The confusion excited him as much as the arousal, and he didn’t like that. Only innocents were confused by their physical needs, and Chase wasn’t a man who looked for trophies outside of the arena. He liked his women easy and experienced. Easy meant no one got hurt, no one got burned when it was time to move on down the road.
But he wanted this woman. He wanted to seduce this woman.
His gaze slipped from her face to her throat, where he could see the rapid flutter of her pulse. Lower, to where her hardened nipple was puckered beneath the soft flannel of her shirt...on one side. On the other side was her sling.
He really shouldn’t be doing this.
The sound of a motor filtered through his lust-induced haze. Summer heard it, too. Her eyes widened. She stepped back. He let his hand fall. She frowned, looked over his shoulder and frowned harder. “Well, shi—shoot.”
It amused him that she’d edited out the cussword almost as much as it pained him to be interrupted. He turned.
A tall man was climbing out of a low-slung foreign car next to the smaller gate. Although the man wore boots and a black cowboy hat with his suit, Chase would be willing to bet he’d never sat on a horse. Even from here Chase could see that his face had the smooth, indoor look of a businessman.
“It never rains but it pours,” Summer muttered.
“So who is he?”
“Ray Fletcher.”
The minute the smooth-faced Ray Fletcher stepped through the gate, the belly-deep belling of a bloodhound erupted from the back porch of the house. Hannah heaved to her feet and bayed again, and a cacophony of barks, yips, yaps and woofs broke out at the kennel.
“Ray,” Summer said in a conversational tone that he barely heard over the din, “has never been introduced to Hannah.”
Chase grinned. Apparently Hannah was a little more alert than she looked, and she set the other dogs off. You couldn’t beat a dozen yapping dogs as an alarm system.
Ray Fletcher closed the gate and started across the thirty or forty yards from the front gate to the paddock. Chase noticed that Summer didn’t take one step toward the man. Fletcher had crossed half the distance before she made some kind of signal to Hannah, at which the old dog heaved a sigh and plopped back down. The rest of the canine clamor was dying down by the time Ray Fletcher reached them.
He was an indoor sort of man, all right, a little soft through the middle and under his smooth-shaven chin. Not bad looking. Not especially good-looking, either. There wasn’t much memorable about him, Chase decided, except the expensive clothes he wore...and his eyes.
Ray Fletcher’s eyes weren’t soft when his gaze flicked over Chase as quickly as a lizard’s tongue tasting the air, summing him up and dismissing him. Chase didn’t much care for the dismissal, but it did intrigue him. Offhand, he could only think of a few men who’d discounted him that quickly. A couple of them were fools. One was as ruthless and cunning as Chase had ever come across.
“Summer,” Fletcher said in a pleasant tenor voice, “as soon as I heard about your accident I came to see if there’s any way I could help. I know how proud you are, but perhaps you’d consider a loan.”
“Really? And here I thought you’d probably come out here to see if my getting crippled up meant I’d have to sell you my land.”
He looked pained. “I know you’ve never acquitted me of having ulterior motives for dating you, though I’d think you’d only have to look in the mirror to realize the truth. But mixing business with pleasure is never a good idea. I should have known better.”
“Well, if you’re really concerned, Ray, let me reassure you. This is Chase McGuire. He’s going to work for me while I’m unable to take care of things myself, so you see, I really don’t have any problems for you to concern yourself with. Chase, this is Ray Fletcher, a land shark from San Antonio.”
“For heaven’s sake, Summer,” Fletcher said, exasperated, then turned his quick brown eyes on Chase. “Mrs. Callaway does like to give me a hard time, Mr. McGuire. I’m a real estate developer, and—” he smiled and shook his head ruefully “—I made the mistake of trying to persuade Summer to sell her land. Now I’m one of the bad guys, as far as she’s concerned.”
“Is that so?” Chase stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and looked Fletcher up and down, his expression easy and pleasant. “You saying you aren’t a bad guy? Sure looks to me like a black hat you’re wearing.”
Fletcher couldn’t decide if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so he ignored it. “Summer,” he began, “about that loan. I’ve got the money to spare, you know that. Just say the word.”
“Now why would you think money was tight for me, unless you knew how much my property taxes had jumped this year? They doubled, Ray. And you know what’s odd? It was right after I turned down your offer that the appraiser showed up to reappraise my land. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
He frowned. “You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with that.”
“You know how us women are, Ray.” Her voice turned low and cold. “We get these notions. I’m getting another one right now. I’m thinking you’d love to make me a loan so that you could somehow get me to default on it. That would simplify things for you, wouldn’t it? You and your plans for your fancy housing development?”
“Oh, enough.” Fletcher made a chopping gesture. “I put my foot wrong with you months ago, but this is getting ridiculous. You can’t blame me for every little thing that goes wrong.” He started to turn, then paused. “Look,” he said, “I really would like to persuade you of my good intentions. If you’re ever ready to give me a chance, just call.”
I’ll give you a chance, Ray. Just withdraw your offer for my land. Formally, in writing. And throw in something about how you won’t ever make another offer.”
He blinked before replying, a second too late, “When you get over your paranoia, call me.” He turned and walked off.
“That got rid of him,” Chase said when Ray Fletcher was out of earshot.
“Did you hear him?” Summer stared at Fletcher’s retreating back. “He offered me a loan. A loan,” she repeated, astounded at the insult. “I can’t believe it. He honestly thinks I turned down his offer to buy my land out of some stupid feminine pique. He thinks he can go right on pretending to be interested in me. Like that would make any difference about whether I’d sell the land or not.”
“How much land do you have?” Chase didn’t think a developer would be interested in the little bit of land that the stable, kennel and house sat on.
“All that,” she said, gesturing at the large, fenced pasture beyond the house and grounds, “and down from there to the river. Nearly forty acres, ten of it riverfront. My father fought hard to hold on to it. He had land speculators after him, too, always trying to get him to sell, but he held on. I am not,” she said, “going to let some inflated property taxes and a sore shoulder make me lose what he held on to.”
Pride, Chase thought. The woman had more of it than was good for her. She was stiff with it, practically quivering with outrage that Fletcher had thought he could get his hands on her land just because she had five times as much of it as she needed and nowhere near enough money—just because she was broke and hurt and might be thought, by some, to be just a tad vulnerable at the moment.
It was damned appealing. “Forty acres isn’t enough to ranch, but it’s more than you need to run a stable, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, disgusted. “I don’t imagine you’d understand.” She turned away. “Come on. The morning’s nearly over and the kennels are still dirty.”
Chase watched her walk away. Her back stayed stiff and straight, but her cute little butt swayed gently from side to side. He appreciated the stiffness almost as much as he did the sway. He watched her move and saw how the morning sun turned to copper when it tangled in her long, unbound hair.
He sighed. He was a weak man. A sadly weak man. And she was a sexy, prideful woman with an injured shoulder who wanted nothing to do with him. A woman like that didn’t know enough about her own body’s responses to defend herself against him, and he really ought to leave her alone...even though when he touched her hair her breath got shallow and her nipples got hard. Even though he couldn’t keep from speculating on how she’d respond if he touched her elsewhere.
She’d probably slap him silly.
“Are you coming?” she called without looking back.
He grinned and picked up his duffel bag. “Yes, ma’am,” he called, and started towards her.
He always had liked a challenge.
Three
By the time the floured chicken was spitting in the grease in the cast iron skillet, Summer felt she had herself back under control. Sure, she’d reacted to the man. No shame there, she told herself, humming as she held her hand under the faucet and washed sticky, egg-batter paste from her fingers. She was only human, and Chase McGuire was a very sexy man.
Pleased with herself for having acknowledged that fact in a calm, mature manner, she patted her hand against the towel hanging next to the sink and headed for the back door.
Her hired hand would need a little notice in order to clean up for supper, one of the two meals a day she owed him. He was probably in the barn. Raul had taken care of the stable chores and left before Summer realized they had rain headed their way. She’d sent Ricky to tell Chase to put up the rest of the horses and close up the box stalls.
That was twenty minutes ago. Ricky was still out there with him.
She frowned as she stepped out on the porch. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Ricky hanging around Chase McGuire for the next couple of months. The man was apt to stir up Ricky’s fascination with the rodeo.
Outside, the air was dusky with storm, the sky, a crisp, exhilarating gray as the day slid into evening. Wind bristled though the leaves on the oaks and made a nuisance of itself by grabbing her hair and throwing it in her face.
She turned toward the barn, and her shirttail flapped in the wind. The flannel rubbed across her bare nipples; and she shivered. She thought about how Chase McGuire had looked at her breasts. Openly. With obvious pleasure.
Somehow she had to figure out a way to get into a bra tomorrow.
None of the horses was out in the paddocks, and all the stalls on this side of the barn were shut to the outside. The southern doorway to the barn glowed a welcoming yellow from the lights Chase must have turned on to fight the premature gloom of the storm-shrouded day.
She paused when she reached the doorway. Neither Chase nor Ricky was in sight, but Dancer’s stall door was open. Kelpie lay in front of it, panting happily. Summer headed that way.
“So you got bucked off the first time, huh?” her son’s excited voice was saying.
“Sure did. And after all my bragging.” A long, mournful sigh, accompanied by the sound of something rubbing rhythmically against wood. “That’s when I learned why cowboys are supposed to be strong, silent types. We mostly get ourselves in trouble when we open our mouths. When we aren’t bragging, we’re putting our foot in it.”
Ricky giggled. “Do you put your foot in it?”
“All the time.”
Summer stopped in front of the stall next to Kelpie. The dog, exhausted from the day’s excitement, settled for standing up and butting her head against Summer’s leg. Dancer, a placid old mare Summer used for her beginning riders, munched lazily on her feed in one corner of the stall. On the other side of the stall, Summer’s hired hand drew a rasp rhythmically back and forth across a rough, splintery place in one of the wooden supports to the stall while her son watched. She noticed that his gorgeous black Stetson had been replaced by a beat-up, cream-colored distant cousin—a working cowboy’s hat, in fact.
Chase looked up, saw her and smiled the one-dimple smile that fit his face as well as his worn jeans fit his hips. “Looks like you’ve got a cribber,” he said.
A “cribber” was a horse that chewed on whatever wood was around, often swallowing air along with the wood and making itself miserable. “Dancer’s not the one with the taste for wood,” she said. Her voice came out wrong. She cleared her throat. “It’s that blasted gelding of the Bateses, the one who threw me. I moved him to the end stall. It’s a little bigger, more room for his toy.” She referred to the big ball that rolled around at the horse’s feet. Cribbers usually chewed out of boredom, and the ball gave the horse something to do.
“Chase wanted to get the wood smoothed down,” Ricky broke in, “so’s Dancer wouldn’t hurt herself on it. We already got all the horses in.”
We? “I see,” she said. “Well, I’m sure that was a good idea, but, Ricky, you aren’t to be following Mr. McGuire around, bothering him with a bunch of questions.”
“I wasn’t bothering him,” Ricky said indignantly. “Was I, Chase?”
“Not a bit.” Chase ran the rasp over the wood one last time, then smoothed his fingers over it, testing. “He helped me bring the horses in and then showed me where the tools were so I could get this taken care of.”
Summer shifted her feet uncomfortably. The man had found work that needed doing without being told. He was being patient and good-natured with Ricky—and she wished he’d been rude and obnoxious instead. She wished—oh, she didn’t know what she wished. She wanted to grab her son and tell him to stay away from Chase McGuire. “Ricky, you know I don’t let you handle all of the horses.”
He drew his narrow shoulders up straight, offended. “I just got Honey-Do an’ Dancer and Mr. Pig and Scooter. Just the ones you always let me get.”
Now she’d treated him like a “little kid” in front of his new hero. Summer sighed. “Well, it’s time to give me some help now,” she said. “Come on up to the house and feed Kelpie, Hannah and Amos.” Kelpie yipped when she heard her name, and pushed against Summer’s legs again.
“But, Mom, Chase said that he was going to—”
“Ricky,” she said once, in her warning voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but his lip stuck out.
“Go ahead and wash up after you feed them,” she said. “We’re having fried chicken for supper.”
That brightened his face again. He looked at Chase. “You don’t want to miss Mom’s fried chicken, so you prob’ly better get washed up pretty quick, too.” Then he took off at his usual dead run with Kelpie running and yipping at his heels.
“Sorry if I kept him from his other chores.”
She pulled her eyes away from the barn door her son had disappeared through. Chase stood just where he had before, about four feet away. Not close at all. Maybe her heart gave a little skip when she saw him with his eyes crinkled up at the corners from the smile that never seemed to leave his face. It didn’t worry her. The humming in her blood was really rather...pleasant. It was only a natural, physical reaction. “I doubt you had much choice,” she said dryly. “I can tell that Ricky’s going to be about as hard to detach from you as a burr from a dog’s tail. I hope your patience doesn’t wear out.”
“I like Rick,” he said, and walked toward her slow and easy. “He’s a bright kid, and he really did help me find where things were. He said the tools were his grandpa’s.”
Summer felt the little hitch in her breath as he drew closer. He couldn’t have heard it, though, which was good. It was best Chase didn’t know what effect he had on her.
She turned just a bit suddenly to lead the way out of the stall. “My father left me his tools along with his stable,” she said, speaking quickly to distract herself from what she was feeling. “Which was a good thing, since the place wasn’t in such great shape when I...he’d been ill,” she added, not wanting Chase to think that Sam Erickson would ever have intentionally neglected his property. “He couldn’t keep things up very well that last year.”