landed facedown, the hard-packed dirt of the arena knocking the breath from her. No belly buster from a rope swing at Coyote Creek ever hurt this bad.
She lay there in the Texas sun with not a desire in the world to get up, hoping breath would return before her heart stopped. Domino, as she well knew, wouldn’t come anywhere near for a while. He was likely in the corner of the lot, sulking.
Gnats buzzed around her ears and one pesky horsefly threatened to add insult to injury, so she had to get up. She sucked in a mouthful of arena dirt, then opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a pair of dusty, well-worn boots—snakeskin boots—crossed at the ankle in a posture of total relaxation. Equally worn blue jeans, made long the way cowboys like them, bunched softly atop the brown boots.
Great. She’d not only been thrown like a greenhorn, but she had a witness to verify her humiliation.
Stifling an inward groan that had as much to do with her unwanted visitor as with her state of breathlessness, Shannon pushed up from the ground. She slapped at her jeans and shirt, loosing a dust storm that obscured her vision and threatened her already tortured air passages. She wiped a dirty sleeve across her face and squinted toward the fence rail where a cowboy leaned, indolently watching her.
Every nerve in Shannon’s body sprang to full alert. A lightning strike would not have shocked her more.
Jackson Kane. When had he come back to Rattlesnake? And what was he doing here, on her ranch, where he was not a welcome guest?
He didn’t look much different than he had the last time she’d seen him, though her carefully preserved pride would not let her go there again, even in memory. Tall and wide-shouldered, his dark and sexy looks still did funny things to her insides and infuriated her to the point of rudeness. She didn’t want to talk to him, even now, didn’t want to notice the way his incredibly sexy mouth wallowed a narrow piece of straw, didn’t want to notice the new age lines around his Cajun black eyes.
But she noticed. Darn it. She noticed.
“What do you want?” She slammed her hands on her hips in a fit of annoyance.
He grinned then, slow and lazy and insolent, as if he knew how much he affected her by showing up out of the blue after all this time.
Taking the straw from between his teeth, he studied her long enough to set her heart to racing and to send the heat of a blush creeping up her neck.
He aimed the piece of straw at her, and she saw then that what she’d thought was straw was actually a tiny lollipop.
She burst out laughing. “A Dum-Dum sucker. How appropriate.”
He pushed off the fence and strutted toward her in that loose-hipped, rolling gait of a man who’d spent plenty of time on a horse and was comfortable in his own skin. Digging in his shirt pocket, he extracted another candy and thrust it toward her. “Want one?”
She eyed the treat with suspicion. “Your idea of a peace offering?”
“Do I need a peace offering?”
She snatched the sucker from his outstretched hand. “It’ll take more than this.”
One side of his mouth kicked up and a dimple deep enough to swim in winked at her. “Then give it back.”
Like the kid she’d been when Jackson Kane had broken her heart and left her with enough guilty regrets to last a lifetime, Shannon ripped off the paper and shoved the sucker into her mouth. A burst of syrupy cherry didn’t do a thing to sweeten her mood.
“Some things, once taken, can’t ever be given back, Jackson, or had you forgotten?”
Her jibe wiped the grin off his face. Good. She didn’t want him having fun at her expense. Not anymore. Because the things she’d given him—and lost because of him—were far too painful to joke about.
Spinning away from his disturbing presence, Shannon searched for her hat. Domino stood in the corner near the barn entrance, eyeing her with caution. The Texas morning was heating up and a bead of sweat tickled the back of her neck. She slapped at a gnat that found the sweat enticing.
“Looking for that?”
Jackson aimed the Dum-Dum at what had once been a nice white, rather pricey Resistol, lying crumpled in the dirt not three yards from him. A gentleman would have picked it up for her, but not Jackson. He stood there with that ’possum-eatin’ grin on his face and mischief in his eyes while she stormed across the paddock. Domino, that worthless piece of horseflesh, had taken his frustrations out on her new hat.
With the crumbled straw in hand, she turned her attention to the horse. Mad as he made her, Domino wasn’t really worthless. Doc Everts was paying a nice price to have his new mount trained at the Circle W Ranch. Moving quietly, she went to the animal, took the dragging reins and led him out of the paddock and away from Jackson Kane, taking the memories of their past along with her.
“Hey, Shan!”
Shannon’s shoulders slumped. The thud of boots against hard ground warned her of his approach. She should have known he wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of. After ten years, he was bound to have a reason for showing up this way.
“Don’t let the gate hit you in the backside on your way out,” she called over one shoulder.
He caught up to her. “I take it you’re still mad.”
Incredulous, she stopped in the entrance of the shadowy barn. Standing right next to her this way, he looked gigantic. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how he dwarfed her completely. As a love-struck teenager she’d felt so protected by his size. As an adult she was unnerved.
“You are amazing, you know that?” She gave him her frostiest glare.
Eyes brightening, he pumped his eyebrows. “That’s what they tell me.”
“That was not a compliment.” She swung around to face him, caught a whiff of grape sucker and a certain manly something that was Jackson Kane and no one else. “Why are you here, Jackson?”
Without a word, he took the reins from her and led the paint into a stall where he began the task of unsaddling. Dumbfounded, Shannon followed, taking refuge in the familiar scents of alfalfa hay and sweet-feed and leather tack.
“I asked you a fair question.”
“All right then.” He looked up from loosening the cinch and wallowed the sucker to one corner of his mouth. Shannon struggled not to follow the action, but lost that battle. His talented mouth had always fascinated her.
“Your granddad thought you could use some help out here. I was available so he hired me.”
“You? Available? What happened to the rodeo circuit?” She refused to acknowledge the part about him being hired. Not to work for her, he wasn’t. And she’d tell Granddad that herself.
“All my rowdy friends have settled down.” He grimaced as if the admission pained him no end, then dragged the saddle off the prancing horse and tossed it over a saddletree. “So I’ve retired.”
“Why don’t you go back to Louisiana?”
“Nobody
