pockets. The blue bandanna he’d tied around his neck lay in stark contrast against his white shirt and tanned throat. Spurs jingled with every long, purposeful stride.
The only thing missing was a pair of six-shooters strapped on his lean hips. Still, she got the feeling that he was gunning for her.
“Nice wheels,” he said by way of greeting as he looked her car over.
“It’s new,” she said inanely.
One corner of his mouth turned up. Not a smile. Not a sneer. Small clue as to what he was thinking.
“Got your boots on?”
She got out of the car and showed him. And his nota-smile-not-a-sneer expression turned into a frown. Big clue as to what he was thinking.
“Let met guess—those would be new, too?”
She glanced away from his look of disgust at her pretty red boots. “What’s wrong with them?”
“I was thinking cowboy boots.”
“These are cowboy boots.”
“If you’re strutting down Rodeo Drive in California maybe. Not if you’re planning to ride a horse.”
She’d suspected he had a midnight ride in mind, even though she’d held out hope for something else. She didn’t ride. In fact, she’d never ridden—guess the choice of boots might have given that away. Somehow she figured he already knew that, too, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
“These boots will do just fine,” she said.
He grunted and shook his head. “Come on.” Then he walked away from the house toward a mammoth, pristine white barn.
“This is Cletus,” he said opening a box stall.
Inside was what Christine considered to be a very big—strike that, an exceptionally huge—brown horse.
“Does he bite?” She could have kicked herself, but the question was out before she could stop it. Talk about sounding green.
“Only blondes,” Jake said, leveling her a look. “But since you’ll be on his back, you should be safe.”
Her stomach sank toward her knees as she looked up the broad length of him. But she smiled. “Oh. Well. Good.”
Jake studied her face. “You have ridden, right?”
“Sure. Lots of times.” Why was she playing this game? What did she think it was going to net her?
A broken neck, probably, but something about his smug attitude just wouldn’t allow her to let him see that she was scared senseless.
“You two get to know each other,” Jake said. “I’ll go get my mount.”
“Good. Great. I’ll be fine,” she said, lying through her teeth. “Nice…horse,” she whispered when Jake was out of her line of sight. “Be nice, okay? I brought you something.”
Again, because she’d figured a ride might be what Jake had in mind, she’d hedged her bets. She fished into her hip pocket and pulled out a sugar lump. She’d heard that horses like sugar.
She’d heard right. Cletus went for the sugar like a bear after honey. It was icky feeding it to him. He snuffled all over her palm before finally lipping the sweet treat into his mouth. When he was finished, he lowered his head and nudged her hip pocket where she’d tucked the rest of the sugar, evidently smelling it there.
“Okay, okay,” she said, laughing in spite of herself, and gave him another hit. “Now we’re friends, right?”
In answer, the horse nipped at her pocket.
“Hey,” she sputtered, stepping back. “Easy on the jeans.”
“They as new as your boots?” Jake asked, startling her as he walked down the aisle of the barn, a big buckskin in tow.
She manufactured a smile. “You’re right about the biting thing.”
His blue eyes pinned hers in the dimly lit barn. “Any guy is liable to bite if a woman has something in her pants that he wants.”
Oh. My. This must be where the walk on the wild side came in. He was letting her know. You came out here to learn, and I’m just the man to teach you.
“Busted,” she said, conceding that he’d caught her with the sugar but not going anywhere near the sexual innuendo. “Who knew he’d be such a glutton?”
“Offer me sugar. See what kind of a glutton I become.”
He gave her another one of those long, smoldering looks that held undertones of all kinds of gluttony, along with shades of warning. She actually thought about turning tail and running as fast and as far as her new red boots would take her.
The old Christine would have run. The new one followed him as he led the two horses out of the barn and into the moonlight.
“Come on. I’ll help you up into the saddle,” Jake offered. “Cletus is long on leg, and you’re just a little short on one end. Um, you always mount from the left, Chrissie.”
Face flaming red, Christine walked back around to the horse’s left side. “I knew that. I was just checking out the, um, stirrup.”
“Sure you were,” he said. “Now grab the saddle horn. It’s that tall thing right behind the mane and in front of the seat,” he added with another shake of his head.
“Well, if I could reach it, it would help,” she sputtered, angry with herself for not being better informed and angry with him for knowing it. “Oh, whoa.” The next thing she knew, she was airborne.
Jake’s strong hands had gripped her around the waist, lifted her up and deposited her on the saddle like a sack of potatoes.
“Here are your reins,” he said when she’d managed to push herself to a sitting position. Problem was, she was gripping the saddle horn for dear life and didn’t have any intention of letting go, even if it was to take the reins.
“What’s he doing?” she asked, near panic when the big body between her legs seemed to pitch and roll like a ship in a rough sea.
“Shifting his weight from one back leg to the other,” Jake said, grinning openly now. “You ready to give up the pretense?”
“Yes,” she all but whined. “Am I going to get hurt?”
He chuckled. “Not on Cletus. He’s a pussycat. And you nailed his soft spot with the sugar, so he’s not going to take a chance of dumping you because you have his sugar stash. Just sit easy, rock with the motion and trust him to take you where we want to go.”
Trust. There was that word again. And that was what this was all about.
“Well, then, yee haw,” she said and smiled when it made him chuckle.
Jake
