yards in front of them.
The horse kept going. And the woods kept getting closer and closer, each tree trunk looking like the dangerous barrier it would become if she were to collide with it. The branches were thick and full, creating an impenetrable fortress. There was no marked trail in that stand of trees; Abigail knew that much.
She also knew there was an extended family of prairie dogs located just before the woods, with the accompanying string of holes they burrowed into the ground—holes that could snap an unsuspecting horse’s leg in two. If Abigail didn’t get her runaway horse to swerve soon, she and Wild Thing might both be goners!
“Whoa!” The wind stung Abigail’s eyes as she crouched low on Wild Thing’s back to urgently repeat her command closer to the horse’s ear. No luck.
Desperate now, Abigail tugged sharply on Wild Thing’s reins, directing the horse to turn right. That didn’t work, either. A good horsewoman, Abigail was bracing herself to stand in the stirrups and put all her body strength into halting the horse when she became aware of a thundering noise above the pounding of her heart and her own horse’s hooves on the ground.
Out of the corner of her watering eyes, she saw a man riding hell-for-leather on a monstrous Appaloosa with spots as dark as the black Stetson the cowboy was wearing. “Let go of the reins!” he yelled at her. “And kick loose of the stirrups.”
There was no time to argue. She did as she was told. A second later, the stranger had looped his arm around her and scooped her from her saddle to his, while both horses galloped side by side. The saddle horn banged against her thigh as he sat her across his lap, keeping her clamped against him with one hand while deftly handling his horse with the other. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she hung on for dear life.
In the transfer from her horse to his, the bandanna holding her hair in place had fallen off, loosening her long curly hair so that it blew into her face…and her unknown rescuer’s face, as well. She couldn’t see anything, and she didn’t have a free hand to get her damn hair out of her eyes.
She felt him shifting, transferring the reins into the hand that had been pressed against her side. Seconds later, his horse, responding to the movement of his heels, veered right toward the open meadow.
It wasn’t until they slowed down that Abigail got a view of Wild Thing, her reins in the man’s capable suntanned hand as he led her. Abigail went limp with relief.
“Don’t pass out on me now!” he growled in her ear.
She immediately stiffened again, on the defensive against the irritation she heard in his voice. Besides, now that the imminent danger was past, she was becoming all too aware of the way her denim-clad bottom was in such close proximity to a certain intimate part of his anatomy. She could feel every flex of the powerful muscles in his thighs as he urged his horse to a stop.
He kept Wild Thing’s reins in his hand as the horse stood at a standstill behind them, her flanks heaving from exertion, her withers flecked with lather, but seemingly unhurt.
Tipping back his black Stetson with his right thumb, Abigail’s unknown rescuer looked down at her. Shoving her hair out of her face, she tried to get her first good look at him. But his hat, although slightly angled, still created enough shadow that she couldn’t tell much, except that he had devil-dark eyes.
“Mind telling me why you were riding like a maniac that way?” he inquired in a soft drawl that spoke of Western outlaws and desperados. It was gruff and dusty, silky and sexy all at once. Men didn’t learn how to speak that way; they were born with the skill. She ought to know, since she was a successful Western-romance writer. Such men were her specialty—in fiction and in real life, she’d always had a weakness for cowboys.
But after three unsuccessful relationships, she’d recently sworn off getting involved with any more cowboys, vowing instead to keep them within the confines of her popular books. Things worked out better that way.
“I was not riding like a maniac,” she belatedly denied. “My horse suddenly took off—”
“Listen, lady, maybe you better stay on a gentle mare until you have more riding experience—”
“I’m a good rider!”
“In an empty barn or horse stable maybe,” he countered, “but not out here. It’s just lucky for you that I came along when I did.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, in a starchy voice that her co-workers back at the Great Falls Public Library would have recognized as the one she reserved for troublesome patrons who wanted a book banned from the library. “You can let me go now.”
“Not so fast,” he replied, leaning back in the saddle to get a better look at her. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“I could ask the same thing of you,” she retorted. “This is private property.” Seeing the direction of his wandering gaze, she put her hand to the open neckline of her shirt, wondering if he’d been able to see down the open V.
“Private property, huh?” he noted with a wicked grin that flashed across his face like summer lightning. “Meaning no trespassing?” he inquired, trailing one finger down her cheek to the curve of her jaw.
“Meaning that exactly,” she haughtily returned.
“So what’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” she shot back.
“Dylan Janos, at your service, ma’am,” he replied with another slight tip of his hat.
“Well, Mr. Janos, you can release me now. I want to see how my horse is doing. Something caused her to take off like a bat out of Hades…”
“Maybe she saw a snake or something.”
“Wild Thing is too well trained to be spooked by a snake unless she was right on top of it, and she wasn’t.”
“Wild Thing?” Dylan repeated. “Whatever possessed you to ride a horse named Wild Thing? You’d do better on a nice nag named Muffin.”
“She’s my horse, and I named her Wild Thing,” Abigail stated.
“You still haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
“That’s right. And I don’t intend to.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re being very friendly.”
“Bingo,” she retorted.
“You know, Gypsy legend has it that if you save a person’s life, they owe you big-time. In fact, their very life belongs to you.”
“Is that so? Well, Western legend has it that if you trespass on someone else’s land, they have the right to…”
“Shoot me?” Dylan inquired dryly. “I do believe that’s reserved for horse thieves, not trespassers.”
She ignored his observation. “Western legend also dictates that a cowboy doesn’t take advantage of a woman…”
“I haven’t taken advantage of a thing. Not yet,” he added, his flashing grin downright roguish
