stroking the chestnut’s white blaze. “But I won’t be hitting the hay anytime soon. Mind keeping me company for a while?” The horse nosed into his hand again. “Good. Then let’s get you spruced up. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
Unfortunately, as he combed and smoothed, his thoughts were elsewhere. He couldn’t get those darkblue eyes out of his mind, or that hair she insisted on tying back tight to her head. It was beautiful hair…hair that should be hanging loose around her face. Hair that would feel like silk against a man’s chest.
He scowled as his libido got squarely behind that thought and started a new response south of his belt buckle. He hadn’t felt a gut-gnawing attraction like this since Audra. Half of the free world knew what a colossal mistake that had been. But early on, he’d been so blinded by her wide smiles and teasing eyes that he couldn’t see how different they were. Way too different for the “opposites attract” thing to work. And who in hell ever decided that having absolutely nothing in common was a sure path to falling in love and staying there?
But he had loved her. Deeply. Madly. Stupidly.
Pike shifted and stomped in his stall, and Mac realized the grooming process had gotten more energetic than he’d intended. “Sorry, boy,” he muttered. “It’ll be just another minute, then I’ll go bug Gypsy and Jett, and let you get some shut-eye. One of us should sleep tonight.” And he doubted it’d be him.
A half hour later Mac trudged up the stairs to his room, grabbed a pair of running shorts, then retraced his steps. He’d shower in the new bathroom, the one off the laundry room he’d had installed while Amos was in rehab. The upstairs pipes rattled, and he didn’t want to wake Amos.
Only the glow from a night-light shone through the partially open doorway. Mac entered, flicked on the overhead light…and stared.
He would never get used to seeing the grab bars and supports around the tub and toilet, or the long bar against the wall. Ditto the shower curtain, which provided easy access instead of the glass doors Mac had originally suggested. For some reason, tonight it all made him feel lousier than usual.
Stripping, feeling his mood plummet, he turned on the water, waited a few seconds, then stepped inside.
Dammit, the strong man who’d raised him was getting old. Amos, who’d taught him to ride bareback and shown him how to topple paper-cup pyramids by flicking rubber bands off his fingertip.
Amos, who’d once hoisted eighty-pound feed bags with ease and now sometimes needed help getting to the bathroom.
Mac’s throat tightened as he scrubbed the soap over his chest and arms, lathering away the smell of horse-flesh, seeing his granddad as he was the day he opened his door and his arms to his daughter’s ten-year-old son. Except for college and four years in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, he’d been with Amos for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years! And his grandfather had always been as strong as an ox.
Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to see the telltale signs of aging as the years passed, or face his granddad’s mortality. Amos was all he had in the way of family, other than an aunt, uncle and a couple of cousins in Texas.
Shelving the soap, Mac braced his hands against the front wall and let the heavy spray beat his hair down to his brows. Let it beat his shoulders and back.
There was nothing like a healthy dose of reality to ground a man. Suddenly his need to jump Terri Fletcher’s pretty bones wasn’t nearly as important as it was a while ago.
Wednesday and Thursday were busy but mostly satisfying, Erin decided, because Mac made himself scarce, arriving home only an hour before she took Christie back to their quarters. He didn’t exactly ignore her, but he was distant—cordial in a stranger-to-stranger way as he discussed various local topics during dinner. His reserve didn’t include Christie, however, and he joked and played with her until she giggled uncontrollably, warming to him in a way she’d never done with Charles. And that was fine with Erin. They needed to keep their distance now that they both recognized the attraction simmering beneath their socially correct behavior.
On Friday afternoon a violent storm came out of nowhere.
“Just open them doors and move outta the way, pronto!” Amos shouted to her from the porch. “They’ll come in fast!”
“I will!” she yelled back over the howling wind and rain. Erin pulled Amos’s hooded poncho more tightly around herself and ran toward the barn, rubberized canvass flapping. The rain was coming down in sheets.
She’d been aware of the rain, but she hadn’t known it was a problem until thunder jolted Amos from his post-PT nap, and he’d sat bolt upright, insisting he had to get the horses back in the barn. “Lightning spooks ’em so bad, they’ll beat down the fences!” he’d persisted. But no way could he manage the task, so that left Erin to manage the situation. Thankfully, Christie was still napping.
A new bolt of lightning ripped and crackled through the dark thunderheads, and the earth trembled. Erin ran faster, seeing the horses now. Grouped together at the far side of the long corral, they skittered anxiously, ran in circles—whinnied and tossed their big heads.
Yanking open the barn door, she hurried inside and passed the stalls, blinking and wiping the rain from her face as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. It was only a little after four o’clock, but the weather and dense cloud cover made it look more like eight.
Striding up an aisle lined with hay bales, she spied the wide doors that opened onto the corral and rushed toward them. Lightning flashed again and lit up the barn. Fumbling with the latch, Erin threw open the double doors to the raging wind and rain, then blanched as the horses picked up the movement and, wheeling, thundered directly for her.
Heart slamming into her throat, she hugged the wall, afraid to breathe as they ran inside, the darker horse nearly losing its footing on the wet straw. Then, just as Amos said they would, they slowed, calmed and found their respective stalls.
Bracing herself, she hurried into the rain again to snatch the door rings, lost her hood in the wind, then yanked the double doors shut and relatched them. Rain still punished the shingled roof, but with the doors closed, the barn was a little quieter now.
Relieved that she hadn’t been trampled, Erin turned around.
Adrenaline jolted her as her unsuspecting gaze collided with Mac’s. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and rain streamed down his face and dripped off his chin to his soaked shirt.
“You’re drenched,” he growled, reaching overhead to click on a bare-bulb light. He whisked the rain from his face. “What in hell are you doing down here?”
She shot him an affronted look. What did he think she was doing down here? “The storm was spooking your horses. The only way I could keep your grandfather from bringing them inside—rather, attempting to bring them inside—was to do it myself.”
Mac swore, exasperated. “Where’s Christie?”
“At the house. She’s asleep on the sofa.” Erin reached beneath the poncho and plucked her baby monitor from her waistband. Toddler snores flowed from it, though they were almost drowned out by the pouring rain and the low sound of Amos’s TV program.
Then suddenly what he’d said and the critical tone he’d used pushed her annoyance to anger. “Did you think I’d leave her wandering the house alone with a man who’s recovering from a stroke? How nice.
