snorted, and come as close to foaming at the mouth as Matt ever wanted to see. His own mouth had gone as bone dry as his lungs were empty.
Over the past months he’d spent countless hours around horses in preparation for this assignment. He wasn’t going to go onto the Bar Naught without knowing his way around. In those weeks, he’d been bitten, kicked and thrown. He’d deliberately sought out the meanest critters he could find so nothing he might later encounter on the Bar Naught would take him by surprise. It was just the way he worked. He had to know it all.
He’d learned to ride and keep his seat in a dead run. He’d learned a few stunts and dislocated his shoulder, half mangled his hand when he got caught up in twisted, unforgiving reins.
But Soldier’s fiery temper made all Matt’s weeks of preparation seem useless. The pitched battle of wills between him and Soldier was oddly silent. A scene without sound except for Soldier’s wrathful breathing.
Matt had to establish dominance, but for too long a time he couldn’t get his lungs functioning to send oxygen to his muscles. For long seconds he could only sit there and cower, inviting his own destruction.
He fought for every breath, praying for the second time in one night. Just let me get out of this one…. Then Soldier let out an eerie sound and gathered his powerful muscles to rear back and rain down death with a killing lunge.
Beyond conscious thought, Matt brought his legs under himself and sprang at the horse, aiming his shoulder at Soldier’s head with every shred of strength left in his battered body. The blow connected, jarred even his own teeth, ricocheting through him as if he’d hit a brick wall. But Soldier hauled back and a grudging respect set in.
In the intervening hour, while the sheriff and his men departed and Halsey and Geary went about turning off all the floodlights, Matt had barely moved. By now, he’d smooth-talked himself into a guarded truce with Soldier Boy, managed to get back on his feet and even get a steadying hand on the stallion’s flank.
Now, facing Fiona Halsey’s rifle, Matt had zero inclination to give up the uneasy rapport he’d achieved with a stallion that would still as soon stomp him into a mud hole and kick it dry.
“Put your hands in the air and move away from the horse.” The sensual grit in Fiona Halsey’s Brit-cultured voice plucked strings Matt didn’t even know he had, made him weak-kneed.
He didn’t cotton to the sensation at all, which immediately put him out of a mood to do her bidding. Even to save his own hide.
If the tall, lush, lanky blonde with the complexion of an English rose had murdered once—and the stench of gunpowder clinging to the gun she still held gave the theory credence—then she had it in her to do it again.
His ribs ached like all billy hell. His shoulder was so stiff he could no longer feel it. Still and all, perverse as it was, maybe he was also a bit turned on by the fact that Fiona Halsey had his disbelieving heart in the crosshairs of her scope.
He left his hand resting where it was, in physical contact with the stallion, and gave Fiona Halsey his most charming grin.
He really didn’t want to die. “Suppose you disarm, and we’ll talk.”
“Suppose I don’t, and you do the talking.”
“I don’t do so well under the gun.” He smiled, stroking Soldier’s flank again. “So to speak.”
“Too bad.” Flinty-edged, her tone still struck him as powerfully seductive. He wondered, did that particular combination come with the royal genes, a couple of generations removed?
His nose itched from what seemed like protracted hours in the softly lit horse barn, but his eyes were attuned to the semidark and his focus homed in on Fiona Halsey’s splintered attention.
Riveted to the motion of his hand, she was equally unrelenting and steady in her dead-on aim. But for an instant he thought he saw confusion in her, jealousy flashing in her shadowed eyes—not for want of his hands on her, he thought, but because her beloved, wrecked Soldier Boy allowed his touch.
Everyone knew Soldier tolerated her least of all.
She tossed that silky curtain of deep blond hair without altering her aim one millimeter off dead center of his heart. “Are you mocking me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he answered, solemn as a judge. Not a woman in possession of a deadly weapon he had no chance of taking from her. Standing outside Soldier’s stall, on the other side of the stall door, she could blow him to kingdom come before he could get anywhere near enough to disarm her.
His survival mechanism, the instincts by which he lived so as not to die, kicked into higher gear for the second time that night. He shook his head slowly. “The grandniece of an English peer, distant cousin to the queen herself?” He shook his head again, and discovered a splitting headache to go with his jammed shoulder and bruised ribs.
Her aim faltered for half a second. He’d succeeded in unnerving her, tossing off her obscure royal connections. He pressed this narrow advantage by using her name. “C’mon, Fiona. We both know you won’t pull the trigger.”
Her chin went up. “Try me.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d kill me, but…” He shrugged. “You’re not going to do anything that would upset Soldier.”
“Soldier Boy,” she answered, the grit in her voice turned more lethal than sensual, “is already upset.”
“You should have seen him an hour ago.” But it occurred to him that provoking Soldier to a frenzied rage might serve her purposes. The thought congealed into a nasty suspicion that he must be very careful not to underestimate Fiona Halsey. “It wouldn’t take much to send Soldier over the edge, would it?”
“No.” She cocked a hip forward, agreeing…softly. Bitterly. Choked. “It wouldn’t take much at all.”
He found his weak-kneed self, the one reacting to her voice, suffering. What man wouldn’t want to spare her the turmoil of loving a horse who would never again return her emotional investment?
Fool. He should be baiting her into the stall, disarming her. What was he doing? What was the point of playing her—or letting her play him? Soldier’s flesh skittered under his hand, and the stallion threw his head up.
But there was a point in goading her, he knew. The smoking Remington made her suspect. The scope made it even more likely. She could have gone five hundred yards up the tree-lined lane leading into the main ranch house with the rifle, picked Everly off and made it back to her quarters in time to make it look as if she had never been gone. He went on stroking the massive animal she loved, subtly stoking her resentment that Soldier tolerated him at all while he offered up his theory.
“Here’s how I see it. You have to be worried about the possibility that I saw what happened. That I saw you do it.”
She stared at him, unblinking. “You think I shot Kyle?”
“Yeah. I do.” He nodded, appreciating her quickness, leading her farther down the path. “And I can appreciate your dilemma. Should you shoot me next, and have to call Hanifen back, or—”
“Or,” she interrupted, anticipating him, “maybe fire off a round and cause Soldier to trample you to
