me here tomorrow afternoon at the same time.”
“Is it okay if Frisco watches?”
“How about just you?” So far Frisco had been all hiss and vinegar, and the idea of the old guy’s spectating held no appeal. Colt was determined to cement his place here before setting himself up for criticism. A job was a job, and he intended to keep this one. It was far enough away from Oklahoma, for one thing, and there was plenty to do and no competition. The Banner-B suited him.
“All right, then, just me.” Bethany smiled at him.
Smiles from beautiful women had been few and far between in the last few years, and it was all Colt could do not to turn his considerable charm on her.
Bad idea. He’d save it for the horse.
“I’ll be out planting posts tomorrow early,” he said. He deliberately tacked a gruff edge to his words.
“Fine.”
With a curt nod, he left her. Next, supper with the Neilsons. Maybe he could soften up the old coot by being friendly with the kid. Eddie liked him, he could tell.
COUNTRY MUSIC WAS PLAYING on the radio, something whiny and sad that made Bethany feel mopey just listening to it. She rattled around in the kitchen, cobbling a meal together from leftovers because she didn’t feel like cooking. To make things even worse, she was nursing a bruised shoulder, an unpleasant souvenir of her dust-up with Sidewinder.
While her food warmed in the microwave, she wondered what was going on around the Neilsons’ supper table. Frisco was probably whittling invisible notches in that chip on his shoulder, and Dita would be making cheerful table conversation. Eddie—well, Eddie was Eddie.
What would Colt McClure add to the mix? He wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality. And anyway, why did she care?
Well, she did care. She desperately wanted the new hand to work out. Not to prove Frisco wrong, but to make life easier at the Banner-B for all of them. After she’d left the corral that afternoon, she’d ridden out to the new fence line and checked on the work Colt had done. He’d dug more fencepost holes than she’d imagined one man could do in a single day. And what he’d accomplished with Sidewinder was nothing less than phenomenal.
Bethany was glad that the old system of breaking a horse’s willpower and creating subservience through fear had fallen into disrepute. She hated pain and cruelty of any kind. These days, the trend in horse training was to use more humane methods than trainers had employed in the past.
She and her own horse, Dancer, worked as a team, and next to Frisco, Bethany considered Dancer her best friend on the ranch. Consequently when Sidewinder first arrived in trade from Mott Findley for some extra bales of hay that she’d grown last year, when the horse had turned out for some reason to be skittish and afraid, she’d thought that teaching him was a mere matter of showing him love and thereby developing trust. So far, all her high-minded theory had achieved for her was a near-death experience courtesy of a terrified horse that was worth less than spit.
But Colt McClure knew something she didn’t, something that would save Sidewinder. He had a rare gift. And Bethany was eager to learn his secret.
She’d been so preoccupied with all she’d had to do today that she’d clean forgotten that Colt needed sheets for his bed. After supper, she loaded the dishwasher and then rummaged in the linen closet until she found what she was looking for. Colt would probably still be eating with Frisco and his family, so she’d drop the sheets off and afterward take a long walk the way she often did late in the evening.
That rascal Jesse roused himself from his spot alongside her old slat-bottomed porch rocker and followed her as she headed toward the barn, her arms full of neatly folded sheets and an extra pillow.
“Dumb dog,” she said to him, nice as pie even though she didn’t feel it. “Trying to ruin my sunflowers. Seems like after all I’ve done for you, you could show respect for the things I love. How am I ever going to get flowers started around the house? What am I going to do with you, Jesse James?”
Jesse, outlaw that he was, wagged his tail enthusiastically and lifted his leg on the truck tire.
Bethany, thoroughly put out, kept walking. “Like I said, Jesse, you’re a dumb dog. But maybe not so dumb. You’ve got Frisco on your side at least.” When he saw that Bethany was going nowhere more interesting than the barn, Jesse wandered away toward the bunkhouse, which was so decrepit and rundown that it wasn’t in use anymore.
The barn was big and more ramshackle than Bethany would have liked, but repairing either it or the bunkhouse was out of the question as long as she continued to have serious cash flow problems. Still, the barn was comforting in its familiarity. As she wrinkled her nose against the dust motes swimming in the last rays of the dying sun, Colt’s horse stuck his head over the door to his stall and pricked his ears. He was a beautiful black quarter horse, sleek and well-kept.
Her own horse, Dancer, nickered and blew in recognition at the sight of her, but her arms were full and Bethany couldn’t get to the carrot she’d stashed in her back pocket. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised. Dancer snorted and bumped her nose against the gate to her stall.
All was quiet overhead in Colt’s apartment. Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden steps as she made her way upstairs. The door hung wide-open, which didn’t surprise her much. Anybody would want to get a cross-draft going in such airless quarters.
“Colt?” she called.
No answer. Inside the tiny room, an oscillating fan positioned on a table blew air across the top of a chipped enamel pan heaped with ice cubes. A primitive air conditioner? It made sense, but not when Colt wasn’t there. And where’d he get that much ice? The apartment refrigerator was the small square kind college kids used in their dorms, and it made minuscule ice cubes.
She stepped into the room, thinking to leave the sheets on the bed. But before she could set them down, she saw a photograph resting on the mattress. It was tattered around the edges, as if someone had repeatedly taken it out of a wallet for a closer look.
The picture was one of those glamour photos. It was of a young woman with dark hair teased into what Bethany thought of as Mall Bangs and deep soulful eyes made comical by too much eye makeup. Despite the hair, eyes and the studded leather jacket with the collar turned up, there was something arresting about the girl’s expression. She looked as if under all that bravado she was hiding an underlying sorrow. Then again, it might be the photographer’s lighting. Whatever it was, she was very pretty.
Bethany was so absorbed in the photograph that she didn’t hear Colt until he entered the room. She wheeled around, startled. And then she saw him.
Her new ranch hand was buck naked and dripping from the shower. His hair was slicked back, darker wet than it was dry, and the water had curled the hair on his chest into tight little burrs. He looked as startled as she felt—thank goodness, certain strategic body parts were modestly hidden by the towel he held in front of him.
She dropped the sheets. Also the pillow. She was totally unprepared for the wave of lust and helplessness that washed over her at the sight of him. Colt McClure was magnificently built, from the solid muscles of his arms and chest to the hard rippling ridges of his abdomen. And below that—she looked away, refusing to speculate on what was behind the towel.
Their gazes caught and held. Bethany could not pull her eyes away. Colt, completely unabashed,
