gaze fixed on the disheveled bed for a long beat. His eyes hardened to sapphire, and a muscle ticked next to his left eye. “Must have been a staff member sleeping here.”
“You think?” She wondered why they hadn’t fixed up the rest of the house.
He seemed to guess her question. “I imagine they ate at the cookhouse with everybody else.”
He turned his attention fully to Melissa and held out a broad callused hand. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift home.”
“You drove?” Why hadn’t she heard the engine?
“I rode Tango.”
She instinctively shrank back.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid to ride double on him.”
“Of course not.” She sure hoped there wasn’t a trick to riding double.
“Then let’s go. You need to eat something.”
“I’ll be fi—”
“No, you won’t. Skipping lunch was a stupid decision. Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive this long.” He reached out and grasped her hand, tugging her out of the bedroom and down the hall.
“Did your great-grandfather have siblings?” she dared to ask.
“He had a sister.”
“That explains the bunk beds.”
“Yes, it does.”
Melissa blinked in the strong sunlight, her focus going immediately to where Tango was tied to the porch.
Jared mounted, then maneuvered the horse flush against the railingless platform, holding out his hand.
Melissa took a deep breath. She braced herself against his forearm, then arced her right leg high, swinging her butt to land with an unladylike thud, off-center behind the saddle on Tango’s broad back.
The horse grunted and stepped sideways.
Jared swore out loud, reached back to snag her waist and shoved her into place as her arms went instinctively around his body and clung tight.
“Sorry,” she muttered against his back.
“You’re a klutz,” he told her. “On top of everything else, you’re a klutz.”
“I never learned to ride properly,” she admitted.
“You need to learn some life skills,” he responded. “I don’t even care which ones. But damn, woman, you’ve got to learn how to do something.”
He urged Tango into a fast walk. The motion and play of muscles were unsettling beneath Melissa’s body. She kept her arms tight around Jared, slowly becoming aware of the intimacy of their position. Her breasts were plastered against his back, his cotton shirt and her T-shirt little barrier to the heat of their bodies. Her cheek rested against him, and every time she inhaled, her lungs were filled with his subtle, woodsy musk scent.
She was quickly getting turned on. Arousal boiled in the pit of her belly and tingled along her thighs. Her nipples had grown hard, and for a mortifying moment, she wondered if he could feel them.
“Where do you live in Indiana?” he asked, voice husky.
“Gary.”
“You have a job there?”
“Not yet.” She’d decided claiming to have a job would raise too many questions about why she needed money, and how she had enough time off to travel across the country.
“An apartment?”
“I’ve been staying with friends.” Not having a job meant she couldn’t claim to be paying rent. Unless she had investments or family money. In which case, she wouldn’t need to earn money for a bus ticket.
As embarrassing as it might be, she had to pretend to be as big a loser as Jared had decided she was in order to maintain her cover story.
He grunted his disapproval, and she felt a twinge of regret that she couldn’t set the record straight. But it wasn’t her job to impress Jared Ryder. And it sure wasn’t her job to be attracted to him. She’d have to fight her instincts on both fronts.
Near the cookhouse, Jared helped Melissa down from Tango’s back. She staggered to a standing position, and he could see the pain reflected in her expression as she stretched the muscles in her thighs. If the woman had ever been on a horse before, he’d eat saddle leather.
“There you are,” came Stephanie’s accusatory voice.
Jared felt a twinge of satisfaction at the thought of Melissa getting her comeuppance. But then he realized Stephanie was talking to him. He’d obviously missed her jumping practice.
“I gave Melissa a lift,” he explained.
Stephanie looked at Melissa. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I was—”
“Downriver,” Jared quickly put in. “Walking.” The explanation earned him a confused look from Melissa.
Too bad. He’d worry about that one later. For now, he didn’t want to plant any thoughts about the old cabin in Stephanie’s head.
Stephanie looked from Jared to Melissa, then back again. “Well, you missed a no-fault round,” she told him, putting her pert nose in the air.
“I guess you’ll just have to do it again.”
“You think it’s easy?”
“No,” he acknowledged. “I think it’s very, very hard. But I also know you’re a perfectionist.”
“I wish,” Stephanie retorted. But Jared knew it was true. You didn’t become one of the top-ten show jumpers in the country without a strong streak of perfectionism.
He handed Tango’s reins to Melissa. “He’s all yours. When you’re done taking off the tack, put him back in the red-gated pen.”
Melissa glanced down at the leather reins. Then she looked at Jared, her eyes widening with trepidation.
Yeah, he thought so.
He gave a heavy sigh and took back the reins. “Or I could give you a hand,” he offered. “Then you can grab something to eat.”
He felt Stephanie’s curious gaze behind him, and he twisted his head to give her an I-told-you-so stare. If she wanted him to have time to watch her jump, she shouldn’t have hired such a hopeless case.
He wrapped the reins around the horn of his saddle, clipped a lead rope onto
