Sloan replied, pulling out a cell phone from his worn back pocket. “I was going to shoe Triple H Ranch horses today, but I’ll call ’em and let ’em know I’ll be a tad late. They won’t mind.”
Tension bled out of Dev and her stomach unknotted. It usually took hours for her to relax. Did it have to do with Sloan? He didn’t seem like someone who got rattled about anything. But then, her knowledge of horses and blacksmiths told her that the men and women who entered that trade were all like him: calm, quiet and possessing a low voice that just naturally put tense horses and mules at ease. Hell, he’d put her at ease! Smiling to herself, she said, “Great. Thanks. I’ll just follow you, then.” She walked quickly around the trailer and climbed into her truck.
* * *
SLOAN WAS MET by a whine from Mouse, his brindle-colored Belgian Malinois dog on his front seat. The dog’s cinnamon eyes danced with excitement, his pink tongue lolling out the side of his long, black muzzle. After patting Mouse, his dog moved over to the other side to allow Sloan into the cab. He was excitedly thumping his lean tail.
“She’s kinda pretty, isn’t she?” Sloan asked his companion.
Mouse whined, thumping his tail even harder and faster.
“You probably think I’m talking about that good-looking yellow Lab she owns hanging her head out her truck window. Don’t you?” Sloan grinned, roughing up his male dog’s dark brown fur. “Two nice-looking females,” he agreed as the dog sat obediently as he closed the door.
Sloan pulled his truck around Dev’s and signaled, easing into the nearest lane. Right now, there was no traffic coming their way. He watched through his side mirror and saw Dev McGuire was right behind him, but keeping a safe distance between the two vehicles. Smiling a little, Sloan rubbed his recently shaven jaw, thinking that she was one fine-looking filly of a woman. He liked her raven-black hair that shone with blue highlights even beneath a gray rainy sky. Her oval face had a strong chin and he could sense stubborn resolve in her after the tire had blown. Knowing she’d have successfully handled the changing of a tire, Sloan liked that Dev had allowed him to step in and aid her. She might be stubborn, but judging from the look in those deep forest green eyes of hers, she was intelligent and had the good common sense to accept help from others.
Dev was built slender, reminding him more of a willow, although he couldn’t tell much beneath that navy goose-down winter coat she wore. The woman definitely had a fine pair of long, long legs on her and that heightened Sloan’s interest in her. He’d always liked tall, willowy-looking women. But he darkly reminded himself that more than likely, she had a man in her life, even though she wore no wedding ring on her left hand. Most of the female rangers at the Teton station were either going with someone or married. Him and about ten other younger rangers were single. They were all looking for the right woman. He was not. His ex-wife, Cary Davis, had cured him of ever wanting marriage again.
As Sloan drove at a reasonable speed, he noted again that Dev was easily keeping up with him. Once they entered Jackson Hole, the four-lane highway bustling with locals and tourists, Sloan remained in the slower right-hand lane for Dev’s sake. Trailering a horse required 100 percent of the driver’s attention. Plus, they never drove near anyone else’s bumper because they had a lot of weight and a thousand-pound horse pushing them forward even after brakes were applied. Trucks and trailers didn’t stop that fast as a result.
Sloan kept trying to ignore the fact he caught the fragrance of her hair or skin, a subtle jasmine scent. It made him inhale deeply, as if he were inhaling a woman’s scent for the first time. Well, that was partly true. After divorcing Cary at twenty-seven, it had taken Sloan nearly three years to recover from the damage it had done to him. And just recently, he was beginning to feel the ache of wanting a partner, or at least a woman to be in a serious relationship with, in his life once again. But no marriage. Just a relationship. Sloan wasn’t the kind of man to have one-night stands. He never had been that type, and wasn’t about to start now. He’d always had long-term relationships and never went into them with the thought that they were going to be shallow or time limited.
There was a haunting softness to Dev McGuire that called powerfully to him. Maybe an innocence to her? She looked college aged, but Sloan was sure she was probably in her late twenties even though she didn’t look it. The maturity she had told him she was older. She wasn’t some giggly young twentysomething. No, Dev had dealt with him in an adult way, although Sloan swore he had seen her interest in him as a man. Maybe that was his imagination? Sloan knew he was no pretty boy or magazine cover model. He was country born, backwoods raised on Black Mountain, and lowlanders referred to his kind as hillbillies. There was pride in being raised in West Virginia, in the Allegheny Mountains among the Hill people whose blood ran through his veins. Black Mountain was a harbor for his kind. These were good people who lived off the land, worked hard, took care of themselves as well as their neighbors. And despite the stereotype where outsiders thought Hill people were dumb and illiterate, nothing could be further from the truth. Minds were changed, however, one person at a time.
So why the sense of innocence around Dev? Sloan pondered that question as he drove slowly through the town. Maybe she got married early, in her late teens. Again, he assumed she was in a relationship. Damn, she was pretty. He liked her beautifully shaped lips, their natural fullness. Her wing-shaped black brows emphasized those glorious, large green eyes of hers. They were alive with life, dancing and fully engaged with him when they spoke to one another. Sloan had tried to ignore as best he could the heat that had streaked straight down to his lower body when Dev had smiled at him.
Sloan thought back to his growing-up years in an old log cabin that sat on top of a tree-clad hill deep in the woods of Black Mountain. They had electricity and every night his mother, Wilma, would read to him as a young child. She loved myths and in particular he remembered Helen of Troy and how beautiful she was. Sloan thought that Dev could be a black-haired version of her. What bothered him, however, was her reaction when he accidentally scared the bejesus out of her. She’d reacted violently when he’d approached her. Looking back on it, he did walk quietly and Dev hadn’t heard him coming her way. Sloan felt bad about jolting her. The woman was under enough stress hauling a horse halfway across the United States, then having a flat tire, which could all have contributed to her reaction.
It was the look in her green eyes that had struck him deeply, the raw terror he’d seen in them. Her face had gone completely white except for her red cheeks caused by the cold weather and wind. He’d seen that look in Afghan villagers’ eyes too often, particularly the women and children who had been terrorized by Taliban who’d come through killing and torturing fathers and husbands. And raping the women. It was a look he’d never forget from his deployments. And it was reflected in Dev’s eyes. Why? Shaking his head, Sloan couldn’t put it together. At least, not yet. And probably never.
As they reached the outskirts of the town, there was a long, long hill they had to climb. On his right was the ten-foot-high elk fence. Below it was the valley where thousands of deer and elk were fed all winter long so they wouldn’t die of starvation. On his left rose a thousand-foot hill, rocks craggy and gleaming with wetness from small springs that wound unseen and then oozed out of the fissures and cracks on the surface.
Sloan could always tell a lot about a person by the animals they kept. That buckskin mare of hers wasn’t jumpy, nervous or tense. She was real relaxed in that trailer, alert but not jerking and jumping around like some horses did. That was a reflection of Dev’s real nature, for sure. Animals always mirrored their owners, plain and simple. So his initial sense of the woman was that she was grounded, quiet and mature. Just like her horse. That was a good combination in Sloan’s book. Giggly, flighty, nervous women made him tense. But then, Cary had been like that, hadn’t she? But that was because she’d been high on drugs and he hadn’t realized it until much too late.
Sloan
