place on earth as beautiful as this valley and the dragon’s teeth of the Tetons thrusting up out of the prairie.
“Now,” Shorty said, walking toward the huge rectangular corral, “the Boss will be riding your mare daily in here. It’s got two feet of fine sand as a base. That keeps your horse from pulling a muscle or, worse, a ligament or tendon. He’s going to be seeing what her strengths and weaknesses are this next week.”
“You mean he does all the riding?” Jordana was surprised. That meant ten horses a day were ridden. “I thought he had help.”
“No, ma’am, he does it all himself.”
“No wonder he was upset with me arriving late.”
Shorty grinned. “Time’s money.”
Nodding, Jordana now understood his frosty stance. “How long does he ride the horse?”
“Depends. At first, he’s not going to push your mare. He’s gonna see how she does at a walk, trot and canter. Might be on her for thirty minutes at the most, depending upon how built up she is or not.”
“I’ve been riding Stormy ten to fifteen miles every third day. He will want to know that.”
“Yep, he will. But when you come out the next time, he’ll cover all that with you. The Boss can tell how in shape or not your horse is by merely examining it and watching it work.”
That was true, Jordana decided. And Slade’s gray eyes had missed nothing. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way. She liked his full mouth even though it had been thinned with displeasure talking to her. His nose was strong-looking and had a bump at the root of it, telling her he’d broken it some time earlier in his life. She’d liked his broad, square face, his skin burned brown by being out in the sun so much, the creases at the corners of his eyes deep. Was that from squinting in the bright, white snow or sun? Or were they laughter lines? Jordana highly doubted Slade had any humor in his bones. Not once had he cracked even a slight smile toward her. No, he wasn’t Mr. Social, that was for sure.
“Oh,” Shorty said, “you need to know that the Boss will not allow a rider to wear spurs or carry a whip.”
“Not a problem. I don’t do either.”
“That’s good because the Boss believes that if the horse and rider have a good rapport with one another, you can get all the speed out of the animal because it trusts you. Don’t ever be seen carrying a crop. He’ll kick you out of here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
Laughing, Jordana held up her hands. “Not to worry. Stormy hates crops. In fact, when I bought her from Bud two years ago, he told me she was combative if she even saw a crop. He thinks the BLM cowboys used whips to get her into a corral. No, Stormy hates crops.”
“The Boss will want to know that.”
“Good.”
Shorty walked her back to the truck. “I’ll help you bring in all your gear to the tack room and then you can leave.”
“Thanks for the help,” she said, appreciating the wrangler. Looking around the large operation, Jordana didn’t see McPherson. The robins were singing in the oak and maple trees that surrounded the one-story ranch house in the distance. There was no lawn, and it looked pretty shabby in comparison to the spotless pole barn and showering shed. Maybe being a single male was the reason. Jordana would have put in a small lawn, flower boxes on the front windows and a small white picket fence around it. A woman’s touch. But this hard cowboy wasn’t much for decoration. At least he cared for his endurance horses. And that was all that counted in her book.
“Now, you need to write out a check for the first month’s rent and training,” Shorty reminded her.
“As soon as I get the tack put away, I will,” Jordana promised him, opening up the trailer door to remove the saddle and bridle.
DRIVING AWAY from Tetons Ranch, Jordana felt happier than she had in two years. Hands firmly on the steering wheel of her three-quarter-ton truck that hauled the empty horse trailer, she drove out just as slowly as she had come in. Maybe McPherson had a tractor stowed away somewhere and would get Shorty out here to flatten it once more.
The sky was a bright blue. The sunlight made the Tetons mountain range west of her look tall, rugged and beautiful. By early July, the last of the snow was almost gone until September, when it would once more become a white cloak around each of the sharp, pointed peaks. Her mind ranged over the price of the training. As a physician, she made good money. Her savings was now gone. She’d spent it buying a house at the edge of town. Two thousand dollars a month for training was going to stretch her in a way she hadn’t counted on. Jordana wanted to put money back into savings, but this training fee wouldn’t allow it.
Grimacing, she slowed at the stop sign that would take her to the highway. Turning left, she drove back toward Jackson Hole. If she’d gone right, she’d be heading into Yellowstone National Park about forty miles away.
Between her clinic and working part-time at the hospital, Jordana made ends meet. Now, with two thousand going out a month, she was hamstrung. Yet, all her life she’d loved horses, and endurance riding had always been her outlet. Could she give that up? Was it too expensive to follow her dream of having the best trainer in the United States train her and Stormy? Jordana waffled, unsure.
Slade McPherson was challenging, to say the least to her. But he’d been gentle with Stormy. How would he treat her? A horse trainer didn’t always transition well from animal to human. She’d had some bad experiences with horse trainers before. Yet, if Jordana was honest with herself, she’d been drawn to the iconic cowboy. That made no sense at all to her! Yet, she couldn’t help but look at his mouth and wonder what it would be like to be kissed by this hard man who braved nature without a second thought. And as he’d run his hands lightly and gently down Stormy’s legs, Jordana swore she could feel those rough, callused hands exploring her at the same time.
“Phew!” she muttered. “This is crazy!”
Was it? What adventures waited for her two days from now when she began her first lesson on Stormy with tough Slade McPherson?
CHAPTER FOUR
JORDANA TRIED TO calm her nerves as she rode Stormy out into the huge rectangular arena where Slade McPherson stood. Her heart wouldn’t settle down. It was July 3, the late afternoon sky filled with threatening clouds. As she looked toward the ragged-edge Tetons, she saw a massive thunderstorm over their sharp peaks. It might come their way if it was strong enough. The wind was up, and Stormy was more alert.
Today was the first day of her training with the implacable McPherson. Why had she had two dreams in a row about this hard-looking cowboy? As Jordana pressed her calf into Stormy’s side to make the turn into the sandy arena, she had mixed feelings. Wasn’t it enough she was working twelve hours a day either at her clinic or the hospital? Since the settling of the lawsuit, she had no desire to get entangled with a man. She was still too raw from the experience, the trauma of the move west and trying to get some sanity back into her life.
“Take her at a walk around the arena to the left,” Slade ordered, his voice carrying across the distance.
Nodding, Jordana took in a deep breath and tried to relax. She knew that Slade was going to be damn tough on her. Stormy had already had two daily workouts. The mustang mare seemed completely oblivious
