This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum

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СКАЧАТЬ the screen door screeching shut in his wake.

      It took her a ten minutes under a steaming shower to get the mud out of her hair and another ten to gingerly pull on her clothes, past the ache in her shoulder and left hip. And her cheek… Well, her cheek was another matter altogether.

      She supposed the bruises she saw when she looked in the mirror were minor compared to the battering her confidence had taken today. She’d always believed she could do anything she put her mind to. Today, however, she’d failed. Failed not only to save her ranch from the fate to which her husband had consigned it, but failed at the simplest of tasks required in running it.

      She leaned over the vanity, inspecting her battered cheek with a frown. She’d been lucky today. If it hadn’t been for that stranger downstairs, she might well be lying dead in the paddock right now instead of contemplating how a scar would add character to her face.

      She closed her eyes against the dull ache throbbing at the back of her skull. Lord, what had she been thinking chasing Geronimo that way? She should have read him better. Anticipated what he’d been about to do. Sure, she was overtired, overworked, but who wasn’t? running a day-today operation like this one. Maybe Ernie and the bank and all of those men were who were waiting for her to fold were right. Maybe she couldn’t do it. Maybe Big Sky Country did belong to the men of the world.

      Maybe a husband was a requirement up here in this wild country. And in the best of worlds, she’d have one. But Ben had taken that option right out of her hands six months ago. So what choice did she have? Husbands didn’t grow on trees. And except for the one man she’d never, ever consider, no one had offered. And even a ranch hand wouldn’t help her now, she realized, thinking of Cain’s offer. It was too late for that. She needed the loan. And they’d turned her down.

      She’d failed. Utterly. It was only a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. And after that, Laird Donnelly would finally get what he’d always wanted. At least, she amended, half of what he wanted.

      Maggie moved to her bedroom window and looked down at the yard. She couldn’t explain the relief she felt when she saw Cain’s bike still parked there. Nor could she comprehend the almost palpable rush she got at the prospect of seeing him again.

      Who was he and what strange twist of fate had brought him onto her ranch exactly when she’d needed him? More troubling, perhaps, was why that very coincidence didn’t alarm her? After all, she reasoned as she made her way downstairs, she didn’t know anything about him. What if he worked for Laird? What if Laird had sent him here to make trouble for her from the inside?

      Unlikely, she decided, pulling a jacket from the clothes tree by the front door. He’d come into the diner off the highway. And there hadn’t been even an exchange of glances with Laird or his men that she could recall. No, he’d said Moody sent him and Moody would never knowingly send a dangerous man to her ranch.

      But then, she reasoned, real monsters rarely have fangs.

      Shrugging into her jacket, she headed outside to find him. She’d promised him food and she would feed him. And that, she told herself, would be the end of that.

      “Whoa, son,” Cain soothed, rubbing a dry blanket over Geronimo’s soaked haunches as the gelding blew out a nervous breath and backed against the rear wall of the stall. Cain tightened his grip around Geronimo’s lead rope and brought the animal’s head down closer to him. “Nowhere to go now, is there? It’s just you an’ me here, pal. Nothin’ to be afraid of.”

      Geronimo nuzzled Cain’s clothing for a scent and exhaled sharply.

      Cain’s mouth twitched with a smile. “Yeah, I know. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? But you could do a lot worse than to end up in Maggie Cortland’s barn. A helluva lot worse. You keep that in mind the next time she steps into a paddock with you, you hear?”

      A sound from the doorway had Cain whirling around with an instinct honed over the last few years. It was an old habit and hard to break, and his shoulders relaxed fractionally when he saw it was only Maggie walking toward him with a curious expression on her face. Her hair was still damp from her shower and as she walked, she pulled her fingers through it unselfconsciously.

      The sight of her did things to him. Made him remember how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. Any woman. Locking down the thought, he turned his attention to the wool blanket in his hand.

      “I can’t tell you,” she said breezily, “what a relief it is to know I’m not the only one who talks to horses.”

      “See?” he said, tossing the blanket over the stall half door. “I told you I could be useful.”

      As Jigger prowled the hallway of the barn near her, Maggie nodded at the gelding. “How did you do that?”

      “Do what?”

      “Settle him down like that? He’s never let anyone but me touch him.”

      Cain ran his palm down over Geronimo’s velvety nose and the horse quivered with pleasure. “We came to an understanding.”

      “Ah,” she said, “you mean, he understands he’s not to trample you if you understand his heartfelt desire not to be sold to the nearest glue factory.”

      “Something like that.” He grinned at her as he ran his hands down the animal’s flank and across the thick, well defined muscles of his chest. “He’s got decent lines. More than decent, actually. But he’s got a shaky history.”

      She braced her elbows over the half door and studied the horse. “You’re right. I’ve had him for less than a month. God knows what happened to him before I found him in that auction. But I’m not giving up on him just yet.”

      “Horses like this are unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst, like today. He could kill you in a heartbeat if he took it into his thick head.”

      Maggie reached up to scratch Geronimo under his chin. “He’s scared, not mean. I know the difference.”

      “Dead’s dead. Nobody will care later what his intentions were.” Cain turned his back on her and finished rubbing the horse’s flanks with the blanket.

      “You’re right, “she said evenly. “I’ll be more careful.”

      He nodded without reply.

      “So…you seem to know your way around horses.”

      “Yup.”

      Maggie braced her arms across the half door of the stall, resting her chin there. “Huh. A monosylabic résumé. That’s a unique approach.”

      He relinquished a small smile. “I thought you weren’t looking for a résumé.”

      “I’m not…exactly. Just curious, I guess. You don’t look like the sort of man who’d be drifting, that’s all.”

      He gave Geronimo a final pat, then gave her damp hair and battered cheek a fresh perusal. “And sad-eyed beauties dressed in city clothes who sit alone in cafés don’t usually run ranches. So there you go.”

      Color crawled up her neck as Cain drew near enough to smell the scent of soap on her. And for the briefest of moments, he had the crazy impulse to bury his face in her hair and simply breathe in the scent of СКАЧАТЬ