Must Love Horses. Vicki Tharp

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СКАЧАТЬ Bryan, if you’re in pain, stop.”

      Then his face softened, a few of the stress lines on his forehead relaxed. “Only my mother calls me Bryan.”

      She wrinkled her nose and suppressed a shiver. His mother? Bryan’s mother was probably a perfectly wonderful person, but having a hot guy tell you that you remind them of their mother, that was sixty-one kinds of wrong. “I remind you of your mother?”

      He laughed. The rumble warm and smooth, like chocolate melting in the sun. He looked her up and down. Long and slow, as if he were mentally comparing every inch of her to his mother. Every. Single. Solitary. Inch. She flushed.

      “Hardly,” he said.

      Her stomach did a weird flippy thing and the synapses in her brain misfired, so she didn’t know what to think about her reaction. She led Eli to the barn. Bryan cranked on the water and handed her the hose.

      Since changing the subject when things got awkward seemed to be working for them, she went with it. “So, you’ve liked to blow shit up—”

      “For a very long time.” Bryan made the mental shift without slipping the clutch or grinding any gears.

      “Legally?”

      His slow smile transformed his face. “Mostly.” When she raised her brows at him he added, “Two or three or four fence posts may not have survived my elementary school days, and there was an old outhouse that fell victim. But that stinky old toilet taught me the need to learn how to shape my charges so the explosion goes in the right direction. I’d call it a win.”

      She squeegeed the water off Eli then turned her horse out with Mac’s mare and colt. “Your mother must have been a saint.”

      “See,” he grinned. “Nothing at all like you.”

      She tried to sock him in the gut, but he moved faster than she’d expected considering his leg was bothering him.

      As they walked down to Bryan’s cabin, Sidney’s mind whirred and shifted into hyperdrive. Two weeks. Two weeks to get four wild horses far enough in their training to impress the buyer. To impress Hank and Mac. To make or break her employment.

      Her heart thumped in her chest, her breath quickened, and her stride lengthened. This wasn’t the start of another panic attack. The panic attacks were all about flight. This? This was all about the fight.

      * * * *

      Boomer held his cabin door open and ushered Sidney inside. She stopped in the center and did a slow 360, taking in the two sets of bunk beds on either side wall, the mini-kitchen with a refrigerator, sink, and microwave that shared a wall with the bathroom tucked behind it.

      She rubbed a hand over the two-seater table, the top scarred and worn at the edges from years of use. There wasn’t much else to see. A one-room cabin didn’t take long to tour. He decided to skip showing her the bathroom, with its baby-shit green shower, toilet, and sink. No point in scaring her off.

      “Very…retro,” she decided.

      “It gets the job done.” He pulled out one of the ladder-back chairs. The joints were weak and the chair racked when you sat in it, but as little as she weighed, it wouldn’t matter none. “Sit.”

      She did. “You live alone.”

      “For now. Alby and Santos have the other cabin. This one was Mac and Hank’s before they moved into the foreman’s house. If they hire anyone else, I guess they’ll bunk here.”

      “What about the cabins you’re building?”

      “Guest cabins.” He retrieved the first aid kit from the bathroom. “Hank’s talking about the Lazy S doing their own guided pack trips into the mountains, hunt trips, things like that.”

      He set the kit on the table, grabbed the other chair, and scooted her chair sideways. He tilted her head to give him a better angle to the light dangling above the table. He dabbed at the wound with a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide, but every time the pad brushed her hairline, more sand rained down into the wound.

      “This isn’t gonna cut it.” He tossed the pad into the trash, returned to the bathroom, and came back with a couple of bath towels and some shampoo. “On the counter. I’m going to wash the sand out of your hair.”

      “I could go back to the barn and shower and take care of this myself.”

      “You could.” He folded one of the towels as a neck rest and laid it on the counter beside the sink. “Or you could lay your ass on the counter and we can get this done.”

      Sidney didn’t move. She could take his offer or leave it. It didn’t matter to him.

      Yeah, tell yourself another lie, like you buy tickets to the World Series to eat the hot dogs.

      Then she stepped to the counter and he couldn’t help the grin that slid across his face. She boosted herself up and lay back with her neck on the towel, her head hanging over the sink and her legs dangling off the far end of the counter.

      He pulled a plastic pitcher from the cabinet above the sink and glanced down at her face as he waited for the water to warm. Even though her eyes were closed there was an animation to her features, an excitement that radiated from her. He opened his mouth to ask her about it when she started talking.

      “I can’t believe I’m working for Hank Nash. Hank freaking Nash! I mean, I knew Mac’s last name was Nash and I knew her husband’s name was Hank, but holy cowboy, I didn’t put the two together.”

      Mac had told Boomer all about the buckle bunnies that flocked around Hank like he was a monstrous, juicy carrot. Boomer chuckled. “You know he’s married, right?”

      “I don’t care about that. Training for him and Mac, having their support, their stamp of approval…” Her voice wavered and she swallowed hard a couple of times.

      He finished wetting her hair, then plopped some shampoo into his palm and started working it into the soft, bright strands.

      “Training for Hank could do amazing things for my career.”

      Working the suds across her scalp, he gently scrubbed and massaged. She groaned, deep in her throat. Boomer’s jeans shrunk a size as he thought of more fun ways he could get her to moan.

      “You know, if the construction thing doesn’t work out for you, you could make a mint washing hair at a beauty salon.”

      “I think I’ll file that under Things I’d Rather Kill Myself Before Doing.”

      “You should keep your options open. You’re pretty amazing at it. Of course, it isn’t as amazing as, say, being a bull-riding champion—”

      “Bull riders only have to hang on for eight seconds. I have far more impressive skills.” He refilled the pitcher and poured water over her forehead and rinsed away the sand, suds, and dried blood.

      She opened her eyes and her face lit. “Oooh, impress me.”

      “Well…” He dug way back into his childhood. “At the age of six I was a master of the atomic wedgie.”

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