To Tempt a Cowgirl. Jeannie Watt

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      Dani leaned back as the waitress set two Cokes on the table, waiting until the woman walked away before saying, “Please understand that I’m not saying we won’t become friends. It’s just—”

      “Full disclosure. I get it.”

      “Thanks.” She pushed the napkin-wrapped flatware aside so that she could rest her elbows on the table. “How is it that you came to vacation at the Staley house?”

      He gave a casual shrug. “I wanted to...disappear, I guess—somewhere in Montana—and I found the place through a private company that specializes in leasing executive homes.”

      “Oh.” She gave a considering nod. “I always thought of the Staley house as more of a big-ass mansion than an executive home.”

      Gabe smiled. “It is huge. I rattle around in it, but the windows are big and the light is great.”

      “You’ll have to give me a tour before you leave. I’ve lived next door, endured their traffic while growing up, but have never been in the place.”

      “Sure,” Gabe said, pleased that she was talking about seeing him again sometime in the future. “Does the traffic across your place bother you?”

      She shook her head. “Not recently, because no one has lived there, but when the Staleys were in residence, yeah. The road is just a little too close to the house. Dad used to cuss out Granddad for granting the original owners access across our property, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

      “Shame,” he said, sipping his Coke. And interesting. He waited until the food came before he asked her what she did for a living.

      “Until recently I worked in marketing at a winter equipment wholesaler, but they went out of business, so I decided to move home and try my luck at training horses.”

      “You can make a living training horses?” Gabe asked.

      “I’m going to try. It’s the perfect time. I have a little severance pay to invest in my business and we own the ranch outright.”

      “Those are good circumstances,” he agreed.

      “My sister Jolie might join me after she gets done with graduate school. She’s doing an internship right now at a big experimental farm in southern Idaho.”

      “She trains, too?” This was looking worse and worse, but the more he knew, the more he could plan how to approach this matter.

      “She’s a barrel racer. She puts on clinics, but I prefer working with horses to people.”

      “Why?”

      She smiled. “Horses,” she said, tapping her spoon on the table, “are logical. People are not.”

      “I’m logical.” A characteristic he’d ignored until he started college and discovered that there was comfort and security in step-by-step processes—a welcome change from his former scattershot approach to life and the resulting chaos. He’d reached the point where he couldn’t imagine operating any other way...or perhaps he was afraid to, afraid he’d lose everything he’d worked for if he went back to shooting from the hip.

      “To a point. But if a horse does something, it’s the result of a stimulus, either current or remembered. The right stimulus will produce the right result. Progress may be slow, but if you take your time—” she shrugged her shoulders “—you’re usually successful. People, on the other hand...people have agendas.”

      He shifted slightly. “Are you saying all horses behave logically?”

      “Oh, no. Sometime horses are too traumatized to overcome their flight responses. They short-circuit.”

      “And are no longer logical.” He wondered if she was talking about the paint mare she’d just bought.

      “They would be if they could overcome the fear factor.”

      “Maybe people are the same.”

      “They are,” she agreed in a halfhearted way that made him wonder if she was thinking about her own recent past.

      “Do you prefer horses to people, Dani Brody?”

      She gave a slow considering nod. “Yes. A lot of the time I do.”

      * * *

      THERE WAS SOMETHING about Gabe Matthews that drew in Dani, made her want to know him better. Perhaps even trust him. Maybe it was that behind his easy charm, she sensed that he was as guarded as she was. That he had his secrets and his vulnerabilities, just as she did.

      Once upon a time she hadn’t been guarded, or even all that vulnerable, despite the knocks life had sent her way. Nor had Allie—at least not in the way she was now. But look at the two of them today, ready to believe that anyone who was friendly or showed the slightest inclination toward pursuing an acquaintanceship had an agenda. She wasn’t as bad as Allie, but she now had barriers where there hadn’t been any prior to her experience with Chad the Liar.

      Was this how she wanted to live?

      A small voice told her that this was the way she had to live until she got a handle on what Chad had done to her. He’d betrayed her, made her feel stupid for trusting him, made her lose faith in her own judgment. She hated that.

      After dropping off Gabe, Dani stopped at the mailbox, then turned into the driveway leading to the house. She was almost to the cattle guard when she stepped on the brake and leaned forward over the steering wheel to peer out the windshield.

      “What the hell?” she muttered as she got out of the idling truck and walked over to the edge of a huge stream of water flowing from the edge of the lawn across the driveway to the barn. The white plastic standpipe had been snapped at the base. Dani bit back another curse as she saw a second river flowing behind the barn.

      “Son of a bitch,” she said, as she approached river number two. That standpipe was also snapped. What had happened and, more important, where was the water main?

      She hadn’t a clue and had no idea where to start looking.

      A few minutes later she stalked back to her idling truck, pausing for a moment before she got in to check the driveway for tire tracks and footprints. Nothing.

      A fluke. This had to be a fluke.

      She put the truck in gear and parked it a few yards from the water flow before heading to the house, where Gus was barking, demanding to be let out. He galloped out, heading straight to the flowing water when she opened the door. Dani followed, taking her phone out of her pocket and holding it for a moment as she debated. She had to call Allie and if she didn’t know where the water main was located, then she had to get Kyle’s number. No way around that, even though she was going to get another earful about bad ranch karma. Not to be helped. She punched her sister’s number into the phone, got the out-of-range recording.

      Great. She pressed her lips together for a moment. Mac was working halfway across the state, Gina had babies to tend to. With a sigh, she called her sister again, left a message telling her she needed Kyle’s cell number, then, after ending the call, she hit the number of the closest able-bodied СКАЧАТЬ