McKettrick's Luck. Linda Lael Miller

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       Cheyenne nodded nervously. The creature probably weighed as much as a Volkswagen, and if either of them got hurt, odds on, it would be her. Just the same, she didn’t want to cause him any pain.

       She was in good shape, but the insides of her thighs were already beginning to ache. She wondered if it would be ethical to put a gallon or two of Bengay on her expense account so she could dip herself in the stuff when she got home.

       “You’re okay?” Jesse asked after a few beats.

       She bit down hard on her lower lip and nodded once, briskly.

       He smiled, laid a hand lightly on her thigh, and turned to mount his horse with the easy grace of a movie cowboy. If Nigel had been there, armed with his seemingly endless supply of clichés, he probably would have remarked that Jesse McKettrick looked as though he’d been born on horseback, or that he and the animal might have been a single entity.

       Jesse nudged his horse’s sides with the heels of his boots, and it began to walk away.

       “No spurs?” Cheyenne asked, drawing on celluloid references, which constituted the extent of her knowledge of cowboys. It was an inane conversation, but Pardner was moving, and she had to talk to keep herself calm.

       Jesse frowned as though she’d suggested stabbing the poor critter with a pitchfork. “No spurs on the Triple M,” he said. “Ever.”

       Cheyenne clutched the reins, her hands sweating, and waited for her heart to squirm back down out of her throat and resume its normal beat. The ride wasn’t so bad, really—just a sort of rolling jostle.

       As long as an impromptu Kentucky Derby didn’t break out, she might just survive this episode. Anyway, it was a refreshing change from shuffling paperwork, juggling calls from Nigel and constantly meeting with prospective investors.

       Reaching a pasture gate, Jesse leaned from the saddle of his gelding to free the latch. The fences, Cheyenne noted, now that she wasn’t hyperventilating anymore, were split-rail as far as she could see. The wood was weathered, possibly as old as the historic schoolhouse Jesse had promised to show her when they got back, and yet the poles stood straight.

       Just as there were no spurs on the Triple M, she concluded, there appeared to be no barbed wire, either. Considering the size of the spread—the local joke was that the place was measured in counties rather than acres—that was no small feat.

       Cheyenne rode through the gate, waited while Jesse shut it again.

       “I don’t see any barbwire,” she said.

       “You won’t,” Jesse answered, adjusting his hat so the brim came down low over his eyes. “There isn’t any. Horses manage to tear themselves up enough as it is, without rusty spikes ripping into their hide.”

       In spite of all he was putting her through, before he’d even agree to look at the blueprints for Nigel’s development, Jesse rose a little in Cheyenne’s estimation. Spurs were cruel, and so was barbed wire. He clearly disapproved of both, and Cheyenne had to give him points for compassion.

       Jesse had never been mean, she reminded herself. He’d been wild, though. Even in high school, he’d been a seasoned poker player—she’d seen him in illicit games with her dad and some of the other old-timers long before he was of age.

       “Is this what you do all day?” she asked, as they rode through high, fragrant grass toward a distant ridge. White clouds scalloped the horizon like foam on an ocean tide, and the sky was the same shade of blue as Jesse’s eyes.

       One side of his mouth cocked up in a grin, and he adjusted his hat again. “Is what what I do all day? Ride the range with good-looking women, you mean?”

       Cheyenne was foolishly pleased by the compliment, however indirect, though the practical part of her said she was being played and she’d better beware. She’d dated, when she had the time, and even had had one or two fairly serious relationships, but Jesse McKettrick was way out of her league. Forgetting that could only get her into trouble.

       She smiled, held both reins in one hand so she could wipe a damp palm dry on the leg of Jesse’s mother’s jeans, and then repeated the process with the other. “You must herd cattle and things like that,” she said, as if he needed prompting.

       “Rance would like to run a few hundred head of beef,” Jesse answered, picking up the pace just a little, so both horses accelerated into a fast walk. “The Triple M isn’t really in the cattle business anymore. It’s more like what the easterners call hobby farming. I train the occasional horse, ride in a rodeo once in a while, and play a hell of a lot of poker. What about you, Cheyenne? What do you do all day?”

       “I work,” she said, and then realized she’d sounded like a self-righteous prig, and immediately wished she wasn’t too damn proud to backpedal.

       He pretended to pull an arrow, or maybe a poisoned spear, out of his chest, but his grin was as saucy as ever. Nothing she could say was going to get under that thick McKettrick hide.

       Not that she really wanted to. Much.

       “How far are we going to ride?” she asked, closing the figurative barn door after the horse was long gone.

       “Just onto that ridge up there,” Jesse answered, pointing. His horse was trotting now, and Cheyenne’s kept pace. “You can see clear across to the county road from just outside the Triple M fence line. It’ll take your breath away.”

       Cheyenne swallowed, bouncing so hard in the saddle that she had to be careful not to bite her tongue. Her Native American grandmother, a proud member of the Apache tribe, would die of shame to see the way Cheyenne rode—if she hadn’t already been dead.

      Don’t let me love that land too much, she prayed.

       Jesse slowed his horse with no discernible pull on the reins. Reached over to take hold of Pardner’s bridle strap with one hand and bring him back to a sedate walk. “Do you ever wish you could do anything else?” he asked.

       The question confused Cheyenne at first because she was concentrating on two things: not falling off the horse, and not throwing away everything she’d worked for because she liked the scenery. Then she realized Jesse was asking whether or not she liked her job.

       “It’s a challenge,” she allowed carefully. “Very rewarding at times, and very frustrating at others. Our last development was geared to the mid-income crowd, and it was nice to know younger families would be moving in, raising kids there.”

       Nigel had lost his shirt on that development, but Jesse didn’t need to know that. Naturally, the investors hadn’t been pleased, which was why Cheyenne’s boss was so desperate to secure the prime acres she was about to see in person for the first time.

       She’d offered to buy one of the condos in the batch Nigel had privately called El Fiasco, for Ayanna and Mitch to live in. The price had been right—next to nothing, since they’d practically been giving the places away by the time the project had limped to a halt. Ayanna had toured the demo condo, thanked Cheyenne for the thought, and had graciously refused, saying she’d rather live in a tepee.

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