A big, warm hand cupped her good elbow, steadying her. “You all right?” Chase’s deep voice asked softly.
She turned her head and looked right into amber eyes with the mirth for once completely gone. Concerned eyes, thickly fringed with those dark, ridiculous lashes. She was close enough to see the texture of the skin stretched across his smooth-shaven cheeks. Men’s skin, she thought fuzzily, is so different from women’s. Summer looked at Chase’s skin and thought of leather, the smooth, supple sort of leather so soft it made you want to pet it, made you want—
“I’m fine,” she lied, and pulled her arm away.
Oh, Lord. What had she done?
Fate was a fickle female. Chase had known that before he was old enough to shave. For the first time in fifteen months, though, fate seemed to be favoring him some. He had a job now, with the promise of a roof over his head that wasn’t part of an old friend’s charity.
Two months wasn’t so long, he told himself as he retrieved his bag from Rosie’s truck. He could handle being without wheels that long, and he could learn to be around horses without having it matter so damned much.
His new employer ought to be a nice distraction. Of course, she hadn’t really wanted to hire him. He had the distinct impression Summer Callaway didn’t trust him.
Smart woman.
He really ought to leave her alone, he told himself as he headed back to the neat little frame house where the three women were probably picking him apart in his absence. So maybe she did have a body that would make a strong man weak and the prettiest blue eyes he’d seen in a long time. Those blue eyes frosted over every time he smiled at her. He was a rodeo cowboy, after all. Just like Jimmie Callaway had been. Considering what Chase knew about the jerk she’d been married to, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to keep her distance.
He frowned at the platoon of tiny toy soldiers and army vehicles blocking the sidewalk up to the house. Summer Callaway was a mother, apparently. He hadn’t known that. Not that Chase had anything against mothers. He just didn’t get involved with them. Nine times out of ten they were looking for someone to be a daddy to their little ones, and Chase was the world’s worst candidate for that role.
“Hey, Rosie,” he said, swinging the door open and stepping back into the neat-as-a-pin living room. The house smelled inviting, a friendly mingling of scents: pine cleaner, coffee and vanilla. The room itself was definitely “country,” from the maple end tables to the comfortably worn plaid upholstery to the gun rack near the door. Folks who lived in the country tended to take a practical attitude toward guns. They were a necessary tool for dealing with wild dogs, snakes or rabid skunks.
“I hope you haven’t been telling all my secrets.” He looked from his friend to the slender woman in worn denim, green flannel and a pale blue sling. She stood there watching him with those pretty blue eyes of hers.
Heat. Like a punch in the stomach he felt it again—the same hot, bubbling mix he’d felt when he first laid eyes on her. Anticipation. Hunger. A thrill a lot like the moment when he lowered himself onto the back of an angry bronc in the chute and knew he was in for one hell of a ride.
He smiled.
Rosie chuckled. “I can’t tell what I don’t know, and I’m sure I don’t know all your secrets. Well,” she said, and heaved herself to her feet, “I’d better get back to the house. You let me know, Summer, if this rascal gives you any trouble.”
Somewhat more reluctantly Maud announced that she had to be going, too. While the three women went through their leave-taking rituals, Chase watched his new boss.
Some might find her a bit on the skinny side, at least from the waist down. Not Chase. The moment she’d opened the door to him, he’d discovered a decided partiality for long, slim legs and a tiny butt, especially when they were matched up with full breasts and hair the color of whiskey in a glass.
He was all but positive she wasn’t wearing a bra under that big flannel shirt.
“Well?” she said, facing him as she closed the front door on her friends. “Are you ready to go to work?”
His gaze drifted lazily from her breasts up to her face. He was supposed to leave this woman alone? He shook his head, doubting himself already, and drawled, “I’m ready whenever you are, sugar.”
Frost warnings went up in those blue eyes. “We’ll go out the back door. Come on.”
Her house was small, but immaculate. What little he’d seen so far of her operation made him think it would be just as scrupulously tended, too, and he liked that. Chase wasn’t especially tidy with his own things, but he was downright nitpicky when it came to horses, their gear, housing and care.
“There’s a phone in the barn and another cordless unit in the kennel, but don’t worry about answering if it rings,” she said, pausing next to the back door to pick up a cordless phone. “I keep one of the cordless phones with me all the time so I can book appointments.” She frowned at the phone in her hand. “Dammit, I can’t put this on my belt if I can’t fasten a belt.”
“I’d be glad to help.” He couldn’t quite say that without smiling.
She turned the frown on him, then turned away, tucking the phone into her sling next to her arm. “The horses have already been taken care of this morning,” she told him, opening the back door and ignoring his offer. “Usually I do it, but Raul came over early today as a favor.”
And who, he wondered, was Raul, and just what kind of favors did he do for her? Chase liked the idea of doing “favors” for his new boss. He didn’t like the idea that someone else might already be doing for her what he was trying to persuade himself he shouldn’t do. “Raul?” he asked. “Is he a...friend of yours?”
She paused, holding the door open and looking at him suspiciously. “Why?”
He gave her his most innocent smile. “Just wondered why you didn’t offer him the job.”
She continued to frown. “Raul is in the eleventh grade. He can’t put in the kind of hours I’ll need in the next couple of weeks, but he’s a good hand.”
Chase nodded blandly as desire tightened down another notch. It doesn’t matter if another man is in the picture or not, he told himself. Not if he intended to keep his distance.
Was that what he intended? “I guess I’ll meet Raul this afternoon, then.”
“Right,” she muttered, giving him one last, wary look. “Well, come on.”
She’d barely set foot on the painted gray floor of the wooden porch when a black-and-white tornado shaped like a dog ran up to her, yipping and twisting itself in tight, excited circles. For the first time, Chase saw what Summer looked like when she wasn’t suspicious or hurting. When she smiled and meant it.
His breath caught in his chest.
“Hmm?” she said, stroking the head of the frantically happy dog. “Did you say something?”
“Quite a watchdog you have there,” he managed to say. She was beautiful. It came as a shock. Not just pretty or sexy or desirable. When Summer smiled with that soft look in her eyes, she was flat-out beautiful. “I imagine she’d be hell on a burglar, running around in circles until the poor fellow got dizzy from watching her.”
The light in her eyes changed from tenderness to amusement. “Oh, Kelpie here is pretty useless as a watchdog. She loves everybody. But I’d better take you over and introduce you to Hannah.” She walked over to where a large brown lump rested on the edge of the porch. The lump lifted its head and thumped its tail once when Summer lowered herself into a careful squat to pet it. “Hannah knows Rosie, so she didn’t mind when you two came up to the door, but we’d better give you a formal introduction now.”
Did