Pride, Chase thought. The woman had more of it than was good for her. She was stiff with it, practically quivering with outrage that Fletcher had thought he could get his hands on her land just because she had five times as much of it as she needed and nowhere near enough money—just because she was broke and hurt and might be thought, by some, to be just a tad vulnerable at the moment.
It was damned appealing. “Forty acres isn’t enough to ranch, but it’s more than you need to run a stable, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, disgusted. “I don’t imagine you’d understand.” She turned away. “Come on. The morning’s nearly over and the kennels are still dirty.”
Chase watched her walk away. Her back stayed stiff and straight, but her cute little butt swayed gently from side to side. He appreciated the stiffness almost as much as he did the sway. He watched her move and saw how the morning sun turned to copper when it tangled in her long, unbound hair.
He sighed. He was a weak man. A sadly weak man. And she was a sexy, prideful woman with an injured shoulder who wanted nothing to do with him. A woman like that didn’t know enough about her own body’s responses to defend herself against him, and he really ought to leave her alone...even though when he touched her hair her breath got shallow and her nipples got hard. Even though he couldn’t keep from speculating on how she’d respond if he touched her elsewhere.
She’d probably slap him silly.
“Are you coming?” she called without looking back.
He grinned and picked up his duffel bag. “Yes, ma’am,” he called, and started towards her.
He always had liked a challenge.
Three
By the time the floured chicken was spitting in the grease in the cast iron skillet, Summer felt she had herself back under control. Sure, she’d reacted to the man. No shame there, she told herself, humming as she held her hand under the faucet and washed sticky, egg-batter paste from her fingers. She was only human, and Chase McGuire was a very sexy man.
Pleased with herself for having acknowledged that fact in a calm, mature manner, she patted her hand against the towel hanging next to the sink and headed for the back door.
Her hired hand would need a little notice in order to clean up for supper, one of the two meals a day she owed him. He was probably in the barn. Raul had taken care of the stable chores and left before Summer realized they had rain headed their way. She’d sent Ricky to tell Chase to put up the rest of the horses and close up the box stalls.
That was twenty minutes ago. Ricky was still out there with him.
She frowned as she stepped out on the porch. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Ricky hanging around Chase McGuire for the next couple of months. The man was apt to stir up Ricky’s fascination with the rodeo.
Outside, the air was dusky with storm, the sky, a crisp, exhilarating gray as the day slid into evening. Wind bristled though the leaves on the oaks and made a nuisance of itself by grabbing her hair and throwing it in her face.
She turned toward the barn, and her shirttail flapped in the wind. The flannel rubbed across her bare nipples; and she shivered. She thought about how Chase McGuire had looked at her breasts. Openly. With obvious pleasure.
Somehow she had to figure out a way to get into a bra tomorrow.
None of the horses was out in the paddocks, and all the stalls on this side of the barn were shut to the outside. The southern doorway to the barn glowed a welcoming yellow from the lights Chase must have turned on to fight the premature gloom of the storm-shrouded day.
She paused when she reached the doorway. Neither Chase nor Ricky was in sight, but Dancer’s stall door was open. Kelpie lay in front of it, panting happily. Summer headed that way.
“So you got bucked off the first time, huh?” her son’s excited voice was saying.
“Sure did. And after all my bragging.” A long, mournful sigh, accompanied by the sound of something rubbing rhythmically against wood. “That’s when I learned why cowboys are supposed to be strong, silent types. We mostly get ourselves in trouble when we open our mouths. When we aren’t bragging, we’re putting our foot in it.”
Ricky giggled. “Do you put your foot in it?”
“All the time.”
Summer stopped in front of the stall next to Kelpie. The dog, exhausted from the day’s excitement, settled for standing up and butting her head against Summer’s leg. Dancer, a placid old mare Summer used for her beginning riders, munched lazily on her feed in one corner of the stall. On the other side of the stall, Summer’s hired hand drew a rasp rhythmically back and forth across a rough, splintery place in one of the wooden supports to the stall while her son watched. She noticed that his gorgeous black Stetson had been replaced by a beat-up, cream-colored distant cousin—a working cowboy’s hat, in fact.
Chase looked up, saw her and smiled the one-dimple smile that fit his face as well as his worn jeans fit his hips. “Looks like you’ve got a cribber,” he said.
A “cribber” was a horse that chewed on whatever wood was around, often swallowing air along with the wood and making itself miserable. “Dancer’s not the one with the taste for wood,” she said. Her voice came out wrong. She cleared her throat. “It’s that blasted gelding of the Bateses, the one who threw me. I moved him to the end stall. It’s a little bigger, more room for his toy.” She referred to the big ball that rolled around at the horse’s feet. Cribbers usually chewed out of boredom, and the ball gave the horse something to do.
“Chase wanted to get the wood smoothed down,” Ricky broke in, “so’s Dancer wouldn’t hurt herself on it. We already got all the horses in.”
We? “I see,” she said. “Well, I’m sure that was a good idea, but, Ricky, you aren’t to be following Mr. McGuire around, bothering him with a bunch of questions.”
“I wasn’t bothering him,” Ricky said indignantly. “Was I, Chase?”
“Not a bit.” Chase ran the rasp over the wood one last time, then smoothed his fingers over it, testing. “He helped me bring the horses in and then showed me where the tools were so I could get this taken care of.”
Summer shifted her feet uncomfortably. The man had found work that needed doing without being told. He was being patient and good-natured with Ricky—and she wished he’d been rude and obnoxious instead. She wished—oh, she didn’t know what she wished. She wanted to grab her son and tell him to stay away from Chase McGuire. “Ricky, you know I don’t let you handle all of the horses.”
He drew his narrow shoulders up straight, offended. “I just got Honey-Do an’ Dancer and Mr. Pig and Scooter. Just the ones you always let me get.”
Now she’d treated him like a “little kid” in front of his new hero. Summer sighed. “Well, it’s time to give me some help now,” she said. “Come on up to the house and feed Kelpie, Hannah and Amos.” Kelpie yipped when she heard her name, and pushed against Summer’s legs again.
“But, Mom, Chase said that he was going to—”
“Ricky,” she said once, in her warning voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but his lip stuck out.
“Go ahead and wash up after you feed them,” she said. “We’re having fried chicken for supper.”
That brightened his face again. He looked at Chase. “You don’t want to miss Mom’s fried chicken, so you prob’ly better get washed up pretty quick, too.” Then he took off at his usual dead run with Kelpie running and yipping at his heels.