“Welcome to Wyoming, Ann. I’m Sherrie Bellington, the sheriff’s one and only deputy. I couldn’t believe it when Mabel said that Nick was going to get married again.” Sherrie chuckled, displaying perfect white teeth. “Truth to tell, I didn’t think old Snake’d let him do it.”
Ann shook the hand Sherrie held out. “He wasn’t any too happy about it.”
“So she wanted to come out and meet you,” Nick inserted with a glance at Sherrie that Ann couldn’t quite read.
Sherrie looked blankly at Nick for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course. And now that I’ve met you, I’d better be getting back. Things are kind of hectic with the sheriff laid up with his broken leg. Bye, Ann.”
“Goodbye.” Ann watched as Nick walked Sherrie around to the driver’s side and closed the car door behind her, muttering something through the open window that Ann couldn’t quite catch. Why had Sherrie come out here? Ann wondered, not believing for a minute her story about wanting to meet her. There was more to it than that. But what?
Jealousy made no sense. If Nick had been interested in Sherrie, he would have hardly married Ann. Could Nick be in some kind of trouble with the law? The appalling thought surfaced only to be dismissed. That look Sherrie had given Nick hadn’t been adversarial. It had been…conspiratorial, Ann finally decided. She stifled a sigh. Yet another thing she didn’t understand and didn’t feel free to ask about.
“Where shall we start?” she asked when Sherrie drove away.
Nick looked around, as if trying to decide, then said, “The barns, I guess. Other than the original cabin, there isn’t much else to see. I mostly raise breeding stock, not beef cattle.”
“How old?” Ann asked, her interest caught.
Nick blinked. “What?”
“How old is the original cabin? For that matter, how old is the ranch?”
“They’re both about 150 years, although the ranch hasn’t been worked continuously. The first settlers were starved out. The original cabin is over there.” Nick gestured toward his left as they rounded the first barn, a relatively new, perfectly repaired building. Ann studied it curiously. Clearly Nick had spent what funds he had had on the barns, which made sense. If the ranch was to prosper, the stock’s needs had to be met first.
Ann turned to look, her nose wrinkling in shock as an appalling odor slapped her in the face.
“Snake likes to grow vegetables.” Nick noticed her expression.
“That’s not any rotting veggie I’ve ever smelled. It’s more like…”
“Fertilizer,” Nick supplied. “Aging horse manure, to be specific.”
“There are limits to this back-to-nature kick,” Ann muttered.
That manure pile had been there for as long as he’d owned the ranch, and getting rid of it simply because she objected to the smell would be bound to give Ann the idea that she could induce him to make other changes. He decided to ignore the comment, thinking it was best to go on.
“I want to show you Silas.” Nick moved toward a fenced area behind the barn. Ann followed him.
“Is Silas another hired hand?”
“No.” Nick put his fingers in his mouth and emitted an ear-piercing whistle. “Silas is my prize bull. He’s very temperamental and is not to be upset under any circumstances.”
Ann instinctively stepped back as a huge black animal emerged from the open barn door and trotted toward them. She gulped. As far as she was concerned, it would take a confirmed masochist to bother that thing.
“Don’t feed him,” Nick continued. “And don’t let him out of the fence. Despite what he thinks, he’s not a pet.”
“Turning him into a pet never crossed my mind,” Ann said earnestly. “I can guarantee you that I’ll give him a wide berth. Do you have any animals on the ranch that are more manageable? Like chickens or ducks or pigs?”
“Pigs!” Nick repeated in horror. “This is a ranch. We don’t do pigs.”
“Anyone brave enough to do that thing—” she nodded toward Silas, who was pushing against the fence in his eagerness to reach them “—should be brave enough to do pigs.”
“Pigs are for farmers. I’m a rancher.”
Ann opened her mouth and then closed it in the interest of harmony. It sounded like rank bigotry to her, but pointing out the fact would not be helpful to her goal of getting to know Nick.
“Right, no pigs,” she said. “So what else do you have on a ranch besides oversized cows and manure piles?”
“Horses,” Nick offered, wondering if she were regretting her decision to marry him already.
He walked through an open door into the dim interior of the larger of the two barns with Ann right behind him. She sniffed curiously. The barn smelled of hay and animals and other more elusive scents. But they weren’t unpleasant scents, just different.
“Most of the horses are out to pasture, but my mount is in the stall over here.”
Ann leaned over the end of the wooden stall. It contained a large brown horse who lifted his head to look at her. Bits of hay were sticking out of his velvety-looking lips, and he studied her with soft, brown eyes.
“What’s his name?”
“Joe.”
“He’s got kind eyes.” Ann tentatively petted him.
So does she, Nick thought as he watched the hazel hue of her eyes deepen when Joe nickered in pleasure at her caress. Nick’s eyes were drawn to the stroking movement of Ann’s fingers as they slowly moved over Joe’s neck. What would it be like to have her touch him like that? The unexpected thought popped into his mind. To have her hands stroking over his bare chest? He tensed as a wave of longing slammed through him.
“I always wanted to have a horse,” Ann confided. “Ever since I was about seven and read Black Beauty. ”
Nick used patting Joe as an excuse to move closer to her. A tantalizing whiff of the perfume she was wearing teased his nostrils, and he fought the impulse to put his arms around her. To pull her up against him. To bury his face against her smooth skin and deeply breathe in the heady fragrance.
“There’s no reason you can’t learn to ride.” His voice was husky with the longings coloring his thoughts. “Joe won’t mind.”
Nick opened the door of the stall, slipped inside and saddled Joe with fingers that felt clumsy. He just hoped that Ann didn’t notice. A quick glance at her both reassured and annoyed him. She was concentrating on the horse, not him.
When he finally got the saddle adjusted, he led Joe out into the open barnyard.
Ann hurried after him, pausing uncertainly when she reached his side. This close, Joe seemed to be much bigger than he had been in the barn. She shifted from one foot to the other. Didn’t they have anything on this ranch that came in a small size?
“Up you go,” Nick ordered.
Ann looked from the ground to the stirrup to the saddle, and then back down at her feet. “How?” she finally asked.
“Put your left foot in the stirrup, grab hold of the saddle and pull yourself up.”
Ann took a deep breath and followed his directions. It didn’t turn out to be that easy. She wound up half on and half off, hanging on to the pommel of the saddle for dear life.
“Pull yourself up,” Nick said.
Ann gritted her teeth in frustration, embarrassed at seeming so inept. “If I could do that, I wouldn’t be dangling here,”