Bethany’s face lit up with a smile. Clearly the kid meant a lot to her. “You’ll eat well at the Neilsons’,” she said.
He nodded, bedazzled by the shimmer of her when she smiled like that.
“I’m going to leave this thermos of tea with you,” she said, setting it on the ground. “There’s salt tablets in the barn, and you’d better take them in this weather. You can keep the thermos. You’ll need something to drink when you’re working far away from the home place in such heat.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” he said.
Without saying anything else, she marched back to the pickup and got in. When the engine turned over, she backed and wheeled around, leaving him standing at the edge of a spurt of dust.
Colt watched her go, thinking that a high-class babe like her was wasted ’way out here in no man’s land. Bethany Burke should be someplace where there were palm trees waving in the breeze, balmy nights and a passel of admiring men flitting around her in appreciation of her spectacular beauty.
Come to think of it, he could appreciate it well enough, but he didn’t think she’d like it. She’d made it clear that her relationship with him was to be businesslike.
He wondered about her, wondered how long she’d been struggling to make a go of this place. There was something valiant about Bethany Burke’s refusal to do the obvious with the Banner-B. Many an experienced rancher would have packed it in by this time. But she didn’t seem of much of a mind to give up. She wasn’t a quitter. That was one thing the two of them had in common.
The pickup merged with the horizon where it flattened under the weight of the sky, and Colt put his back into his work and dug another posthole. He thought about his new employer, pictured her reclining under a palm tree in one of those tiny string bikinis, a demure come-hither glint in those remarkable blue eyes.
He might have sworn off nighttime dreaming, but there was no reason why he couldn’t indulge in a few daydreams now and then.
COLT HEARD THE RUCKUS as he was storing the posthole digger in the corrugated equipment shed where he thought it belonged, not in the barn where he’d found it. A horse squealed in panic, the heart-wrenching sound echoing back and forth between the barn and the shed. A horse’s terror was one thing Colt couldn’t stand to think about. He knew what it was like to feel that way—no damn good.
He ran out of the shed and around it. A red roan galloped around the perimeter of the corral behind the barn, bucking every once in a while for good measure. Whatever else was going on wasn’t any clearer than his vision, which was normally 20/20 but presently obscured by the ominous cloud of dust billowing in the air.
Then he saw Bethany Burke clambering up on the fence, displaying the pert curve of her backside in the process. She dragged a leather halter behind her.
“What the—?” he hollered.
“This horse is meaner than cuss,” she hollered over her shoulder. The halter caught on the fence post, and then her foot slipped and she fell back into the corral.
Colt was over the fence in an instant. The roan, a thousand pounds or so of muscle and sinew, was wild-eyed and galloping straight toward Bethany. She realized the danger and rolled over twice to fling herself away from the onslaught of thundering hooves. Colt planted his two feet firmly in the dust between Bethany and the horse and fixed his gaze on the horse’s eyes. Not surprisingly, the horse fled to the other side of the corral and stood panting, sides quivering.
“Get up,” Colt said tersely into the sudden quiet. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the horse.
Behind him, he heard Bethany climb on the fence, up and over. Colt backed away, still holding the horse with his gaze. Then he vaulted over the fence and jumped down, landing lightly beside her.
Bethany’s face was ashen. She was scared. He couldn’t blame her; she could have been trampled.
“You all right?” he asked sharply.
She nodded and closed her eyes for a long moment. “I’m okay. Thanks.”
“What were you doing?”
“Trying to put a halter on him.”
“Who spooked this horse? Not you, I take it?”
She lifted a shoulder and let it fall, but she wasn’t as nonchalant as she seemed. A slick of perspiration beaded her forehead, and he thought he detected a slight trembling of her upper lip—a very sensual upper lip, it seemed to him.
“You’d have to ask Mott Findley.”
“Who’s he?”
“My neighbor. I took Sidewinder from Mott in trade believing I could help him, but I’m thinking he’s hopeless. Sometimes I’ll be making progress, then something sets him off. If he can’t catch on to what a good horse is supposed to do on a ranch, I’ll have to get rid of him.”
Colt knew what that meant. The roan was well on his way to becoming poodle food. With a marginal operation like the Banner-B, a horse wasn’t worth the feed and vet care it took to maintain him if he couldn’t pull his weight.
He moved closer to the fence, leaned on it. The sinking sun felt good spread across his shoulders. The roan, a gelding about fourteen and a half hands high, had the powerful hind-quarters and deep chest of a good quarter horse, a breed developed for cutting cattle and roping steers. To say this horse was skittish was an understatement—he was downright dangerous. Colt hadn’t seen a horse in such bad shape in years, not since Ryzinski’s. He didn’t have to think about it for more than a moment.
“You mind if I have a try at him?”
Bethany chuckled mirthlessly. “Not if he’s going to kill a perfectly good ranch hand.”
“I know what I’m doing.” Colt turned around and looked at her. She was covered with dust, but she didn’t seem to mind. She’d bundled her hair into a barrette at her nape and tucked her thumbs inside the waistband of her jeans. It drew them tight around her belly. Nice.
“You think you can calm him down, go ahead. Just don’t take any chances.”
“I figure I can help him some,” he told her. She didn’t say anything, so he climbed up on the fence and studied the roan. The horse was blowing air in long huffs and eyeing Colt with trepidation, his ears laid back along his neck. His sleek coat gleamed in the sun.
“What’s his name?”
“Sidewinder. Like the rattlesnake.”
Colt wasn’t sentimental about animals. He wasn’t sentimental about anything anymore. But Sidewinder was an animal caught in a prison, and Colt identified with that. Worse, the animal had no one to help him get out. And a horse only knew to run when threatened. A horse didn’t fight. Block his flight, and you terrified the animal. The horse was beside himself with wanting to be free.
Trouble was, this horse would never be free. He was expected to work. If someone didn’t show him how to work, he’d soon be a dead horse. Nothing free in being dead.
Colt’s shirt was sweaty and stuck to his skin; he stripped it off in one swift motion and flung it over the fence. He alit from the fence, dropping into the corral. Bethany moved closer, but he didn’t look at her. The only power that would hold Sidewinder was the strength of his gaze, and this wasn’t the time to waste it.
The horse rolled his eyes, shook his proud head and took off at a trot, but that was what Colt expected. He strode to the center of the enclosure and kept his body turned fully toward Sidewinder, maintaining eye contact. What has someone done to you? he said silently. He’d never known if horses knew what people were thinking, and he wasn’t sure it mattered if they did. He didn’t need any special ESP with Sidewinder because his body language would do the job. It had never failed yet.
Sidewinder