“I don’t need my glasses for anything but reading. In fact, I’ll just move them to the truck, if you don’t mind.”
Mind? Mind what? Oh, yeah. The glasses. “No. That’s fine.”
He smiled. Amanda just about melted. It was a crooked smile. Not suave. Not flirtatious, just a genuine crooked smile that made her heart all but melt at the boyish, yet masculine friendliness of it.
She stepped back, waved a hand at her face, saying, “Dust,” in case he thought she was doing something silly, like waving the heat out of her cheeks, which she was.
Lord, you’ve got the hots for Scott Beringer.
There were a million reasons why that shouldn’t be, not the least of which was that he’d stolen their land. And yet she couldn’t deny the truth, despite what she tried to tell herself.
“Um, if you don’t mind, I’m going to let you do the feeding part all by yourself.”
“By myself?”
She nodded and said, “It’s easy.” And it was. “You just drive about two hundred yards out and start feeding. Honk the horn when you’re done.” She turned away from him before he realized the reason why she wouldn’t meet his gaze was because she was in danger of doing something silly, like touch him. Or maybe even jerk his head down and kiss him.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“Into the house to make breakfast.”
“But I’ll do that.”
Oh, no, he wouldn’t, because just right now she didn’t need to admire him any more than she did, and she had a feeling Scott would cook as well as he did everything else.
“I’ll cook,” she said over her shoulder, nearly running into the door in the process.
Get a hold of yourself, Amanda.
“You just remember to close the gate when you’re done.”
She didn’t know if he nodded or not, didn’t know because she was halfway across the barnyard before she heard the truck start up.
Breakfast first, then part two of her plan. She could handle that, right?
Right?
Chapter Four
It was a sign of how discombobulated she was that it took her nearly a half hour to realize something was wrong. Very wrong.
By Amanda’s calculations, it should have taken Scott roughly twenty minutes to feed the steers, and that was taking into consideration his inexperience. But when the clock struck a quarter hour, Amanda figured she’d better check on him. Turning off the stove, Amanda removed a pot of sizzling sausages, their basil-and-garlic smell making her stomach growl.
What had he done?
She saw for herself a few seconds later.
Scott Beringer sat in the back of the truck atop a bale, only when he saw her, he shot up like a patio umbrella. Surrounding him on the ground were bales of hay, unopened, frustrated cattle milling around as they tried to get to the food. Scott tried to shoo them away so he could jump down, but he was simply out-numbered and likely too afraid to plunge into the midst of a hundred head of cattle.
She heard his faint cry of help.
“Well, I’ll be,” she murmured.
Why the heck hadn’t he opened the bales?
Because you didn’t tell him to.
She slapped her forehead. “You idiot,” she yelled, but it was hard to say who she meant, her or Scott.
She’d have to go rescue him.
SCOTT COULDN’T BELIEVE how relieved he was to see Amanda Johnson riding her horse toward him. Granted, it was usually the man that rescued the woman, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, this particular knight looked great atop a horse—better than he would. Her hair had dried into its masses of ringlets, the breeze picking up a red strand and playing with it. She looked glorious with the morning sky as a backdrop, and all he wanted to do was touch her. Unfortunately, she didn’t look half as impressed with him as he was with her.
“Nice going,” she said as she pulled her horse to a stop just outside the herd of cattle.
“I’d only fed a few bales and suddenly I was surrounded.”
“You’re supposed to open them first.”
“Open them?”
She shook her head, and he wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain she rolled her eyes, too. But then she kicked her horse forward, and the cattle parted as if her horse were a bowling ball and the cattle the pins.
“If you wrap the hay hooks around the twine,” she said as she got close enough for him to see that her waist was tiny when tucked into jeans, “it’ll snap the cord. You throw flakes to the steers, not the whole bale.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“No, I didn’t,” she admitted with a total honesty that took him by surprise. “My mistake.”
This woman was apologizing? Was the sky falling?
“Here,” she said. “Climb aboard. We’ll let them eat what they can and then come back to move the truck later.”
He’d like to climb on top of her.
But, of course, that would never happen. Not at his present rate of impressing her.
She held the horse in place while he slipped a leg over, then settled behind her with an ease that took him by surprise. But the moment his front made contact with her back, he grew instantly hard. Darn, she turned him on. Maybe it was the whole country girl thing, but suddenly he wondered if she’d look good in gingham and pearls.
“Wrap your arms around my waist.”
For real? She wanted him to touch her? He didn’t hesitate.
“Now, hold on.”
He held on, pulling her up against the front of his chest. Darn. She may have a hard body, but she was all woman beneath.
“Haven’t you ever watched a western before?” she asked, tilting her head a bit to stare at him out of the corner of her eye.
It took a moment for her words to penetrate the lust-induced haze he’d sunk into. And even then, he still couldn’t follow what she meant.
She must have seen his confusion. “Didn’t you ever wonder where those little flakes of hay came from?”
He had to force himself to swallow before saying, “Sure I’ve watched westerns, but I never paid close enough attention to them to know those little bricks open up.”
“Bales,” she mumbled, and he could have sworn he heard laughter in her voice. “They’re called bales.”
Good thing the back of her saddle separated their lower extremities, otherwise she’d figure out fast that the only hay he was thinking about was the hay he wanted to roll her in.
“I’m not off to a very good start, am I?”
He felt her stiffen, felt her kind of jerk a bit before saying, “Actually, you’re not doing too bad.”
They were the first kind words he’d had from her, and they made Scott’s heart pitter-patter.
“Yeah, well,” he croaked before coughing to dispel the odd crick in his throat. “I’ve decided to hire someone to do the feeding.”
She was silent a long moment. The