When Cole had stepped inside the barn and hollered for Lizzie, one of the horses, Wild Thing, had gone off like dynamite, neighing and kicking his stall door. Cole thought Wild Thing was too dangerous to fool with but Lizzie had the softest heart in the world. When she’d found out Old Man Green was starving Wild Thing and beating him, she’d talked her dad into buying the horse. Her father had hired more than a dozen horse whisperers to save the animal, and when they’d failed, Lizzie’s father had wanted to put him down. Lizzie wouldn’t hear of it.
Cole hadn’t thought too much about the ruckus the horse was making until he heard a crooning voice inside the stall. Thinking Lizzie might be trapped, Cole had rushed toward the stall door.
“Lizzie?”
“Shh!” chided a young, defiant voice from inside the stall.
Since Cole couldn’t see too clearly in the shadows, he took the slim figure wearing jeans and a baseball cap turned backward for the young male groom who worked for Lizzie’s dad.
Fixating on Cole, the gelding’s ears swept so far back against his narrow gray skull they all but vanished. Then the big animal lowered his head as his pale forelock shot over terrible eyes that rolled backward. Half rearing, the animal charged, his hooves splintering a board.
“Get out of that stall, boy!” Cole commanded.
Wild Thing’s eyes rolled crazily. Again the gelding reared to his full height and heaved himself with murderous intent against the stable door.
The boy jumped back and flattened against the wall. “Are you trying to kill me?” In the confusion the kid’s baseball cap hit the sawdust, and a lustrous mane of black hair tumbled down the imp’s shoulders. And across breasts.
“Maddie Gray?”
What male with an ounce of testosterone wouldn’t have recognized her sinfully gorgeous, exotic features—Maddie’s creamy pale skin, her voluptuous mouth, her violet-blue eyes? Hell, she looked exactly like her no-good mother, Jesse Ray Gray, the town’s most notorious slut.
Cole’s gaze seared her ample breasts, which heaved against her faded blue cotton work shirt. She’d filled out since he’d seen her last. If her tight clothes were any clue, she’d probably be up to her mother’s tricks—if she wasn’t already.
“You’re Maddie Gray,” he repeated accusingly, disliking her more than a little because she stirred him.
“So what if I am?” Her beautiful mouth tightened rebelliously.
Wild Thing’s eyes rolled, and he neighed shrilly.
“Please lower your voice and start backing away,” she ordered.
At least she wasn’t a total simpleton. She saw the folly of being penned in such a small enclosure with a monster like Wild Thing.
“I said back away!” she repeated. “Can’t you see you’re scaring him?”
She began to speak to the startled horse in a sweet, soothing murmur Cole would have envied if he wasn’t so furious at her for her foolhardiness and willingness to blame him for her own stupidity.
“It’s okay, big baby. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” she said huskily in a purr that would have oozed sex had she been talking to a man.
A gray ear perked up. Not that the large animal didn’t keep his other ear flat and a suspicious eye on Cole.
“You’ve gotta go,” the girl urged when Wild Thing danced impatiently.
“Not until you get out of that stall,” Cole said.
“I will, you big idiot—just as soon as you shut up and leave.” For the horse’s sake, she kept her insult soft and sweet.
Cole’s stubbornness made him stand his ground a few seconds longer, but her pleading eyes finally convinced him. After Cole left, it took another minute or two before the horse settled and the girl was able to slip out. Strangely, no sooner was she safely outside the stall than Cole’s temper flared again. He knew he should forget about her recklessness and go to the Collier house and wait for Lizzie, but Maddie had his blood up. So when he heard her light, retreating footsteps as she lit out the back to avoid him, he rushed after her. When she caught sight of him, she let out a cry of alarm.
Grabbing her arms, he shoved her against a wall. “You have no right to be on this property! Or to be in that monster’s stall!” Cole yelled. “You scared the hell out of me!”
When Wild Thing screamed and sent his hooves crashing against wood again, Maddie stilled.
“I was just doing my job, okay?”
“Your job?”
“I’ll have you know Liam Rodgers hired me.”
Liam, Lizzie’s daddy’s foreman, was no man’s fool. “Why you? Why would he hire you, of all people, when he could hire the best?”
She frowned. “Maybe because I know what I’m doing. While you’ve been off at college driving your fancy cars and chasing girls, I’ve been mucking stalls to get free riding lessons. Maybe I’ve learned stuff. When he saw Wild Thing stand calmly and let me saddle him in the round pen, Liam about fainted. When I rode the horse just as easy as you please, Liam hired me.”
“Well, you can’t possibly know enough to work with that monster.”
“I did what twelve men couldn’t do!”
“You got lucky! Now you listen to me. A normal horse weighs half a ton and has a brain the size of a tomato. Such an animal is wired to defend himself against predators, which includes humans, even half-pint girls like you.”
“I know all that!”
“That horse is a maniac. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him—not in the round pen, not in his stall, not ever!”
Her chest swelled, and her eyes narrowed rebelliously.
Her dark look only fueled his fury. “Don’t you get it? Next time he’ll kill you!”
“Not if you stay out of this barn and let me do my job!”
“Right! So, it’s my fault? I have half a mind to report this to Mr. Collier.”
“No! If I don’t save him, Mr. Collier will kill him.”
“Good.”
“No! Please…He’s better. I know he’s still easy to startle, but he’ll get even better. It’s just going to take time and patience. He’s been through a lot.”
“He’s a killer.”
“Not many living creatures get the easy, pampered start in life you’ve had. That’s why you can’t possibly understand what it’s like for the rest of us!”
Her lovely voice had softened with desperation and love for Wild Thing but it didn’t hold a trace of self-pity. When her impassioned eyes misted, he noticed they were as beautiful as sparkling amethysts.
“I know you don’t care what I think, but Lizzie loves him. Spare him for her sake!”
The girl was passionate, compassionate…and despite her ragged jeans and faded shirt, gorgeous, as well.
Damn those eyes of hers. Again they reminded him of jewels, with lavender facets of light and dark that made his blood run hot and cold. Those damn eyes, coupled with having held her too close for too long in a shadowy barn that afforded him the privacy to follow through on his desire, had him hard as granite. Aware of her soft, slim body pressed tightly into his, he didn’t even try to defend himself from the heat that her sexy curves generated.
It would be so easy to take her right here.
Her mouth was full and luscious and suddenly he wanted to kiss her, to dip his tongue