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 inside and taste her. Would she open her mouth and let him?
The heat in her gaze was generated from some emotion. Maybe she felt what he did.
“What?” She had gone still. Her eyes never left his face. “Let me go!” Her voice was shallow.
“You don’t want me to do that, and you know it.” In the grip of a need too fierce to deny, his voice was raspy.
His gaze moved hungrily lower. She had soft, lush breasts. Hell, he wanted way more than a kiss, and he wanted it very badly. She was Jesse Ray’s daughter, so she probably wanted it, too.
Feeling justified in testing a girl of such easy virtue, he gripped her shoulders and pulled her closer. Before she could react, he lowered his mouth to hers so he could take his first taste of her. His lips were hard and demanding because he expected easy compliance. And for an instant she responded just as favorably as he’d imagined, by gasping and sighing and clutching him closer. Her lips did part, and he felt her tongue, if only for an instant. Then almost immediately she stiffened. Recoiling, she balled her hands and began to pound at his chest, thrashing wildly.
When he didn’t immediately let her go, her face flushed with anger. “You wouldn’t treat Lizzie like this! You wouldn’t try to take her in a barn like she was something cheap and easy without ever even having a single conversation with her!”
“Well, you’re not Lizzie Collier, are you? You’re Jesse Ray’s girl.”
“And that makes me too low to have feelings like you and your kind? Well, I do have feelings! And I’m not like my mother, you hear! So, go find your precious, saintly Lizzie Collier, and leave me in peace! She’s your girlfriend. Not me! And I wouldn’t ever want to be!”
But the last was a lie. The quick tears of shame and desolation in her lovely eyes and the thick pain in her ravaged tone told him so. She wanted him, but on equal terms. She didn’t want to be someone cheap in his eyes. Her pride, as well as her longing for him, tugged at his heart and made him feel ashamed even as it made his desire for her increase a thousandfold.
He hadn’t misread her. She had wanted him, badly. But Jesse Ray’s daughter had as much self-respect as Lizzie Collier did any day.
For a long moment, she gazed at him as if pleading for something he was at a loss to give even as her look tore his heart. Then, with a desperate cry, she pushed free of him and ran out of the barn. As he watched her retreating across the pasture, he was stunned by her grace and vital beauty and by how much more he wanted her than he’d ever wanted Lizzie. He was baffled by how low and ashamed he felt by that fact. She was just Jesse Ray’s girl. Why the hell should he feel such an overpowering need for her, such a need to apologize to her?
For weeks afterward, he’d tried to put the scent and softness and taste of the spirited and unsuitable girl out of his mind, but she’d been too lovely, too passionate, too brave, too forthright—too sexy. He’d dreamed of her, dreamed of making love to her.
He tried to forget her, but then his friends began to tell him