Maverick

by Irish Winters

  A pretty smile tweaked China’s lips. “I don’t think you’ve got enough water in there to hurt him. He’s a big horse. Let him have all he wants.”

  Star slurped and sucked. Between his thirst and the water leaking between Maverick’s fingers, it didn’t take long before the water was gone. Star pulled his face up from the leather and snorted. The animal seemed to understand Maverick was there to help, but time was ticking. He tossed his soggy jacket aside and resumed excavation.

  By then China had wandered down to the trees. Probably needs to pee.

  Maverick concentrated on the dirt impacted at Star’s front legs, hoping that once he got them loose, he would know for sure if there were injuries to be dealt with. Some horses needed to be put down when they broke a leg. Of course, he didn’t know much about that kind of stuff. Never really wanted to until now.

  He scratched behind his big buddy’s ears. Star lifted his nose and nickered softly. “You like that, don’t you? Sure hope you’re okay, big fella. You’ve been buried too long.”

  “You haven’t been around horses much, have you?”

  Great. Caught talking to her horse. I’m as bad as she is.

  Maverick glanced over his shoulder. “Nope.”

  China handed him a short but sturdy branch and a baseball-sized rock. “I don’t know if this will work, but if we pound these sticks into the dirt, we could loosen the impacted dirt quicker.”

  Made sense. He took the stick she offered and complied with her wishes. She seemed a very practical woman. That said a lot about China Wolf in his book. The primitive tools worked.

  China labored along Star’s rear quarters until Maverick uncovered a bloody gash dead center of Star’s broad chest. Damn it. Bleeding, too. “You’d better come see at this. He’s hurt. Looks bad.”

  Maverick edged away from Star to make room for China. Star had dozed off, the crazy animal. He kept on with his nap while China examined him. Briefly. With a quiet grunt, she wiped her bloodied fingers on her jeans, scooted back to the horse’s hindquarters and continued digging.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Don’t you want to clean it or something? I can haul more water.”

  She pounded the pointed end of her stick into the hard earth and twisted it. “No. He’s okay.”

  “It’s deep and it’s bleeding.”

  “I know. I saw it. He’s fine.”

  Maverick shook his head. “Whatever. He’s your horse.”

  China stopped digging. She leaned onto her butt and pushed her hair out of her eyes for the umpteenth time. Sweat glistened on her face and ran down her neck. Ringlets of frizzy hair spiraled at all angles. The bright sunshine overhead didn’t help. Her ruddy cheeks didn’t fit with the fairytale mystique he had imagined earlier.

  She blew out a big breath and licked her lips. If anything, she resembled a lizard, parched and on the verge of sunstroke. Not an elfin fairy at all. The last thing he would call her was good looking. Tolerable, maybe. At a distance. After a few tequila shooters.

  She sighed. “This is the deal, Maverick. You’re right. Star is a horse. He’s not human. Horses are tougher than us, especially this guy. His hide’s thicker. His bones are harder and stronger. He’s got a higher pain threshold than we do. That cut you found isn’t that bad. He’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  Maverick let the argument go. Not my problem.

  “I’ll clean the scratch when we get home. You’ll see. He’ll be okay.”

  No, I won’t see. I’ll be gone. Maverick smoothed his palm over the mane hanging over Star’s face. Damned if a rumbling sound didn’t lift up from the horse’s throat. Sounded as if he purred. The simple vibration soothed Maverick, too. He scratched more dirt from behind Star’s ears, wishing he could do more for this gentle-tempered beast, especially since his owner didn’t seem to care.

  China took a deep breath and rested, her hands stuck in the dirt behind her like a tripod. “Never thought the hill would cave in like this. Must’ve been all the spring rains we had.”

  Maverick had no idea why the hillside had shifted. It just did. No sense talking about it.

  It was a beautiful place to sit for a spell, though. Remote. Secluded. Even the slide had brought a splash of color to this wild country called Wyoming. The red gash that capricious Mother Nature had deemed necessary in her morning gardening, contrasted beautifully against the ocean of green grass.

  The only problem was the lazy horse napping in the middle of it. Said horse seemed able to read Maverick’s mind. With one of those pig-like grunts, he nudged his nose onto Maverick’s thigh. Before Maverick knew it, he had a lap full of horse head, twitchy ears, and whiskers.

  “What brings you to Wyoming?” China asked.

  He shrugged at her gentle inquisition and cast his gaze to the mountains to the west even while he scratched behind Star’s ears. There was no good answer. It was simply what bums like him did. They walked until they had a reason to stop. Why Wyoming? It was as good a place as any.

  “You need a job?” she asked when he didn’t answer.

  “No, ma’am. I don’t.” That much he knew for sure. He already had a job. Walking. Leaving. Getting as far as possible—away. He would be content to be on his way when this random act of kindness was done. Getting Star back on his feet was work enough.

  “Just thought I’d ask.” China pushed to her knees. “We don’t get many good men just passing through, and you look like you could use a hand up. Are you lost, or do you know where you’re going?”

  Good question—one he hadn’t figured out the answer to yet. He was lost when he started walking. Damned lost. And sometimes the quiet beat of steady footfalls on concrete highways and byways convinced him he might have found himself again. But all he had to do was draw too close to civilization to know better. He wasn’t lost, but neither was he found. Whatever he was looking for was still that a way. Farther west. Any place else but here.

  “At least let me offer you a warm meal and a shower when we’re done.” She dusted her palms against her jeans. “It’s not much, but you look like you can use both.”

  Right on cue, Star bumped Maverick’s hand with his nose. The animal seemed to be waiting on an answer.

  China seemed earnest enough. “Come on, Mr. Carson. Take a chance on me. I’m not too bad a cook. I promise I’ll wash my hands first.”

  “I can’t stay.” Maverick tossed a glance at her without really seeing her. Eye contact with a woman could be fatal. Any guy knows that.

  “Who said anything about staying? I’m just asking you to eat one meal.” She climbed down from the high ground above Star. “Let’s see if he’ll get off his lazy butt, shall we?”

  Maverick pushed to his feet and stepped out of her way. This oughta be good.

  She grasped the horse’s halter, shook the dirt off, and with a tender caress to Star’s wide cheek, China tugged. “Come on, baby boy. Break’s over. We’ve got a long walk home.”

  He grunted, pulled those two massive front hooves from the loose dirt, and damned if he didn’t scramble up with a snort. He shook like a dog. A really big dog. Dirt shuddered off his flanks. It rolled off his mane. He staggered a moment before he caught sure footing.

  Maverick took another full step back. Holy hell. The breadth and height of this horse was nothing short of tremendous. Star towered over his mistress, his chest at least four times as wide as she was. Maybe more. Hell, he towered over Maverick, too.

  Maverick brushed more dirt off Star’s wide rump, revealing another jagged wound. “You probably don’t care, but he’s got a cut on his rear end, too.”

  Both China and Star turned to look at him. Damned if those two semi-interested faces didn’t almost crack a smile on Maverick’s mouth. Almost.

  China investigated. “That’s nothing. His big butt has already snagged every nail, splinter, or barbed wire in the county. We’ll just get out the old Preparation H when we get home, huh, big fella?” she said as she stro
ked Star’s long nose.

  “Preparation H?”

  A mischievous smile lit China’s face. “Sure. It tightens more than just assholes.”

  Maverick had no answer to that interesting info byte. Preparation H? For horses? Who would have thought?

  She pinned him with an appraising stare, her hand stuck out for another handshake. “Now, are you going to join me for dinner or is this goodbye?”

  He raked a hand through his hair and looked west. The song of the lonesome road called up to him from the ravine. You have other places to be. You’re not done walking. Not by a long shot. And yet...

  “A home-cooked meal would be nice,” he admitted as he accepted her hand. The words were no more than out of his mouth when Star swished his lengthy tail, catching Maverick in its wake. He spit and brushed the strands of horsehair off his lips.

  China laughed, a pleasant sound under the hot afternoon sun. “Told you he likes you.”

  Chapter Two

  I like him.

  Who wouldn’t like the handsome stranger who’d just saved her horse’s life? But the man didn’t talk unless he was spoken to. When she asked questions, most times she didn’t get an answer. Just a grunt. China liked that, too, crazy as it sounded. Some men just didn’t have much to say.

  She had always respected the trait in her father. Jefferson Wolf never needed much in the way of words to communicate, either. Even when he’d died of cancer, their last words were nothing more than, ‘Bye. See you around.’

  He had built the Wild Wolf Horse Ranch from the ground up and ran it like the business he meant it to be. The finest Percherons in the west were born and bred there. Ask anyone. She could trace their bloodlines all the way back to Diligence himself, the first imported Percheron stallion successfully bred in the country.

  Instrumental in preserving the breed, the Wild Wolf was more than just a horse ranch and a business to China. It was her life and pure joy. She lived the Wild Wolf. Breathed it. Intended on dying for it if the good Lord asked.

  It took most of the day to free Star and walk home. It hadn’t helped that she’d lost one of her boots in the fall and had to walk home barefoot. The sun was low in the west by the time they strolled beneath the Wild Wolf sign hung over the end of her long gravel drive. It branched off the highway, Devil’s Tower to the east, Yellowstone to the west. Stuck between heaven and hell, her father used to say. No place better.

  Maverick hadn’t said two words while he’d trailed behind Star’s big caboose. Even his dirty baseball cap gave nothing away. Black with a gold logo on it: The TEAM. Boring. He had slung his backpack and guitar over his shoulder, pulled the brim of his cap low over his eyes, always gazing west as if he had other places to be.

  China suspected he didn’t. When he wasn’t holed up behind his dark glasses, the man had a far-off stare. It didn’t take a genius to put that stare and the Marine Corps jacket he had so willingly transformed into a water jug, together. She had seen the same look on her father’s face the few times he had talked about the war in Vietnam. The veteran’s stare—not so much seeing anything as reliving long past tragedies, remembering ghosts, regretting things that couldn’t be changed and trying to find a way to move on.

  Maverick was all tomcat straggly. Scruffy. Maybe homeless, too. His clothes were shabby, and the soles of his boots worn thin. Like him. No doubt he would gulp his dinner and bolt for the road the first chance he got.

  “You’re welcome to use the shower in the bunkhouse.” She nodded toward the log cabin-style building across the yard. “The guys went into town for supplies, so it’s empty. You’ll find clean towels on the bathroom shelf. It’s got a washer and dryer, too. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” He ambled past her and Star, and darn it anyway, she had to look twice. The man beneath those dirty denims walked like a gunslinger. A little bowlegged. Lazy. As if no one could make him do what he didn’t want to do. Don’t ask. Don’t even try.

  A funny feeling caught at the back of her throat watching his dusty butt. Trim. Tight. Not baggy and saggy like most guys’ backsides. She swallowed hard and walked Star into the barn, needing to get her mind off the ass of that moody man on his way to what might be his first shower in a few days.

  Star, she understood. All he needed was a good brushing, a rubdown, and maybe a handful of grain. But Maverick? Another animal all together. He might benefit from a good meal and a hot shower, but the look in his eyes when she had offered a simple handshake declared there would be no rubdown. No camaraderie, either. This guy radiated ‘leave me alone’ in bright, radioactive neon.

  It didn’t take long to get Star settled and cared for. By the time China finished cleaning his minor wounds and doctoring him, Maverick returned.

  Holy smokes. He cleaned up damned good.

  She looked twice again. Dark hair, wet, but nicely parted and combed. Rugged good looks. Intense dark eyes with no hint of a smile. He looked more like a roughneck from the oil fields when she’d first opened her eyes to him on the hillside, but showered and dressed in what was probably his last clean shirt, he was worth looking at. Clean-shaven chin. His sunglasses folded and stowed in his shirt pocket for a change.

  Her nostrils flared. It didn’t hurt that he smelled like soap.

  Coffee brown eyes hit her with—what? Insolence? Hostility? Dislike?

  An odd mix of emotions shifted in those dark depths. He would’ve scared her with that ornery lift of his upper lip if she hadn’t experienced kindness at his hand.

  “Tell me what you need done around here,” he said by way of greeting, his thumb tucked inside his belt buckle.

  “Me? Nothing right now.” She floated a stable blanket over Star’s back. Her motherly side allowed a little wriggle room to coddle her one-ton, baby boy just this once with a covering for the night. He didn’t need it as much as she needed to do it for him. “How about you? What do you need?”

  “I can clean stalls, pitch hay, anything you need, ma’am.” Maverick seemed so earnestly intent on working for his supper.

  “No. You’ve done enough for one day.” She placed her hand on his forearm in a friendly gesture, but even that didn’t breach the barrier erected around him. He was a tough one, this Maverick Carson who wasn’t related to Kit. He stiffened, so she pulled back and gave him his space. “Besides, it’s dinnertime. You don’t need to get dirty the first minute you’re clean. Do you like chicken?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He closed the barn door while she led the way to the ranch house.

  “Good. You grill while I shower. You do know how to grill, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I cook,” he muttered.

  She’d glanced sideways at him and honestly, her breath caught. This guy was hands-down the handsomest man she had laid eyes on in ages. His hair needed a trim the way it curled under his ears and at the nape of his neck. But those unsmiling eyes, fixed on the horizon, already looking ahead and beyond? Yeah. He was sullen from the ground up. But damned beautiful.

  She knew good bloodlines, and this guy had them in aces. He carried himself with pride and strength; his shoulders squared but tense, as if he trusted no one. He looked ready to fight, like he could take on the world at the drop of a hat.

  The thick fringe of lashes bracketing his eyes would’ve made them seem bigger and brighter if he relaxed enough to smile. Instead, he scowled. The gentle arch of his brows softened the hard line of his jaw, though.

  Oddly, that was another thing she liked about him. He was a deadly serious man, nothing like the braggarts and know-it-alls from town.

  And polite. He took the porch steps two at a time and opened the squeaky screen door for her. A shiver raced up her spine. A true gentleman lay beneath this brooding exterior. His parents had taught him well.

  She nodded once, accepting yet another act of kindness from a man who barely spoke, and whom she didn’t know well enough to have invited home for dinner. But there he was. Six-foot-plus, hands washed and hungry.

  Once i
n the kitchen, she pulled the container of marinating chicken from the refrigerator. Handing him the chicken and a platter, she pointed to the back door. “Grill’s on the patio. Utensils and lighter, too. I’ll be finished showering by the time you’re done. Don’t burn the wings.”

  He accepted the assignment without a word or eye contact and headed for the patio with a quick, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Hurrying to her upstairs bathroom, she locked herself in, not scared so much as cautious. Still, she couldn’t resist parting the curtains to steal a peek at the man on the patio.

  Grilling fit this Good Samaritan to a T. He attended to it like a sentry on duty and never once looked at the back door. An opportunist could’ve robbed her blind while she showered. Maybe taken other liberties as well. Not this guy. She knew horseflesh. People flesh, too. Maverick might be a puzzle, but he was not most men.

  Her shower steamed behind her, but China stalled, the view on her patio more tantalizing than she had expected. Maverick turned the chicken pieces with the tongs. One by one. Carefully. Deliberately. Short bursts of fire flashed up from the grill. He paid attention, moving the thicker pieces to the center, the smaller to the outside where they wouldn’t burn.

  The man seemed stuck in a military mindset. In between turning and basting, he returned to the same position, his hands clenched behind his back, his feet spread maybe a foot or two apart.

  Argh. She tore herself away from the view and pulled the glass shower door open. Reality hit her the second the water poured over her face. She had been so worried about Star that she hadn’t given a thought to herself. She did now.

  I could’ve died on that hillside. No one would’ve known where I was.

  Warm water or not, she shivered. If not for that quiet man on her patio right this very minute, she would still be buried, still suffocating while Star languished nearby. He would’ve died a terrible death.

  Oh, Daddy. What have I done?

  Her knees turned to jelly. She braced her palms and forehead to the shower tiles as the tears came. Maverick saved my life today. He didn’t have to, but he did. My God, I owe this stranger everything.