Harvest at Mustang Ridge

by Jesse Hayworth

  Her eyes flashed. “I don’t intend to let you.”

  Which sounded great, but experience said that stuff like this always circled back around on a guy. He would’ve stuffed his hands in his pockets, but his pants were across the room. “So now what?”

  “So now nothing. Enjoy your dinner and I’ll see you tomorrow.” She swept down off the porch like she was exiting stage left, and slammed the car door for emphasis.

  The noise brought Klepto to the door. He stood at the threshold, head cocked, while Krista whipped the vehicle around and headed up the drive.

  As the taillights dwindled, taking the engine noise with them, Wyatt glanced down. “Well. That was interesting.” And by “interesting” he meant he needed to go take another shower, this one cold. Because, damn. Rather than cooling his jets, the exchange had blown any chance of him pretending he wasn’t attracted to her. He’d always had a thing for blond cowgirls in general, and this one in particular. To find that she’d gotten feisty with age and experience, and was ready to go toe to toe with him despite their history . . . Yeah. He was in trouble.

  *

  By the time Krista got back home, she had calmed down enough to decide she should probably chalk up the past hour—maybe even the past forty-eight—to temporary insanity. That would explain why she hadn’t fled the moment Wyatt answered the door in a towel. And why she had kissed him.

  “Great job,” she muttered as she let herself in through the front door. “Way to prove that you’re not over him.” Or, rather, that she couldn’t resist the big, capable cowboy he had grown into. Without meaning to, she called up that first sight of him at the door—a centerfold moment of wet hair, bare chest, and white towel. As her blood heated at the memory of feeling his body against hers, though, something brushed at the edge of her mind, a discordant twinge, like she was missing something.

  “Is that you, sweetie?” her mom caroled from the sitting area, where she was camped out on the couch with her feet up and her e-reader in her lap. “I didn’t know you went out.”

  Krista paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I was just delivering supplies to the bunkhouse.” Ogling my new wrangler. Kissing him. Please don’t ask.

  “Oh?” There was a wealth of meaning in the word.

  “It’s fine, Mom. I’m fine.”

  Rose set the reader aside. “I just worry about you, sweetie. I want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy. I’ve got everything I want right here.” She set her foot on the bottom step. “Including, thanks to you, the world’s comfiest bedroom. Which is calling my name.” Please don’t start the “you’re putting too much of yourself into the business and if you want a family you can’t wait forever” thing, I’m begging you.

  Okay, so maybe her mom had given her that sit-down only once. But even a year later, it hadn’t scabbed all the way over. It wasn’t like Krista didn’t want to meet someone. And of course there were kids involved when she pictured herself down the line—what was a family ranch without the next generation? But there wouldn’t be any kids without a husband—not in the Skye family, anyway—and it wasn’t like she had candidates beating down her door.

  “You’re not thinking you and he will—”

  “Wyatt is just filling in while he’s between jobs,” Krista said firmly. “That’s it. Period. End of story.”

  “Maybe this will be good for you,” her mom said, not looking entirely convinced. “Having him around for a few weeks might help you get him out of your system so you can move on, find someone else. Have you thought about online dating?”

  Krista barely heard her, though, because all of a sudden the twinge was stronger, the discord louder. She frowned, thinking back. And it clicked.

  If Wyatt was between wrangler jobs, why didn’t he have a horse, or even a saddle? And how many unemployed cowboys traveled with high-end leather bags and a top-notch laptop?

  Then again, he hadn’t actually said he was between wrangler jobs, had he? Just that he was between jobs. She had assumed. And you know what they say about that.

  Doing a U-turn, she said, “Can I . . . Let me get back to you on that, okay, Mom?”

  Rose frowned. “I thought you were going to bed.”

  “I am. I will. I just need to check on something first.”

  Once she was behind her desk, though, staring at the computer screen, she hesitated, feeling like Pandora getting ready to pop the top on her pretty box. Or like she was holding a party-popper can and wasn’t sure she wanted to be wearing worms.

  With any other potential hire, she would have plugged his name into Google first thing, looking for horse-related mentions and wacko social media rants. With Wyatt, though, she hadn’t done any of that. Partly because it had felt like she’d be e-stalking an ex, which was pretty much the definition of not over him . . . but mostly because she didn’t want to know what he’d been doing since he disappeared on her.

  Which was also pretty high up there on the “signs you’re not over him” list, come to think of it.

  Groaning, she buried her face in her hands. “This is stupid.” She had to do it, especially now that things weren’t lining up. And especially since she had kissed him, and they had . . . whatever they had going on between them. So she blew out a breath and steeled herself. “Here goes nothing,” she said, and she typed CHARLES WYATT WEBB into the box, and hit ENTER.

  It took a second for her mind to process the images that popped up on the screen, another for her jaw to drop.

  Wyatt?

  She had been expecting rodeo photos, maybe a ranch Web site offering trick training or turnaround of problem horses. Or, after seeing his personal stuff, maybe links to a horse-related white-collar job of some sort. What she got, though . . .

  Wow.

  The tiny thumbnail images at the top of the screen showed horses, all right, but they weren’t training projects or rodeo remounts. The life-size metal sculptures were made of gears and pistons, frozen images that reared, galloped, and fought, seeming to come alive even in miniature.

  “What the . . .” Her eyes went to the top Web site hit, GearHorseGallery.com, and the short description below. Unique, one-of-a-kind Western pieces by award-winning artists working in reclaimed metal. The only source for pieces by the renowned C. Wyatt Webb.

  There was a Denver address, but it could have been a cross street on Mars for all the sense it made to Krista. She wouldn’t even have believed it was the same Wyatt Webb if it hadn’t been for the thumbnail picture. He was wearing a white button-down shirt that was open at the throat and popped against a background as dark as his eyes. And while his hair might be shorter, his tan less evident, there was no question it was the same man who was living in her bunkhouse.

  The one she had kissed half an hour ago, and who had kissed her back. And who was clearly more than just an out-of-work cowboy.

  She leaned back. Blinked. Rubbed her eyes until they blurred and cleared again. But none of it changed what she was looking at on the screen.

  “That’s . . .” Impossible, she wanted to say, but obviously it wasn’t. A lot could change in eight years.

  The room took a long, slow spin around her as she clicked to open the Web site, then hit the prominent link to his name. And whatever breath she’d been hanging on to vanished from her lungs in an instant. Not because of the three-quarter picture of Wyatt with his Stetson low on his brow and his sleeves rolled up over his muscular forearms.

  No, it was the showcased statue that had her brain vapor-locking.

  The metal mustang was caught midgallop, not in the legs-neatly-tucked nanosecond of suspension that so many artists used, but in the spraddle-legged moment when two feet make contact and the other two claw the air for more speed. The horse’s head was twisted to the side, its ears flat and its mouth open as if snapping at an unseen threat, and every line of its body was perfect, maybe not anatomically—though that was darn close—but in sprit. There was movement in the motionless image, making inaudible hoofbeat so
unds in the viewer’s mind.

  It would have been impressive had it been carved from stone or cast in bronze. It was even more so because it had been constructed of barnyard scraps—gears, tractor parts, old horseshoes—making it seem like a mustang’s ghost had walked out of a junkyard and glared around as if to say, Yeah? Come over here and say that, why don’t you?

  And Wyatt had made it.

  That wasn’t even the craziest part, though, wasn’t the thing that had her shaking her head and brushing her fingers across the screen. Because she knew that horse. She had seen it in person. On a date.

  Holy cow.

  Two winters ago, she had visited California for a short course in modern dude ranching—four weeks doing intensive course work and two interning at a luxury horse resort. There, she had hit it off with Ballard, an assistant wrangler who liked his coffee black, his horses fast, and his relationships short and sweet. That had sounded just fine to her—she was on vacation, away from her friends, family, and her usual responsibilities, and sick of having only a single notch on her proverbial bedpost.

  They had flirted and shared a couple of drinks, and on her day off he had surprised her with tickets to a dinner-and-dress-up museum gala, celebrating a traveling exhibit of Western-themed art. The mustang sculpture had been the centerpiece of the section devoted to modern pieces. And it had grabbed her instantly. She might have stood staring at it for hours if Ballard hadn’t nudged her along. It had been that good, that powerful.

  She hadn’t gotten the artist’s name, though. What would she have done if she had seen WYATT WEBB on a nearby plaque?

  She flushed, remembering that she’d gotten her second bedpost notch that night. A week later, she and Ballard had parted with a whole lot of “keep in touch” that neither of them had meant. And she’d never had to reassure herself that she was over him.

  Scanning the tabs at the top of the Web site, she hesitated over the one that said BIO. Clicked it.

  The same galloping horse from the main page was set atop this one, suggesting it was a favorite, or one of his better-known pieces. Below it, she read:

  A lifelong horseman, Wyatt Webb grew up wanting to be a rodeo star, a stunt rider, or Indiana Jones. After having some success with the first two, he turned his attention to learning how to hot-forge horseshoes, intending to go into therapeutic shoeing. When master farrier Ryan Dillon agreed to take him on as an apprentice, he had no idea his life was about to change.

  An embedded picture showed Wyatt with a grizzled barrel of a man, both of them wearing heavy suede shoeing chaps and bent over the upturned foot of a bay horse. Krista’s heart squeezed at seeing a younger and leaner Wyatt who was more like the guy she remembered. At the same time, it was strange knowing that this had come after they were both out of each other’s lives. The bio continued:

  While learning to create precisely balanced shoes from blank stock, Wyatt became interested in decorative forging. Ryan taught him a blend of old and new techniques, and the two teamed up in forging competitions.

  A photo montage showed the two men standing with a series of sculptures made from bent and welded metal bars—everything from a tabletop model of Denver’s Rainbow Arch bridge to a life-size mermaid. As the pictures progressed, the pieces increased in their size and intricacy and the prizes went from ribbons to trophies, and from there to oversize checks.

  Soon, Wyatt struck out on his own, using agricultural scrap metal to create life-size representations of Western scenes from yesterday and today.

  The bio went on to list a bunch of awards, along with several museums and state buildings that displayed his work. But it was the line of photos along the bottom that caught Krista’s attention. There were half a dozen horses—all caught midmotion and no two the same—plus a bucking bull with a cowboy coming off the side, and an annoyed-looking cow being hassled by a bristling dog made from pieces of a combine. Each was made up of cleverly combined metal parts—a whole junkyard come alive.

  She stared, baffled, her mind buzzing with a strange mix of pride and discomfort. Why had he come to Three Ridges? Why was he still in town? And most of all, why was he working for her?

  She didn’t have a clue. But first thing tomorrow, she was going to find out.

  9

  Krista headed for the barn early to get ahead of Wyatt, only to find that he and Jupiter were already gone. She told herself to let it go, catch him later, use the time to chip away at her to-do mountain. Instead, she pulled out her saddle and called, “Hey, Lucky-boy. You up for a morning ride?”

  A glossy black horse in a nearby stall nickered, arching his neck and pressing the perfect diamond in the center of his forehead against the bars of the sliding door.

  She grinned as she put him on the cross ties. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Admittedly, taking Lucky out to look for Wyatt and Jupiter was the cowgirl equivalent of taking a Lamborghini down the street for a gallon of milk. But it wasn’t every day that a girl discovered that the guy who broke her heart had gone on to become a famous artist.

  Once she was mounted, Lucky’s smooth paces ate the distance, putting them at the marker stones in no time flat. Reining in, she scanned the undulating hills. “I don’t see—”

  Lucky pricked his ears and bugled at the sight of the horse and rider two valleys over.

  “Thanks, buddy. Off you go.” She nudged him into motion, barely needing the cue with him eager to stretch his legs. He flowed down the ridge and settled into a rocking-chair rhythm that would get them to the others in a few minutes.

  Hopefully by then she would have figured out what she wanted to say.

  *

  Wyatt saw her a ways away, cued by Jupiter’s quick shift of attention and the sudden fine tension running through her body. Or maybe the tension was in his body, sparked by the sight of Krista astride the elegant black gelding, with her hair in cowgirl braids and a sassy red bandanna knotted around her neck like she was planning to rob the eleven o’clock stage.

  It made him want to stop and stare, as that kiss played back through his mind like it had been trying to do all morning.

  She’s not for you, he reminded himself. There were sparks there, sure—damn near fireworks. But they were traveling on two different roads these days, and he had sworn off hurting people.

  He rode up to meet her, letting Jupiter pick her way along a prairie surface that looked smooth from a distance, but had proved to be a minefield of gopher holes and shifting rocks up close. As they closed the distance, he saw that the black horse was as fine a specimen as he’d seen in a long while, and Krista’s narrowed eyes were aimed full bore at him.

  Jupiter did a little dance beneath him, warning that he’d tensed up.

  As Krista came up opposite him and the horses touched noses, trading scent, he said, “Morning, boss. Nice horse.”

  “Don’t you nice horse me, Wyatt.”

  “You’re mad.” Was it about the kiss?

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re famous?”

  Oh. That. “Only according to my agent and the PR people.” Seeing her glare narrow further, he added, “I figured you’d look me up if you wanted to know what I’d been doing with my life. And I like being back around people who care about things like crops and calves rather than visual metaphors and social commentary.” He paused. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful. I’m lucky that Damien saw some of my pieces and threw the weight of GearHorse Gallery behind me, lucky that people lined up to buy, talking about the clash between tradition, industrialization, and the green revolution.” He shrugged. “The thing is, I just like making horses out of metal.” At least he used to.

  It was probably the most he’d said about it to anybody since coming to Wyoming—the most he’d said to her about anything.

  She didn’t seem impressed—more like she was ready to kick him. Was it bad that he found he preferred that over the usual ooh, ahh reaction he got from women?

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “You’
re on your vacation, getting back to your roots, or whatnot, and it’s my responsibility to background check my hires. But why are you here? Why take a job you don’t need? I’m having a hard time believing it’s all about making amends when you let it go eight years without a word.”

  The girl she had been would’ve taken it all at face value. The woman she had grown into knew better, and she kept her eyes on his as she waited for an answer. News flash: She hadn’t just gotten feisty; she had gotten tough, too. Tough enough that she would walk away from him if he ducked her question. Which would probably be better for both of them—he didn’t want her inside his head any more than she already was, hadn’t expected to feel anything when he stood near her, caught her scent.

  Let it go. Isn’t it enough that I’m here? That was what he should say. Or, better yet, Lady, I’m just here to do a job. Instead, he grated, “I wish I could tell you that I came here with you in mind, but the truth is, I came to Three Ridges because I’m blocked, and I was hoping to hell that spending some time in the backcountry would loosen things up.”

  Saying it aloud put a fist of self-directed anger in his gut, a punch that came from admitting he didn’t have his head screwed on tight enough, didn’t have control of his process, such as it was.

  “Blocked.” She said it levelly, carefully. “Like writer’s block?”

  “Something like that. Used to be that I could look at a pile of junk and see a bucking bull, or picture a mustang and know where to go for the parts. I didn’t think about it, didn’t worry about it, the right answers were just there. After a while, though, it started getting harder to go from the pictures in my head to the actual build.” He had told himself it was because he was getting distracted by the business side of things, and hired people to handle the shows, the e-mails, all of it. That had just made it worse. “I got through my last show and promised myself I would take a break and clear my head . . . but the American Pioneer Museum asked me to do a piece for their post-reno relaunch next summer. It’s a career-maker, and they’re open to whatever I want to do. When I sit down to actually start the work, though . . .” He shook his head. “Nothing.” Like his prospects if he didn’t get his ass in gear.