by Nicole Helm
“Thought it was slave,” Micah muttered, earning him a nudge from his mother, who was wearing a dark-blue T-shirt that somehow made her eyes seem even more vibrant. Or maybe that was the fact her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, leaving her pale, graceful neck visible and—
Shit, man, get a grip.
“Thanks for this,” Cora said, offering them all sheepish smiles.
“Yeah, thanks,” Micah said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
Cora looked down at her son with a pained expression that Shane could relate to a little too hard. He’d considered it his duty to help Boone stay on the straight and narrow when they’d been growing up because Boone had only been six when Dad had died. Shane had been something like his father figure.
Another failure. Because Boone had been into every kind of trouble imaginable, and Shane knew it was only his love of the rodeo that kept him from getting into serious, irreparable trouble.
So, Shane knew what it was to look at someone and be afraid and at a loss and just desperate to figure out what to do to make everything okay.
“Well, we better get started,” he said, gesturing toward the stables. “First stop. Horse shit junction.”
Gavin chuckled, Micah scowled, and Cora smiled prettily up at him, the soft light of dawn giving her skin a little glow.
“And I’ll make up a nice lunch for you four,” Mom said. “Be back around eleven.”
“Eleven? That’s like five hours away,” Micah grumbled to his mother.
“Excellent math skills,” Cora replied crisply. “Maybe I should have put you in math camp so you couldn’t throw any basketballs at any coach’s head.” She looked back at Shane, rolling her eyes.
“Throwing basketballs at coaches. Hmm. What do you say the kind of punishment for that would be, Gav?”
“Well, when our youngest brother started a bonfire on the baseball field before practice, I think he was on shit removal, collection, and application duty for a week.”
“Arson might be a step above basketball throwing,” Shane offered thoughtfully.
“Where’d the ball hit?” Gavin demanded.
Micah blinked up at them, eyes wide—somewhere between awe, fascination, and fear. “B-back of his head.”
“No potential bleeding then. Yeah, we’ll have to downgrade from arson,” Gavin said, nodding toward Shane. “Collection then. We’ll go from there.”
Cora was trailing after them, and, when Shane glanced back at her, she looked vaguely perplexed.
“I hope you don’t plan on giving him ideas on how to get in trouble all day,” she said with a bit of an amused smile.
“If you plan on telling someone what to do, you have to earn a little bit of respect first or they’ll do a piss-poor job.” Shane slowed his steps so he was next to Cora.
“That so?”
“Far as I can tell. Arson brother was always telling me I was a goody-two-shoes.”
“You are a goody-two-shoes.”
Shane nodded to where Micah was entering the stables behind Gavin. “He doesn’t need to know that.”
Shane could tell she was trying to suppress a grin, and it made him want to see it full-fledged. They stepped into the stables, and he nodded toward the tool wall.
“Grab a shovel. Part of telling someone what to do is showing them you’re not afraid of doing the hard work yourself.”
Cora scoffed. “I’m not shoveling. . . . You can’t be serious!”
“Dead serious. Everyone in my stable works. Troublemaker or not.”
He left her there at the entrance to the stables looking a little shell-shocked. He was all too pleased with himself.
Chapter Seven
He wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. Shane didn’t actually expect her to do any of the work.
But he walked over to a wall full of tools and picked out a shovel and held it out toward her.
“But . . .” Cora couldn’t think of anything to say. Except that it was Micah’s punishment, not hers. But Micah was watching her with big eyes, and Shane was clearly trying to hide a smile, and she somehow wanted to prove to everyone in this awful-smelling building she could shovel a bunch of horse poop if need be.
“Every morning we muck out the stalls and put in fresh hay. Most of the horses get a good workout since they’re used to get us around the ranch, but we have to keep track so we know each horse is getting enough exercise.”
Shane moved to one . . . thing. Stall, Cora guessed. She didn’t know the terminology, but it was like a pen, closed in on all sides, but with plenty of room for a horse.
A gigantic, hairy beast with giant eyes she thought could swallow her, even though they were only eyes, stood there. Cora couldn’t bring herself any closer.
“Whoa. It’s huge,” Micah said, sounding awed and clearly forgetting himself for a minute because he quickly affixed a scowl to his face when Cora looked his way.
“So’s the shit,” Gavin said, clearly having a hell of a time.
Cora couldn’t say she was having much fun, or that she particularly cared for either of the Tyler men in this moment, though they stood there with grins and shovels.
She didn’t mind looking at them, truth be told, no matter how irritated. Shane and Gavin looked an awful lot alike. Same height and build—broad shoulders, toned arms, and . . . well, other things Cora couldn’t allow herself to notice or think about in the presence of her son. They had the same dark hair and eyes, but the way their faces were arranged was different. Shane had a square jaw and wide-set eyes and a nice mouth. He was a sort of classic kind of handsome. Like that cowboy in an old black-and-white movie she’d fallen asleep to last night. Gavin’s features were more rugged, she supposed. His nose was crooked and his mouth was all sharp angles—whether smiling or frowning or, more often, scowling. More brawler type, whereas Shane was clearly the peacemaker.
She liked that about him. Also the way his butt looked in those jeans, which she was not thinking about in the presence of her son.
“There are eight stalls, so we’ll each clear out two. Shovel it all out here, then we’ll show you how to spread in the new hay.”
“Wait. . . . We’re all going to do it?” Micah asked, looking from Shane to Cora and then back again, openmouthed enough he couldn’t scale his expression back to a scowl.
“When everyone pitches in, we get more work done,” Shane said simply, as if there was no question.
Cora didn’t know why that touched her, or seemed like such a big, good thing for Micah to learn.
“Then I get to go home?”
Shane’s mouth curved. “Your mom’s in charge, kid. We’re working you till she calls it quits.”
“Settle in, buckaroo,” Cora offered with a smile. “You’ve earned some hard work.”
“You’re going to have to do it too,” Micah returned with that kind of patented disgust only kids could manage.
“I can handle it. Let’s see if you can.” Then she set about doing something she had never dreamed in a million years she’d end up doing: she shoveled poop. Considering she’d cleaned up leaky diarrhea diapers, projectile vomit, and the like in the years of being Micah’s mom, it really wasn’t especially awful.
Micah groaned in disgust, but Cora couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t morbidly fascinated by the whole thing. She could read the expressions on her child’s face, when she wasn’t second-guessing herself or he wasn’t shutting her out. There was a spark there in his eyes as he hefted a huge pile of poop onto the metal scoop of a shovel.
Once the stalls were clean and Shane had inspected them all to make sure they’d gotten everything, Shane and Gavin led Cora and Micah through putting new hay down and then moving the horses back into the pens.
Cora looked sideways at the horse she was supposed to be leading. She didn’t feel much like a leader when the horse’s dark, gigantic eyes seemed to bore into her.
“She won’t bite. I mean, she could, but it’s doubtful.”
Cora scowled at Shane. “I don’t think she’s going to bite me. I think she’s going to eat my face off.”
“I think that’s gorillas.” He took the reins from her, which was a simple maneuver considering she’d been afraid to hold them in the first place and had just barely held the leather between her fingertips.
“Bears also eat faces, I’m pretty sure,” she offered, following him. Well, walking next to him so that he was between her and that creature. “And, look, I don’t know. Horses are still animals. It could go crazy and decide it wants to eat my face off.”
“She won’t,” Shane assured, clearly amused with her horse reticence. He easily led the horse into the stables and gave its rump a friendly pat.
Do not let your mind go any further than that, Cora Preston.
Cora glanced at where Gavin was talking to Micah, pointing to parts on the saddle Gavin had just fastened onto one of the other horses. Cora forgot about her discomfort with horses at that avid look of interest on her son’s face. She hadn’t seen that in a while.
“Is your mom always right?”
“No,” Shane replied flatly.
Cora waved her hand, knowing exactly what was causing that flat tone. “Aside from the Ben thing, which you’ve yet to prove to me isn’t right, she’s always right. Isn’t she?”
Shane shrugged. “Maybe more often than not.”
“I just love her.” Because if this was the thing that got Micah to wake up and participate in life beyond his video games again . . . Cora got teary just thinking about how much she owed this woman she barely knew.
“She incites that feeling in a lot of people,” Shane was saying. “For what it’s worth, she likes you too. And she’s got a good radar about kids who need a little hard work and a little horse therapy. Although, you can blame her if your kid ends up on the rodeo circuit.”
Cora must have visibly paled because Shane chuckled and reached out to touch her arm. A little shoulder squeeze she was sure was supposed to be friendly and reassuring and not at all a gesture that might make her wonder what that big, rough hand might feel like against bare skin.
Shane Tyler was a serious problem.
“Only one out of three boys she raised ended up in the rodeo. So, you might have a one in three chance.”
“How reassuring,” Cora muttered.
“You guys are pro at the poop shoveling. You care if we get him up there?”
Cora looked at the horse, something akin to terror clutching her gut. The giant beast towered over her baby, and Shane wanted to put the little bundle she’d nursed with her own body on one. Her sweet little boy who’d spent too many years in quiet, desolate fear.
“You can say no,” Shane said gently, and without an ounce of disgust or judgment. “No one would hold it against you. Horses can be intimidating if you’re not used to them.”
She watched as Micah reached out and swept his hand down the giant beast’s side, just as Gavin instructed him.
“He’s not intimidated,” she said miserably. “Do you know what the absolute worst part of being a parent is?”
“Never knowing what the right thing to do is.”
She blinked up at him, because not only was that exactly it, but he said it so certainly. Without even the hint of a question. “How . . .”
He shrugged, watching Gavin and Micah, and it felt like he was very purposefully not meeting her gaze. “I’m the oldest. When my father died . . . Well, I was never a parent, no, but I took on some parent-like responsibilities here and there.”
Here and there. Somehow she thought it had been a little more than that. “I don’t want my fear to hold him back, and yet . . .” Cora blew out a breath. “I need him to be safe and whole.”
“And happy.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You just had to bring that one up.”
“We’ll put a helmet on him. We’ll guide the horse. Won’t take our hands off her. It doesn’t have to take twenty years off your life. Maybe just one or two.”
Her heart swelled a little at that. Both at the gesture and at the fact that Shane understood no amount of precaution would ever make any of this completely without worry. She wasn’t sure she knew anyone like that. Lilly was always trying to take her worry away, make it better. Her friends weren’t parents. They couldn’t fully get it.
Shane wasn’t a parent either, and yet he got it. It was a strange mix all in one person. All in one very, very attractive person. “You’re a strange man, Shane Tyler. I don’t know quite what to do with you.”
He pulled his cowboy hat down farther on his head, obscuring his features in shadows. “Ditto, Cora. Ditto.”
* * *
They got Micah up on the horse, and the kid tried so hard to act unaffected and bored, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Not his mother. Certainly not Shane or Gavin.
The kid was in love, and there was something special about introducing someone to that. Mostly Shane only ever associated with people who’d grown up around horses and had always worked with them. Ranchers and ranch hands. His life was a summation of connections he’d made from the Tyler ranch.
Watching Cora’s trepidation and Micah’s free-falling love affair did something uncomfortable to Shane’s chest. Something, much like what Cora had said about him, he wasn’t sure what to do with.
Shane had instructed Gavin to take Micah around on Bodine. Although Shane thought the best course of action for his own peace of mind, and other body parts, would be to put some distance between him and Cora, he also thought he’d be the best person to stand next to her and reassure her everything was fine while Micah rode his first horse.
“I hope we’re not stealing your whole morning away,” she offered.
“We’ll put you to work this afternoon to make up for it.”
She smiled at him, one side of her mouth going up farther than the other, making him think about mouths and the meeting of and . . .
He forced himself to look ahead as Micah and Bodine passed, Gavin dutifully keeping his hands on the reins.
“We could get you up on one if you’d like.”
“I would not like. I would rather shovel poop for the rest of the day. Possibly my life.”
“They’re not so bad.”
“They are to me.”
He grinned at her, already forgetting his ordering himself to look ahead. “I’m going to get you up on one. One of these days. You just wait and see.” Because it was stupid to pretend he didn’t want to see her. Again and again. Like this, where he didn’t have to think about Mom and Ben and the wedding, just a pretty woman who smiled and flirted with him.
She pushed a stray strand of reddish hair behind her ear. “That sounds like another thing we disagree on. I’m going to start a list.”
It sank some of the easy camaraderie and, yes, maybe even flirtation, because everything that reminded him of his mother marrying that crook did.
“He lies.”
Cora blinked, clearly not following Shane’s train of thought, so he had to press on. “You said if you had reason to believe Ben would hurt my mother, you wouldn’t be a part of it. Well, he’s a liar. He forged his references to get a job here.”
“Is that all?”
“All? It’s a lie.”
Cora studied Shane thoughtfully, blue eyes contemplating and serious. “Who hasn’t lied when they were desperate for a job?”
“Me,” Shane replied indignantly.
She blew out a breath, shaking her head. “You’ve never been desperate for a job.”
He opened his mouth to argue, except, of course, there was no argument for that. The Tyler ranch had always been his. There’d never been a question or time for anything else.
“I assume you found out about his lying about the references yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And did you tell your mother?”
Shane ground his teeth together and nodded. A few months ago, before the whole engagement nonsense, when he’d told Mom about the f
act that they’d figured out the references were bogus, she’d already known. Ben had confessed.
But a lie was a lie.
“I’m sorry, Shane. I am. I just don’t think that’s the end of the world. I’ve told a lot of unfortunate lies because it felt like the only option I had. I can’t beat myself up for it. I mean, I can and I do, but I try not to.”
Unfortunate lies. Only option. It reminded him of the other night and the odd impression he’d gotten from her that she’d been hurt by a man before.
Shane flicked a glance to where Gavin was teaching Micah how to dismount. The kid’s father clearly wasn’t in the picture. So, it made sense Cora had been hurt or abandoned. The kid’s dad could just be dead. Shane knew full well that was possible. Still, he wondered....
And had no business wondering.
Micah scurried over, and all of that preteen bluster and apathy had clearly washed away.
“Mom, this is seriously . . .” He looked from Shane to Cora, with wide-eyed enthusiasm so deep and bright, he couldn’t hide it. “Can I take horse-riding lessons? Gavin says his sister gives them.”
“God help me,” Cora muttered, but Shane didn’t have a doubt she’d agree. She was a good mom, and she wanted her kid safe and happy.
“Molly does a fine job with the riding lessons,” Shane offered. “She’s been giving them since she was a teenager. She’s very safe.”
“I’m sure,” Cora murmured.
“And if money is an issue—”
“It isn’t,” she snapped, so coolly, so curtly, Shane could only stare. He hadn’t expected that snap of temper from her. Certainly not over something so small. “We’ll work out something, Micah, but if you’re going to take lessons, you’re going to have to do some work, too. Isn’t that right, Shane?” She glanced at him somewhat regally, all but daring him to disagree.
“Of course. Learning how to ride means learning how to care for the horses. We could use the help, as long as it’s from someone willing to listen and learn and earn a few blisters.”
“But if I do all that, I can eventually ride them on my own, right?”
Micah looked hopefully at Shane, and Shane nodded toward Cora.
