“I really appreciate this,” Leigh said as they left the dining room.
“Right.” When they reached the deserted front porch, he turned to her. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you really brought me out here? I doubt you want me to fix your truck.”
“Actually, I do need someone to look at it, although I don’t think there’s a serious problem. The truck can wait. I got you out here because I have a suggestion about Kyle.”
“I am surprised.”
Leigh sucked in a breath and prayed for patience. It would be far simpler to hit this man alongside the head with a two-by-four, but tact was required if she intended to protect Kyle. “I agree he needs to get over his fear of the corrals. But I don’t think forcing him to go down there is the answer.”
“And you do know the answer?”
God, he was maddening. And infuriatingly attractive. His steady gaze had a way of making her forget what she’d been about to say, and the movement of his lips beneath that tantalizing mustache made her want to.... She swallowed and focused on a point beyond his left shoulder. “My Appaloosa mare, Penny Lover, is in foal.”
“How nice for her.”
“Dammit, will you drop that bored-cop manner of yours for five minutes?”
“What makes you think I can?” he asked quietly.
She stared into the gray depths of his eyes. There had to be a passionate, warm human being hiding behind that granite facade. That was the only explanation for her instinctive need to reach out, no matter how obnoxious he seemed on the surface. “You’d better hope you can,” she said. “There’s a lot riding on it.”
Emotion flickered in his eyes for a second, but was quickly masked.
She soldiered on. “I suggest you take a riding lesson without Kyle so he doesn’t feel pressured. When you get back, you can tell him about my mare being due to have a foal soon. Kids are usually fascinated by that. I’ll bet Kyle will want to come down and see her himself tomorrow.”
“But I want him to learn to ride. We only have six days left.”
“Does he have a reason to be afraid of horses?”
“Oh, sure.” Joe turned away and propped his hands at his hips while he stared at the mountain-draped horizon. “He has a reason to be afraid of a lot of things, because my ex-wife taught him to be. One of my buddies was a mounted patrolman and he tried to take Kyle up on his horse once. Darlene went ballistic and snatched him down, screaming that he could be killed. He was only three, but I’m sure it made an impression on him.”
“Then we need to take it slow. Please don’t drag him to the corrals this morning. It would be a miserable experience for all of us.”
Joe glanced back at her. “You said yourself I shouldn’t abandon him to do my own thing.”
“Not for the whole stay, but you can leave him with Belinda and Dexter for a couple of hours. Maybe he’ll even miss you and wish he’d gone along.”
He hesitated. “I wish I could believe that.”
Her heart leapt at this small evidence of a crack in his armor. “Take a risk, Joe,” she said. “Believe it.” Then she turned and walked into the house. If he’d met her suggestion with an expression of cynicism, she didn’t want to see it.
* * *
DISAPPOINTMENT OVER Kyle’s refusal to come down to the corrals hung over Joe for most of the trip in Leigh’s battered truck. But as the weathered fences came into view, Joe’s excitement grew. He’d always secretly wanted to be with the mounted unit in New York City, but his superiors had insisted they needed him in the Bronx. As a teenager, he’d ridden a few times in Central Park and had loved it, but once he got on the force, there didn’t seem to be any time for hobbies like horseback riding.
After Leigh parked the truck, they got out and started toward the tack shed. She set a brisk pace, her boots thudding rhythmically across the dirt as she called out greetings to the hands who were working on reinforcing the fence in all the places it had been sawed through.
It would be a hot morning’s workout. Already Joe’s shirt stuck to his back, but physical discomfort had never bothered him much. He took a deep breath, savoring the musky odor of animals and warm earth. “Who are you going to start me on?” he asked. Ry had clued him in as to which horses to avoid, and he wondered if Leigh would try to sneak one of them in, just to humiliate him.
“We’ll put you on Mikey.”
“Mikey? Isn’t he a kid’s horse?” Joe realized the hands would be watching this lesson and his pride kicked in. “I think I can handle something a bit more spirited than that.”
Leigh gave the brim of her straw cowboy hat a little tug. “Mikey has plenty of spirit, but he’s also completely trustworthy. It’s a good combination of qualities—for horses and people.”
“And extremely rare.”
Leigh spun to face him, her eyes dark with fury. “That may be true where you come from, but out here it’s the norm,” she said in a low voice. “I realize you consider me one of your prime suspects, but you’ll have to trust me, at least for the next two hours, or I won’t be able to teach you a damn thing.”
He gazed at her flushed face, her slightly parted lips, the little drop of moisture that had gathered in the hollow of her throat. She was magnificent. “Well said,” he murmured, and tightened his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her.
The fire in her eyes glowed bright for a moment, then gentled into a soft warmth as the corner of her mouth tilted. “Thank you. Now let’s get to work.”
He helped her carry saddles and bridles to the hitching post. Then he leaned against it while she grabbed two lead ropes and went into the corral after the horses. She moved with assurance through the herd of powerful animals, laying a hand on a muscled shoulder, slapping a shining rump, passing out pieces of carrot, laughing as the animals nuzzled her back pockets for more treats. This was what Joe had wanted Kyle to see, but in a way, he was glad Kyle wasn’t here. Joe felt more free to indulge in fantasies that would have seemed inappropriate with his son around.
And Leigh inspired fantasies, with hair the color of honey, a voice shaded with mystery and movements as fluid as a woodland sprite’s. She was a seductress in worn denim and scuffed boots. Joe couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Finally, she came through the gate leading a bay gelding and a gray mare. All the anger and frustration he’d been so used to seeing in her expression was gone, as if contact with the horses had cleansed her of negative emotions. She held out the lead rope for the gelding. “Here’s Mikey.”
“I had that one figured out.” Joe took the rope and walked Mikey over to the hitching post.
“It doesn’t pay to go by names.” She tied the gray mare next to Mikey. “We have a mare called Georgina, but mostly we know her as George.”
Joe rubbed the white blaze on Mikey’s nose. “To confuse the dudes?”
“Well, it does have a way of uncovering the real greenhorns. When someone rides George and says, `He’s a great horse,’ we know they didn’t check their cinch like they were supposed to. If they had, they’d have noticed that `he’ was missing some necessary equipment.” She disappeared into the tack shed, but not before he detected a blush on her cheeks.
When she came back, she had a brush in each hand. She gave him one. “Some of the old cowboys make fun of me for grooming the horses and tell me I’m babying them, but I do it anyway, and I insist the guests do, too.” She moved around to the far side of the gray mare, so he could only see her hat. “The horse deserves some pleasure out of the experience,” she said.
His groin tightened. All this talk of male equipment and pleasure, combined with the sight of Leigh moving around in snug jeans, was getting to him. “Sounds fair.” He concentrated on Mikey’s rich mahogany coat that rippled in reaction with each stroke of the brush. Brushing the horse only seemed to enhance the sensuous images assaulting him. He didn’t think Leigh was deliberately tormenting him, but maybe she was. Maybe she considered it fit punishment for the suspicions he held a
bout her.
“Be careful around his belly,” she warned. “He’s ticklish there, just like a lot of people.”
“Are you?” He wished the question back immediately.
After a beat of hesitation, she answered, “Sometimes.”
He knew if he asked when that was, he was a dead man. He brushed so hard, Mikey stepped sideways and swung his head around as if to ask what maniac was trying to scrub his hide from his body. Joe gentled his motion.
By the time he’d worked his way around to Mikey’s right side, Leigh was on the gray mare’s left. They worked back to back, and inevitably, as they leaned over, touched backsides. He registered the rounded firmness of her buttocks in that one casual encounter and his mouth went dry. “I think that’s good enough,” he said, returning to the safety of Mikey’s other side.
“Have you ever saddled a horse before?” She sounded slightly out of breath.
“No.”
“Then I’ll talk you through it.” She ducked under Mikey’s neck and came to stand next to Joe on Mikey’s left side. “The saddle blanket goes first, of course. I’m sure you know that.”
“Right.” In his present state of mind, he wondered if he would have known anything, including his own name. Somehow, he followed her instructions for positioning the blanket, placing the saddle on Mikey’s broad back and drawing in the cinch. But every time her hand accidentally touched his or her breath fell warm on his cheek, he fought the urge to turn and take her in his arms. No matter that there were cowboys all around, or that he needed to maintain his objectivity where this woman was concerned. He was fast becoming obsessed with the need to taste her lips, to feel her body pulled tight against his, to...
“You can mount, now.”
He stared at her.
“Mikey’s ready,” she said.
His heart hammered in his chest. “What about you?”
“I’ll get you mounted first, and then I’ll saddle up.”
Of course that’s what he’d been referring to. Of course. Like hell. And the color was high on her cheeks. She knew. With shaking hands, he reached for the saddlehorn.
“No.” She laid a hand on his arm. A branding iron wouldn’t have given off more heat. “If you’re going to grab something, take a handful of mane instead.”
Oh, he wanted to grab something, all right. He clutched a fistful of Mikey’s black mane, shoved his booted foot into the stirrup, and swung up with as much grace as he could muster considering the condition of his swollen manhood.
“Very nice,” she said.
He didn’t dare look at her. He fumbled with his right foot and managed to slip it into the stirrup on that side.
“The stirrups are too short. Take your feet out and I’ll adjust them.”
“They feel okay.” And he didn’t think having her fooling around by his thighs was a good idea at all.
“They’re too short. This is western, not English. You’re not going to start questioning my judgment at this stage, are you?”
With a small sigh of resignation, he slipped his feet free and eased back on the saddle. But he couldn’t ease back far enough to escape the push of her shoulder against his sensitized thighs. He clenched his jaw and tried to think of boring things—traffic duty, paperwork, cold coffee at three in the morning. Nothing erased the sensation of sitting in a warm saddle with all his senses aroused while a bewitching woman stood nudging his inner thigh with her face nearly level with his crotch. She moved to the other side and he held his breath while she puttered with his right stirrup and the denim of his jeans bound him tighter and tighter.
“There.” She backed away. “Try that.”
I think you know what I’d like to try, he thought, thrusting his feet into the stirrups.
“Now stand in them.”
Standing was a great suggestion. It relieved some of the pressure.
“Okay. Looking good. Just give me a minute and we’ll head over to the round pen.”
He needed at least a minute. He wondered if she’d noticed what a state he’d been in, and if she took satisfaction in the way she affected him. Probably yes on both accounts, although he’d been unwilling to meet her gaze and find out. Then there was the flip side of the question—how she was responding to him. If she was toying with him without investing any of herself in the exchange, he could find the courage to turn away. But if she wanted him with even half the intensity he felt... He shook his head and swore softly. There would be no escape.
5
LEIGH SAT on Pussywillow and watched Joe canter around the aluminum pen they used for training horses and riders. “Keep your heels down,” she called. “Grip with your thighs. That’s it.” A teacher had to keep a close eye on her pupil, she told herself, all the while knowing that images of Joe Gilardini would appear in her dreams tonight. Images this potent always did. His broad shoulders filled out a yoked Western shirt to perfection, and the ripple of powerful thigh muscles beneath his jeans drew her attention more than once. Back in New York, he must have been one tough cop.
He was also a quick study—his lean body had already absorbed the rhythm of the gently loping horse.
“Reverse direction,” she called.
His reflexes were lightning fast. She’d known that from the first day when in one economical motion, he’d protected his son from the bull and saved himself. Yet she was amazed at the ease with which he shifted his weight, reined in a tight circle and started off in the other direction. True, he lost a stirrup in the process, but in seconds he had it back. As a teacher, she was gratified. As a woman, she couldn’t ignore the sexy tilt of his pelvis as he rocked in the saddle. Her body warmed, remembering how he’d responded to her during the saddling of his horse. But he’d probably choke before he’d acknowledge it. She was a suspect in his investigation, after all. If he was determined not to crack, she wouldn’t, either. He’d only think she was trying to seduce him out of his suspicions, anyway.
A wind had sprung up, swaying the mesquite branches at the edge of the round pen. Rain clouds snagged by the mountains would provide a cooling afternoon deluge, but at ten in the morning, it was still well over a hundred degrees, and Mikey’s coat was dark with sweat.
“That’s enough work for Mikey this morning,” she called. “Slow him to a trot and then we’ll take him out on the trail for a little cool down.” She rode toward the gate and leaned down to open it. As she fumbled with the latch, a gust of wind blew a bit of dried weed against Pussywillow’s foreleg. The mare leapt in fright, and Leigh grabbed a hunk of mane as she started to slide sideways.
“Easy.” Joe pulled alongside and clamped a hand on her arm.
She would have been able to right herself, but acting on instinct she allowed him to do it instead. The imprint of his strong fingers burned through the sleeve of her shirt.
“Okay?” he asked, slowly releasing her arm. Very slowly.
She tilted back her hat and gazed at him without speaking for a long moment. Almost independent of their wills, their bodies found excuses to touch and be touched. Perhaps they wouldn’t have as much control over this conflagration as she’d thought. “Thanks,” she murmured. “I’m fine. Pussywillow’s a skittish little mare.”
His gaze held hers. “Then why did you choose her to ride?”
“She has a wonderfully soft mouth.”
Joe’s gray eyes darkened and his glance drifted to Leigh’s mouth. Then, as if catching himself, he turned away. “Let’s go,” he muttered, wheeling Mikey around.
Shaken, Leigh led the way out of the round pen. This was getting too heavy. She should definitely lighten up. She would advise Joe to do the same, but she didn’t think it was in his nature.
She decided to take him out to the site of the old homestead. The trail there was fairly level and wide enough to ride two abreast, so she could keep an eye on his technique. At least that was the excuse she gave herself for watching how he moved in the saddle. “You’re doing well, but you could ease up on the reins a
little,” she said.
He relaxed the reins a fraction. “Thanks.”
“How does it feel?”
Unexpectedly, he flashed her a smile. “Great.”
The smile caught her like a blow to the stomach. God but he was attractive when he did that. His mustache gave his smile a rakish look that took her breath away, and for the first time, she contemplated the enormous appeal of Joe Gilardini having fun.
For the next few minutes they rode in a silence broken only by the call of quail and the chatter of cactus wrens. Yet the atmosphere felt anything but peaceful to Leigh, as her sensitized awareness recorded the rhythm of Joe’s breathing, the slightest movement of his hands, the direction of his gaze. She even imagined she could hear his heart beat. When he let out a satisfied sigh, she felt as if the air had been pushed from her own lungs.
“I don’t understand what could be scary about all this,” he said. “When I was a kid, I would have given anything to ride a horse and be a cowboy.”
“Seems like the kid grew up to do exactly that.”
He gave her a wry smile. “I guess you’re right. And I thought that Kyle would be as excited about it as I am.”
“Give him time.”
Joe sighed again. “Time. I can’t believe he’s already seven. If I don’t connect with him soon, it’s going to be too late.”
“I’ll tell you a secret. Out here, time isn’t something to be bludgeoned into submission the way it is back in New York.”
“Is that so?”
“Ask Ry McGuinnes if you don’t believe me. When I first met Ry, he was hell-bent-for-leather, just like you. Wanted me to teach him riding the first day, team roping the second. That’s an Easterner’s way of attacking life, trying to cram too many things into each hour. Ry’s beginning to understand that most worthwhile things can’t be accomplished that way.”
“I’ve never been real long on patience, myself.”
Leigh nodded. “That’s okay. You’ve come to the right place for learning some.” She pulled Pussywillow to a halt as they entered a clearing. On the far side, a cracked concrete rectangle and a few scattered pieces of adobe were all that was left of the homestead.
The Lawman Page 5
