“You didn’t tie it to something or at least leave the reins hanging forward from the bit so it would think it was tied?” His tone was growing more impatient.
“It didn’t occur to me to tie it to something. And I didn’t know that if I left the reins hanging forward it would think it was. Is that true?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead she saw the sharp edge of his jawline tense. “The horse didn’t throw you?” He was back to demanding.
“No.”
“And you aren’t hurt?”
She didn’t suppose a sore rear end counted. “No.”
“Damn fool woman,” he muttered, angry again. Then through clenched teeth, he said, “I ought to let you walk back.”
Ally made it to her feet with a wince she hoped he didn’t see. “I’m sorry. I guess it was probably dumb to just slip away, but I didn’t know what else to do and I never thought you could disappear so quickly.”
He stared daggers at her. Then he jammed his hat onto his head and spun away from her, swinging up onto his own horse as if he really were just going to ride off. In a hurry.
But he didn’t. Instead he looked at her over his shoulder and said, “Come on.”
“Come on?”
“You’ll have to ride with me. Get over here and I’ll lift you up.”
Oh, dear. “Isn’t there another way?”
“You can walk,” he said flatly, as if the choice were hers.
Walking did not sound like such a good idea. Not only was she miles from the ranch house, but while she’d slept, her muscles and abused parts had tightened up considerably.
But sitting on a horse again, up close and personal to Jackson, was not a great alternative.
“Make up your mind,” he ordered when she hesitated.
Her mind was made up. She just didn’t like what it was made up to.
Trying not to flinch, she went to stand beside horse and rider.
Jackson had left the stirrup free. “Put your foot there and give me your arm.”
He didn’t know what he was asking of her.
Remembering the tree stump she’d used earlier, she pointed to it and said, “Can we do this over there?”
He sighed but moved to that spot and waited for her.
Even climbing the eighteen or so inches onto the stump was painful, but she managed to do it without showing just how much it hurt. Then she did as she’d been told before, and Jackson hoisted her to sit just behind the saddle.
A slight squeak escaped her throat when her rump met the bony one of the animal, but she squelched it in a hurry.
“Hang on,” Jackson barked.
“To what?”
“Me.”
Ally swallowed hard and did that, too.
No sooner were her arms around his waist than he nudged the horse into a trot as if he were very anxious to get this over with.
But regardless of how anxious he might be, he couldn’t have been as anxious as Ally was, because she didn’t know which was worse—the agony of pain that shot through her body with every jarring bounce of that horse, or the unwelcome pleasure of having her arms around what she’d only admired from a distance until now...
Jackson Heller. Of all people.
* * *
“Mom!” Meggie ran from Hans and Marta’s house when Ally and Jackson rode up. “Where’ve you been for so long? Hans was thinking maybe he should go look for you ‘cuz he thought you were lost or hurt ‘cuz your horse came back without you.”
The little girl’s worry flooded out and the moment Ally was on the ground Meggie wrapped her arms around her waist and hung on tight.
“I’m fine. But I did do something silly and got a little lost,” she soft-pedaled as Jackson led the horse to the barn.
“Are you okay?” Meggie asked.
“I’m absolutely fine,” Ally said, slowly enunciating each word to convince her daughter.
Meggie let go and studied her from head to toe. “You look okay.”
“I am okay. I had a nap until Jackson found me and here we are. No big deal.”
“Then does that mean you can come see how I painted the doghouse?” Meggie asked, apparently reassured since she switched willy-nilly to a new subject.
“Sure,” Ally said with a laugh.
She followed behind Meggie as the little girl excitedly led the way, hopping and skipping and urging her mother to hurry.
This was a new twist, Ally realized, because usually once Meggie entered her worried mode, it was very difficult to get her out of it. And yet it hadn’t taken much at all just then.
“Can’t you walk any faster than that?” Meggie asked, jumping up and down beside the doghouse.
Ally had never seen her so proud of anything. She had done a great job, Ally realized when she finally got there. But more than her painting skills, what impressed Ally was the fact that Meggie was so pleased with herself. There wasn’t a trace of the depression that had caused the school counselor to recommend a psychiatric evaluation. Not even an inkling of the depression that had been ever present, underlying even happy events, since the divorce.
And when Jackson joined them belatedly and praised her on top of it, Meggie beamed.
Ally could hardly believe what she was seeing. Not that she thought there had been an instant cure to her daughter’s woes, but even an interruption in them was a first.
Suddenly, being sore and dirty and lost seemed like a small price to pay for what was happening right before her eyes.
Jackson began to talk to Meggie about painting the paddock fence, showing her what he had in mind as if she were a great artist he was commissioning for the job after being so impressed with what he’d seen of her work.
“If you two don’t mind, I’m going in for a bath,” Ally announced when it seemed that neither of them even remembered she was standing there.
It barely distracted them, so she added, “See you in a few minutes,” and went to the house.
Unfortunately the bath didn’t feel as good as she expected it to. When she sank into the water, she realized just how raw her backside was and added a brutal stinging pain to her other complaints.
Descending the stairs again after that was no mean feat, either, and when she got to the kitchen and learned Marta had left a casserole for their dinner she silently blessed the woman for sparing her the chore of cooking.
Instead, there was Jackson—freshly showered in the time she’d left him outside with Meggie, his hair still damp, his face clean-shaven but for his mustache. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a crisp white T-shirt.
Meggie was setting food, dishes and silverware on the butcher block for an informal supper and the two of them were laughing over something.
Ally offered up a second silent thanks for being spared the slide around the breakfast nook’s bench seat and the opportunity to stand to eat her meal without making it too obvious just how much pain she was in.
Over dinner Meggie was full of questions for Jackson about the workings of the ranch and the animals, quoting Hans in what seemed like a sudden case of hero worship and bragging about Marta’s making the best chocolate-chip cookies in the world and having shared them with Beth for an afternoon snack on the patio.
Clearly Meggie’s day had been better than Ally’s and Ally was grateful for it.
When they were all finished eating, Ally sent her daughter up to get ready for bed and Ally and Jackson began to clear the dishes.
“I owe you a thanks and an apology,” Ally said to him as they did.
He hadn’t actually spoken to her since pulling her up behind him on his horse when he’d rescued her earlier, and he didn’t now. He only raised an eyebrow at her as if he didn’t have a clue about what she meant.
“I appreciate your coming back for me today,” she began.
“What did you expect me to do? Leave you out there?”
“Or make me find my own way home.”
“More likely you’d have found your way farther out on
the range,” he said, but he wasn’t growling or grumbling or being irascible about any of it. For once they were merely exchanging conversation and Ally was grateful for that, too. Though she thought the enthusiastic charm of her daughter had had more to do with softening him up than anything.
“And I’d like to apologize for getting mad at you for giving Meggie chores to do. After all the pampering and spoiling I’ve done to try helping her, I’d never have guessed that putting her to work would do the trick.”
“Helping her?” he repeated. “What’s wrong with her?”
This time Ally felt as if his treatment of her daughter had bought him the explanation she’d avoided until then. “She’s had trouble adjusting to the divorce. I never knew kids could get clinically depressed, but that’s what happened.”
“She doesn’t seem depressed to me.”
Ally felt so good about the change she’d witnessed in Meggie in the past few hours that she laughed as if she hadn’t taken it seriously, either. “No, not tonight, that’s for sure. But she has been. Shag kept saying it would be good for her—for us both—to come up here. I thought he meant as sort of a retreat—fresh air, a calmer life-style, being around animals—things like that. But giving Meggie chores has done a lot more to boost her confidence and self-esteem than what I had in mind.”
“So old Shag tried to get you up here even before he died?”
“He felt bad for what Meggie and I were going through,” Ally said somewhat ambiguously, because she still didn’t want to go into all the details.
Then she remembered Jackson’s suspicions about her being his father’s lady friend and wondered if he was still thinking along those lines. “Shag wasn’t considering bringing us here himself or anything like that. He’d have stayed in Denver with my mother. He just suggested Meggie and I come. That’s all there was to it.”
“It’s all right,” Jackson said with a small chuckle that seemed to brighten the kitchen considerably. “I gave up thinking it was you the old man was keeping company with.”
Ally was glad to hear that, but she didn’t say anything. She merely went on loading the dishwasher. Jackson reached around her to wet the sponge to wash off the butcher block, giving her a whiff of clean-smelling after-shave that she caught herself enjoying much too much.
“We never knew anything about the woman he was with in Denver,” Jackson volunteered then. “So it was just the logical conclusion that the Ally Brooks he put in his will was who he was sweet on.”
“You didn’t even know my mother’s name?”
“Nope. We had his lawyer’s name, address and phone number—if we needed to contact Shag, we did it through him—but that was it.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how he was. He didn’t think it was right for us—Linc, Beth or me—to see him with a woman who wasn’t our mother, even after we were grown. For years, probably up until he met your mother, he kept company with Margie Wilson in town here, but only as a backdoor romance. He never so much as danced with her at a town celebration.”
“Wow. I knew he was old-fashioned, but that’s pretty incredible.”
“He was close to your mother?” Jackson asked hesitantly.
“It was as if they were married. Though she did think it was strange that he never brought her up here or would have you or Beth or Linc there, even for holidays. She tried to talk him into getting everyone together, but he just wouldn’t hear of it.”
Jackson blew a derisive sigh. “That was Shag—stubborn as a mule.”
“Why does it sound as if you didn’t like him much?”
“Wasn’t much to like. Mean and ornery. There wasn’t a soft spot in him after my mother died. Leastwise not one we ever saw. He was easier on his horses than he was on us. Seemed to like them better, too.”
The kitchen was back in order by then and Ally gingerly leaned against the counter’s edge as Jackson settled a hip on one of the butcher-block stools.
“That doesn’t sound like the man we knew,” Ally said, surprised by Jackson’s description of his father.
“Maybe he mellowed with age and he just wasn’t around us enough for us to see it.”
“Maybe.”
Talking the way the two of them were made Ally feel as if the wall between her and Jackson might be breaking down. A little, anyway.
Wanting to keep it going—as well as wanting him to know his father really had loved him and his brother and sister—she said, “He spoke highly of you all. You in particular. He said you ran this place better than he ever had. That that was part of the reason he had turned it over to you. He thought he ought to just get out of your way so you could have a free rein.”
“He said that?”
“More than once.”
“I’ll be damned.”
Jackson stared off into space, thoughtful for a moment. Then he raised those incredible blue eyes to her again, backtracking through their conversation. “Is Meggie the reason you came here instead of just selling your share of this place? Because the old man suggested it for her mental health?”
If she said yes, would his treatment of her daughter change to drive them off? Ally wondered in a flash of her earlier concerns. Somehow she doubted it now, but still she was afraid to risk it, so the answer she gave touched on the other aspect of their moving to the ranch.
“We both needed a fresh start. A new beginning.”
“Lots of easier ways to do that,” he observed, though not in the same way he’d said similar things before about the wisdom in their being here. This was just a statement. It didn’t hold any threat or warning.
And though Ally waited for it to be followed up with another offer to buy her out, it never came.
Instead he let the conversation end there, pushed off the stool and said, “Come on, I’ll get you some liniment that’ll help that sore backside of yours.”
So much for thinking she hadn’t been obvious in favoring it. Still, at that point, she wasn’t about to turn down something that might ease her misery. “Thanks,” was all she said.
He headed out of the kitchen, turning off the lights as he passed the switch.
Ally followed, amazed by how much tighter and sorer everything was getting as the evening wore on. She tried not to distract herself from it with the appealing sight of Jackson’s great derriere in front of her. But it wasn’t easy.
He went through the dining room, the living room, the foyer, and headed up the stairs.
That was as far as Ally got—one foot on the bottom step. The pain was so great it took her breath away in a gasp and her hand shot to the railing as if it were a lifeline.
There was no way she could climb those stairs. At least not without pulling herself up by the banister and allowing a slow enough pace to accommodate the pain. Not something she had any intention of doing with Jackson watching.
“You know, on second thought,” she said as if there weren’t a thing in the world wrong, “why don’t you just leave the liniment in my room? I think I’ll stay down here and watch some television before bed.”
Jackson had reached the top landing by then. He turned around from there and frowned down at her. “Television?”
“Sure. I had that nap this afternoon and I’m not really tired,” she lied through her teeth.
He just stared at her for a moment and then he came back down the stairs. “You nearly fell asleep over your supper.”
She was hoping he hadn’t seen that. “Well, you know, I guess I got a second wind.”
His handsome face eased into a lazy, knowing grin. “Yeah, I just heard it a minute ago when you took this first step here. Wouldn’t be that you can’t make it upstairs, would it?”
“No, I’m okay in that department.”
“Sure you are.”
Before she realized what he was doing, he grabbed her by one arm, bent over and hoisted her unceremoniously over his shoulder.
“You need a good night’s sleep so I can get a decent day’s work out
of you tomorrow,” he said as he climbed the stairs again.
He carried her all the way into her room and for a fleeting moment Ally thought he was taking her to the bed. Images of scenes like that from her romance novels shot through her head and wicked excitement danced down her spine.
Then he stopped short, as if the bed might have been where he was headed until he remembered himself or thought better of it, and he set her on her feet on the floor.
But it was too late. The contact and the stray fantasy had awakened a whole world of things inside Ally that left her standing there dumbly while he went to his room and came back with the liniment tube.
She could only hope what she was feeling right then didn’t show in her expression the way her misery had.
“Here, use it liberally,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly quiet, making her wonder if he was feeling some of what she was.
“Thanks.” She accepted the tube, barely glancing up at him. But somehow, once that glance reached his face it got stuck there.
Beautiful eyes. Ruggedly gorgeous facial bones. Lips parted just slightly beneath his mustache....
He was nearer than she’d thought he was. Or had he just moved?
He had, because he was moving still, so slowly it was almost imperceptible....
Was he going to kiss her?
Curiosity tipped her chin.
Or was it something else that did it? Was she inviting him to press that oh-so-supple mouth against hers?
Even though she told herself to back off, to break the spell that seemed to be wrapping around them, she couldn’t do it. Because if she was honest with herself, at that moment, she was dying to know what it would be like if he did kiss her....
Then he snapped out of the spell himself and he was the one to step away from her, heading for the door again.
“Get some sleep. You’ll need to be downstairs at five sharp tomorrow morning,” he ordered in the same harsh tone he’d used so much since she’d met him.
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