Tempted by a Cowboy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  She was not here for Phillip Beaumont.

  Now if she could get that through her thick skull.

  It was hard, though. No one brought her coffee. Everyone took her at her word when she said she didn’t hook up and left her alone. Which was how she liked it.

  Well, maybe she didn’t like it. It was a lonely life, never letting herself get close to people.

  She’d made friends with Whitney Maddox last winter because Whitney...understood. Whitney had been down the same path, after all. It was easy to be friends with someone else who only trusted animals.

  But Phillip? Not only did he not leave her alone, he kept coming back for more. It was almost as if he enjoyed her refusal to kowtow to him.

  She started to wonder why that was but stopped. She didn’t care if he thought she was a hoot or a breath of fresh air or if he was silently mocking her every single move. She didn’t care.

  Not much, anyway.

  She rubbed Betty’s ears and focused on Sun. Her thoughts didn’t often get away from her like this, not anymore. And when they did...

  No. She wasn’t going to have a bad night. She wasn’t even going to have a bad day. She forced herself to breathe regularly. Just because Phillip Beaumont was handsome and tempting and got this smile on his face when he looked at her....

  Right. Not happening.

  His reputation preceded him. He probably looked at every woman as if she were the one person he’d been waiting for. This had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that she was the only woman on the ranch.

  She knew all these things. The sheer logic of the situation should have defused her baser instincts. That’s how it’d always worked before.

  So why was she thinking about that smile? Or the way his hands would feel on her body? Or what his body would feel like against hers?

  Jesus, this was getting out of control. She’d left men in her past with the tequila and the nights she couldn’t remember. She would not be tempted by a man who was every one of her triggers wearing a pair of work jeans.

  Work jeans that fit him really well.

  Damn.

  Betty leaned against her, anchoring Jo to reality. She let herself rub the back of her neck, her fingers tracing the scar tissue that she’d earned the hard way. This was not the first time she’d been tempted by a man. The first job she’d taken off her parents’ ranch had featured a hot young cowboy named Cade who liked to raise hell on a Friday night. Yes, it’d been a year since the accident at that point, but Jo had healed. She’d been flattered to know that she hadn’t managed to totally destroy her looks and, truthfully, she had been tempted.

  Cade had been her idea of a good time for years. It would have been so easy to take him up on his offer for a little fun. So damned easy to get into his truck, not knowing where they were going and not knowing if she’d remember it in the morning.

  But she was tired of not remembering. So she’d passed on Cade’s offer and never forgotten him. Funny how that worked out.

  Sun was calmer today. That was good. The carrots had provided him something to focus on.

  Finally, after Jo spent an hour and a half trying not to think about Phillip’s smile or his jeans while she waited for Sun to get tired, the horse slowed down to what looked like an angry walk, as if he’d only stopped running as a favor to her. He continued to pace near the carrots.

  Jo waited. Would the horse actually eat one? That would be making more progress than she’d hoped for. And if Sun improved faster, the sooner she could pack up Betty into the trailer and be on her way to the next job, far away from the temptation named Phillip Beaumont.

  Sun dipped his nose into the water bucket and took a couple of deep drinks, then leaned down to sniff the carrots.

  And pawed them into mush.

  Close, she thought with a weary sigh.

  She tried to focus on the positive here. Sun was, in fact, getting bored with being out-of-control. Something as innocent as carrots hadn’t sent him into spasms of panic. He hadn’t even destroyed them outright. He’d been curious—so much so that his curiosity had distracted him from his regularly scheduled pacing. This was all good news.

  She heard hoofbeats coming up the drive. Sun heard them too and, with a whinny that sounded closer to a horse than a demon, resumed trotting and kicking.

  Moving slowly, Jo turned to see a beautiful pair of Percherons hitched to a wagon loaded with hay and driven by none other than Phillip Beaumont, who was sitting high on a narrow bench. His coffee mug was nowhere in sight. The wagon looked as though it was a hundred years old—wooden wheels painted red and gray. The whole thing was a scaled down version of the Beaumont Beer wagon that the Percherons pulled in parades and commercials.

  Phillip put both reins in one hand and honest-to-God tipped his hat to her. Heat flushed her face.

  “Did he eat the carrots?”

  “He pulverized them.” She pointed to the orange-colored dirt.

  “Damn.” He looked a little disappointed, but not as if the world had ended. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

  He seemed so sincere about it—a man who was concerned about his horse.

  She’d be lying if she said she didn’t find it endearing. “That’d be good.”

  She was pretty sure this was flirting. Maybe she was being the ridiculous one, reading intent where there was none.

  Her face got hotter.

  “I can’t help but notice,” Phillip went on as if she weren’t slowly turning into a tomato, “that you’ve spent at least two days standing in the middle of a paddock.”

  “This is true.”

  He jiggled the reins. “There’s more to this farm than just that patch of dirt.” The invitation sounded pretty casual, but then he turned that smile in her direction. That was a smile that promised all kinds of wicked fun. “Want to go for a ride?”

  That was flirting. It had to be.

  And she had no idea how to respond.

  After a moment’s pause, Phillip went on. “I’m getting Marge and Homer here used to pulling the wagon. I’m headed out to the other side of the ranch, where I keep the Appaloosas. Have you seen them?”

  “No.” She hadn’t even really seen the Percherons—but she wanted to. Could she accept this ride at face value—a chance to see the rest of the storied Beaumont Farm and the collection of horses it contained? “You named your horses after The Simpsons?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Good lord, that grin was going to be her undoing. “I’d love to get your professional opinion on them and the Appaloosas.”

  There—now did that qualify as flirting or not? Dang it, she was so out of practice.

  He must have sensed her hesitation. “I’m just going to drop off the hay. Twenty, thirty minutes tops.”

  Wait—a multi-millionaire like Phillip Beaumont moved his own hay? This she had to see for herself. “One condition—I want to drive.”

  For a moment, the good-time grin on his face cracked, but she was serious. Drunk driving—whether it was a team of Percherons or a Porsche—was a non-starter for her.

  Then the grin was back. “Can you handle a team?” His voice had dropped a notch and was in danger of smoldering. If she hadn’t seen the crack in his mask before, she might not have noticed it this time. He hid it well.

  “I can see how you’d question my skills, what with me being an equestrian professional.” He notched an eyebrow at her and she almost felt bad for being a smart-ass. So she added, “I was raised on a ranch. I can drive a team.”

  “Ever driven Percherons?”

  “There’s a first for everything.”

  That was flirting—for her, anyway. Phillip took it that way, too. “Then come on.”

  He waited while she exited the paddock, her donkey on her heels. “What abou
t Betty?” she asked after she got the gate closed.

  She couldn’t leave Betty alone with Sun. But she didn’t want Betty wandering around the farm. She was small enough that, if she really put her mind to it, she could fall down a hole or get stuck in a gap in the fences.

  “I thought she might like to try out a new pasture, meet some of the not-crazy horses we have here,” he replied, pointing to a gate about two hundred yards up the drive. Clearly, he’d been anticipating this question. There was a certain measure of thoughtfulness about him that was, she had to admit, appealing. “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

  She grinned up at him. “So it is. I’ll follow the wagon up.”

  She gave Sun a final look. The horse was actually standing still, watching them with the kind of look that seemed to say that he was taking in everything they did and said. Would he freak out as they left him alone or would he watch them go?

  Phillip gave her one of those old-fashioned nods of his head and clucked to his team. The wagon started and she followed, Betty on her heels.

  This was just some professional consideration, right? Phillip was a noted horseman and she was an increasingly noted horse trainer. His asking her to look at other horses on the farm had nothing to do with any real or imagined interest on his part and everything to do with getting the most out of what he was paying her.

  When they got to the gate at the pasture across the road, Phillip surprised her again by hopping down off the wagon and opening the gate for Betty. “There you go, girl. Enjoy the grass—we’ll be back.”

  Betty gave him one of her looks as she plodded past him into the pasture. Phillip latched the gate behind her. “Have fun!” He turned to Jo, the goofiest grin she’d ever seen on his face.

  “What?”

  “I like Betty. Everything about her is hilarious. Here, let me help you.”

  Now, Jo was perfectly capable of climbing up onto the narrow seat of a rack wagon all by herself, but Phillip moved to her side and placed a hand on the small of her back. “Just step up on the wheel there....”

  His touch sent licking flames of heat up and down her back. His hand was strong and confident against her. How long had it been since a man had touched her? Since...

  Bad. Bad, bad, bad. She slammed the breaks on that line of thinking and shook him off before she did something insane like pretend to stumble so he’d be forced to catch her. “I have done this before, you know.”

  She didn’t catch the double entendre until he said, “Have you, now?” low and close to her ear. His breath was warm and didn’t smell like whiskey.

  It had been a long time. Really long. Could she indulge herself, just this once, and not slide back down to rock bottom? She had needs. It’d be nice to have someone else help her meet them.

  She looked over her shoulder at Phillip, who was less than two feet away, an expectant look on his face. But he didn’t press the issue or find some excuse to keep touching her. He just waited for her response.

  She swallowed and hefted herself into the seat. This was starting to look like a bad idea—all of it. She tried to refocus her thinking. She was at the Beaumont Farms because this job would make her reputation as a trainer. Phillip Beaumont was not just an attractive, attentive man with a reputation as one of the better lovers in the world, he was the client who’d hired her to save his horse.

  And getting in the wagon to see the farm and his other horses was...was...a wise business decision. He might have another horse who needed retraining, which would mean more money for her, a better reference.

  That was a stretch and she knew it, especially when Phillip swung up into the seat and managed to make it look smooth. He settled onto the bench next to her, their thighs touching, and handed her the reins. “Marge likes to go fast, Homer likes to go slow. Try to keep them together.” Then he leaned back, slung one arm behind her on the bench and said, “Show me what you can do.”

  He wasn’t touching her but she swore she could feel the heat from his arm anyway. She gathered the reins and flicked them. “Up!”

  Phillip chuckled as the horses began to walk. “Up?”

  “It’s what we said at home. And,” she couldn’t help but point out, “it worked. What do you say?”

  “I’m partial to ‘Let’s Go.’ So you were raised on a ranch?”

  She adjusted the reins in her hands until she had more tension on Marge’s. “Yup.” She felt as if she should say more, but small talk was not one of her strengths. Never had been. Maybe that’s why parties had always been easier with a beer in her hand.

  “Where’s home?”

  “Middle of nowhere, South Dakota. Nothing to do but stare at the grass.”

  “Oh? So you’ve been training horses your whole life?”

  She shrugged. She didn’t like talking about herself. She especially didn’t like talking about the six or so years that were a total blur. So she skipped it entirely.

  “Not like this. But I’d come back to the ranch after college—” That was the most diplomatic way to put it. “—and a neighbor’s barn caught fire. He lost four horses, but one survived. Oaty was his name. That horse was a mess. The vet almost put him down twice but...”

  “But you couldn’t let him do that.” Phillip’s tone was more than sympathetic. He understood.

  “Nope. I just watched him. For days. And the longer I watched him, the more I could understand him. He was terrified and I couldn’t blame him.”

  “You waited for him to get bored?”

  “More like to calm down. Took about a month before I could get close enough to brush him. He was scarred and his coat never did grow back right on his flank, but he’s still out on my parents’ ranch, munching grass and hanging out with the donkeys.”

  The day she’d saddled old Oaty up and ridden him across the ranch had been one of the best days of her life. For so long she’d felt lost and confused and hadn’t known why, but saving Oaty had been saving herself. She hadn’t given up on Oaty and she wouldn’t give up on herself.

  She was good at something—saving horses no one else could. She’d stayed on her parents’ ranch for a few more years, driving around the state to other semi-local ranches to work with their horses, and as her successes had mounted, so had the demand for her services.

  Besides, a woman could only live with her parents for so long. So she’d bought her trailer and hit the road, Betty in tow, determined to make a name for herself. It’d taken years, but she’d finally made it to a place like Beaumont Farms—the kind of place where money was no object.

  “That must have been huge for you.”

  “Oaty was a tough case. Probably the toughest I’ve had up until now.”

  Phillip chuckled. “I’m honored to be the toughest case.”

  She couldn’t help it. She turned to look at him. “It’s not really an honor.”

  Their gazes met. There was something raw in his eyes, something...honest.

  She did not fix people. She did not sleep with people. She didn’t do anything involving alcohol anymore. She’d been clean and sober for ten years and had never crossed back over to the dark side. Apart from a long-ago cowboy named Cade, she’d never once been tempted by a man.

  Until now.

  She shouldn’t be attracted to Phillip and most certainly not interested in him.

  But she was. Against all known logic and common sense, she was.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting the reins at him. “You drive.”

  Five

  “You really haul your own hay?” Jo asked as she watched him grab a bale.

  The question struck him as funny, considering the woman was holding a bale at mid-chest without breaking a sweat.

  “Of course. This is a working farm, after all.”

  “But you work?”
>
  He shot her a smarmy look, but it felt differently on his face than it normally did. He picked up a bale, aware of how she was looking at his arms. “I work.” Then he flexed.

  She could be quite lovely when she blushed—as she was doing right now. She wasn’t a traditionally beautiful woman, what with her strong jaw, dark hair that brushed her shoulders and her flannel shirt with only one button undone, but underneath that...

  She wasn’t his type. But he was having trouble remembering what he liked so much about all the women he normally kept company with. Compared to Jo, they all looked...the same.

  “This way,” he said, leading her back to the hay room.

  Working in silence, they got the hay unloaded in a matter of minutes. He carried in the final bale and turned to get out of her way. But he didn’t walk back out to the wagon. He stood there for a moment in the dim room, watching her heft her final bale on top of his. Then she turned and caught him staring at her.

  A ripple of tension moved across her shoulders and he thought she was going to blow past him and rush for the open air. After all, they could do things in this hay room and no one would be the wiser. But she’d made her position pretty damned clear. If she stormed out of here, he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

  She didn’t. Instead, she hooked her thumbs in her belt, leaned back against the hay bales and looked at him as if she was waiting for him to make his move. No overt come-on, no suggestive posturing. Just standing there, watching him watch her.

  He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to press her back against the bale and find out if she liked things soft and sweet and pretty like her blush or if she wanted it rough and tough.

  But, as she stood there and waited, he didn’t want to. Which didn’t make any sense. Of course he wanted to kiss her, to touch her. But...

  Something stopped him.

  She was starting to unnerve him. Suddenly, he realized this must be what his horse felt like. She could stand here all day and wait for him to get bored.