Problem was, Jake was interested in her, too, though far differently from his grandfather. Not in a forever kind of way, though. He would never try that again. But he had a hell of a lot of interest in one night with Cassidy—whether it was a good idea or not. And it really was not a good idea.
“I do have her figured out.” Jake ran the brush across his horse’s back in long, even strokes that practically had the big animal purring. When he spoke again it wasn’t just to his grandfather. He needed to hear it all said out loud, too.
“She’s from the city, Pop. When it snows in Boston, there are snowplows out making the streets navigable. Sidewalks are swept off and my guess is she wouldn’t know what to do with herself any more than Lisa did when the snow’s up to your thigh and just walking across the yard is more aerobic exercise than most people get in a year.”
“Always comes back to Lisa, doesn’t it?”
Jake stopped brushing the horse and looked at his grandfather. “Why wouldn’t it? She was my wife.”
“Was being the operative word here.”
Jake sighed. “You’re the one who told me if you’re going to make mistakes, don’t make the same one over and over again. Remember?”
Scowling, Ben said, “I remember. But I don’t see Lisa around here anywhere, so—”
“Maybe she’s not here in person, but Lisa was as attached to her computer as Cassidy seems to be. They’re both from the city. And I’m willing to bet that neither of them knows anything about ranch life or how to do anything more strenuous than hitting a keyboard without breaking a nail.”
Shaking his head, Ben Hawkins blew out a breath and said, “You remind me of that old saying about the guy who got cheated by a Frenchman and then swore that all of the French were thieves.”
“I didn’t—”
“That’s just stupid thinking if you ask me. You lump all women together and you’ll never notice when the right one shows up.”
Jake stared at the other man for a long moment. “Where’ve you been, Pop? I’m not looking for the ‘right’ one. As far as I’m concerned that mythical woman doesn’t exist.” But, he added silently, Cassidy Moore would make a great “right now” woman. He gave his horse one last pat before easing out of the stall and latching the gate closed behind him. Brushing past his grandfather, he said, “If it’ll make you happy I’ll go to the house now and check on her. Okay?”
Ben smirked. “If you want to check on Cassidy, then you should come with me.”
Frowning, Jake followed after his grandfather as the old man walked the length of the barn before pushing open one of the double doors. Holding it open with one hand, he used his free hand to signal Jake in a come-here motion. Still frowning, Jake looked out and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
There was Cass, wielding a snow shovel alongside Jim Hatton, clearing the sidewalks and porches of the cottages and bunkhouse. The two of them were laughing and talking, tossing shovels full of snow at each other and in general acting like they were the best of friends.
“She’s shoveling?”
“Been at it for hours, too,” Ben told him with a note of satisfaction in his voice. “You took most of the hands out with you, so that left Jim to do the clearing while I saw to the horses.”
“Yeah...” No big deal. The ranch had an ATV with a snow blade attachment. All Jim had to do was drive the damn thing around the yard, clearing paths and around the barns. Nobody had asked him to clear sidewalks and porches, too. That could have waited.
“Cass came out, said she wanted to help.” Ben grinned when Jake shot him a look. “She had Jim show her how to drive the ATV, then they took turns. After that, Cass went in to help Anna fix dinner for everyone and when she was finished, she came back out to help Jim clear the sidewalks and porches.”
“Been busy around here.”
“Yeah,” Ben said wryly. “And I never did see her laptop today...”
“Funny. Real funny.”
“She’s a nice girl. Helpful. Seems to know how to enjoy herself, too.” Ben paused. “Maybe she could teach you.”
Jake didn’t know about that, but there was plenty he’d like to teach her. He shifted his gaze back to her in time to see Cass slip on some ice and fall over into a drift of knee-high snow. Her laughter pealed out into the cold, still air and something inside Jake ignited. Then that heat became a blistering fire as he watched Jim reach one hand down to pull Cass up and then turn her around to brush the snow off her back and butt.
A rumble of disquiet rolled through Jake, though he couldn’t have put a name to the feeling. It cost him, but he ignored Jim’s presence and focused on Cassidy. She was wearing a jacket that was too big for her, and a borrowed knit snow hat in blazing orange that boasted a pom-pom on top of her head. Heavy leather gloves covered her hands, and her jeans were stuffed into knee-high boots. Her cheeks were red from the cold; her hair, dusted with snow, hung down around her shoulders, and even at a distance he saw the joy on her face and knew her smoke-gray eyes would be sparkling.
She was having fun.
Working.
Outside.
Hell, Lisa had never left the confines of the house until all snow had been brushed aside for her. She had never taken the time to get to know the men who worked on the ranch, either—let alone work alongside them. All right, maybe Jake had judged Cassidy too harshly. But wasn’t that the safest way to handle her? Knowing how she made his body react, keeping her at arm’s length seemed the wisest decision.
“Not much like Lisa at all if you ask me,” Ben mused.
Jake slanted his grandfather an impatient glance. Hearing his own thoughts voiced aloud wasn’t helping. “Nobody asked you.”
Ben only chuckled, which had Jake gritting his teeth. A hell of a thing, for a man to be thirty-four years old and still have his grandfather see through him so easily. He turned his back on the view of Cass and headed back into the barn. “How’s the new foal doing?”
Another snort of laughter. “Nice change of subject.”
“You know as well as I do we’ve got to watch a late foal—winter’s a hard time for a horse that young.”
“We’ll get her through.” Ben rubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “She’s got a warm stall, plenty of feed and her mama to keep her safe.”
“Think I’ll take a look at her just the same.”
“Thought you might.”
Jake stopped dead and looked over his shoulder at his grandfather. “This has nothing to do with avoiding Cassidy. This is about work. Responsibility.”
“Real handy then that it also gives you a reason to stay put rather than face that laughing woman out there.”
Jake scowled but didn’t bother answering, mostly because he couldn’t argue with truth. So instead, he walked along the length of the barn. Most of the stalls were empty as the cowboys hadn’t come down off the mountain yet. But there were a few horses tucked away from the winter storm.
He took the time to stop and check all of them, starting with the stallion that was his prize stud. People paid big money to have their mares impregnated by Blackthorn. The big horse huffed out a breath in welcome, then nosed at Jake’s pockets, looking for treats. “I’ve got nothing for you right now, but I’ll be back with an apple later, all right?”
Jake would swear that the horse understood him when he talked, and the stallion gave him a disappointed shove with his big head as if to underscore that. “Okay,” Jake said, laughing a little. “Two apples.”
He locked the stall behind him and walked on, stopping to check on a mare with a strained foreleg. She was healing well, but Jake wanted to see it for himself. The horse continued to eat as he pulled up a stool, plunked down on it and began to unwrap the binding around her leg. This was what he needed to do. Focus his thoughts, his energies, on the animals who
needed him. On the ranch that had become his world.
“Looks like your days of relaxation and pampering are about over,” he told the horse and smiled to himself when the animal whickered gently as if arguing with him.
“You’ve got it easy, don’t you?” he asked, comfortable with talking to the horse. It was a good time to gather his thoughts, to ease his mind. Talking to animals who couldn’t answer back was better than therapy. He should know. He’d had plenty of that when he got back from his last tour of duty.
It was the nightmares that had gotten him a one-way ticket to a shrink’s couch. Memories that he couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with when awake managed to slip into his dreams and drive him mad, as if he were still in a battle for his life. Images, sounds, smells, chased him in his dreams, hurtling him from sleep with a jolt, night after night.
But the therapist and all of her face your fear, remember and embrace what you lost, hadn’t helped a damn. How the hell could he be expected to embrace a damn thing? What was lost was gone forever. What he had left was this place. That’s what had saved him. Coming home. To the ranch that smoothed every rough edge on his soul until he was finally, he thought, nearly whole again.
And now his dreams were back to being haunted. Haunted not by the sights and sounds of war, but by a visceral need that had him wound so tight he could hardly walk without pain. There was probably something ironic in there somewhere but damned if he could see it.
The mare shifted impatiently as if telling him to get out of his own head and on to more important things. He couldn’t agree more.
“Another day or two,” he murmured as he ran his palm up and down her foreleg. “Then you’ll be good to go.”
“Is she hurt?”
Jake’s head snapped up to see Cassidy watching him from just outside the gate. Where’d a man have to go these days to get some time to himself? “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m happy to see you, too.” She smiled in spite of his less-than-warm welcome. “Your grandfather said if I came in here, you’d show me the baby horse.”
“Foal,” he corrected, then muttered more quietly, “Of course he did.” Jake wished Ben would find a new hobby.
“So, is this horse all right?”
Concentrating on the task at hand, Jake checked again for swelling and smiled to himself when he couldn’t find any. “It’s just a muscle strain,” he said, “and she’s nearly back to normal.”
Quickly, efficiently, he rewrapped the animal’s leg, gave her a pat, then stepped out of the stall, forcing Cassidy to move out of the way. Good. Distance was key. And even with that thought, he caught a whiff of her scent, instinctively dragging it deep inside him. His gaze swept her up and down. His old jacket swamped her much smaller body and fell down nearly to her knees. She had snow dusting her hair, on that silly hat and caked on an old pair of Anna’s boots, and she looked...happy. When his gaze settled on her face, he saw her cheeks were red from the cold, her gray eyes were dancing, and there was a half smile on her face. “You should go into the house. You’re probably freezing.”
“I’m cold but not frozen yet,” she said, giving him another grin.
“Yeah. I saw you out there with Jim.”
“I was helping,” she said with a shrug, then winced and rolled her shoulders.
He gave her a knowing look. “You think your muscles ache now? Wait awhile.”
“It was worth it,” she said. “It felt good to get outside in the cold air.”
“Can’t argue with that,” he said, walking past her toward the last couple of stalls. He understood the need to be outside, doing something, feeling the slap of the wind against your cheeks. He just wouldn’t have thought that she would understand it.
The gelding he looked in on next had his head hanging out the stall door in anticipation of a good rub between his eyes. So Jake obliged while Cassidy walked up behind him and said, “Look at him. It’s like he’s a puppy getting a belly rub.”
Jake had to smile. “Rocky always wants you to give him a pat or a scratch. If he could figure out how to do it, he’d be a lap-horse.”
She laughed at the idea, and the sound of that laughter reached right inside to twist and tangle him into even more knots. The woman was dangerous.
“His name’s Rocky?”
“Yeah, short for Rocking Chair.”
“What kind of name is that?” She reached out to smooth her hand down the length of Rocky’s nose and the horse moved into her, silently asking for more.
“He’s lazy,” Jake said with affection. “Even as a colt, he would rather walk than run and rather roll in a shady spot of grass than walk. So. Rocking Chair. He’s not a stud. No one wants the lazy gene passed on. And the only people who’d enjoy riding him are little kids for a slow walk around the corral.”
Cass tipped her head to one side and looked at him, measuring. “Yet you keep him here.”
Jake’s gaze flashed to hers.
“The horses are your business and Rocky is, despite being a sweetie, not really a part of that business, but you keep him anyway.”
Frowning, Jake muttered, “Who’d buy him?”
Cass only smiled and stayed right behind Jake. “Your grandfather says you have to take extra care with a horse born this close to winter.”
“He would be right.” He tossed a glance at her over his shoulder. “They’re too young to withstand really cold temps, so we have to ensure they stay warm and well fed.”
“Ben says you understand horses better than anyone he’s ever seen.”
“Sounds like my grandfather’s talking your ear off.” And apparently had plenty to say.
“I like him.”
He looked at her, saw that she meant it and nodded in approval. Lisa and his grandfather had never gotten along. Not that it mattered any that Ben and Cass clearly did. “He likes you, too.”
“That’s nice to hear.” She leaned on the stall door after he went through. “Oh, isn’t she sweet?”
The foal was a charmer, all long legs and big eyes with flirty eyelashes. Still a little wobbly, the foal came close to the stall door and let Cass lean over to pet her head. The mare, of course, was keeping a close eye on everything, but Sadie was a good-natured animal and Jake wasn’t worried. He went on, checking out the mare, giving her some extra attention, then made sure there was plenty of feed in the stall before slipping out the door again and latching it behind him.
Obviously reluctant to leave the tiny horse, still standing close enough to be petted, Cassidy spoke softly. “Your mother says the one thing she really misses about the ranch is the horses. I can see why.”
He moved in closer than he should have, reached over the stall gate and grazed his palm across the foal’s head. “Know a lot about horses, do you?”
She looked up at him with a grin. “Not a thing. But they’re beautiful. And big. Except for this little guy—girl.”
“They are beautiful,” he agreed, and silently added, so are you. That smile of hers was deadly accurate. It lit up his insides like a fireworks explosion and he didn’t need that. Didn’t want that. So he forced himself to move away from her, from temptation. “They’re a lot of work too, so I’d better get busy.”
“Oh. Sure. Me, too. I guess I’ll head back to the house.”
“More internet work?”
“No. I promised Anna I’d help set out the meal and serve the hands when they got back, so I should get to the kitchen.”
He frowned to himself as she started to walk away. She puzzled him. Intrigued him. Attracted him in a way no other woman ever had, and that was damned irritating. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Do what?”
He threw both hands out. “Help. Work. Cook with Anna. Shovel with Jim. It’s not your
job to do any of it.”
Tipping her head to one side, she stared at him for a long moment. “This bothers you?”
“It confuses me,” he admitted and could hardly believe he’d said it out loud.
She smiled at him and shook her head. “I don’t know why. I’m here. There are things to be done—I’m helping do them. Simple.”
“Why do I think there’s nothing simple about you?” His gaze was locked on her. Snow fell behind her, twisting and dancing in the cold wind. Horses whickered softly in their stalls. Standing there in the coat and work boots and that silly hat, she looked as if she belonged. But he knew she didn’t, despite appearances, and that stiffened his resolve even as she took the few steps back to stand directly in front of him.
“I think that may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she told him.
Then before he could think of a damn thing to say, she went up on her toes, reached for the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him and he knew he should set her back, pull away from the tantalizing taste of her.
Just as he knew he wouldn’t.
In an instant, he’d snatched her up close, pulling her into him until their bodies were pressed so tightly together, he could feel the heavy drum of her heart. She opened her mouth to him and Jake moved in, taking what he’d hungered for the last couple of days. Surrounded by her heat, her scent, her taste, he lost himself in the glory of it and shoved away all thoughts of caution.
Something raw and powerful rose up inside him and he rode the crest of that raging need, taking Cassidy with him. She moved in even closer, threading her arms around his neck and holding on as if he was the only stable point in her universe. He knew that feeling as the world around him rocked and swayed unsteadily.
In the back of his mind, a voice sounded, whispering, insisting that he stop now before he lost his grip on the last tattered remains of his self-control. And he fought the voice because he didn’t want control. He wanted this. Her. He didn’t know why she had hit him as hard as she had, but there was no denying the spark between them, the heat engulfing them.
The Cowboy's Pride and Joy Page 6
