Kissed by a Cowboy Read online

  Wes had heard enough. “Okay, then. Thanks for showing him to me. I appreciate it.”

  He turned away before he said something sarcastic. Cowboy fell into step beside him. Good Lord, the kid was a bad liar. He heard more than saw Jillian follow in his wake.

  “Now, there’s a horse trader if ever I’ve seen one,” she said.

  Horse trader. The scourge of the equine industry. People who picked up horses for cheap and tried to resell them, usually telling a whole boatload of lies along the way. He would bet if he looked at the horse’s registration papers, he’d see that the kid wasn’t even listed as owner. He stopped suddenly.

  “Did you see him try to buck that kid off earlier?”

  Jillian drew back, obviously offended. “No. I told you, I could tell something was off the moment I spotted him and so I dropped in on him last night.”

  He looked away from her piercing green eyes, still not really convinced, but damned if he didn’t agree that something wasn’t right. Perhaps it’d been a lucky guess on her part.

  “You believe me now, don’t you?”

  He faced her squarely. “I believe you’re an astute horsewoman, one smart enough to check up on a prospect when nobody was around. And I believe you’re probably right. If he’s got issues in the stall, he probably has issues under saddle.”

  “Thank you. I’m flattered.”

  They stood in a place just outside the arena, in between the fenced enclosure and a long line of stalls. Horse heads bobbed up and down as they watched the activity directly across from them.

  “I don’t know why you men are always such skeptics,” she added. “I get so tired of having to explain to your sex why I feel a certain way about a horse. For once it’d be nice to meet someone who says, ‘Oh, you have a gut feeling? I completely understand. Thanks for the tip.’”

  A horse neighed in the distance. In the arena, one of the animals being ridden answered back. Typical sounds for an equine event except in the distance, off in the barns a ways away, one could hear the sounds of bulls calling to each other. Wes had planned to go look at them earlier, but then he’d spotted the kid riding the gelding...

  He turned back to Jillian. She sure was cute, especially standing there, branches from a nearby tree sifting sunlight onto her hair and throwing dappled patterns on her shoulders.

  “I see your point, and I’m glad you spoke up. I’m still interested in the horse, but I’ll be watching him more closely from here on out.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’m telling you, you’ll be sorry if you end up buying him.” She bent and scratched Cowboy again.

  “Duly noted.”

  “Your dog knows I’m right, too.”

  “Yeah?” Cowboy whined. When Wes looked down, he was chagrined to realize his dog sat at Jillian’s feet.

  “Dogs have a sixth sense about other animals. They know when they’re bad. You ever watch a cattle dog run up to the rankest bull in the herd? They just know, and they step in to protect their master.”

  “If you say so.”

  “One more thing,” she said. “If you want your dog to stop chewing your boots, give him something else—like a pig ear or a cow bone. He’s never going to stop on his own.”

  Wes jerked upright.

  “What makes you think he likes to chew my boots?”

  “Another gut feeling.”

  He didn’t move for a second. Could she see the chew marks along the top? No, she couldn’t see them.

  “Lucky guess.”

  She must have realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him, because she nodded. “Just do me a favor. Stay away from that horse. He’s a bad one.”

  “Duly noted.”

  She turned away. He watched her for a moment before doing the same. Crazy. The whole thing was crazy.

  “By the way,” he heard her call, “Cowboy strikes me as the type that likes to bury things, so if you’re missing a boot, check for fresh piles of dirt.”

  He almost stumbled. She was looking over her shoulder, a wicked smile on her face. How did she know about that—?

  She started walking backward, thumbs hooked in her jeans. “But that was probably just a lucky guess, too, huh?”

  She turned away before he could respond, which was probably a good thing because she’d done something a woman hadn’t done to him in a long time.

  She’d rendered him completely speechless.

  Chapter Two

  Typical male, Jillian thought as she took her time walking back to the show arena. You had to slap them in the face with the truth before they believed you.

  Story of her life.

  If he had a hard time believing she had a sixth sense, then he’d really freak out when he discovered the truth. Still, he’d seemed nice, she thought as she reached the interior of the massive enclosed arena, the sound of Gene Robertson, this year’s clinician, droning on in the background. Oh, damn. She’d wanted to watch that. That was what she got for dillydallying outside.

  “There you are,” said one of her closest friends, Natalie Goodman, a blonde spitfire who had every cowboy within twenty yards looking their way. Thanks to her trim figure, bright blue eyes and generous smile, men didn’t know what hit them when she looked in their direction.

  “I was out talking to Wes Landon.” She took a seat on the aluminum bleachers that stretched along one side of the arena. Her backside instantly chilled. It was the end of January and if you weren’t out in the sunlight, you froze half to death.

  “Landon, Landon,” Natalie was saying. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

  “Zach’s friend. The one who races horses, only he tells me he isn’t the one who breeds them or owns them. He just manages his mom’s farm.”

  “That Wes,” Natalie said, focusing on the man on horseback. He spoke about the shape of a horse’s shoulder and its importance when it came to clearing obstacles, something that Natalie should have been speaking to the crowd about. Natalie was a shoo-in for this year’s equestrian games in show jumping. As long as they could keep her primary mount, Nero, sound, she’d be representing the United States of America.

  “Was he as good-looking as Mariah claims?”

  “He’s not bad.”

  More like drop-dead gorgeous with his blond hair and green eyes. He had the looks of a movie star. She frowned because that was something she knew firsthand.

  Negative energy. Focus on the positive.

  “Not bad?” Natalie repeated, blond brow arched over an almond-shaped eye.

  “Okay, fine. He’s pretty hot.”

  No sense in denying it. Natalie would see for herself one day soon.

  “Wow, that’s pretty high praise coming from a woman who dated Jason Brown.”

  “Shh,” she hissed, glancing around. She had no idea why. It wasn’t as if there were members of the paparazzi nearby. Those days were long behind her.

  “What? I think it’s kind of cool that you dated People magazine’s sexiest man alive.”

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t know him like I did.”

  He’d called her because he’d been having problems with his Arabian stallion. She should have known right then that he was an idiot because only egotistical jerks owned stallions if they weren’t in the breeding business. But no, she’d accepted the job, figured out the problem and ended up getting asked out on a date, and he was just so dang handsome and sweet that she’d said yes. And then yes again. Only he’d turned out to be nothing like the men he portrayed on-screen. He wasn’t a sweetly sexy hometown boy. He was an ass who’d broken her heart.

  “...don’t you think?”

  Jillian shook her head. That was all in the past. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

  “What?” she had to ask.

  “I said you should probably answer your cell phone, don’t you think?”

  Jillian jumped, then fished into her back pocket for her phone and as she glanced down at the unfamiliar number, she knew—she just knew.

>   “It’s him.”

  Sometimes her abilities extended beyond the animal kingdom.

  “Him who?”

  “Wes Landon.”

  Natalie smirked. “That was quick.”

  “Yeah.”

  She ignored the voice of reason, the one that told her to ignore him because he was just a little too good-looking. It would be easy to forget the rules around him.

  Her finger had a mind of its own. “Hello?”

  “You ran away before you could give me your phone number.”

  She wanted to grin like a silly teenage girl. What a doofus. She had sworn off men after Jason had left her shattered.

  She glanced left. Natalie stared, her expression one of clear interest.

  “You never indicated you wanted it,” she admitted. “Not that I was surprised. You know, me being a crazy woman and all.”

  Next to her, Natalie broke into a wide smile.

  “Come to think of it, how did you get my number?”

  “Mariah.”

  “I should have known.”

  She shot Natalie a look of apology and then stood, heading toward the middle of the building and the exit. She didn’t need grief from her friend.

  “What did you want?” she asked.

  The noise of the crowd in the arena made it hard to hear and so she headed for the atrium at the front of the building. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers filled the air and reminded her she hadn’t eaten lunch.

  “You were right.” There was a pause, and she could perfectly imagine him shaking his head. Or maybe that was a visual she picked up from his dog. Hard to tell.

  “I followed that horse back to the barn so I could watch the kid untack.”

  “Oh?” She’d reached the exit and it was immediately quieter. “What’d you find out?”

  A large man with a dog at his side blocked her path. The dog was a black-and-white border collie. She glanced up sharply, her heart flipping over in her chest. Beautiful green eyes smiled down at her from beneath a black cowboy hat, one nearly as dark as the man’s lashes.

  “He about kicked the kid in the head.”

  Her hand dropped, cell phone forgotten. His hand did the same, although he took the time to disconnect. She absently did the same.

  “And then he yelled, ‘You crazy son of a bitch,’ before he spotted me standing there.”

  Hey, Cowboy, she silently telegraphed the dog. A long black tail started to wag. She smiled and returned her attention to Wes.

  So handsome. So ridiculously gorgeous. Mariah had been trying to set him up with one of the girls from the barn for ages, and he was so cute she might have been tempted to throw caution to the wind if they’d been introduced before now...before she’d pegged him as a doubting Thomas.

  “Did he get nailed?” she asked to cover that particularly troubling thought.

  Green eyes sparked. “Nah. He’s fine.” She saw his lips turn up in a brief smile as he remembered the incident. “But when he realized I’d heard, I could tell he was about to offer up some excuse. I told him don’t bother.”

  “So you believe me now?”

  And why did the thought make her so giddy? She knew what his answer would be even though she hoped for something different.

  “I believe you intuitively knew something was off with that gelding.”

  Intuition. A sixth sense. Men had excused her abilities a million times over. Women had, too, but it always felt different when it was a man.

  “I’m usually pretty good at reading horses, but I’ll admit I missed the mark on this one.”

  “That’s big of you.”

  His smile was pure charm. “Mariah says you’re the real deal, a bona fide horse whisperer, and so I was thinking...”

  No. Don’t say it. She didn’t want to spend any more time with him. To be honest, she had been glad when he let her walk away.

  “...maybe between the two of us...”

  He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. She knew what he was thinking.

  “You want me to help you pick out some prospects, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, there was a part of her that wished that for once in her life she could meet someone and tell them the truth. It wasn’t a sixth sense. She picked up images from the minds of animals. Her friend Mariah said she talked to them, but it wasn’t really that. She could see what was going on in their minds, but she could never tell people that, not when she first met them. They’d call her crazy, but for some reason she wanted to tell Wes, and she wanted him to believe her.

  It’s because you think he’s cute.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  She hadn’t meant the question to come out so cool, but something about the man set her teeth on edge. It was as if she fought an invisible force field, one she wanted to break through.

  He doesn’t believe you and that hurts.

  It shouldn’t have hurt. It never hurt. So why now?

  “I don’t know. What do you have in mind?”

  You.

  She almost blanched. “Money.”

  Beneath his black cowboy hat his brow lifted. “You mean like pay you for your services?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How much are your rates?”

  “I’m expensive, but I have another idea.”

  The brim of his cowboy hat tipped a bit. If she wasn’t mistaken, his gaze had just intensified, green eyes flashing with...what? Interest?

  “Like what?”

  Good Lord, he’d taken her words wrong. He was thinking something personal. “I’ll help you in exchange for a sizable donation to CEASE.”

  If she’d told him she wanted to use the money to fly to the moon, he couldn’t have looked any more surprised.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. See, we want to hold a big fund-raiser, but we’re a little short on cash. If you want my help, you’ll have to help CEASE.”

  She heard him huff something out under his breath. He wouldn’t accept, couldn’t accept. She had a feeling the whole “you have a good eye” thing was just an excuse to get to know her better. Chances were, as a farm manager, he had a good eye, too. He didn’t need her. Not really, but she could tell her offer had put him off. He might not breed horses, but she knew he didn’t like the group she hung out with; ergo, he wouldn’t like her...or so she’d thought. The dratted man actually appeared to be considering her offer.

  Why had she ever opened her mouth about that horse?

  Wes Landon could be dangerous to her health. Good-looking. Sexy smile. Horse lover. She’d never be able to resist his charms, and if she didn’t, she’d pay the price once he discovered the truth about her “sixth sense.” She always did.

  “Let me get this straight.” He leaned in closer to her. “You want me, a farm manager whose mother breeds racehorses, to donate money to CEASE, the people who picket the racetrack where my mom runs her horses.”

  “Yup.”

  Don’t say yes. Don’t say yes. Don’t say yes.

  But he didn’t look as perturbed as she’d expected. “Deal.”

  God help her.

  Chapter Three

  The next day she was still irritated as hell that she’d agreed to help. Granted, it was for a good cause, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a pain in the rear. She’d had to spend all day yesterday visiting the horses in the sale catalog. Natalie had joined her, and Jillian had mulled over each horse, trying to decide if it would work best for Natalie or Wes.

  Fortunately, she hunted for two very different animals. Reining horses performed a pattern in an arena, trotting, loping and running, followed by working with a cow. Cutting was all about the cow, so it was easy to separate the two types of horses. By the end of Wednesday she’d picked out a horse for Wes, but instead of being excited to see him, he stared at the animal as if she’d lost her mind.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he
said Thursday morning.

  The thing about his opinion of the horse was that it didn’t disturb her nearly as much as the man himself. There were times when you met a man and he just...did something to your insides. Wes was one of those men for Jillian. Frankly, he was probably “one of those men” for a lot of women. She’d seen women do double takes as she’d followed Wes over to the stables. She didn’t blame them. He might have been wearing nothing more than jeans and a dark green button-down, but the cotton shirt did something to his eyes. They were so green you could spot them from ten paces away.

  “Okay, I know he’s not much to look at, but it’s what’s inside that counts,” she said, referring to the horse they were examining.

  “Is he even big enough to carry my weight?”

  Jillian nodded her head emphatically. The horse looked as plain as a copper penny, she admitted. He stood in the far corner, head toward them, the smell of pine shavings in the air. His red coat marked him as a sorrel, and about the only thing interesting about his features was the blaze on his face. Typical of horses that traced back to the legendary Gunner, the white covered nearly half his head—the top half. Horse people called it bald-faced. Jillian called it a good sign—a sign he had a lot of his sire’s blood in him.

  “He’s by Colonels Smoking Gun, Wes, one of reining’s all-time leading sires.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “I think he’s going to be just like him.”

  “But I don’t want a reining horse.”

  “I know, I know. But he’s cutting bred on the bottom. He’s got Dual Rey in his lines. And he likes cows, and he has his father’s desire to win.”

  He glanced at her sharply. “Let me guess. Another one of your ‘feelings’?”

  “Yes.”

  He eyed the gelding again. “He looks like a mule.”

  “He does not!”

  Wes stepped back from the stall and crossed his arms. The horse inside barely lifted his head. The gelding looked tired, Jillian noticed. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and asked the question she didn’t want to ask.

  You okay?

  She received an image of long spurs and sweat-soaked sides. Of an evil-looking spade bit and a dusty arena. His owner had ridden the socks off him last night.