The Wrangler Read online

  “Help’ll be here soon,” he said. “They can finish up.”

  “But I’m here now,” she answered, picking up a muck rake and heading inside the stall. Her short hair left the back of her neck exposed to the cold. “And I want to. I haven’t done this in months.”

  Not since before the accident.

  Her stomach turned. She clutched the end of the rake for support, holding it tight. Sometimes it physically hurt to think about her loss.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said, although she was a little bit sore from her ride yesterday. But nothing too bad.

  What am I doing here?

  She should be at home, surrounded by the things she loved, mementos of her parents, photos, awards she’d won at horse shows. But, honestly, that’s exactly why she’d left. She couldn’t take it. Being there in her apartment. Alone. And so she’d gotten in her car and driven west before she’d known where she was going.

  “You don’t look okay,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated, stabbing her fork into the pile of wood shavings at the horse’s feet.

  “Hey,” he said, and suddenly there was a hand at her shoulder.

  She froze. Reluctantly, slowly, she faced him, but she didn’t meet his gaze.

  “It might not seem like it, but I understand.”

  It took her a few second to get up the courage to look him in the eyes.

  “If you need someone to talk to…” he began. How was it possible? How could she feel so immeasurably sad and yet aware of him at the same time.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He shuffled closer. She tensed.

  “Sam,” he said softly, as if test-driving the name, rolling it on his tongue to see how it tasted. He leaned down and Sam knew, she just knew, that he was about to kiss her.

  Chapter Eight

  “Mornin’, Mr. McAlister.”

  They jumped apart.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” the man added, studying Sam, who felt her cheeks heat. Silly reaction given nothing had happened.

  Yet.

  “Elliot,” Clint said, nodding. “Nice to see you this morning.”

  The man nodded, the black leather hat he wore about the newest part of his attire, Samantha noticed. He had skin as worn and as wrinkled as an old quilt.

  “Bones are gettin’ a bit creakier,” he said, “but I woke up this mornin’. Suppose that’s not a bad thing.”

  “This is Sam,” Clint said, rubbing a hand over his face.

  She was still trying to stop herself from blushing.

  “She’s staying with us awhile,” Clint added.

  She was scanned as thoroughly as a can of goods at a checkout counter. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

  “And you,” she said with what she hoped was a friendly smile, though it probably came out looking sickly because her face was still burning in reaction to their kiss…or almost kiss.

  “What do you need me to do this mornin’, boss?” Elliot asked.

  “I was hoping you could move some hay around for me,” Clint said. “I need some bales dropped out in pasture five, and some more hay brought into the barn.”

  “I’m on it,” the man said, turning away.

  “Isn’t he too old to do that kind of work?” Sam asked, unable to stop herself. “I mean, he’s got to be at least sixty.”

  “Seventy-five,” Clint said. “All of his years out of doors have made him look older than he is but he can run circles around the other ranch hands.”

  “Oh.” She looked away, ridiculously uncomfortable in his presence. “Cute horse,” she said in an attempt to change the subject.

  “No, he’s not,” Clint said, picking up a rake he’d managed to drop without her noticing. “He’s a woolly mess. Losing his winter coat right now. Looks like a damn radiation victim.”

  Sam nearly smiled at his analogy. She crossed to the horse’s side, stroked his shoulder. Hair poofed into the air around them. “He’s not that bad,” she lied. “Give me a curry and a body brush and I’ll have him looking better in no time flat.”

  “Sounds like a deal to me,” Clint said. “Brushes are in the tack box, his halter’s hanging on the door.”

  “But don’t you need help mucking out?”

  “I already told you, I’ve got all the help I need arriving any second now.”

  As if to illustrate his point, someone else showed up. A kid. Well, all right. Maybe not a kid. Eighteen, nineteen years old. Battered brown cowboy hat, the color nearly matching his unkempt hair. Thick, denim jacket. Tattered pants. He looked like something the wind blew in.

  “Mornin’, boss,” the guy greeted.

  “Dean,” Clint said from inside the stall, “Sam here was just inferring I don’t have enough help. Would you please disabuse her of the notion?”

  “Dis-a-what?” the kid asked, mouth hanging open. He had braces.

  “Never mind,” Clint said. “Hand us Pepper’s halter. Miss Davies here’s going to tidy him up.”

  “Hi, Dean,” Sam said. “I’m Sam.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

  Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Gosh, she loved cowboys. On her way out west, everyone had been so polite. Apparently, people in the Midwest raised their children to respect their elders.

  “Dean here lives on the next ranch over,” Clint said, taking the halter from Dean’s hands and slipping it over Pepper’s head. “He works for us Monday through Friday.”

  Sam took the lead from Clint.

  “And Sam here is going on the roundup with us,” Clint said, opening the stall door.

  “The roundup?” Dean asked, the front of his hat moving up he lifted his brows so high.

  Sam clucked the horse forward, her feet bogged down by the thick bed of shavings in the stall.

  What if Clint had tossed her down on those shavings and kissed her until she was dizzy with desire?

  Sam!

  “Yeah,” Clint said, following her out. “Gigi thought she might like the ride.”

  The two men exchanged a look. “Terrific,” he added, though Sam could tell he thought the idea anything but.

  “Excuse me,” she said heading for the cross-ties. She hadn’t realized her presence on the roundup would cause trouble with anyone else but Clint. Obviously, women didn’t usually go along.

  She didn’t know what to make of that as she brushed off Pepper. Clint and Dean worked on the barn while she tackled the somewhat messy job of brushing down a horse that was losing its winter coat. She ended up with more hair on her than on the horse…or so it felt like. Someone else arrived, and Clint sent the new guy out…to somewhere she didn’t hear. Frankly, she didn’t care. She was wondering if she’d made a mistake. If maybe she should gracefully bow out. What would Clint say if she did that? What would Gigi say?

  “He looks pretty damn good,” Clint said as she turned Pepper loose in his stall.

  “Thanks.” She unclipped the lead. Someone had fed the horses, the sweet smell of alfalfa filling the air. “If you want a horse’s coat to shine, you have to brush him twice a day…sometimes more. You should see the halter horses on the quarter horse circuit. I swear you can see yourself in them, they’re so shiny.”

  “Yeah, but none of our horses are going to show anytime soon. Just a roundup.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  She was tempted to tell him about her concerns as she left Pepper’s stall. It wasn’t like she was nervous, more like apprehensive. Though she had all the confidence in the world that she could ride the socks off most horses, she didn’t know for certain. She’d been in an accident. And it’d been months since she was in a saddle for long stretches of time. She’d already suffered through one mishap….

  “I know I asked you this before, but are you really sure you’re going to be up to it?” he asked, reading her mind.

  Tell him. Tell him now.

  “Sure,” she said with a lift of her chin. �
��It’ll be good for me to get out.”

  “You think?”

  She nodded firmly. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to brush all the horses in the barn.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  She nodded, but it was hell walking past him. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted to stop, to turn to him, to take his hand. Instead she forced herself forward and peered into the next stall.

  And froze.

  “It’s him,” she said, admiring the dappled gray inside, the one with the blue eyes and the long mane. Unlike any breed she’d seen before. She’d wondered which stall he was in, or if he was kept in the barn. “Your horse. The one you were riding yesterday.”

  “That’s him,” he said, amused.

  “He’s one of your mustangs, isn’t he?”

  He didn’t say anything, the silence growing to the point that Sam risked a peek up at him.

  “You’re afraid to answer that question, aren’t you?” she asked. “Even after I promised to sign a nondisclosure, you’re still worried I’ll go off and blab it to the world.”

  She watched as he glanced at the horse, then back at her again. “I trust you’ll keep your mouth shut. And, yes, he is one of our mustangs.”

  She smiled, a grin she was certain blinded him it was so bright. “How old is he?” she asked, opening the stall door and slipping inside. The horse lifted his head, studying her in the peculiar way horses had: ears pricked forward, pupils clearly focused on her, his thick forelock covering a portion of his face.

  “Five.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We microchip all our horses during our spring gatherings.”

  The spring gathering. The one she’d be going on in a couple of days.

  If she didn’t chicken out.

  “He’s beautiful.”

  Actual, living proof that the Baer Mountain Mustangs truly existed. How many times had her mom used a dappled gray gelding in her bedtime stories? To think that while Sam had been growing up, an ancestor of this horse—maybe even a dappled gelding like this one—had been running through the hills.

  She moved forward, slowly, held out her hand. Would he pin his ears? Would he wrinkle his nose—a sure sign of equine displeasure?

  His ears pricked forward.

  “Hey there,” she said softly. “What’s your name?”

  “Buttercup,” Clint said.

  She glanced at him sharply. “No, seriously. What is it?”

  “Seriously. Buttercup,” Clint said. And was that…could it be? Was that a smile on his face?

  “No way,” Sam said in reaction to both the smile and the horse’s name. “I thought you were kidding when you told me that before.”

  “Gigi named him.”

  By now she could tell this was no wild mount who might bite her. She moved closer, lifting her palm to the horse’s cheek, a favorite place for horses to be scratched—just above the cheekbone.

  “You poor thing,” she said, but the gelding didn’t appear to mind his name. He leaned into her, clearly enjoying the attention. He even took a step forward. His feet rustled in the shavings, releasing pine scent into the air. “But you’re gorgeous,” she whispered.

  Clint didn’t say anything.

  She glanced out the open stall door. Clint stood there, a curious expression on his face.

  “Remember,” he said, “you’ll owe me your firstborn.”

  She’d like to give him a son.

  That thought was so inappropriate and so out of the blue she found herself turning away, and blushing.

  Jeesh. Was her feminine clock ticking or something?

  But she couldn’t deny that she wished he’d kissed her. There. She’d admitted it. She was seriously, wildly, unsuitably attracted to him. Here was someone who understood horses, someone who spoke her language. And who looked like he belonged on the cover of a western magazine to top it all off.

  “Tell me about them,” she said, still stroking the horse. “How did you get them?” she asked. “How have you cared for them all these years? Why do you care for them? What do you plan to do with them in the future?”

  They were all questions she’d been dying to ask Gigi, but she hated to broach the subject. Gigi had been gracious enough to allow her to stay with them. She hadn’t been comfortable grilling her.

  “They were part of a land treaty in 1868,” he said.

  “A land treaty?”

  He nodded, came forward and ran his hands through his horse’s mane. She saw a world of tenderness in that touch, a gentleness in his eyes. He loved this animal, cared for him, soothed him when he was frightened with a comforting hand.

  And maybe that was the root of her attraction. She needed someone. Anyone, to touch her like that. Lord knows, no one had held her since her parents died.

  And could you sound any more desperate?

  “My great-great-grandfather was a colonel in the U.S. Army,” he said. “Once the army decided to stop fighting the Sioux, he was in charge of peacetime efforts. William Baer knew he’d need some kind of common ground to help smooth negotiations. At his first meeting, he commented on the horses the Sioux rode. One thing led to another and in the end, the they were so grateful for all his efforts establishing peace, they gave him some of the horses he’d admired that first day.”

  “Wow,” Sam said. “That’s a truly remarkable tale.”

  “But that’s not the end of the story.” He absently scratched his horse near the withers. Buttercup lifted his head, his upper lip sticking out like an elephant’s trunk.

  “Once peace was established, the U.S. Army was under pressure to clear the western plains of wild mustangs. They were eating all the grass and leaving none for the cattle to graze on.”

  “What?”

  “Yup. That movie Hidalgo was based on a true event. They were going to kill them all…or as many as they could get their hands on.”

  She gasped. “Could they do that?”

  Buttercup was in ecstasy by now, leaning into Clint’s hands. “They could do whatever they wanted,” he said. “It was the United States government. The Sioux were helpless to stop it, and they knew it. My great-great-grandfather was outraged and so he took matters into his own hands. In the middle of the night, he and some of his Sioux friends stole the horses from where they’d been corralled. It was a daring thing to do. Two hundred head of horses right out from beneath the U.S. Army’s nose.”

  “Obviously, he succeeded.”

  “Yup. No one could ever prove it was him. But the Sioux knew. Horses were sacred to them. So they gave him some of the land ceded to them in the Treaty of Fort Laramie—the bulk of what we now own—and entrusted him with preserving their precious horses.”

  “The Baer Mountain Mustangs.”

  Clint nodded, patting the horse. Buttercup lowered his head in disappointment. “We’ve taken great care to maintain the bloodline, but by doing so they’re not really wild mustangs anymore. You’ll see more of that when you ride out with us. There’s three different herds. We geld the colts and mix and match the fillies with the other herds. That way there’s no inbreeding and we’re able to protect their unique heritage.”

  And she would be one of the few people who would ever get to see them. “How have you managed to keep this a secret for so long?”

  He shrugged, fiddled with his horse’s mane. “The Sioux know, of course. We still trade with them from time to time. It’s a good way to introduce new blood into the herd. There’ve been other people who’ve guessed over the years. Rumors. Some of our ranch hands have come and gone, a few of them have let the secret out. But we’ve always denied it. Until you.”

  “Until me,” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said, scratching his chin. “Although to be honest, I’m still not convinced that was such a smart idea.”

  “But I’ll never tell anyone,” she said, suddenly terrified he wouldn’t let her see the horses. “I promise the minute you put that nondisclosure a
greement in front of me, I’ll sign it.”

  “No.”

  “No?” She felt as if she was losing her parents all over again.

  “I can think of only one way to keep you quiet.”

  And suddenly her heart rate tripled. There was a look in his eyes….

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  “I’m gonna have to go to bed with you.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Go to bed with me,” Samantha Davies squeaked.

  Clint almost laughed at the look on her face. If he didn’t know for a fact that she was attracted to him, he’d have been insulted. But he remembered only too well how close he’d come to kissing her earlier—and how much she’d wanted him to do it, too. He could see it in her eyes.

  “Come on,” he teased. “It won’t be that bad. One night in my bed in exchange for seeing the horses.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Am I?” he asked, stepping toward her.

  She started to back away.

  Stop it, Clint. You’re going to scare her.

  But he couldn’t seem to stop himself. And to be honest, there was a part of him that wanted to see how far she’d go. To see how badly she wanted him. Or how badly she wanted to see his mustangs. And they were his horses, not that Sam knew that. Grandma Gigi might be a Baer, but the ranch and all its belongings had been deeded to him after his grandfather’s death. It would have gone to his mother if she’d still been alive, but sadly, that hadn’t been the case, although in hindsight Clint was convinced Gigi had deeded the place to him as a way of keeping him busy after his grandfather’s death. He’d loved Grandpa Baer as much as Gigi had.

  “Look,” she said, holding out a hand, “I want to see your horses, I’m not going to lie. It means a lot to me. But I’m not going to sleep with you just so I can go out on some extended trail ride.”

  “A trail ride?” he asked. He had her cornered now. There was no place to go except out of the stall, but he noticed she didn’t make a dash for it. No. She pressed her back against the oak panels and stared up at him, her chest rising and falling.