It wasn’t his business, but it was surprising Leezel didn’t have a passel of illegitimate kids given her slutty behavior. Still—holding this little one in his arm, Maverick knew he would do what he could for Kyrie despite her mother. He was dumb like that.
China had that look on her face again, the one she had worn since the foal’s birth. He stiffened his back and slapped the reins, glad for his dark glasses. Whatever she was thinking about him needed to stop.
“Hey. Slow down. We’re here.” She reined Ebony to a halt. The barbed wire fence they’d been following turned at an obtuse angle and continued up and over the next hill before it dipped into the neighboring ravine.
Maverick turned Star around. “The horses come up this high?”
“No, but the cattle do.”
“You raise cattle?” That was news.
“Yeah. We turned them out a couple weeks ago for summer grazing. They’re around here somewhere.”
“How many head?”
“Should be ninety Black Angus in this field, give or take a few; another hundred and fifty head of red in the next field yonder. I’m hoping for twice that number by fall if all goes well.” She seemed so sure of herself.
“They’ll all calve?”
“No, but most of them will.” China urged Ebony slowly forward as they patrolled the fence. “I keep the horses closer to the barn. Beef might be pricey, but my kids are priceless.” She straightened in her saddle and turned halfway around, pointing to a grove of scraggly pines not far from the fence. “See? There’s part of the herd.”
All he saw was the tanned, bare skin at her waist and the swell of her ass against the leather saddle when she tilted forward. A spark sprang to life in his belly.
“Maverick. Don’t you see them? They’re right over there.”
Damn. Busted. Well, almost. His Oakleys saved his sorry butt. He averted his gaze from her backside to the direction she pointed. Sure enough, a couple dozen black cows stared back at him, their tails switching. A group of calves lay curled on the ground while another nursed from its mother.
“One, two, eight, nine.” She nodded as if she agreed with herself. “Yeah. Double or nothing by October. That’s the plan.”
“What makes you so sure?” He had to ask.
She nodded. “Because of bulls like my buddy over there, Sir T-Bone.”
Maverick followed the direction of her nod. A black bull sauntered out of the trees, his ears pitched forward, definitely on guard duty.
“What happens in October?” Maverick’s arm had gone to sleep, but as much as he needed to readjust Kyrie, he didn’t want to. The privilege of her trust resonated with him, and frankly, he liked her sleeping there.
“My neighbors help me with round up. The yearlings go to the auction and the rest will winter in the lower pastures. I might put one or two in the freezer, but most pay the bills.”
“Then you start all over again next year?” He kicked Star’s belly lightly to keep up with Ebony while China continued checking the fence. The big fella seemed to think he should nibble on every daisy within range of his prehensile lips.
“That or I sell ’em and move to Alaska.”
“You what?”
China giggled. “Just kidding. I could never leave this place. This is my home.”
The fragrant breeze rippling uphill tossed her hair. She grabbed her hat before it blew away. She seemed as much a part of this wide-open country as the wind and sky. “It smells good up here. Don’t you think?”
He barely twitched his nose and shrugged. “Smells like horseshit to me.”
Her mouth dropped opened. “Why, Mr. Carson. Did you just make a joke?”
Maybe. Even a city boy like him could tell the pleasant scent on the breeze today didn’t have anything to do with horses. Or beef cattle.
“It’s Russian Olive. It only blooms in spring. It makes me want to take a bite out of the air or just breathe it all in. Every last morsel.” China seemed especially talkative this morning. She leaned over her saddle horn, as if she was trying to figure him out. “Don’t you ever take your glasses off? It would be easier to know when you were teasing if I could see your eyes.”
Thankfully, Kyrie stirred in his arms, and he didn’t have to answer. He peered down into the face of a worried but smiling angel with apple-red cheeks. The resemblance to China startled him. Kyrie stared up at him with serious dark eyes lined with the longest lashes. Her lips turned into a pout, and her bottom lip stuck out. She didn’t struggle or cry, but she was concerned.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” He adjusted her so she could see her aunt. “Who’s that?”
“Andy China,” Kyrie whispered somberly. She scratched her nose and yawned.
China reined Ebony around so she faced Maverick and Kyrie. “You want to ride with me a while?”
“Nope.” She wiggled her butt tighter into the crook of Maverick’s arm. “I is ridin’ my favwit horsey.”
“Yes, you and Maverick are riding Star. Are you sure you don’t want to ride with me?”
“Uh huh.” Kyrie squinted in the bright sunshine as she leaned back to see Maverick better. “You is Mavwick?”
He tapped his dark glasses down his nose and peered over the rims. “Yes, ma’am. At your service.”
“Does you yike me?”
The question irked him, not because she had asked it, but because of the worry in her pretty blue eyes. He couldn’t help himself. “I like you a lot, Kyrie.”
Two little arms circled his neck, and once again he was glad for his Oakleys. He stabbed them back into place. This baby girl had just touched a part of him he had long thought dead. Turned out it wasn’t.
He hoped he wasn’t out of line, hugging a little girl, but darn it anyway, Kyrie was an angel, and he needed a hug with no strings attached.
“I yikes you, too, Mavwick,” she whispered as if it was their secret.
God, she was breaking his heart. He closed his eyes and let the warmth of her gentleness in. How the hell do little kids do this? Reach into the darkest cave and splash sunshine all over the place like it’s no big deal?
“Damn it anyway.” China slid off Ebony and stood with her hands on her hips. “I hate it when Rich is right. He said he saw a couple of my strays roaming his land. I was hoping he mistook a couple deer for my beef, but look at this.”
Three strands of the barbed-wire fence were busted through, one post down. Maverick urged Star alongside it for a better view. The wire hadn’t been broken. It had been cut. Definite chain marks circled the middle of the fence post.
China shielded her eyes with her palm while she surveyed the hills around her. “Who would drive all the way up here in the middle of nowhere just to vandalize my fence?”
Maverick looked the nearby ground over. A single set of tire tracks was evident alongside the fence, but he saw things China wouldn’t have known to look for. Sniper hides. Ambushes. Buried explosive devices and mayhem. Those kinds of things.
The perfect concealment for an enemy combatant in a stand of quakies about twenty fence posts ahead. The rocky outcrop of red rock two clicks away on the opposite hill where a good sniper could lie in wait all day, make a kill shot, and slip away without being noticed.
This place wasn’t safe. Not by a long shot. The pleasant hill morphed into another hill in a very different country far away. Minarets and prayer towers sprung up everywhere. Darkness thundered in his head, paralyzing his sense of direction. It took all of his resolve to not dive off Star’s back with Kyrie and run for cover.
“You okay?” China peered up at him, her face wrinkled with worry.
“Fine,” he lied, his fingers trembling on the reins. The scenery shimmered, then transformed back into grass and quakies. He took a deep breath and forced the panic down. Striving for control, he changed the subject. “You bring anything to fix the fence?”
“Yes.” China didn’t say anything more. She walked the fence line, straight toward that dangerous stand of quakies a
nd the sniper that wasn’t really there. She stopped, removed a loop of coiled wire from a post about ten posts down and started back to him. To safety.
His heart pounded like a mother. Every inch of him roared, ‘Run, damn it. Get your ass back here.’
Out of the blue, a meadowlark burst forth with a joyful peal, jolting him back to the hills of Wyoming. The breeze cooled his worried brow, and the countryside was once again full of nothing more than the determination of a very stubborn woman. He wasn’t in the middle of a kill-zone. This wasn’t even Afghanistan. She hadn’t seen what he had seen because snipers and Taliban soldiers weren’t there to be seen. They were in his hard head, damn it.
The annoying troll, hypervigilance skulking up the back of his neck slacked off. He sucked in a big breath of relief and let it fill his gut. Okay, yeah. I’m not there. I’m here. In Wyoming.
The view of her walking back to him eased the last of his irrational fear away. She looked angry, but man, it was a beautiful kind of anger. China wasn’t made of fluff and hair products. Certainly not acrylic nails. No. She was denim and boots, a cowboy hat for shade instead of show, and the mother of all creatures great and small on her ranch. She was more than a businesswoman handling a serious horse-breeding ranch, though. With the blush of the sun on her face and the wind playing with her hat and hair, she was—damned beautiful. Sexier than hell, especially in that shirt. One of them sights for sore eyes. And hearts.
He looked away. She was the last thing he needed.
“I yikes Andy China,” Kyrie said from the crook of his arm.
Me, too, kid. Damn it. Me, too.
China stopped at Ebony’s side. She dropped the coiled wire to the ground and lifted a collapsible shovel with a narrow blade and a pair of well-worn work gloves from her saddlebag.
Maverick slid off Star with Kyrie. He held her at arm’s length for China to take. “Here. Hold the girl.”
“’S okay. I’ve got it.” China didn’t even look up. She braced a boot to the back edge of the shovel and forced the blade into the rocky soil. “This won’t take but a minute. Maybe two.”
“No, ma’am.” He set Kyrie on the ground between them and reached for the handle. “Let me do that.”
China lifted a shovelful of soil and tossed it aside. Her boot hit the shovel again. “I said I’ve got this.”
Before she could kick the shovel back into the hole, he wrapped his fingers around the handle. “And I said I’ll do it. You take care of your niece. You can’t be doing man’s work dressed like you are, anyway. I’ll dig.”
She glanced down at her shirt. Her brows furrowed. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”
Not one damned thing. Nothing’s wrong with those perky breasts snuggled beneath it, either. Shit. What the hell am I thinking? He was just the hired hand. Nothing more. This boss lady could tell him to get the hell off her land as easy as not.
China raised her head and stared him down, right damned through the dark lenses of his Oakleys. Damn it to hell. A spark lit in the deepest depths of those blue eyes. A flash of defiance. Everything about this fierce woman, squared-off and ready to fight like she was, assaulted his better senses. A physical jolt to his groin opened his eyes. Wide.
She blew a loose strand of hair off her nose. Her chin jutted out. It didn’t take a genius to read the vibes coming off of her. China didn’t like being bossed around, either.
Like the fragrance on the breeze, he wanted to take a bite out of her. A big bite. His fingers itched to delve into her hair, to twist it into a knot so he could steer her mouth and her lips toward his. He licked his lips thinking what she would taste like. Minty toothpaste? Strawberries? Coffee? All tantalizing flavors on a woman’s tongue. On China’s tongue.
“It’s just a posthole. It’s not like I’m digging a well or anything,” she threw at him.
Maverick held his ground. Every part of his body just plain ached for relief. Like that was going to happen. But there was no damned way he would stand around and let her do a man’s job. Not as long as he was breathing.
He eased the shovel out of her grip, not wanting to piss her off any worse. “Understand that, ma’am. You dig the wells. I’ll just dig postholes. Now, if you don’t mind—”
She stepped back, the look on her face gentle again. He tore his gaze from her and concentrated on digging the perfect hole instead of her lips. He didn’t need to fall into those stormy pools of blue. No way in hell.
One foot down that slippery slope and all bets were off. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself, and he plain wasn’t going there. Only a dumbass kept making the same mistakes over and over. He had learned the hard way, damn it. He, Maverick Carson, was no dumbass.
China watched him work for a moment before she turned to her niece. “Come on, Kyrie. Let’s cut some wire and patch the fence.”
She and Kyrie walked back to the coiled fencing. He hadn’t noticed until then that every dozen posts held a similar coil of barbed wire. Good thinking. She cut three lengths of wire with a pair of pliers she retrieved from the saddlebag, something not every woman knew how to use. Damned if she didn’t splice the strands of wire together as if she knew what she was doing.
With a few deft turns of the tool, she and Kyrie were waiting on him to finish tamping the post into place. China handed the pliers to Kyrie. “Don’t pinch your fingers.”
“I be carefo,” Kyrie promised.
Before China could do it, Maverick finger tightened the spliced wire until it snapped against the post. “You got a hammer? Some tacks?”
China frowned and pulled a small hammer out of her belt. “Of course I’ve got a hammer.”
He held his hand out, palm up.
She deliberated, her brows furrowed. Something shifted through those pretty eyes, but whatever it was, it kept on going. Looked a lot like stubbornness for a second there. This woman didn’t have a passive bone in her body, but she handed the hammer over, handle first. “You’ll need these, too.” She gave him several fencing staples.
He took the staples out of her palm, careful not to touch her skin any more than he had to. It took a few hammer swings to set the tacks and finish the job.
Kyrie clapped her hands. “Mavwick! You did reawwy good!”
He couldn’t help but smile at her boisterous praise over a simple job. China and Kyrie could’ve passed for mother and daughter, right down to the way they tossed their hair and sniffed the wind. The only difference between them was the over-sized baseball cap on Kyrie’s head, and the dusty cowboy hat on China’s.
Oh yeah, and that pretty checkered shirt.
Prettiest damned sight in all of Wyoming.
Chapter Twelve
“I’ve got barbequed pork chops for dinner.” China looked to Maverick as they unsaddled the horses back at the barn. Kyrie had scampered off to find her kittens the moment she landed. “You’re welcome to join us.”
As usual, Maverick didn’t answer. Not even a grunt.
The ride back had been uneventful, except for the very disturbing knowledge that someone had cut her fence. This kind of nonsense had only happened one other time, when a group of teenage boys decided they wanted to ride Sir T-Bone. Of course, they were drunker than skunks. Sheriff Hammer had visited her in the middle of the night because one of the boys got hurt on her property.
The kid was lucky the bull didn’t trounce him and stomp him to death.
None of the tough guys even got on the bull. The young man fell through the barbed wire after he had cut the fence. He’d sliced his leg and hand enough that he needed quite a few stitches. It seemed a fitting reward for vandalizing a rancher’s property, but his parents thought otherwise. A couple of transplants from New Jersey, they’d threatened to sue her for damages their foolish son caused. They’d thought wrong.
Wyoming law protected the rancher and the bull instead of the idiot looking for a thrill ride. Last she had heard, the kid and his folks had moved back east where they belonged. Whoever had cut her fence th
is time had to be local. She planned to call the Sheriff as soon as she hit the barn.
The task of rounding up her strays had gone smoothly with Maverick’s help. Everything seemed easier with him around. He stepped up every time, although somewhat begrudgingly when she had first asked him to hold Kyrie. China smiled. She had gotten the same grumble from him when she’d asked for her niece back.
Kyrie had solved the problem with her very direct observation. “Uh uh. Me ‘n Mavwick is ridin’ Tar. We goin’ home.”
China had acquiesced. The man had a way with animals and children. Only a good heart could communicate without saying a word the way this guy did.
Whether he knew it or not, Mavwick had a way with women, too. He’d let Kyrie hold Tar’s reins, as if she were in charge. The sight of that little girl chucking the reins and ordering Star to: “Giddy-up,” warmed China like nothing else. Kyrie had no positive male role models in her life and being treated special always made her happy. She chattered like a magpie all the way home, telling him about her kittens and how she liked the orange ones best, and on and on.
Surprisingly, once or twice he had offered an actual comment instead of a grunt.
China sighed. The handsome guy had plans to leave the Wild Wolf, but while he was there, she meant to do what she could to see that elusive smile one more time.
He loosened the cinch and removed Star’s saddle. A woman had to be blind to miss the biceps straining beneath his sleeve and the ease with which he handled the weight of the bulky saddle. He made it look easy. Light. Slinging it over the stall rail, he lifted Ebony’s saddle out of her grip before she could stop him.
“It’s not heavy,” she insisted. “I can handle my own tack.”
No answer, other than him hanging the saddle blankets next.
China let his male chauvinistic tendencies slide. She removed the bridles. Both horses tossed their heads as they waited patiently to be released to the outside corral. It was late afternoon and the herd was on its way back. Even Gorgeous nickered in excitement from the outside corral where she and China Love were penned for now.
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