by Helen Lacey
Wanting to laugh off the suggestion in his words, she smiled. “Well, that’s because you are a made-in-Texas cowboy. That doesn’t count.”
Knox took a step closer, his eyes pinned on her face in a way that had never happened before. This new line of conversation had seemed to open something up between them, and Genevieve wasn’t all too sure that she shouldn’t slam the lid shut real quick on what might turn out to be a giant Pandora’s box.
“Well,” the rancher said, his voice lowered in a way that sent a tingle right down her spine. “You know what people say about things from Texas—”
“I know, I know.” She cut him off playfully. “Everything is bigger in Texas.”
“Now, that’s a dirty mind at work.” Knox smiled at her, showing his straight white teeth. “I was going to say better but if you want to say bigger, then I’m not going to object.”
The banter seemed to break the odd tension between them and they both laughed. And that’s when she noticed that when Knox took a step toward her, she had mindlessly taken a step toward him. With a steadying hand on the neck of the horse patiently waiting in the cross ties, Genevieve said, still laughing, “Do you know that I even agreed to go out with your brother on a date, just to get my father off my back?”
In the rancher’s eyes, there was a fleeting emotion that Genevieve could identify only as jealousy. It was brief, but she saw it.
“Not that anything happened between us,” she was quick to add before she got to work on the final horse of the day. If she got lost in conversation with Knox, she would lose the time she had made up and then she would be late for her next client. “I knew that Logan had it bad for Sarah. As a matter of fact, I told him to quit being such a chicken on our date. It was just a one and done for me. I told Viv to take my name officially off the list and I told my dad I tried.”
“So... Logan wasn’t your type?”
Genevieve glanced up to see that same intense, focused, almost examining expression in Knox’s eyes.
“No,” she said with an easy laugh. “And obviously I wasn’t his! He’s married to Sarah and everyone in town knows how much he loves being a father to baby Sophia.”
Genevieve gently moved the horse’s hoof onto her stand so she could smooth out the rough edges left behind by her nippers. “My dad says I’m too picky, but is there really such a thing as being too picky when you’re looking for your soul mate? I mean, unless I meet that exact right guy, I’m not even all that sure that I want to get married and have kids. I have my business and my career to build. I’m happy. Why fix what ain’t broken, right? That’s why I’m living in the apartment above my parents’ garage—I’m saving money so I can move to California. There’s a lot of really exciting stuff happening with holistic approaches to horse care there and I want to be a part of it.”
“So, you’re not even planning on hanging around Rust Creek Falls?”
“Nope.”
“That might just be perfect, then.”
The cryptic tone Knox used to say those words made an alarm bell go off in her head, but she didn’t ask him about it. Some things, in her experience, were better left alone.
Genevieve finished her work and unhooked the last horse from the cross ties, hooked the lead rope to its halter and handed the horse off to Knox.
“You can tell your father that all the horses got a clean bill of health today. I can see these four again in four to six weeks.”
Knox nodded rather absentmindedly. He led the horse back to its stall, and then he headed back to her, covering the distance quickly with his long-legged stride. There was a new determination in the way he walked, and there was a glint of mischief in his dark brown eyes that caught her attention and made her feel a little queasy in her stomach, like she had just gotten a mild case of food poisoning.
Instead of handing her a check as was typical, Knox stood in front of her, his hat tilted back a bit so she could see his eyes, and asked her, “How would you like to get your dad off your back while you’re earning your way out of here?”
“How would I like that?” She shook her head with a laugh. “Are you kidding me? I’d love to get Lionel Lawrence off my back.”
“Then you and I are in the same boat. Because I would love to get Max off my back and out of my business.”
Genevieve heard, and understood, the frustration in Knox’s voice. Having an overbearing, meddling parent as an adult could strain even the most solid of parent-child relationships.
She shrugged. “I hear you, Knox, but so far, nothing I’ve tried has worked. If I could find a guy who would just be a no-strings-attached boyfriend for a while, that would placate dad for a while I think. But, all the guys around here want a commitment. Something weird in the water around these parts, I think.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about a boyfriend,” Knox said.
“Oh, no?” Her brow wrinkled curiously. “What were you thinking?”
Knox pinned her in place with those deep, dark eyes of his and his lips—very nice, firm, masculine lips—curled up into a little smirk. “I was thinking more along the lines of a husband.”
Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781488042249
When You Least Expect It
Copyright © 2019 by Helen Lacey
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