Meeting Her Match

by Debra Clopton

  That’s right. Whirling around, she jogged after him. He was perfect for this, and she was going to convince him to help her. No more misgivings about it. This was the right thing to do.

  Plan halfway in place, Sheri jogged up Pace’s driveway and went in search of him. She found him behind the house inside a round pen that sat off by itself. It was lined with thin, split tree trunks.

  Hearing the sound of Pace talking, she moved toward the structure, found a crack to peek through and made like a statue. Pace stood about thirty feet from her. He was standing in front of a chestnut-colored horse.

  She hadn’t meant to spy on the guy, but couldn’t very well interrupt him now that she could see he was working. She also couldn’t stop her curiosity from getting the better of her. She was interested in how he worked. He was, after all, supposed to be the best.

  So there she stood, rooted to the crack in the fence, watching and listening as he talked softly to the wary animal. Despite his surly manners, she got a kick and a half out of looking at him, probably because he reminded her of the heroes from the movies she enjoyed watching. She was nuts about movies. Westerns in particular. Not that he looked like Gary Cooper or John Wayne, but somehow he possessed their essence….

  Okay, her brain was gone. She was losing it, but she couldn’t help herself. She remained quietly hidden, steadily watching.

  In Pace’s hand he held a coiled rope which he was rubbing down the torso of the horse as he spoke to it in a silky voice. She remembered this horse. It had raced off the truck first and stayed as far away from people as it could get. That Pace was able to get within ten feet of it surprised her. What a difference a few days could make. Or was it the difference Pace could make? He was so calm standing there letting the horse get used to him. The way she would treat a scared puppy.

  Pace held the coil of rope up and let the horse see it. Then he touched the rope to the horse’s neck, then its shoulder. She noticed that he used the coiled rope to push on the horse, too. She knew there was a reason behind every touch he administered.

  His smooth as silk voice was so contrary to the gruffness he’d shown her that it startled her. Watching him in action, Sheri could totally believe he was the best. There was a gentleness she’d certainly never seen. Sheri watched for at least an hour. She couldn’t help it. Time flew by. It was the most remarkable thing she had ever witnessed.

  After a while, sanity returned, and she realized there wouldn’t be an opportunity to talk without interrupting him. She finally backed away and walked down the driveway unnoticed. As she jogged her way around the bend toward home, she was filled with a quiet sense of awe.

  It was a nice reprieve after all the turmoil she’d been experiencing.

  Pace Gentry. What a contradiction. For as long as she lived, she didn’t think she’d ever see anything more extraordinary than the look on his face as he worked with that horse.

  It wasn’t the tight scowl he wore outside the round pen. It was an expression of total contentment. He was at home within the boundaries of that circle. He was relaxed and in control. It was clear as day that Pace had been born a bronc buster.

  She paused in her driveway and walked beside the sweet-scented honeysuckle vine that wound around her mailbox and ran down the length of the fence among her brightly colored birdhouses, her own mini Mule Hollow. She smiled, listening to her wind chimes singing softly in the breeze and studied her flowers as she passed.

  What Pace did was lead the horses to an understanding. Exactly! His gift was that he worked with the animals until they chose to wear a saddle. He mesmerized them until they said, “Throw that saddle on up there and hop on, cowboy.”

  It seemed almost laughable, yet that was exactly what it looked like.

  Now she knew his secret.

  Pace Gentry was like a Dr. Dolittle when it came to horses. He could practically talk to the animals. He just couldn’t talk to people!

  Or, he chose not to talk to people. Or maybe just not to her.

  Hmm, the man was more perplexing and interesting than any man Sheri had ever encountered.

  She kind of liked that.

  The salon was busy the next day. Sheri had arrived at work distracted. She hadn’t slept well the night before, and it was her neighbor’s fault. Instead of sleeping she found herself thinking about what would make a man like him leave behind a life he loved. As she worked on Edith Musgroves’s toes, she forced herself to focus on her reasons for wanting to acquire his help in executing her plan. They weren’t personal, she reminded herself, this was business. She needed to keep that in mind. At any other time dating him for real would have been a done deal. She’d have been all about seeing what he was about.

  But for the purpose of achieving her goal all these thoughts about Pace Gentry’s personal life really needed to stay out of the mix. They could only complicate things. She’d chosen him because he fit the profile. He was a man who, like her, appreciated his freedom. It was obvious. Though she didn’t have this on authority, from what she’d observed and what she’d heard of the man her assumptions made sense. Now all she had to do was convince him to help her.

  As the day ended Lacy finished her haircuts first and headed home, leaving Sheri to close up shop. Intent on approaching her neighbor again, Sheri had just locked up and was climbing into her Jeep when an overall-clad Norma Sue came barreling across Main Street from Pete’s Feed and Seed, holding on to her straw hat as she ran.

  “Sheri, hold up there a minute,” she called.

  Sheri went ahead and climbed into her open-topped vehicle, noticing some jokester had used his finger to write the words Wash me in the dust-covered red paint.

  “Cute,” she muttered, wondering which cowboy had left his mark as he’d passed by.

  Dust in August was a way of life out here, especially when one lived on a dirt road as she did. Even so, she loved Texas in August. Sheri had always been infatuated with the outback of Australia, but she was afraid of heights and hated flying. Flying that far was out of the question, so the dry heat of western Texas in August was as close as she’d get to the real outback.

  Enjoying the heat, she breathed in the dry air and watched Norma Sue hustle toward her, sweating as she came. Sheri got a picture in her head of the posse hog tying her and tossing her on the first plane to Australia in an attempt to fix another aspect of her life if they knew she had a fear of flying.

  “Whew-ee! This heat is about to fry me whole,” Norma Sue said, fanning herself with her hat as she slid to a halt beside Sheri. “I just wanted to invite you to church tomorrow. We’ve been missing you something fierce lately.”

  There you go, Sheri thought grudgingly. This was one more thing they were set on fixing about her.

  “Norma Sue,” she sighed, “we’ve been through this.”

  “Sheri, you haven’t come to church since you and J.P. broke up. You can’t take what happened out on the Lord.”

  Sheri was not taking it out on the Lord…well maybe a little. But that was between her and Him. It wasn’t Norma Sue’s concern that she’d had about all the secondhand blessings she could take. Still, she wasn’t about to tell Norma Sue that she was feeling forgotten by God. It was childish but true, and Sheri honestly couldn’t explain her feelings. She just knew that lately when Sunday morning rolled around she didn’t have the desire to get up and go to church. After all, what had the Lord done for her lately?

  It had become a subtle issue between her and Lacy, too, but Lacy had backed off, and Norma Sue and the posse were going to have to do the same. After having lived in Dallas for so long, Sheri was having trouble with the fact that in a small town like Mule Hollow everyone knew her business. If she missed church everyone knew it and thought their input was welcomed.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love the people of Mule Hollow. She did, but there were boundaries that needed to be established.

  “I’ll come when I’m ready, Norma Sue,” she said firmly. “Right now, I’m not.” Her conscien
ce pricked her a bit as she heard her biting tone, but she was tired of this.

  “Then how about coming to my house on Monday night for a little Bible study we’re starting up?”

  “I don’t think so.” Frustrated, Sheri turned the ignition and listened as the engine coughed then started up.

  Norma Sue smacked her hat back onto her wiry, gray hair and placed both hands on her robust hips. “Then promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

  Sheri slumped slightly, her hand tightening on the gearshift. “Okay. I’ll promise you that, but I’m not promising you anything else.”

  Norma Sue smiled. “Fair enough.”

  Sheri backed the Jeep onto Main Street.

  “I know your heart is broken, Sheri,” Norma Sue called, “but God is on your side and so are we. You just give it some time and everything is going to work out fine.”

  Sheri refused to let her mouth drop open! Instead she rammed the gear into Drive and pressed the gas too hard. The Jeep shot down the street as though it were a race car doing zero to sixty in four seconds flat—all right, ten seconds….

  Though four wouldn’t have been fast enough to suit Sheri.

  Knuckles white, hot wind in her hair, Sheri glanced at herself in the mirror. “Pace better get on board pretty quick—that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  She was nervous thinking about it. Really, did she just go up and say, “Hey, I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.” No, too pathetic.

  Besides that, he’d just give her that you-poor-goose look then walk away as if she were a pain in the neck.

  Still, if this was going to work she had to ask him for his help, didn’t she?

  Lost in thought, she turned onto the dirt road. Maybe there was a way to get him to cooperate without really telling him what she was doing.

  Nope. She couldn’t do it. She had to tell him what her plan was. Explain her reasoning and persuade him that he would be doing all the happy single people of Mule Hollow a favor. That was the only honest way to go about it. That meant she had to go see him.

  She stopped at her driveway and stared down the road toward his place.

  Sheri squared her shoulders and drove forward. The worst Pace could do was say no. Right?

  Chapter Five

  Okay, so she was doing it again.

  Sheri wasn’t exactly certain why she was hiding behind Pace Gentry’s tree-limb-lined horse pen spying, ahem, watching him work. She was not a Peeping Tom! She was a woman of action. She’d come here to do what she needed to do, but he hadn’t heard her drive up and well, there he was working…and she couldn’t very well interrupt him. She could just see the fireworks that would ignite. He’d probably get so irritated that she wouldn’t be able to ask him anything.

  So here she was peeking through the cracks feeling like a loser but mesmerized all the same.

  No, not mesmerized. Entertained.

  Okay, she was mesmerized.

  The guy had a way with a horse. She never knew something like that would captivate her as it did, but it did. The man could be a real winner if he put a little of that sweet, gentle way of his with a horse into his relationships with people. She had to admit, she could handle some of the attention he was giving that horse. What woman couldn’t? Maybe she could make him a deal that if he helped her, she’d help him learn how to treat a lady.

  She bit her lip and placed both hands on the wooden fence in anticipation when she realized he was about to step into the saddle. It was unbelievable. How could he be ready so soon to hop on the mustang’s back? The fact that there was a saddle on the horse had shocked her when she’d arrived. Now he was testing the stirrups in a way that looked, even to Sheri’s untrained eye, as if he was about to swing up there and hang on for the ride.

  No, now was definitely not a good time to interrupt him. She needed him to be in a halfway decent mood when she asked him to play the part of her boyfriend. Besides, she wanted to see him ride this wild horse. She felt as though she were about to get the prize out of the Cracker Jack box as she waited with bated breath.

  All she needed at the moment was a bag of popcorn and she was set for the show.

  The horse’s eyes widened as Pace kept his left boot on the ground and used the right boot to put pressure on the stirrup. Skittish, the horse jerked its head and backed up a few steps. Pace stayed with her, talking softly to her and doing a little one-legged hop as he steadied himself by holding on to the saddle horn. When she stopped moving he let her calm down by planting both feet back on the ground. At the same time he kept the hand holding the reins on the saddle horn and continued to talk to her.

  It was amazing what a little sweet-talking could do. Would Sheri be able to sweet-talk him?

  Sheri could tell by the horse’s eyes that she remained a bit uncertain about what was going on, but for the wild mustang that she was, even this much cooperation was nothing less than impressive. As Sheri watched, Pace slipped his boot into the stirrup again. Sheri assumed they’d go through the same routine a few times. Wrong. In a swift, fluid motion Pace stood up, keeping all his weight on the foot in the stirrup. It was similar to that first day she’d seen him step into the saddle—only this time he didn’t throw his left leg over the horse. Instead, he just stood there, right boot in the stirrup, left boot relaxed beside it, resting against the horse’s side as he leaned his torso forward slightly over its back.

  Inconceivable! The horse didn’t bolt; it just stood there for a moment.

  Sheri hadn’t meant to make a noise. She’d just been so surprised and awed by what she’d seen that the gasp just happened. It just whooshed out and carried like a shot echoing through the calm evening air, startling both the horse and Pace. In no time the horse whipped its head toward the sound, jumped sideways and kicked its back legs straight out and up, sending Pace flying.

  Sheri watched, horrified, as Pace flew through the air and hit the dirt with a thud followed by a grunt. As luck would have it, he landed flat on his belly looking straight at her eyeball blinking at him through the peephole.

  Her stomach flipped as his eyes darkened and his lips flattened into a thin, straight line. Unable to move, Sheri watched him as he slowly pushed up off the ground, dusted off his chest, and—without ever breaking eye contact—crooked a finger at her.

  Ha! As if she was dumb enough to go in there.

  Oh, nooo. She took a step back and watched him come toward her. She thought about running into the woods, but he knew where she lived so she scrapped that plan and held her ground, heart pounding, pulse racing.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he rasped, his voice low, his eyes sparking with anger.

  “I…” she started, but words failed her when her gaze locked with his. She thought she would be frightened. Instead, she couldn’t help thinking that Pace was mighty cute when he was angry.

  “Trespassing. That’s what you’re doing.”

  “No—”

  “Sure looks like it to me. I work with horses alone for a reason, so people like you don’t come along and destroy an entire afternoon’s work. Like you just did.”

  “Look, if you’d just let me explain—”

  “What? That you were spying on me? Lady, I knew from the first moment you came meddling around here that you were going to be trouble. I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ll thank you very much to turn around and get off my property.”

  What a hothead! They were at a standoff, only inches from each other with their eyes locked, breath mingling. Sheri hadn’t been so mad since the day the posse told her they were taking over her life. But the posse didn’t look like Pace Gentry. They didn’t smell like Pace Gentry and they certainly didn’t make her heart act as if it were going to explode…. Whoa, girl! Get a grip.

  Pushing aside her attraction to his good looks, Sheri laid her palm against his muscled chest. It was a reflexive action, like a shield to prevent him getting any closer. But then she felt the beat of his heart against her open palm…. S
tartled, she yanked her hand away and stumbled back, twisting out of his hold. Instantly, her foot hit a dip in the ground and she yelped in pain as her ankle buckled and she began to fall.

  Pace caught her around the waist and swung her back to her feet. One minute she was scrambling to get away from him, and the next she was held securely in his embrace.

  Sheri wasn’t sure where all the air had gone, but it evaporated the instant his arm wrapped around her. Finding herself being held so close, so carefully by Pace, shook Sheri as if she’d just driven her Jeep over the edge of a cliff. She had never felt anything like it.

  She didn’t want to be this attracted to the man, didn’t need to be this attracted to him.

  Totally flustered, she pushed away from him. He was standing ramrod straight, his expression mirroring hers for an instant before he once more stared at her accusingly.

  “I…I wasn’t spying on you,” she managed to get out, her voice breathless, her brain struggling to form a coherent thought.

  “Yes, you were. Why else would you be here?”

  “No! I came because I need a boyfriend,” she blurted out because she was so shook up. The second the words were out Sheri wanted to kick herself.

  Talk about kissing a good plan goodbye.

  In the blink of an eye Sheri saw her master plan disappear into thin air.

  Pace studied his neighbor with a fair amount of confusion. He hadn’t slept well the night before because of her. He knew she was the kind of woman he wanted to steer clear of, but he couldn’t help thinking about her. He knew she wasn’t the one for him. When he was ready for marriage, he wanted it to be a commitment for the rest of his life with a woman who shared his faith. Not that anyone would know by his short temper sometimes that he had any faith. Still, from everything he knew of Sheri, she didn’t fit his requirements. Besides, he was still trying to find out what the Lord wanted him to do with his life.

  Even knowing all of this hadn’t stopped him from thinking about his sassy neighbor. Looking at her now chafed him more than he could understand, especially thinking about how she’d felt in his arms. The fact that he was noticing how pretty she looked with her warm, golden eyes like fire in the afternoon sunlight wasn’t helping him. The woman was trouble. The last thing he needed was Sheri… Wait…what did she just say?