by Evie Nichole
Paul grabbed the reins just below the horse’s bit and gave them a jerk. “You can stay on the ground long enough to tell me what I’ve heard isn’t true.”
Gold Nugget wasn’t used to someone being that rough with her mouth. The mare struck out with her front hoof and nailed Paul right on the shinbone of his right leg. He cursed and snatched the reins out of her hand.
“You bitch!” Paul shouted. He made a move to slap her mare across the nose with the reins.
“No! What are you doing?” Aria lunged for the reins, but Paul was bigger and stronger than she was.
Paul smacked Nugget’s nose, and the quarter horse lost her mind. She reared up and lunged toward Weatherby. Aria struggled to keep out of the way of the flailing hooves while trying desperately to get Paul away from her horse. Paul was cursing and trying to beat the mare with the long split reins while she spun wildly in circles.
Tears stung Aria’s eyes as the feeling of impotent rage washed over her. How dare this man touch her horse! She pushed against him, smashing her body against his, trying to move him away from the mare. Nugget just wanted to get away. In the background, Aria was aware of Jorge’s shouts and the sound of another truck sliding to a halt in the gravel.
Then, just as suddenly as Weatherby had attacked, a huge fist landed right in his face and stopped his tirade. Aria was on the ground. She’d been knocked aside by Weatherby’s elbow at some point. Her eye stung, but that didn’t matter. Right now, she could only focus on Laredo Hernandez.
The big man stood with his hands fisted at his sides. Casual boots and jeans had replaced his typical Western suit, and he wore a white T-shirt that stretched taut across his biceps and pectoral muscles. His white straw cowboy hat was pulled low across his brow, but Aria could still see him glaring angrily at Paul Weatherby.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Weatherby?” Laredo snarled.
Paul was holding his face with both hands. Thankfully, that meant he’d let go of Nugget’s reins. The mare had already hightailed it back toward the barn. Aria could see Jorge and her other two grooms catching the mare. They would take care of the horse. But she needed to take care of the jerk that had just had the audacity to beat her horse.
Paul Weatherby looked at Aria and then looked at Laredo. Laredo moved closer to Aria as though he intended to make sure Paul didn’t take a swing at Aria. “So, that disgusting rumor is true, then.”
“What rumor?” Aria demanded. “What are you talking about? You come out here to my land, uninvited, and you start beating my horse? You don’t touch my horses! You want to ruin a horse, go buy someone else’s and screw it up. God knows you do that pretty damn well!”
“You’d better watch your mouth!” Paul snarled. He pointed his finger right in her face. Then he pointed at Laredo. “Now that you’ve hooked up with the Hernandez bunch, you’re on my radar. You’d better watch yourself.”
“You’re an idiot!” Aria fired back. “Jesse Collins has been my best friend since grade school. I’d pick any Hernandez over a Weatherby any day of the week!”
Paul’s glare was so ugly that Aria felt a shiver go down her spine despite the hotness of the weather. He curled his lip at Laredo. “You always did have a talent for picking the losers. But then your last loser realized that she could do better.” Paul made a gesture between the two of them. “Maybe this is a perfect match. The alcoholic and the snooty ice queen. Aria won’t want you in her bed, but you’ll be too drunk to care!”
Laredo did not seem to react at all to that ugly insult. Aria kept looking at him, expecting him to do something. But the only thing he did was point at Weatherby’s truck. “Get in and drive, Paul. One more word and there won’t be a lawyer in the world that will keep your ass from getting fired for misuse of power.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Paul scoffed, but he was moving toward his vehicle. “Just pull a typical Hernandez move and threaten me with legal action. It’s all you losers know how to do these days.”
“Because we aren’t the ones fighting a losing battle on the wrong side of the law,” Laredo retorted. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on between the Flying W and R&R Stock Contracting. The two of you can screw each other as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get that contract.”
“We’ll just see about that!” Weatherby climbed in his truck and hightailed it out of her farmyard. The gravel kicked up by his wheels spattered the gleaming white gooseneck horse trailer behind Laredo’s truck. The horses inside whinnied in alarm, and the trailer rocked back and forth as they shifted and stomped in irritation.
Aria did not feel her anxiety begin to drain from her body until Weatherby’s truck turned onto the two-lane highway and disappeared over a hill. At that point, she felt almost faint. Her knees wobbled, and she actually felt as though she were going to pass out.
“Whoa there,” Laredo murmured.
To her surprise, his hands were quite gentle when he supported her weight against his side. He put one arm around her waist and began to walk with her toward the split rail fence surrounding her riding ring. He smelled good. It was so odd to notice that, under the circumstances, but the scent of sunshine and sandalwood was almost rejuvenating in a way.
“Thank you,” Aria murmured. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t gotten here when you did.”
“You’d have handled it,” Laredo told her in a quiet voice filled with confidence. “I have a feeling you would have horse whipped his butt and sent him packing just as soon as you got over the shock. It’s not like you could have possibly anticipated that he would do something that asinine. What kind of a man whips a horse that doesn’t belong to him?”
“What kind of man whips his own horse?” Aria fired back.
The ghost of a smile tilted up the corners of Laredo’s mouth. “A Weatherby.”
“Touché.” Aria felt a giggle well up despite the situation. He had a dry wit and that was unexpected. Had he always been like that?
She stared up at him. His handsome face was utterly composed. He had shaved, and he didn’t look quite so haggard today as he had last night. She felt the strangest urge to touch him. It was almost as though she could not stop her fingers from reaching up to gently stroke the softness of his freshly shaven cheek. He caught her hand and pressed his cheek against it.
“Are you all right?” he whispered. “That was quite a shock.”
Aria managed a nod. His scent enveloped her, and the warmth of his body was a welcome presence beside hers. “I don’t know why Weatherby came out here.”
“I think I might be able to answer that.” Laredo exhaled a long sigh. “The Flying W is trying to edge out the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company on a big stock contracting deal. It’s basically a contract that would entitle the winner to provide rodeo livestock to every single rodeo in the state because the circuit is replacing JP Rawlings.”
“I’ve heard about that. I think anyone who depends on the state rodeo circuit has heard of that.” Aria realized that Laredo saw this business—her business—from a very different angle.
Laredo took her hand from his cheek and lifted it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles and sent a thrill through her body that had nothing to do with the shock or the temperature outside. “Weatherby has been harassing me because of some”—he hesitated here as though he didn’t want to talk about it—”personal problems that I’ve been having recently. I think he believes he can strengthen his family’s bid for that contract by putting me in a cell and capitalizing on the break between the Collins and the Hernandez ranches.”
“Is there really a break though?” Aria wondered out loud. “Jesse has been a member of your family for years. Why would she just turn her back on the operation?”
Laredo’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You’d have to ask her.”
Aria had asked Jesse. She was as tight-lipped—literally—as he was being. But that was all right. In Aria’s world, everyone was entitled to their
secrets. In fact, how could Aria fault Laredo for keeping secrets when she was busy looking at the time because she was afraid that Laredo was still going to be here when Darren showed up with both Jaeger and Bella in tow. Oh, it was a tangled web that she was weaving, and Aria was beginning to be afraid that she was about to strangle herself with it.
There was another insistent stomp, and Laredo turned to look at his horse trailer. “I think those horses are tired of being in the trailer. I picked them up out at our ranch this morning. I had Cal pull out the ones he thought had promise. He’s got a better eye for that sort of thing than I do.”
Aria sighed. Laredo had not made a single protest when Paul Weatherby called him a loser. Last night, he’d told her he looked ridiculous on a horse. Now he was saying that his older brother was better at picking out talented horses than Laredo was. How could everyone think that Laredo was an arrogant prick that ran the Hernandez ranch like his personal piggy bank when the man was so insecure that he acted like a teenaged boy with an inferiority complex?
Chapter Nine
Laredo tried not to act like a total imbecile as he unloaded the horses from the trailer in sort of the reverse of what Cal had done earlier that morning. He handed them off to Aria outside, and she in turn tied them to the metal loops on the exterior of the trailer.
“Nice stock,” Aria commented once the black had been tied up near his companions. “Have you ridden any of them?”
“Uh. No.” Laredo sighed. He was really going to do this. It had been ages since he’d been on a horse. “You want to get on now?” he asked Aria hopefully.
She leaned around a dark red gelding’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow at Laredo. “There are four here. I have lessons starting in about an hour. Why don’t you just pick one and climb on for a few minutes to see what you think? Then you can come out tomorrow and ride the rest and decide what you want to do.”
Laredo could decide what he wanted to do? He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was thinking that you were going to ride them and tell me what you thought.”
“Why?” Two lines appeared between her eyebrows. She came a little closer. He could smell the tang of leather and horses mixed with her light feminine scent. It was strangely alluring. Then she looked up at him from underneath the brim of her baseball cap, and he felt the power of her dark brown gaze. “You’re perfectly capable of deciding which of these critters you think has potential. And I’ll be honest, I don’t have the time to ride them all for you. I suggest you ride them and then pick one to compete. Any more than that would be pushing it.”
Laredo sighed. He glanced over her shoulder to see one of her grooms approaching with the little palomino mare that Paul Weatherby had worked over so horribly. The animal looked skittish as hell.
“I need to ride poor Nugget,” Aria told him. “Pick one of yours and saddle up. Even if we just walk around inside the ring, it will tell us both what we need to know.”
She didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need her to. Or maybe he did. Laredo wasn’t sure anymore. Being this close to Aria was scrambling his brains. He kept thinking about Cal’s comments earlier that morning. Was he having thoughts—romantic thoughts—about Aria?
She tilted her head to one side, and Laredo found himself leaning toward her face. He wanted to kiss her. There was something unbelievably inviting about her lips. He loved the way they looked. They formed a perfect little bow. The pink color of them was a startling contrast to her deeply tanned skin. He wanted to know if they were as soft and pliant as they looked. He wanted to feel them move beneath his. And yet there was a part of his brain that kept screaming at him that this would be very wrong.
“Laredo?” she whispered.
He swallowed. “Yes?”
“We really need to get moving.”
“Right.”
The spell was abruptly broken. She moved away, and Laredo was left to stare at the black horse and wonder if Cal and put tack in the trailer. Laredo hadn’t actually owned his own saddle in decades. What an odd thought. Bella had begged him at certain points in the past to buy her cowboy boots and saddles and pretty pink cowgirl hats and Western shirts with flowers and stars on them. He’d never given in, and over the years, his own collection of riding items had dwindled away to nothing.
A quick peek in the tack compartment of the trailer showed that it was stuffed full. That was fortunate. Except Laredo didn’t feel like it was fortunate. He felt like the lack of any tools to actually ride the horse would have been a stay of execution. But since there was no rescue in sight, Laredo had no choice but to methodically pull out his equestrian skills and saddle up that black horse.
It was surprisingly less awkward than he’d expected. The animal was well-behaved. Laredo only took a few extra minutes to double and then triple check that the cinch was as tight as he could get it. Then he fumbled a bridle onto the animal’s head.
He could not help but feel like the horse gave him a little bit of a sideways look of annoyance when the bit clicked against its teeth as Laredo put the bridle on. But then the black horse was saddled and Laredo was ready to ride. Sort of. Mostly.
Aria was already on the palomino horse inside the riding ring. Laredo didn’t want to try mounting the horse inside the ring with Aria watching. He wanted this first moment to be private. So, right there beside the trailer, Laredo put his reins in his left hand, his left foot in the stirrup, and hauled his butt into the saddle for the first time in years.
The world did not end. He was sort of surprised since he’d actually expected something to happen. Fanfare. Gong of doom. Something. But there was nothing. Just the flick of an ear as the black horse stood patiently and waited for Laredo to settle himself in the tack.
Laredo wiggled a little back and forth. He half turned. Then he finally put his hand on the pommel of the saddle. That was when he felt the little letters carved into the leather.
“I’ll be damned,” Laredo whispered.
Cal had never been known for doing what he was asked to do. But this was the first time that Laredo actually felt glad that his older brother was an independent ass who did his own thing. When Laredo was only twenty, he had decided never to ride again. He’d told Cal to sell his rig and use the money for something useful. Apparently, Cal had just stuck the saddle in the back of the tack room with the thought that Laredo would eventually change his mind. As usual, Cal was right.
“Hey!” Aria shouted from the ring. “You going to come in here?”
Laredo picked up his reins and felt the black horse’s immediate response. “I’ll be right there,” he called back to Aria.
Laredo steered the horse back toward the ring. He leaned down out of the saddle and unfastened the gate. The black waited patiently until he was asked to move through the gate, and then he stood quiet on the other side to allow Laredo to refasten the gate.
“Wow.” Aria’s voice came from behind him. “Neat trick. Apparently, he’s got some good training.”
“Cal.” Laredo thought about his brother. “Cal starts all of the young horses at the ranch. He’s the one who can have them eating out of his hand in no time.”
She rode around him, turning in her saddle to flash him a beautiful smile. “Looks like you’re not so bad with that yourself. Come on, then. Let’s see what you can do.”
“What I can do?” A wave of nervous energy pulsed through his body.
The black began to walk. His head bobbed and his body moved with a decided rhythm that was so familiar that it was almost impossible for Laredo to stay tense. Muscle memory took over, and he was suddenly using his legs to guide the horse and letting his reins stay nice and relaxed.
He looked around the ring and found Aria. It was impossible to stop watching her. She was absolutely beautiful on a horse. Her long legs wrapped around the animal and kept her body perfectly balanced. There was a gentle confidence in the way she moved that the animal seemed to appreciate. The mare had gone from tense to calm. They executed turns, stopped on a
dime, and spun circles as though they were chasing a wily cow back to the herd. And the entire time, Aria moved with the animal as though it were the most natural thing to her next to breathing.
Laredo asked his horse to trot. The black was smooth as silk. It felt as though he had an expensive set of shocks that kept his body from moving much at all as he trotted around the ring. Laredo stayed relaxed. He had expected to tense up from the bouncing, but there was no need. He let himself flow with the movement and rhythm of the animal. Soon he was asking for more speed. The black immediately picked up a ground-eating lope that was as unhurried as anyone could want in a horse.
Then the two of them were both walking. Aria moved her mare into step beside Laredo’s mount, and he realized that he hadn’t felt this at ease in—well, in years. The sun was warm on his back. He felt a trickle of sweat slipping down the back of his neck from under his hat. There was a slight breeze tugging at the brim of his cowboy hat. It touched his face and caused him to close his eyes.
Without sight, he could feel the movement of the horse even more intensely. Each footfall, each step, and every single breath the animal took. Beside him, he heard Aria’s mare’s lighter steps. He heard the creak of leather as her saddle moved on the mare’s back. It was earthy and primal, and as he thought about the way she sat astride that animal with such poise and confidence, he realized that there was something incredibly arousing about it as well.
“You’re smiling.”
Her words were backed by a smile. He could hear it. Laredo turned his head and looked down at her. His horse was just a shade taller, and he was most definitely taller than she was. It was an interesting perspective.
Aria sighed and reached down to stroke her horse’s neck. “I haven’t seen you smile in years.”
“I don’t have a lot of reasons to smile.” He could not stop watching her hand. The way her strong fingers gently massaged the mare’s neck gave him decadent ideas of what it might be like to feel her hands on his flesh.