As it was, he was pulling away from her cabin as Henri drove up, her truck’s headlights sweeping the area.
He put on the brakes. Driving off wasn’t mannerly.
She came alongside, rolled down her window and flashed him a grin.
He hit the button and lowered his window. His unshaven face said it all. “Hi, Henri.”
“Hi, Matt.”
“I’d intended to be gone before you got here.”
“Doesn’t matter. Word gets around. Did you have a nice evening?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Does she still want to help feed this morning?”
“Absolutely. She’s waiting for you, probably peeking out the window right this minute.”
“She’s had a crush on you for years.”
“I know.”
“Should be an interesting rest of the week. See you at the barn.” She rolled up the window.
He drove to the barn because it was quicker and he was already late. When he walked in, CJ was working from the front, his preferred starting point. He ended the tuneless whistle that accompanied every job he tackled and broke into a grin. “Didn’t have time to shave, huh?”
“Hey, CJ. Sorry I’m late.”
“I understand completely. I’ll bet you’re glad Nick and I made you drop us off.”
“Uh, yeah.” He ducked in the tack room to hang up his jacket and fetch some work gloves.
“It didn’t go well? Man, it seemed like you two—”
“It went well.” He stepped out of the tack room and had to go back for his phone. Not on his game this morning.
“And you don’t want to talk about it. That’s cool.”
He glanced at CJ. The guy was only trying to be nice. “You know how it is.”
“No, sadly, I don’t know how it is. I’m a lonesome cowboy looking for love.”
“She’s out there somewhere.” He managed an encouraging smile and made tracks for the other wheelbarrow propped at the back of the barn.
“Just what I need, a woman with a lousy sense of direction.”
Matt laughed. Time to lighten up, but that was easier said than done. When he was with Lucy, emotion carried the day…or night. But he wasn’t with her now, and reason had claimed the spotlight.
He’d loaded hay flakes into the wheelbarrow and started back down the aisle when his phone pinged with a text. He pulled it out. Candace. Then it pinged again. Unidentified number. He quickly scanned the text. Mary Jane, wanting to meet for coffee. Another ping with just a number. Shannon, asking him out for a drink tonight.
“Is that your phone?”
“Yep.” The follow-up chimes came in and he silenced the phone.
“What’s with all the texts? I can’t picture Lucy bombarding you like that.”
“She isn’t.” He tucked the phone away and picked up the wheelbarrow handles.
“Then who?”
“Some of the women I danced with last night.” He opened Thunderbolt’s stall door.
“Holy crap! The sun’s barely up!”
“I’m aware.” He delivered hay to his stallion along with a friendly pat.
“Look, since you’re otherwise occupied, how about giving them my number?”
“Glad to. Which brings up the question, how did they get mine?” He closed Thunderbolt’s stall door.
“You didn’t give it to them?”
“Sure didn’t.”
“Then I’m stumped, although I’ve heard you can find anybody’s number online if you work at it.”
Matt glanced back at Thunderbolt and sighed. “That’s it, then. I made a website for my breeding operation. Put my number there.”
“Yeah, but it’s been up for months.”
“I know.” He moved on down the line, depositing flakes into empty hay nets.
“I can’t believe the haircut inspired women to start texting you at the crack of dawn.”
“Me, either.”
“But even if that’s not it, I’m gonna cover my bases. I’m booking an appointment at Tres Beau as soon as my old haircut grows out. Too bad I just—” He was interrupted by the barn door opening. “Well, good morning, ladies. Not much wind for a change.”
“Yep,” Henri said. “I’m happy about that.”
Lucy was in the house. Matt’s internal temperature shot up. “Henri, were you and Lucy planning to handle the oats again?”
“We will,” Henri said. “Count on us for the rest of the week. I’ll put it on the schedule.”
“Sounds good.” He went back to delivering hay, but fatigue was getting the better of him. How was Lucy doing? They’d taken a couple of short cat naps in between making love, but those couldn’t be counted as actual sleep.
Should he have left earlier? Probably. But her enthusiasm had never waned. She’d initiated the action the third time, teasing him playfully, taking the top position, driving him crazy….
He blinked, shook his head and glanced around. Almost finished. Then he and CJ could turn out the geldings who weren’t getting oats.
He’d left in such a rush that he and Lucy had no plan. Would she want to spend any time with him today? Would she want him to spend the night again? Was that understood?
After delivering the last hay flake, he put away the wheelbarrow. CJ’s was already propped against the back wall. At some point CJ must have come past him, but he’d completely missed that.
As for CJ, he was leaning against the stall where Henri and Lucy were making over the buckskin colt Aristotle and Henri’s mare Guinevere. Matt walked in that direction.
CJ looked over as he approached. “Ready to turn out some of the boys?”
“Thought we might.” He stood beside CJ and gazed into the stall where Lucy and Henri were feeding mom and colt small carrot chunks. Lucy’s enraptured expression made him smile. She’d always been nutty about the young horses.
She looked up and caught him watching her. “I’m in love.”
“I can tell.” She was talking about the colt. That didn’t matter to his heart, which pumped faster.
“Lucy’s given me a beautiful sketch of these two.” Henri glanced his way. “She showed me the one she did of you and Thunderbolt. If you want, I can take them both to Peter for framing.”
“That would be great. Let me know how much and I’ll—”
“I have an idea.” Lucy fed the colt the last carrot, wiped her hands on her jeans and turned to Matt. “Before you get that image framed, you might want to consider making a digital version so later you can get some high-quality copies.”
“I can understand getting a digital copy in case the original gets messed up, but why would I need more?”
“You could either sell them or use them as giveaways to promo your breeding operation.”
Henri’s head came up. “That’s brilliant. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that years ago. The one of Aristotle and Guinevere would make a fabulous promo image. But if I’m using it commercially, you should get paid.”
“Same with my picture,” Matt said, “but I have no idea what a fair price would be.”
“It’s simple.” Lucy smiled. “The price is zero. Both sketches are gifts and I won’t take money for them. That’s final.”
Matt shook his head. “But if we’re using them for—”
“I understand her point, Matt. What she created for us is a labor of love.”
There was that word again. It kept coming up and socking him in the gut. “But we’re using the picture to make money.”
“With my blessing,” Lucy said.
“Okay, I’ll go with that.” Henri pinned her with a sharp glance. “But what if I wanted to commission something specific?”
“Like what?”
“An image for a Christmas card, and another one for the thank-you cards I send out to guests after they’ve gone home. I’ve bought whatever Western-themed ones I could find, but this would be better. I can’t remember the term for presenting the same look all the time,
but that’s what this would do.”
“It’s called branding.”
“That’s it. Your sketches have the right feel for promoting a ranch or a breeding operation. It’s partly the subject matter and partly the medium. The images look rustic, and we specialize in rustic around here, right, Matt?”
“Never thought about it. I guess that’s true of the Buckskin. Me, I just specialize in sperm.”
Everybody cracked up.
He didn’t get why. “I’m not sure how you’d brand that, though.”
“Subtly.” Lucy had laughed so hard she’d given herself the hiccups. She wiped tears from her eyes. “Very… subtly.”
CJ punched him lightly on the arm. “Hey, buddy. Let’s turn out some critters.”
“Okay.” He followed CJ to the back of the barn. Shortly after that they led Thunder and three of the geldings outside.
CJ eyed him as they walked the horses to the pasture gate. “You must have had some kind of night. I’ve never seen you this loopy.”
“I’m not loopy.”
“Oh, no? Mister I specialize in sperm?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not going to explain it. In your current condition, you wouldn’t get it, anyway.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Not by a long shot. But damn, I would love to be in your shoes, even loopy as you are. You just spent the night with a wonderful woman and you have a dozen more texting you at daybreak.”
“Not a dozen. Three.” That he knew of. He’d silenced his phone and hadn’t looked at it again.
“Plus Lucy makes four women currently hot for your body. That’s rock star status, bro.”
“I only want Lucy.” He led his charges into the pasture, unclipped the lead ropes and smacked them on the rump to send them off.
“From where I stand, you’ve got her.”
Matt sighed. “No, I don’t, CJ. And the hell of it is, I never will.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lucy needed to talk to Matt privately, but that wasn’t in the cards. He and CJ turned out the horses and then they walked together to the bunkhouse for some breakfast. Poor guy probably needed a meal and a nap.
But God, was he funny when he was exhausted. I specialize in sperm. Well, yeah. He was standing Thunderbolt at stud. And Matt himself was… a stud. No getting around that. Even when he was dead on his feet, he was the sexiest guy she’d ever come across.
Henri offered her a ride to the dining hall for breakfast and asked to join her. She was glad for the company. She was a little rocky, herself, after virtually no sleep and a marathon of lovemaking.
Once they had their food and coffee, Henri got right to the point. “I need the 411 on you and Matt. You’re both very dear to me and I don’t want to be blindsided by a crisis.”
“I don’t want that, either.” Lucy sipped her coffee to buy time. “I’ve been crazy about him since I was fourteen.”
“I know that. Moving on.”
“At nineteen, I announced I was in love with him and wanted to live with him in Montana. He turned me down.”
“Aw. That explains a lot.”
“Fast forward to last Friday. I built my career, found a guy, and planned to parade my new husband in front of Matt.”
Henri blinked. “That’s why you booked us for the honeymoon?”
“Partially. I missed this place like crazy and wanted to come back anyway. The honeymoon gave me an excuse, but subconsciously I think I needed to show Matt I had a handsome man who wanted me.”
Henri shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can see why you’d do that, but it’s not a good reason to get married.”
“That’s for sure. I’m not excusing Kurt for what he did, but maybe… if he sensed I didn’t love him with all my heart…”
“There’s a better way to handle the problem than cheating.”
Lucy sighed. “Of course. And there’s the matter of my best friend having an affair with my fiancé. But marrying him would have been a huge mistake. They did me a favor.”
“I’d agree, but that doesn’t absolve them.”
“No. But I’m not as self-righteous as I was when I ran out of that church.”
“That’s a good thing. Self-righteousness makes you old before your time.”
“I totally believe that.”
“So what about Matt?”
Lucy ducked her head. “Henri, that’s all my fault. I invited him to spend the night with me.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. He could have refused.”
She screwed up her courage and looked Henri in the eye. “But it turns out he’s wanted me all this time. He’s only human.”
“So are you.”
Her shoulders dropped. “So human. That man is my kryptonite.”
“I used to say that about Charley.”
“But in your case, it was a good thing.”
“Not at first. I was an Indiana farm girl. Midwestern through and through. My heart belonged to the land and the Wabash River.”
Lucy smiled. “I assume you got over that.”
“And caught flak from my entire family. My mom and dad have passed on, but my sisters and brother still give me hell for leaving my Indiana home.”
“I can’t imagine you anywhere else.”
“I can’t either… now. But when I made that leap of faith, going against my family’s wishes, I was scared stiff.”
“Did you leave a good job?”
“Tell me about it. I was a professor at Purdue.”
“You were a professor?”
“I don’t mention it often. It doesn’t matter, really, and I’d rather be thought of as a rancher. That fits better with the rustic image the Buckskin’s promoted through the years.”
“What were you a professor of?”
“Animal science. I wanted to raise buckskins, but I didn’t have the money and the family farm was for growing grain. Charley had both money and land. Besides, he turned me on. That’s the critical part of the equation.”
“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something.”
“And doing a bad job of it if you haven’t figured out the message yet. Here it is. Don’t build a life with someone who’s a good companion or a congenial business partner. Build it with someone who’s your kryptonite.”
Henri’s advice made a catchy sound bite, but Lucy didn’t dare take it literally. Her situation was very different from Henri’s. She wasn’t eager to breed horses for a living. Her degree was in marketing and Apple Grove was too small to support someone with her skills.
After breakfast, she went back to her cabin and picked up her sketchpad. But drowsiness overcame her and eventually she caved. Hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on her cabin door, she stripped down to her undies and crawled back into the unmade bed that still carried the scent of lovemaking.
The ping of a text woke her from an erotic dream involving Matt. Picking up her phone from the nightstand, she glanced at the screen. Exactly the name she wanted to see there.
I have an hour available now if you want to take a short trail ride. We’d have to leave in about ten minutes.
She texted back. You’re on. I’ll come to the stable.
I’ll ride over and pony Lucky Ducky. It’ll be good practice for Thunder and save you the trip.
Great.
She dressed quickly, pulled on her barn boots and brushed her hair. Fortunately, the new style was an easy keeper. A hat with a brim would be nice, but she hadn’t bought one, so the stretchy knit would have to do.
Shoving her arms into the sleeves of her shearling jacket, she waited by the window. The first time she’d seen Matt, before she’d known his name, the sound of his voice or the color of his eyes, he’d been in the round pen schooling a troublesome bay.
Although the horse had tried every trick in the book to gain control, Matt had used patience and a firm hand to win him over. He’d won her over, too. From then on, her h
eart had beat a little faster whenever Matt mounted up.
She’d denied herself that thrill for six long years. Anticipation churned in her stomach as she watched for him to come around the bend.
There. Her breath caught. As the stallion arched his neck and tossed his head, Matt’s gloved hands stayed easy on the reins. Silver decorating the hand-tooled saddle caught the sunlight as Thunderbolt pranced a little. Matt’s thighs flexed as he tightened his grip until the stallion settled.
She smiled. Odds were good that Matt relished the prospect of this ride as much or more than she did. A cowboy didn’t buy a handsome stallion and a beautiful saddle for solo rides down lonely trails. City guys drove sports cars. Cowboys rode magnificent horses like Thunderbolt.
Lucky Ducky walked calmly along on the stallion’s left, his chest even with Thunder’s haunches. Tenderness for her old pal made her a little misty-eyed. He looked good for his age.
After buttoning her coat, she put on her gloves and hat before walking outside. “Spectacular entrance. I’m impressed.”
Matt grinned as he reined in the stallion. “That was the idea.” Looping the reins around the horn, he dismounted before unhooking Lucky’s lead rope.
Then he coiled the rope and tied it to his saddle. “I’m damn proud of this animal. I love showing him off.” He walked toward her and rested his gloved hands on her shoulders. “I’ve missed you. Did you sleep?”
“I did. Had a hot dream about you.”
“Hm.” He gazed into her eyes and his grip tightened. “When you look at me like that…” His chest heaved. “I forget everything else.”
“I’m the same.” She moistened her lips. “Do you think... is it because we waited so long?”
“Maybe.” His attention drifted to her mouth. “It’s like I’ve found the best thing in the world and I can’t get enough.”
“Me, too.”
“We can’t leave the horses and go inside, though. Lucky would be okay, but Thunder could wander off. He’s not completely trained.”
She glanced over his shoulder. “You mean like he’s wandering now? And Lucky Ducky is following him.”
Matt whirled around. “Damn. Thunder!” He whistled through his teeth. The stallion kept meandering toward the next cabin in the circle. “I don’t want to chase him down on foot. He might just take off.”
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