Conard County Marine

by Rachel Lee

  He straightened and stretched his long legs. He went to the back of the horse trailer and clicked his tongue as he unfastened the locking mechanism and pulled the back open. Standing to the side as Valentine sidled, he slipped his hand over the roan’s rump and made his way to the animal’s head. Clipping on the lead, he clicked again while pulling slightly on the halter. Valentine, one of the best horses he’d ever met with the heart of a lion and the disposition of a lamb, obediently backed out.

  Once the big gelding had all four hooves on the driveway, Jake took him around a couple of turns to get him used to the environment and to work the kinks out of the trailer ride.

  Valentine raised his head and flicked his ears forward at the sound of whinnying in the distance. Look at that. He was already making friends. Valentine returned the call. He had excellent manners.

  Leading the gelding, he went through the big open doors. Once inside, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. The skylights were placed every few feet in the arched roof, flooding the arena with faint, early morning natural light. Only the center row of mercury vapor lights high above the arena area were on, and Jake suspected it was a bid to save electricity.

  Shoving his hands in his jeans pockets, he skirted the arena wall, watching the two riders who were working a small herd of cows inside the four-foot-high cambered plank wall. Realizing he wasn’t all that visible in the dim light, he rested his arms on the arena wall and watched a buckskin gelding perform, the horse’s movements quick, sharp and highly tuned as he prevented the wheeling, running steer from returning to the herd. A good cutting horse was poetry in motion as far as Jake was concerned, with the horse and rider as synchronized as man and animal could ever get. The horse’s athletic ability had to be top caliber for it to work and the animal had to have cow sense. When it really came together, it was showstopping. And his pulse sped up when he spied the gorgeous blonde putting a horse through his paces.

  But it wasn’t just the highly trained, athletic ability of the horse that he appreciated. It was the woman’s stillness, her grace, her oneness with her mount that made his pulse hit overdrive. She was something to see on a horse, especially one working like this one was. It was almost as though she were an extension of the gelding, her hands motionless, the hard, fast, twisting action of the horse barely shifting her in her seat. The lady could stick to a horse like lint; that was for damned sure. He allowed himself a small smile. And she looked mighty fine while she was doing it. He could see why Colton Valley Ranch had a top-notch reputation.

  Resting his forearms on top of the wall, he stared at her. She had on blue jeans and tan suede shotgun chaps, and a cinnamon-colored tank top showing off her tanned, toned arms. Her deerskin gloves were darkened with age and use, and she had her golden-blond hair pulled back and braided, but hair had escaped and wisped around her face. A straw maize hat with a multicolored scarf was tied around the crown on her head. She had sawdust in her hair and a big smudge of dirt on her cheek, and by rights she should have looked like a mess.

  But not this dynamo.

  She looked like she had just walked out of some fashion magazine. Boy howdy, those long legs in tight chaps were enough to make a man forget his good intentions about keeping his hands to himself.

  She worked the horse another fifteen minutes, then dismounted, handing the reins to another young woman, then took the reins of the horse the other rider had been warming up. She had just mounted when Jake stepped out of the shadows and started toward her.

  About halfway there, he got quite the jolt when he recognized the looker.

  It was the princess herself. Alanna Colton.

  *

  “Would you get a load of that?” Tamara LaCross said. “Holy cow.”

  Alanna Colton, perched in the saddle of one of the cutters she was training, followed the trajectory of her assistant’s gaze. In the distance, a man was striding toward them, leading a gorgeous blue roan. The horse had a black face, mane, tail and stockings, the coat a blue sheen and a leopard-patterned body.

  Feeling strangely breathless, she watched him advance. She glanced at the cowboy and a strange flutter unfurled in her midriff. The man wasn’t so bad, either.

  He was tall, six foot two at least. The cowboy literally radiated an aura of strength and masculinity. He was powerfully built with heavily muscled shoulders, but beneath his unquestionable virility, beneath his physical toughness, there was something...some indefinable quality that drew her. She wondered what kind of person really lay beneath his alpha image.

  He looked as if he had just ridden off the range. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and a dark blue Western-style shirt that fit him like a second skin. Threaded through the loops of his jeans was a wide hand-tooled belt that sported an engraved silver buckle, and on his feet he wore a pair of scuffed brown cowboy boots. His face was heavily shadowed by the broad brim of his gray Stetson, but even that couldn’t conceal the strong jawline.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he drawled.

  “Yes, how can I help you?” Alanna felt vaguely suspended as she met his steady gaze.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said, grabbing the brim of his hat and giving it a tug. “I’m looking for Buck Tressler.”

  “Buck’s on an errand in town. How can I help you?”

  “He hired me to work with your stallion Zorro. Name’s Jake McCord.”

  Oh, shoot, this was the horse whisperer Fowler had agreed to hire to work with that damn rogue stallion he had foisted on her without speaking to her first. Sure she had agreed they needed to infuse the stables with some blooded stock, but she hadn’t expected him to pay way too much for an unmanageable stallion. Fowler wasn’t the most patient person when it came to working with horses. In fact, Alanna liked it much better when her brother spent his time focused on Colton Incorporated. Since their father’s disappearance, Fowler had been on edge for the last couple of months with he and Zane fighting over his longtime girlfriend, Tiffany and her possible involvement in their father’s kidnapping. Her family seemed more fractured than usual.

  That all seemed to be resolved now with Zane blissfully happy with his administrative assistant, Mirabella, now his wife. Alanna liked and admired the willowy redhead, and was pleased to welcome her into the family.

  But with Fowler’s interference in her domain, she now had to work with this tantalizing man. She didn’t go in for that horse-whispering mumbo jumbo and was skeptical of the practice that promised near-miraculous results that were misleading at best and damaging at worst.

  Now he’d hired this phony. Jake the Fake, as far as she was concerned.

  “Alanna Colton,” she said as he extended his hand toward her. “Welcome to Colton Valley Ranch.” She pulled off her glove and placed her hand in his. She was bombarded by disturbing new impressions and the tantalizing warmth of his callused palm sliding over hers. Handsome? No, not exactly, but there was a compelling attractiveness about him, an attractiveness that was unfeigned and indestructible. Dark eyebrows arched over blue eyes, flecked with gold and amber, and the thick long lashes accentuated their hypnotic intensity, the stubble of beard along his jaw a dark, sexy shadow.

  There was something very intriguing about his face, something that touched her in the most profound way. It revealed a depth of character, an inner strength, but it also revealed an imperviousness that had been carved by disillusionment. It was the face of a man who had forged on alone, a man whose sensuous mouth had been hardened by grim determination. And, against her will, Alanna felt an immediate affinity for him that she had never felt for another human being. Her keen awareness of him as a man had an immobilizing effect on her, and she was conscious of nothing except the warmth of his touch and his unwavering gaze.

  He was a man of contradictions, and he confused her.

  “Thank you kindly,” he responded.

  Alanna didn’t want to let go of his hand, and she reluctantly withdrew it from his grasp. Impatiently, she thought this was da
mned inconvenient. No way did she need another alpha male in her life who told her what to do. Not to mention, she was wary of anyone who professed to “have a way with horses.” She’d already had her brother undermine her, and before his disappearance her father just couldn’t let go of control of the stables even though he often told her she was in charge. She felt like an island surrounded by sharks and if she ever tried to leave, she would drown. She was at the very worst undermined and at the very best ineffectual. Along with running every aspect of a busy and thriving stable, training cutters for market, and now dealing with a dangerous and untrainable stallion, Alanna was working with her new outreach project. Colton Valley Ranch Gives Back was a program for inner-city kids that taught them how to handle horses and provided a safe environment to learn about responsibility, leadership and community. “Tamara, continue working Samson.”

  Swinging her leg over the saddle and dropping to the ground, Alanna turned. “Yes, ma’am,” Tamara said, taking the reins from Alanna’s outstretched hand.

  “Let me show you your lodgings and where you can stable your horse,” Alanna said. The sooner she put distance between them the better. She still had a full day. But Buck wasn’t due back for at least another thirty minutes, and she didn’t want to delegate this task to anyone else. Jake was an employee and new here. She did want to make him feel comfortable, even with his questionable profession.

  “Valentine,” he said.

  She approached the roan. Jake watched her with an unsettling steadiness that made her knees a little weak. Reaching out, she rubbed Valentine’s forelock, and he pushed his nose into her hand with an exhale of air. Then nudged her as if he wanted to make friends. Charmed by the gelding’s soft blue eyes and friendly temperament, she couldn’t help herself, she slid her hand down the animal’s smooth neck. “Really, that’s his name?” She smiled, moving around Valentine, her hand running over him. Valentine stood still and calm. “And, I can see why. This marking on him is heart-shaped.”

  “It’s a birthmark, but even though he can’t perform, he still loves the ladies.”

  “He’s gorgeous, and you’ve taken good care of him.”

  “Yes, ma’am, he’s a fine partner.”

  The horse nuzzled her again, and she ran her hand over his velvety nose. “You’re a lover not a fighter, huh?” Valentine nickered softly and flicked his ears forward.

  “This way, Mr. McCord.” He stepped to the side, making way for her to pass him, and with a gentle guide to the small of her back, his hand big and warm, he dropped back to allow her to pass, but the brief touch had been electric.

  She headed for the back of the arena and the big double doors. They exited through into a wide corridor with a row of box stalls to each side, closing the doors behind them. Walking side by side, she led him around the side of the arena, and Valentine pranced, his head up again, this time a loud whinny splitting the quiet air. Several mares in the paddock they were passing trotted over to the fence. She didn’t blame them. He was quite the handsome specimen.

  She laughed at his antics and was impressed with the way Jake settled him down with an ease she’d never seen on any horse person she’d worked with, not even some very competent old-timers. It was a sense of balanced energy that radiated out of him as natural and as basic as Jake himself.

  “I guess you weren’t exaggerating. He is quite the ladies’ man.”

  He scrutinized her intently as if he had already made up his mind about her, but had to switch gears. Not a surprise. A lot of people pigeonholed the Coltons into fancy folk slots, but getting her hands dirty, working the horses, running the stables wasn’t just what she did for the ranch, it was her life. Her father had steered her toward jumping, but it was barrel racing she’d loved and competing was her guilty pleasure. His contemplative tone tinged with an undercurrent of amusement, he said softly, “I don’t exaggerate, ma’am.”

  “Unless there’s a campfire and some tall tales to be told,” she quipped before she could stop her wayward mouth.

  He slid a sidelong glance her way, some of that cynicism fading with the twinkle in his gorgeous blue eyes. “I don’t tell tall tales,” he said. “You know, unless there’re some greenhorns to sucker.”

  She laughed as they came out to the main thoroughfare between the barns and headed toward the farthest, newest of the buildings.

  She turned left and led him to the wide-open doors of the barn closest to the apartments. Walking into the interior, Valentine’s hooves muffled against the black, rubber floor mat over a shiny brick floor. Curious by nature, many of the horses in the barn stuck their heads out into the main hall and with an eerie stillness they watched Jake with interest as if he exuded something irresistible...a silent communication. She frowned. That was interesting. She’d never seen that before. What was it about this man that made not only the horses sit up and take notice, but seemed to excite the very air around him?

  She noticed a stable hand had Firecracker crosstied at one of their two wash racks. The prized pure white horse was an excellent broodmare for their cutters, but Alanna suspected she would be better at throwing foals suited to barrel racing.

  Firecracker started to get antsy and Jake stopped short. His gaze went to the horse. As the stable hand untied her, she broke away.

  Jake dropped the lead line to Valentine and ran toward the horse. Firecracker came to a stop and danced until Jake got to her. He whispered something, took ahold of the halter and immediately turned the horse in a tight circle, touching the quivering horse’s neck, quieting her immediately. The stable hand approached and Jake said, “Probably got a whiff of a stallion and it excited her. Just be aware if she starts to get anxious again, untie and lead her around a few times until she quiets down. I know it’s an extra step, but will ensure she doesn’t bolt.”

  The stable hand nodded and thanked Jake.

  He came back to the docile and quiet roan and picked up his lead line. “Lead on,” Jake said. Alanna had to absorb this new information about Jake. It was obvious he knew what he was doing, but horse whispering was just a fancy name for natural horsemanship. It was true Firecracker was aptly named, but Alanna had never seen her respond so easily to someone.

  She stopped at the end of the barn and indicated a corner stall. “You can use this box stall which is cleaned daily. Our horses are fed four times a day with fresh water daily. If your horse requires special needs you can speak with the stable manager for this barn. His name is Billy Jones.”

  “Valentine is fit as a fiddle. No extras required.”

  She nodded. “All right. He can answer any questions or feel free to ask me.”

  He pulled open the sliding stall door with the black steel half grill across the length of the gleaming cedar planks. Guiding Valentine in, he unclipped the lead rope and slid the door closed. Valentine tossed his head and blew and snorted as he explored the interior of his temporary new home.

  Alanna noticed how big, strong and sure Jake’s hands were as he handled the large roan with ease. Obviously a man who had been around horses his whole life. She pushed back her curiosity. She wasn’t going to ask. Getting personal with him wasn’t on the agenda. Although, her questions burned in the back of her skull.

  “The yoke...” He trailed off, looking at how to open it so Valentine could poke his head out. “He’s a curious cuss and will want to stick his head out to survey the area. He doesn’t bite at all.”

  She stepped up to the grill and turned to him. “The latch is right here,” she pointed out. Jake got close, so close she got a whiff of him flavored with a woodsy, citrus scent that made her want to turn her head into his chest and breathe deep.

  “Where?”

  She reached out and captured his wrist, guiding his hand to the latch. His skin was smooth and warm. The double combination of smell and touch sent her heart into overdrive, pounding with a hard beat. “Right here.”

  “Of all the newfangled...” He fumbled around, then made a gotcha sound. “There w
e go,” he said as he slid the cover to the side and latched it.

  He was still standing too close and her gaze connected with his. Alanna experienced that same flutter as she fell victim to the laughter in his eyes. She had a sudden and nearly overpowering urge to touch him again, but she drew a slow, measured breath and deliberately hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her chaps.

  He was watching her with that unsettling steadiness again. She made herself back away just to be out of his disturbing presence.

  Her voice was only slightly uneven when she said, “I assume you brought your own tack.”

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes, it’s in my truck parked up at the arena. I’ll unload it later.”

  Okay, more devastating when he smiled. It disarmed her even more. “Let me show you the tack room.”

  “You have a chandelier in a barn,” he drawled, stopping and looking up.

  She smiled. “Yes, there’s no reason we can’t be elegant and refined, even in a barn.”

  He shook his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  It was clear he didn’t agree. “We have a heated tack room, two wash stations that include hot water, a heated viewing area for our customers, and an upper level split loft area for hay.”

  Five minutes later she took him over to the apartments, leading him through the great room with its comfy furniture and TV, past the tricked-out gourmet kitchen with two old-fashioned big farmer’s tables where a dark-haired woman who looked about the same age as Alanna stood at the stove, her back to them.

  “Hi, Ellen,” Alanna said.

  The woman turned and smiled, her hazel eyes warm and infectious. “Hello, Miss Colton.”