Having Chance so close that she could feel the heat from his chest against her back made her feel a whole host of sensations—but “safer” definitely wasn’t one of them.
Chapter Nine
He needed some air. Right now, the scent of Chloe’s shampoo was filling up his senses and making him think and feel things he shouldn’t be thinking or feeling. If he didn’t get moving, he was liable to do something one of them was going to regret.
For a moment, in an act of self-preservation, Chance had considered just going ahead and guiding the mare outside. But he had a feeling that it was in the best interests of both of them if he asked her first. He thought it would be better if Chloe was prepared rather than just springing things on her. She seemed to be jumpy enough against him as it was.
“So,” he asked her, “are you game?”
For the life of her, Chloe didn’t know exactly what he was asking her. She knew what she wanted Chance to be asking her, but that would be leaving herself wide open for all sorts of complications that she knew she just couldn’t handle.
“Game for what?” she asked uneasily.
“To take a little ride.”
“And do what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Ride?” It was more of a question because he didn’t know what she was expecting to hear, or what she wanted him to say.
“Oh. How far?”
She felt him shrug against her back. “I thought just around the outside of the stable for tonight. Next time we’ll go farther—and on separate horses,” he added. She heard the amusement in his voice. And then he asked, “Ready?”
Chloe was ready, all right. To jump off the horse and run back to her cottage. But for some reason she nodded her assent. Whom was she kidding? It wasn’t the horse she wasn’t ready for. It was Chance.
She wasn’t ready to have his arms tighten around her as he took control of the reins, to feel his warm breath on her neck as he coaxed the mare out of the stable, to feel his muscled thighs around hers as they rode the perimeter of the corral. Not at all ready.
Suddenly the evening seemed to get too warm, and she had to steel herself against this man wrapped around her.
“You all right?” he asked her. “You’re as stiff as a board.”
She gave him the first excuse that came into her head. “Just trying not to fall off.”
“You can’t fall off,” he pointed out. “I have you, and besides, Mirabel isn’t exactly trotting. If she were going any slower, she’d be going backward.”
Up against him the way she was, she couldn’t get comfortable. It would mean lowering her guard, and she couldn’t afford to do that. “I had no idea the corral was this large,” she commented.
“It’s not really. It just seems that way because we’re moving around it at a snail’s pace. We can go faster,” Chance offered, pretending to get ready to kick his heels into the mare’s flanks to make her pick up her pace.
“No, no,” Chloe protested, raising a hand as if that somehow made her plea more emphatic. “This pace is just fine. Unless you mind,” she added, suddenly realizing that riding like this had to be immensely boring to someone like Chance. Given this speed, any second now he was liable to fall asleep.
Mind? Chance thought, astonished that she should phrase it that way. Why would he mind having his arms around a beautiful woman, holding her a hair’s breadth away from him?
Being here like this with Chloe reminded him that it had been a long, long time since he had allowed himself to get physically close to someone without worrying about the resulting consequences.
“No, I’m just fine,” he assured her. “Matter of fact,” he told her as they approached the stable door, “we can go around again if you’d like.”
Yes, she’d “like”—which was just the problem. With very little effort, she could just close her eyes and transport herself to another place in time, a time when everything seemed right in the world.
A time when she fantasized about the future that lay ahead of her. A future that included the husband she loved and a family. Having Chance hold her like this made it so easy for her to remember—so easy to yearn.
She had to stop doing that, she silently upbraided herself.
It was time to stop dreaming and face reality—a reality that included neither her husband nor a family.
“No, that’s all right,” she told him. “Once is enough for now—if you don’t mind. We both have things to do,” she added, being deliberately vague.
“I don’t,” he told her honestly. Lord, but she smelled good, even out here with the night air diluting the mind-numbing scent that was still lingering in her hair. “This is the guys’ free time,” he pointed out, explaining, “They’re either doing homework or just kicking back. After I check in on them, the rest of my evening is wide open,” he told her.
“Oh, well, mine isn’t.”
What was with her? Two lies in one day? But she absolved herself of the guilt over this last one. It was self-preservation. She simply couldn’t be around Chance in her vulnerable state. There was just something about having him close to her like this with the dusk slipping into nightfall that made her uneasy. Not because she thought that Chance might try something but because she was afraid that she might.
“I have to get back,” she told him.
“Sure, I understand.”
He wasn’t about to make things difficult for her, and he certainly wasn’t about to press her for details. The last thing he wanted was to make Chloe feel as if he was encroaching on her space or trying to box her in in any sort of way.
After bringing the mare back into the stable, Chance dismounted, then turned to face Chloe and offered her his assistance to get down.
Chloe hesitated, but she knew that she wasn’t in any position to attempt a graceful dismount. Not yet. Because she had absolutely no idea how. So she took the arms that were being offered to her and allowed Chance to help her down.
That maneuver involved getting very close to him for another very long moment.
A moment in which her heart seemed to stop even as her pulse accelerated to double time.
Chance picked her up off the mare and brought her down, holding her by the waist and sliding the length of her body down a hint away from his until her feet were finally touching the ground.
He was holding her close enough for her imagination to vividly take flight—and to silently lament when he finally withdrew his hands from around her waist.
When she opened her mouth to thank him, Chloe found that she couldn’t speak. Her mouth had completely gone dry, and her words stuck to the roof of her mouth.
Swallowing, she gave communication another try. This time, she did something more than just croak. “Thank you for the lesson.”
Chance laughed shortly. “I’d hardly call that a lesson.”
“Okay, have it your way,” she allowed. “Thank you for the introduction...to horseback riding,” she added belatedly, realizing it might sound as if she was thanking him for something entirely different.
“My pleasure,” he told her.
It was only after she’d turned from him and began to hurriedly walk away, back to the guesthouse, that she heard him call after her, saying, “This isn’t over, you know. I intend to give you that riding lesson.”
“When I have time,” she tossed over her shoulder without even looking back.
She wasn’t about to make promises. She’d had enough of that.
“Make time.”
It wasn’t a suggestion; it was clearly an order.
His order rang in her ears as she all but ran the rest of the way to the guesthouse.
Chance remained outside longer than he knew he should have, watching her and admiring Chloe’s form until she was gone from sight.
Nothing wrong with that, Chance told himself as he turned away and went back into the stable. Just admiring one of the Lord’s finer creations, nothing more than that.
And he would continue telling himself that, Chance thought, until it finally stuck.
* * *
“Something on your mind?” Sasha asked her the next day.
Graham’s wife had sat in on one of Chloe’s sessions with Ryan and then another session with Brandon.
Chloe knew she had to be sporadically supervised, especially since she was so new to Peter’s Place. But she still couldn’t help being a little nervous.
Added to that was the fact that she kept expecting Chance to come walking in at any moment, announcing that he was going to give her another lesson. Right now it felt as if the last of her nerves had been worn down to a tiny nub. She felt so tense inside that if she were a guitar string, she would have snapped in half.
But she was trying her very best not to appear that way on the surface.
Judging by Sasha’s question she wasn’t succeeding very well.
“No,” she replied, trying to sound laid-back. “Other than doing right by these boys,” Chloe qualified at the last moment.
Sasha smiled. “Nice answer but not the one I was looking for.” She leaned forward in her chair. “I mean, is there anything else going on? You seem like you’re waiting for something to happen.”
Obviously, being an undercover spy was never going to be an option for her, Chloe thought.
“No,” she denied again. And then she decided to own up a little, hoping that would be enough for Sasha. “I guess being observed puts me on edge a little. I realize that I’m not as good as you are at this, but—”
“Nobody’s comparing us,” Sasha told her firmly. “We all have our own individual styles. I’m just here to observe whether or not you’re connecting with the boys—and I’m happy to say that you are.”
The truth was, Chloe was somewhat nervous about measuring up to the woman who had hired her. After all, these had initially been “Sasha’s boys” and in a sense, they still were. She’d been rather afraid that both the boys and Sasha would view her as an interloper.
“You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” Chloe told her.
“Then it’s mutual,” Sasha told her with a warm smile. “Because it makes me very happy to honestly be able to say that.” Sasha looked at her a little more closely. “But are you sure there’s nothing else? You don’t need some time off, do you?”
“Time off?” Chloe echoed. “I just got here.” She felt as if she was just beginning to get the hang of the routine. “I’ve still got a long ways to go before I make a niche at Peter’s Place. Why would I want to take some time off?”
Sasha shrugged. “To acclimate yourself to the area a little more. This is different from living in the city,” she said sympathetically.
“Amen to that,” Chloe said with a laugh. “It’s almost too quiet here at night to sleep, but I’m slowly getting used to that, too.”
“So you’re settling in?” Sasha asked.
“Absolutely,” Chloe told her with feeling.
“I’m glad because I can’t tell you how nice it is to have another woman around. I mean, I have the girls,” she said, referring to her two daughters, “and I love them to pieces, but it’ll be a lot of years before either one of them is anywhere near being someone I can actually talk to.” She quickly amended, “I mean, Graham is a wonderful man and he’s really great with the girls, but well, you know men, there’s a lot they don’t understand when it comes to the way we women feel.”
Smiling at her, Sasha put her hand over Chloe’s.
“I just want you to know that if you ever need to just talk—about nothing or about something—I’m here for you.”
When Chloe couldn’t help but laugh, Sasha looked at her a little uncertainly, wanting to be let in on the joke. “Did I just say something funny?”
“Not exactly.” The whole thing struck her as rather ironic. “What you just said to me is what I told all four of the boys after I had my first session with each of them.”
“Well, my offer was rendered from a nonprofessional position,” Sasha said. “As a friend,” she further qualified. And then she continued. “And as a friend, I have to say that being around you right now reminds me of that old adage, the one about being a cat on a hot tin roof.”
“I make you think of that?” Chloe asked, secretly wondering if the same thing had occurred to Brandon and Ryan, the two boys she’d seen today for their sessions.
“Well, not exactly,” Sasha admitted. “But certainly close to that. Tell me, are you waiting for something to happen, or for someone? Or is it just that I make you very nervous?”
“You don’t make me nervous,” Chloe quickly told her. How could she tell her boss that it was Chance who made her nervous?
It was time to be truthful with herself. To admit that she wasn’t afraid of the riding lesson he intended to give her—or the horse—although she wasn’t exactly confidence personified when it came to either. What had her feeling so internally jumpy was the man. And the prospect of her next interaction with him.
Her next solo interaction with him, she silently emphasized.
Interacting with Chance when there were others around was fine. They were just two employees at Peter’s Place with the same prime focus: getting the teens assigned to the ranch to find their better inner core.
She could go on working alongside Chance all day like that.
It was the anticipation of being alone with him that had her acting like that so-called restless cat Sasha had just likened her to. Because being alone with Chance woke things up within her that were better off left dormant and sleeping.
She was certainly better off if they were left dormant and sleeping, Chloe thought.
Looking at Sasha now, she realized that the woman was still waiting for some sort of response from her as to why she was acting so unsettled.
Sasha seemed almost hungry for some sort of shared confidence, Chloe thought. She supposed that it was almost cruel of her not to say something, even though it was against the privacy she tried so desperately to maintain.
Taking a breath, Chloe made her decision. She’d confide in her half brother’s wife. Maybe then they could move past this and get on with her work at Peter’s Place.
“Chance wants to give me riding lessons,” she told Sasha.
The other woman’s face literally lit up.
Chapter Ten
“Oh, really?” Sasha asked. If possible, she sat up even a little straighter, her interest unwaveringly engaged. Delight was all but vibrating in her voice.
“Yes,” Chloe replied. Her voice was as quiet as Sasha’s was vibrant and enthused.
“You don’t know how to ride a horse?” Sasha questioned, clearly surprised.
Chloe shrugged. Not wanting to get into a discussion about that, she just said, “The opportunity never came up.”
For a second, Sasha was quiet and Chloe thought that, mercifully, that was the end of the discussion on that topic. But then Sasha looked at her, her smile even wider than it had been a moment ago, her eyes dancing.
She clapped her hands together. “This is wonderful!” the woman exclaimed.
“I wouldn’t exactly go that far,” Chloe protested, not really sure why her newly discovered sister-in-law would be so happy to find out that there was this definite gap in her education. “It just...is,” she finally said.
This was what she got for trying to be completely honest, Chloe thought a second later. Rather than moving on, she had the feeling that she was about to get sucked down in the ocean by the undertow.
If the gleeful look of anticipation on Sasha’s face—the origin of which was a complete mystery to her—
wasn’t enough, Chance picked that exact moment to walk into the room.
The man had awful timing, Chloe thought, feeling her stomach tighten at the same time that there was this sinking sensation right in the center of it. She was definitely a woman torn.
“Speak of the devil,” Sasha declared, amusement as well as pleasure surrounding every syllable that she uttered.
Chance looked just a little taken aback. “Since when have I become the devil?” he asked uncertainly, not quite sure what he’d just walked in on.
Sasha rose from her chair. The binder she’d brought in with her to make notes while observing Chloe’s session was in her hands and pressed up against her chest.
“We were just talking about you,” she said dismissively. “Well, I’m sure I hear Maddie calling for me so I’ll just leave the two of you to it,” she said.
Chloe shifted self-consciously. Sasha had all but held up a sign with instructions on it as to what she thought they should do next once she left and they were alone.
One of Chance’s eyebrows arched as he turned to regard the woman who was left standing in the room.
“‘To it?’” he asked Chloe, torn between being bemused and confused.
“I told Sasha you offered to give me riding lessons.” Chloe cleared her throat. She couldn’t remember when she had ever felt more awkward. “Sasha thought it was a good idea.”
“Oh.” He nodded as if comprehending what he had just walked in on—except that Chloe wasn’t 100 percent convinced that he wasn’t reading a great deal more into Sasha’s comment. “Well, it is a good idea,” he told her. “Everyone should know how to ride.”
“I would think it’s more a matter of preference,” Chloe countered. “It’s not like it’s a life-or-death situation, like learning to swim.”
Chance wasn’t about to get into an involved discussion on the subject. He had a far simpler way to resolve it.
“Wouldn’t you rather know how to do something than not know how to do it?”
Chloe suppressed a sigh. She supposed that Chance did have a point. And she didn’t want him to think that she was reluctant to broaden her horizons.
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