“Huh,” was all Lefty said.
“Huh,” echoed Gimp.
“Huh yourselves,” she retorted. “You just don’t like admitting there’s more than one way to break a horse. Quirts and spurs don’t work on an animal like Leopard.”
“Yes, ma’am,” both men said.
There was no real heat on either side of the disagreement. The subject had been aired thoroughly since Elyssa had come back to the Ladder S and confounded the men by riding the savage stallion with little fuss and no danger.
Leopard’s unfailing gentleness with Elyssa still surprised the old cowhands, who were fond of predicting dire results from the stallion no man had been able to stay on top of. It galled their pride that a slender girl could do what tough, experienced men had failed repeatedly to do—ride the spotted stud that had a fearsome reputation as a man killer.
Uneasily Gimp looked over the stall at the big horse and the fragile-looking girl. Wearing the green silk dress, a blacksmith’s leather apron, and leather gloves, Elyssa was bending over Leopard’s left rear hoof, cleaning it with a blunt steel pick. Flashes of scarlet petticoat burned like fire in the dim light of the stall.
Gimp shook his head and muttered beneath his breath about foolish girls and man-killing studs.
“Huh,” was all Elyssa said.
Hiding a smile, Hunter bent over the manure rake and forked the last dirty straw into a wheelbarrow. He had worked with men like Gimp and Lefty before, old bachelors who complained about everyone and everything, including the friends they had known since they were knee-high to a short horse.
Hunter knew the complaints weren’t serious. They were just the cowhands’ way of being alive.
“S’pose you want me to shoe that spotted devil again,” Gimp muttered.
“How did you guess?” Elyssa asked, straightening.
“Combing cows out of them mountains is hard on shoes, and you’ll be doing a bunch of it.”
“Shoeing Leopard won’t be necessary,” Hunter said clearly. “She won’t be taking him out of sight of the house.”
“I can trim and file his hooves for you,” Elyssa said, ignoring Hunter. “I’m just no hand with a hammer.”
Bugle Boy’s stall door opened and shut with emphasis. Hunter strode across the aisle.
Gimp and Lefty looked at one another and went back down the aisle with surprising speed. They had learned during breakfast that the little boss and the new ramrod didn’t see eye to eye on a whole lot of subjects, especially if it involved Elyssa showing the Ladder S to Hunter from the back of a horse.
“Let me know who wins,” Gimp said just before he vanished into the yard.
Elyssa gave the empty doorway a disgusted look. Quickly she peeled off the leather apron, traded the hoof-pick for a brush, and led Leopard into the paddock. The stud wore neither bridle nor halter nor rope. She controlled him with no more than a tug on his mane and a low-voiced command.
“Running away?” Hunter challenged from the aisle outside Leopard’s stall.
“Leopard likes to be outdoors while I groom him.” Elyssa smiled slightly. “Do feel free to join us.”
To Elyssa’s surprise, Hunter opened the stall door and walked through it into the paddock.
Leopard turned his head and flattened his ears in blunt warning.
“Easy, boy,” Hunter said soothingly. “I’m not planning to hurt one hair of your spotted hide.”
Elyssa almost didn’t recognize Hunter’s voice. Instead of the abrupt, abrasive tone she was accustomed to hearing from him, he was using the same beguiling voice that he had used with Penny.
I could get used to that voice, Elyssa thought. It’s like being stroked with a black velvet glove.
The thought made her tremble slightly, secretly.
Leopard stamped and flicked his ears.
“Gently, Leopard,” Elyssa said in a low voice. “It’s all right. Not a rope or a blindfold in sight. I’m here, boy. No one is going to hurt you.”
For the space of several slow breaths, Leopard measured Hunter with feral eyes. Then the stud blew through his nostrils, shifted position so that he could keep an eye on Hunter without turning his head, and slowly relaxed his ears.
Elyssa’s voice crooned praise, joined by Hunter’s much deeper voice. Leopard’s ears flicked as he listened. After a few minutes he blew again, stamped one foot, and nudged Elyssa to get on with the grooming.
“You do love being petted, don’t you?” she said. “Well, I love petting you, so we’re even.”
Still singing Leopard’s praises, Elyssa began brushing the tall horse.
Though Hunter said nothing, he was impressed by Elyssa’s ability to get past the stud’s wariness.
After several minutes passed, it became clear to Hunter that Leopard was far more interested in being groomed than in stomping anyone. Slowly Hunter moved his right hand away from his gun belt.
“How did you get him to trust you?” Hunter asked.
“It started when he was born,” Elyssa said, brushing Leopard’s glossy hide. “Mother’s prize Arabian mare was bred by a mustang stallion that had escaped from the Shoshone.”
“So that’s where Leopard got his spots,” Hunter said. “The Shoshone trade with the Nez Percé, who are the best horse breeders this side of Ireland. Their Appaloosas are famous among plainsmen.”
“That’s what Bill said. Mother was too distraught to listen when she discovered what had happened.”
“Because the foal wouldn’t be purebred?”
“Partly. But mostly because the mare was too old to be in foal. She died when Leopard was born.”
Hunter whistled softly. “Did you get another mare to accept him?”
“No. Leopard was born out of season. There were no other mares nursing foals.”
Silently Hunter looked at the big stud. If Leopard had gone through a tough time as a foal, it didn’t show now. The horse was big, well made, obviously powerful.
“What did your mother do?” Hunter asked.
“She was going to shoot the foal rather than watch it starve, but I begged her to let me try to save him.”
With a remembering kind of smile, Elyssa brushed the stud’s broad, shiny barrel. Leopard gave a sigh that was almost a groan and half-closed his eyes, obviously relishing the feel of the brush.
“I washed Leopard down with a warm, slightly rough rag, acting like it was his mother’s tongue,” Elyssa said. “Then I helped him stand, and helped him up when he fell, and rubbed him all over with that rag and talked to him all through the day and night.”
With an intensity Hunter could barely shield, he watched the expressions chase across Elyssa’s face—sadness for the dead mare, pleasure in the foal, amusement at his attempts to stand, and above all, love for the dangerous stud who was standing half-asleep beneath her gentle hands.
Belinda never liked animals, Hunter realized. Not like this. Belinda chose a horse for its color and a cat because it matched her trousseau. I thought it was amusing, then.
Judas Priest, but I was stupid.
Still am.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be getting hard just watching a flirt groom a horse.
“What did you feed him?” Hunter asked, his voice almost rough. “Sugar mash?”
“We had a cow that was fresh, because my mother loved butter and cheese. Penny and I rigged a bottle of sorts. At first, Leopard wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
The stud shifted his weight. He turned his head and lipped at a strand of long, pale hair that had escaped from Elyssa’s hastily made chignon.
Without breaking the easy rhythm of the grooming, she tucked the hair back out of reach.
Leopard stretched his neck and pulled the chignon apart with his agile lips.
Laughing, scolding Leopard gently, Elyssa balanced the brush on his spotted buttocks, swept up her hair in both hands, and knotted it at the back of her neck once more.
Hunter let out a slow, hidden breath. He tried to ignore
the sudden heavy running of his blood. It would be a long time forgetting the sight of all that silky, flaxen hair tumbling wild and free down Elyssa’s sea-green dress.
And her hands, so quick and graceful.
What would it be like to have those hands all over me? Hunter thought.
Then, savagely, I’m a fool for even thinking about it.
“That’s how I got Leopard to drink,” Elyssa said, picking up the brush once more.
Hunter made an encouraging sound. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew his voice would be too deep, too husky, rough with the force of the desire pouring through his body.
“I dipped a strand of hair in milk and tickled his lips with it,” Elyssa explained. “After a while, he got the idea and started sucking on the hair.”
Hunter looked at the big stud and tried to imagine him as a feeble colt. It was impossible.
“Within a few days I had him on a proper nipple,” Elyssa said, “but he never forgot. He loves to lip my hair, as though he expects milk and honey every time.”
Hunter said nothing. He was too busy thinking what it would feel like to pull apart the loose knot of the chignon and bury his face in Elyssa’s clean, sweet-scented hair.
And then he would reach beneath the silk to find even softer, sweeter flesh.
Elyssa would let me, just like she let me in the barn.
God, I’ve never had a woman respond like that, all in a rush, her breathing as sudden and ragged as mine.
Night after night, she would be a wildfire burning for me, hot and unrestrained. I would be the same for her, burning her all the way to her hungry, sensual soul.
A hidden shudder of desire went through Hunter as he thought about it…the girl and the night and the fire.
In one way, at least, Elyssa is different from Belinda. Belinda was calculating. Elyssa is too reckless to be wise.
Sex would be good with her. So damned good. Maybe even worth marrying for.
Hunter heard his own thoughts and went cold.
Haven’t I learned yet? he asked himself scathingly. Did Ted and little Em die for nothing?
Shocked and angered by his own unruly sexuality, Hunter faced again the consequences of having chosen the wrong girl as a wife, just because she made his blood run hot and wild.
How can I even think of shackling myself to another Belinda? he asked himself. A sexy little girl in woman’s clothing.
A girl who traded the lives of her kids for a fast poke from the neighbor while her husband was fighting a war a thousand miles away.
Too young. Too spoiled.
Too weak.
But I married her, and my kids paid for my stupidity.
There was no arguing with that icy reality.
Yet still Hunter wanted Elyssa with a force that left him shaken.
It made Hunter furious—with himself, with the situation, and most of all with the girl who wore a silk dress in a stable and gave him sideways glances from hungry, sea-green eyes.
“But it was nip and tuck for a while,” Elyssa said, stroking Leopard’s neck with her hand.
When Hunter said nothing, she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. The cold set of his mouth made her wince. She looked back at Leopard.
“I spent the next month in the stall with Leopard full-time,” Elyssa said hurriedly. “I kept him warm when there was ice on the marsh and the wind blew fit to freeze hell itself. When spring came I just spent nights in the stall until he was old enough to be weaned.”
“How old were you?”
The harsh tone of Hunter’s voice drew another sideways glance from Elyssa and renewed interest from Leopard.
“Thirteen,” Elyssa said.
“At that age most girls are trying out silks and fans.”
Elyssa shrugged. “I never got the hang of fans. My highborn cousins thought it was hilarious.”
“Highborn cousins? Around here?”
“No. Mother’s relatives. Lords of England. She hoped I would marry one of them. I didn’t, but I lived with them from the time I was fifteen until I came back this spring.”
As Elyssa spoke, she brushed down Leopard’s muscular buttocks with quick, strong strokes.
“Why didn’t you marry one of them?” Hunter asked.
“They thought everything about me that wasn’t disgusting was quite funny.”
“Figures,” Hunter said sardonically. “You couldn’t snaffle off a rich husband, so you came running home with your tail between your legs.”
Elyssa’s temper flashed. It had been bad enough to watch Hunter be cream-pie-nice to Penny. Taking insults from him now was more than Elyssa could bear.
“Catch,” she said, firing the brush at Hunter.
Before his hands snatched the brush out of the air, Elyssa vaulted onto Leopard. Her silk skirt flew up above her knees and the scarlet petticoat seethed like flame around her thighs. Impatiently she jammed the cloth beneath her legs and urged Leopard toward the gate.
Instantly Hunter moved to cut Elyssa off from the paddock gate.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Hunter demanded.
“Anywhere I please.”
Elyssa spun Leopard away from Hunter with a touch of her hand on the stallion’s powerful neck. An instant later the big stud was cantering toward the paddock fence.
Leopard went over the fence like his namesake, not even tickling the six-foot rails with his hooves. He landed lightly on the other side and danced in place, plainly wanting to run.
Motionless, Hunter watched Elyssa. Silk skirts and petticoat climbed halfway up her thighs. Her legs were long and lithe. Their womanly curves reminded Hunter of just how taut and full her breasts had felt against him.
With no warning Leopard gathered himself, took three strides, and leaped back into the paddock. Though the horse landed only a few feet from Hunter, he didn’t back up an inch.
“Have I made my point?” Elyssa asked in a clipped voice.
“What point was that?” Hunter asked.
His voice was somewhere between harsh and husky, and blood beat visibly in his neck. He hoped that Elyssa couldn’t see it, or the blunt male flesh that was swelling beneath his trousers with each heartbeat.
“You were hired to oversee the Ladder S, not me,” Elyssa said. “I will go where I please, when I please.”
“No,” Hunter said before he could think better of it.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Now, that’s something I’d like to see, you begging me.”
“It won’t happen,” Elyssa assured him gently. “My cousins and their highborn friends tried for years to break me. They had time and cruelty on their side. You haven’t a chance, Hunter.”
“Not enough time?”
“Not enough cruelty.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, Sassy.”
“How long have you owned Bugle Boy?”
Hunter blinked, surprised by the change of subject.
“All his life,” he said slowly. “Why?”
“He bears no marks of quirt or spur. Nor is he head-shy. He has the confidence and calm nature of an animal that has been well and gently cared for since birth.”
Again Hunter was surprised. He measured the easy way Elyssa controlled Leopard without benefit of bridle, saddle, or even a piece of string.
The knowledge that she could have run off and left Hunter in the dust was galling.
Whatever else, she’s a hell of a horsewoman, Hunter admitted reluctantly to himself.
“In sum,” Elyssa continued, “you are rude, arrogant, stubborn, and hardheaded, but not cruel.”
Leopard gave a little leap, as though his patience was at an end. Clearly the stud wanted to jump the fence again and have a good run.
Just as clearly, Elyssa did too. A slight pressure of her hand pointed Leopard toward the fence again.
“Hold it!” Hunter said. “Just because you’re in a snit, you can’t head off at a dead run.”
Elyssa’s
temper slipped.
“Really?” she asked coolly. “How will you stop me?”
“Penny depends on you,” Hunter said in an icy tone. “If you kill yourself racing that damned stud over rough country, Penny would be at the mercy of strangers for the roof over her head and the food on her plate.”
Penny, Elyssa thought starkly. I should have guessed. Hunter wasn’t worried about me at all.
With outward calm Elyssa concentrated on the golden grasslands slanting gently down from the mountains to the tawny marsh below. After a few slow breaths she was certain she could control her temper.
I need this arrogant male creature, Elyssa reminded herself bluntly. I have to keep telling myself that.
I need Hunter.
And if that means watching him court Penny, so be it. I took a lot worse in England and never sniveled, so why does Hunter’s contempt cut me so deeply?
Because I want him to like me, that’s why. I want him to use that black velvet voice on me.
But it wasn’t something Elyssa was going to say out loud.
“Are you listening?” Hunter demanded.
Distantly Elyssa nodded. The slight motion was enough to send her loosened hair rippling like moonlight over the green silk of her dress.
“I won’t work for a spoiled girl who gets in a snit at everything I say,” Hunter continued.
Again Elyssa nodded.
Again the motion set her hair to sliding softly against her breasts. With quick, impatient motions she gathered up the flyaway strands and knotted them at her neck once more.
“I won’t work for a girl who sulks, either,” Hunter said.
Elyssa turned and looked at him.
The look told Hunter that Elyssa wasn’t sulking. Her eyes were distant. They had a primitive calculation that reminded him of Leopard.
The challenging, sexy, admiring light in her eyes had vanished.
Good, Hunter told himself. It’s about time she stopped looking at me like she was wondering what it would be like to get on me and ride.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Hunter wondered if Elyssa was as surprised as he was by the question. He shouldn’t care and he knew it.
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