“Try not to be mad at me for taking this job,” Graham said quietly, so the words stayed between them and didn’t echo through the barn. “Gus offered it to me weeks ago, not yesterday morning.”
“Yes, you told me that. I’d rather not talk about that little job interview. I wish you hadn’t been there.”
“Why not?”
Because it showed you all my flaws. I’m too young, too weak. I got chewed out by your uncle. She wished she wasn’t so attracted to Graham. It would be better to just walk away and find a new boyfriend back at college.
As if. She wasn’t going to find another man who so instantly and totally appealed to her like Graham did, and she knew it. Her future would be a pretty lonely one.
Sadness made her as grouchy as sexual frustration had. “Just put the saddle on the horse. Get a pad first, so you’re doing it right. You can’t slide the saddle up and over, because the pad would slide off. Most people toss the heavier saddles up and over.”
You can lift yours and set it down. Not everyone is tall and strong, and did you have to be handsome, too?
Graham had no problem lifting the saddle until the last few inches of height. He tried to be all stoic about it, but his left hand let go of the pommel and caught the saddle lower, a little juggling move that let him keep raising the saddle until he could set it on the horse’s back.
She shrugged. “Actually, that works fine.”
“Great.”
“Now take it all off.”
He slid her a look, a smile. “That’s what she said.”
She wanted to roll her eyes and laugh with him. She really did, but she saw him shake out his left arm, just a little bit, before reaching for the saddle. He was in pain.
She wasn’t the fearless woman she’d pretended to be yesterday at dawn, but he had been her lover once in the moonlight, and she’d never forget it. She didn’t want him to be in pain. Ever.
The gelding reflected her turmoil as she held his halter. He wasn’t a very patient horse in the first place, which made him a terrible choice for this type of rudimentary lesson. He’d been shifting and blowing and tossing his head all along, but now Emily backed him up a step by pushing on his chest to remind him not to get pushy with a human. She tapped his hoof with her boot until he moved his leg so that he was standing squarely on all four feet.
“Okay. Go ahead and take the saddle off.”
Graham didn’t move.
“What?”
“Remember what I said about the schoolteacher tone being a turn-on? This horse trainer thing you do is killing me. Damn it, Emily.” He looked down the aisle quickly and then kissed her, only his mouth on her mouth for one hot second, a hard claim on her body.
While a wave of purely physical desire flooded her in the wake of that kiss, Graham grabbed the saddle and lifted it off the horse. He bent to set it on the floor.
He was in pain. He could lift the saddle, but he was in pain. Had he been in pain last night at any point? Had he made her laugh when she hadn’t known?
“Tell me about your shoulder.”
He hesitated, then let go of the saddle and stood. “My shoulder is the last part of my body that I’m thinking about after kissing you.”
She smiled briefly. “When did it happen?”
He was quiet a moment, one of those deliberation points.
I was your lover. Talk to me.
“Back in 2013. On April third. Helmand province.”
“Afghanistan? I’m sorry.”
He was silent.
She didn’t feel like she had the right to push him this time. “I didn’t even see a scar the other night.” When you were naked and we were making love. She wished she wouldn’t blush. There was no need to blush. They were adults, both of them.
He smoothed one finger over her flushed cheek. “It was a little too dark for that.”
“The interior lights were on for a few minutes, when we were wet.” She’d been shivering, wringing out her wet hair, feasting her eyes on a nude man’s strong back, his muscular backside. Gosh, she really was blushing. “I can’t believe I missed something like a bullet wound.”
“I wasn’t shot. It was a vehicle rollover. My skin stayed nice and intact, so no scars, but the bones inside shattered a bit. It’s not that big of a deal. If I lift my arm too high, my shoulder reminds me not to do that anymore. For the rest of my life.” He shook out his left arm again. “It’s already stopped hurting.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. It doesn’t hurt.”
“I don’t believe that’s the whole story. People don’t remember the date of a simple car accident. It was more than that, wasn’t it?” It scared her, to think that he’d lived a life where he could have been killed any day of the year, two different years. How easily they might never have stood on the patio in their prom pose, cheek to cheek.
“Hey,” Graham said softly, and she knew her face had given away her thoughts. “Sweet girl. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s really not.” She remembered how much he’d wanted to disappear, to go off the grid. It was hard to escape memories.
Whenever you remember Graham and Emily by the lake that night…
She’d given him a good memory, the best, something to balance out the bad. Maybe she could have been the right woman for him.
She’d tried, but she’d failed. She had to leave him tomorrow and go back to Oklahoma. She had no job, no say in where she lived, what she studied, when she’d graduate.
The gelding tried to throw up his head. She shushed him, but she frowned at the halter. “Did you put the halter on this horse?”
One of the metal clips had its latch toward the horse’s face. It was a little thing, but she explained that over hours of work, it could irritate the horse. “Like I said, we’re all about keeping everything healthy and injury-free around here.” She unclipped it, then clipped it on with its curved side toward the horse’s face to show Graham how it went. Then she unclipped it, put it on backward again, and stepped back. “Okay, you change it.”
Gus chuckled from behind them. “You could have left it the right way.”
The foreman’s sudden presence startled Emily. Graham didn’t care for being sneaked up on, she could tell by the way his jaw clenched a little, but he answered his uncle amiably enough. “She’s training me right, and you know it.” He unclipped the fastener, turned it the right way.
Gus frowned at her instead of beaming with approval. “Did you choose this gelding for him?”
“Of course not. Sid and Bonner were having themselves a good old time.”
Gus sighed. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now. Trey wants Graham to start riding. You’re the best person I know to train someone on horseback.”
Good ol’ Emily. She’ll work all day because she loves this ranch. Grew up on it, you know.
That mindset was there, so obvious now that she’d seen it. She’d helped start it, unknowingly, as a teenager. It was up to her to stop it, too.
Don’t make waves, don’t stir things up, play it safe…
The lake had been painfully cold, but she didn’t regret that she’d made a splash. She would’ve only regretted it if she hadn’t.
She turned to Gus. “Let me be sure I understand. You want me to spend my day off sharing my experience and using my skill to get your greenhorn started on horsemanship?”
“You don’t think Sid or Bonner could do a better job, do you?”
Was that how easily Gus had manipulated her in the past? Just by pitting her in competition with the boys?
“No, I know they can’t. But they are on payroll today. You are getting a salary right this minute. Graham is getting paid right now. Trey wants him to ride? Trey gets a third of the profits this ranch turns. And yet
, I’m being asked to train your new hire for free.”
“You love to be with the horses,” Gus said, stubborn as the day was long.
Even though there was nothing she’d like more than to spend the day with Graham, Emily was playing the long game now. Everything she did would set the tone for years to come.
“No.”
“No?” Gus repeated.
“No, I will not work for free while you two are being paid.”
She handed the gelding’s lead to Gus and walked away. Her very first step took her past Graham. She heard his quiet chuckle as she passed him.
She was leading her mare out of the stall when she heard Graham tell his uncle he needed the day off.
She was tightening the cinch on her saddle when Gus told Graham he’d get docked a day’s pay.
She was putting the bridle over her mare’s pretty face when Graham walked up to her. “Now neither one of us is getting paid today. You promised to take me riding the next time I was in town. I did leave town yesterday morning. Got lost for sixty miles and then returned, so this is the next time.”
When had her hard bodyguard become charming?
He spoke more quietly, in case Gus was still listening to them. “You said you’d take me for my first ride. That needs to be today, or someone much uglier and more unpleasant than you will do it.”
It was tough to return his smile. He’d seen her failure with Gus. She still had to confess her failure with her parents. “This isn’t how I imagined it. I thought you’d be done with your three months off the grid. I’d be working here. We’d be together for…well, for more than a day.”
“But this is what we have. Keep your promise, sweet girl. Take me riding.”
Chapter Seventeen
Graham hadn’t realized he’d need to be a horse psychologist to be a good rider. “If your horse got to run a little bit and have some fun, would mine get jealous and try to run, too?”
“It’s possible.” Emily led the way to one of the shade trees that dotted the landscape. “You might want to dismount, just in case. You can stand with the reins nice and loose. She’ll be good. Don’t let her get her chest in front of you, though.”
Jeez, just standing still with a horse took effort. The whole experience so far had taught Graham how far he had to go just to be passable in the saddle. He wouldn’t admit it—ever—but when he’d swung himself up into the saddle for the first time, he’d thought that being on horseback was a hell of a lot farther off the ground than it looked.
He dismounted reasonably gracefully. He looked up at Emily, who had no idea how much she knew. She knew she was good with horses, but she was twenty-two-years good, never having been far from a horse since birth.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Show me how it’s done. Let’s see some speed.”
“You want to watch me gallop?”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t sound very fun for you.”
She was so very wrong. As he watched her sweeping in a wide arc through the pasture, he felt a very real pleasure. Horse and rider were graceful, beautiful by any standard, but more than that, this was Emily, his Emily, the woman he knew intimately, flying like magic, riding like a stuntwoman, absolutely spectacular. Always.
When she came back, she looked down at him from her horse, and he felt a moment of reverence for her. She was amazing. She was better than he could ever deserve.
He wanted his hands on her.
She wanted more than that. They were kissing from the moment she dismounted. Even as she tied her horse next to his, he was kissing the back of her neck, and then she turned into him. Her leather gloves hit the ground at their feet and her warm hands were under his clothes, sliding up his body.
She spoke his name over his lips. She whispered in his ear, “Did you bring protection?”
No—so he needed to slow things down. He kept his hand on the side of her neck, braced his other hand on the tree trunk behind her. “I thought I was spending the day with Sid and Bonner, shoveling out stalls. Not exactly the kind of day you slip a packet in your pocket for.”
She panted from their kisses but frowned with concern. “Those two are going to try to trick you. So be careful. They won’t give up.”
“It’s not so different from the military. They feel obligated to try to haze the greenhorn, but they aren’t thrilled that I’m the greenhorn. I’m a tougher bite than they ever expected to have to chew, but they’ll get me sooner or later. Then they’ll be relieved to give it up.”
“They’ll get you?”
“Of course.” He shrugged. “I’ll forget to check if the sugar is really salt or something dumb. It’ll be over after that. But I’ll give them a run for their money first.”
Emily started to smile, started to sigh and ended up shaking her head. “I wish I had your confidence.”
You did. Where did it go?
The hesitant Emily he was looking at now was too different from the bold Emily who’d kissed him goodbye at dawn yesterday. He’d been with her most of the day yesterday, so he knew she’d been disappointed with Gus. He didn’t know how things had gone later. He should have asked sooner.
“How did things go with your parents last night?”
“How did you know I went to see them?”
“I knocked on Trey’s door, looking for you. When I saw you this morning in the barn, I assumed they hadn’t kicked you out.” He ducked his head to see her face better. “Did they?”
Her dark eyes welled with tears. “I’m so… I’m so sorry.”
Cursing himself for not seeing the problem sooner, Graham pulled her away from the tree and held her against his chest. “It’s going to be okay. If you can’t live with Trey, then we’ll find a place to live together, somewhere nearby. I have some money.” He gave her an encouraging squeeze. “I didn’t finish my master’s either, remember? We’ll spend that.”
“Oh, Graham, it’s not like that.” Her tears were falling now. “I have a place to live. Oklahoma Tech. I have to go back.” She wiped her cheeks with her hand. “But I’m not taking any master’s courses. I have to take three classes to keep my apartment, so I insisted that I choose the other two. They’ll be undergrad classes toward a minor. I’ll graduate this May, and that will be the absolute end of it.”
She tried to pull away from him. He didn’t want to let her go, not while tears were falling. He cupped her head with his hand and held her against his chest.
It took her a long while to relax into his arms, another few minutes after that to stop crying and catch her breath.
He smoothed a few loose strands away from her face. “We’re just back to our original plan. Three months apart. Twelve weeks. We can do that.”
“But I’m not the woman you thought I was. I was going to be this great rancher, Miss Independent. I was going to finish my degree online this summer. I was going to pay my own way and have my own place to live. I’ve done none of that. None of it. You have every right to be so…disillusioned. That Emily you made love to? She didn’t last long. I failed. I’m so sorry.”
“When did you decide all this?”
“Last night, I knew it.”
“Why did you want to make love to me under this tree just now? Was that supposed to be break-up sex?”
That sounded pretty bad—and pretty accurate. Since he held her face in his hands, she couldn’t hide. “Well…” She bit her lip. “I wanted to feel like I belonged to you just one more time. I’m leaving tomorrow, and you may not be here when I come back for roundup. I’ll under
stand. I wasn’t able to make anything work the way I thought it would.”
It was stunning that she could think he wouldn’t want her because her first run at her goals didn’t work out perfectly. This wonderful woman had no idea, none at all, just how wonderful she was.
“Emily, I know you hate the scary military voice, but if you don’t adjust your attitude, you’re going to hear it.”
She sucked in her breath, that little pinprick breath that he already loved.
“You opened up Gus’s eyes yesterday. When he said you were overqualified, you called his bluff and accepted the position he’d just said you were qualified for. If Trey hadn’t come home, you would have had Gus in a corner. This morning, refusing to work for free was a winning strategy. Gus is going to realize your value quickly.
“Even when it comes to college, you succeeded. You’re not going to waste your time or money or effort on master’s degree classes you don’t want. You did it. You got the main thing you wanted, even if you had to trade September for May.
“I’m in awe of you. I don’t want to say you’re perfect or you’re a goddess, because I don’t want you to be that unreachable, but believe me when I say that I know I’m reaching above myself to be with you. You are everything exciting in the world. You have a future. You have the daring to go after happiness. Watching you strip by a pond, watching you gallop your horse, watching you braid your hair—you bring me to my knees, Emily. To my knees.”
He held her face in his hands and kissed her cheeks, her nose, her forehead. “So you go ahead and have your doubts. You go ahead and keep trying to get better. That’s you going after the future you want. But while you’re in the middle of making your dreams a reality, you need to know that when I kiss you, I already taste that bit of perfection that is you.”
If she wanted to belong to him one more time, then he was willing to oblige. He could do it without that damned foil packet. He kissed her face, her throat. He bent his head and kissed her breast through the warm plaid of her shirt, and then he dropped to one knee. He put his arms around her waist and pressed the side of his face to her stomach. Then he was on both knees, undoing her belt, anticipating that bit of perfection.
Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon Page 41