Tempted by a Cowboy

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Something about that had been...well, it’d been good. He’d liked chasing her and she’d liked being chased. They’d dated internationally for almost a year. He’d looked at rings. He’d been twenty-six and convinced that this marriage would be different from his parents’ marriage.

  Then his father had died. Suzie had accompanied him to the funeral and met the entire Beaumont clan—his father’s ex-wives, Phillip’s half-siblings. All the bitter fighting and acrimonious drama that Phillip had tried so hard to get free of had been on full display. The police had gotten involved. Lawsuits had been filed.

  So much for the Beaumont name.

  The relationship had ended fairly quickly after that. He’d been upset, of course but deep down, he’d agreed with Suzie. His family—and, by extension, he himself—were too screwed up to have a shot at a happily-ever-after. They’d parted ways, she’d married that European prince and Phillip had gone right back to his womanizing ways. It was easier than thinking about what he’d almost had—and what he’d lost.

  Still, he’d liked the chase. It’d been...different. Proof that it wasn’t just his name or his money or even his famous face that a woman wanted. He’d had to prove his worth. That wasn’t a bad thing.

  Jo Spears clearly wasn’t swayed by his name or his money. If she was as good a trainer as she claimed to be, she’d probably spent plenty of time in barns owned by equally rich, equally famous men and women. He didn’t spend a lot of time with people who didn’t want a piece of his name, his fortune—of him. The feeling was...odd.

  He could stay out here for a few weeks. And he wouldn’t mind having a little company.

  He could chase Jo. It’d be fun.

  “Coffee?” A thoughtful gesture was always a good place to begin.

  She looked at the mugs in his hands and sniffed. “I don’t drink.”

  He was going to have to switch brands of whiskey. Apparently Jack had a stronger smell than he remembered.

  “Just coffee.” When she gave him a look that could have peeled paint, he was forced to add, “In yours.”

  She took the mug, sniffed it several times and then took a tentative sip. “Thanks.”

  He stood there, feeling awkward, which was not normal. He wasn’t awkward or unsure, not when it came to women. But every time he deployed one of his tried-and-true techniques on her, it backfired.

  Oh yeah, this was going to be a challenge.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. Always good to focus on the basics.

  That worked. She tilted her head in his direction, an appreciative smile on her face. “Not bad.”

  “I noticed,” he continued, trying not to stare at that smile, “that you spend a lot of time standing in the paddock. With a donkey.”

  Her eyebrow curved up. “I do.”

  “Can I ask why, or are the mysteries of the horse whisperer secret?”

  Damn, he lost her. Her warm smile went ice-cold in a heartbeat. “I do not whisper. I train.”

  Seducing her was going to prove harder than hell if he couldn’t stop pissing her off. “Sensitive about that?”

  Oh, that was a vicious look, one that let him know she’d loaded up both barrels and was about to open fire. “I’d explain my rules to you again, but what guarantee do I have that you’ll remember them this time?”

  Ouch. But he wasn’t going to let her know how close to the quick she’d cut. He wouldn’t back up in fear from his horse and he sure as hell wouldn’t do it from a woman. He gave her his wicked smile, one that always worked. “I can be taught.”

  “I doubt it.” Her posture changed. Instead of leaning toward him, she’d pulled away, her upper body angled in the direction of the barn.

  Okay, he needed a different approach here, one that didn’t leave his flank open to attack. Yesterday, when he hadn’t remembered meeting her, she’d warmed up while he’d patted Betty. Time to put this theory to the test.

  “Come here, girl,” he said, crouching down and pulling the baggie of carrots out of his back pocket. “Do you like carrots?”

  Betty came plodding over to him and snatched the carrot out of his hand. “That’s a good girl.”

  “Did you bring one for Sun?”

  “I did.” He hadn’t, but he’d brought enough. “But I don’t think he likes me enough to let me give him one.”

  Then he looked up at her. Her light brown eyes were focused on his face with such intensity that it seemed she was seeing into him.

  He fished another carrot out and looked at the horse that was still going in pointless circles around the paddock. Yeah, no getting close to that without getting trampled. “Like I said, I don’t think he likes me.”

  “He doesn’t not like you, though.” She kept her gaze on the horse.

  “How do you figure?” Betty snuffled at his hand, so he gave her the carrot he was holding. He still had two left. “Every time he sees me, he goes ballistic.”

  Jo sighed, which did some impressive things with her chest. “No, every time he sees you, it’s something different. He doesn’t like the different part. It has nothing to do with you. If you want to see what he does when he actively hates someone, you can call Richard out here.”

  “He hates Richard?” Although, now that he thought about it, Sun often did seem more agitated when the farm manager was around.

  She nodded. “Richard and your hands are the ones who’ve shot him with the tranq gun, lassoed him in his stall and, from Sun’s point of view, generally terrorized him. You don’t have those negative associations in Sun’s mind.”

  Everything she said made sense. He palmed another carrot, wondering if he should give it to the donkey or if he should try to walk into the paddock and give it to his horse. He’d be risking death, but it might be a positive thing the horse could associate with him. “He just doesn’t like change?”

  “Nope.” She looked at his hand, then nodded to where there was a water bucket and a feed bucket hanging on the side of the paddock. “Put it in his bucket. But go slow.”

  “Okay.” So it felt a little ridiculous to move at a snail’s pace around the fence. But he noticed that Sun slowed to a trot and watched him.

  Phillip held up the remaining two carrots so that Sun could see them and then dropped them over the fence and into the bucket. Then Phillip slowly worked his way back to where Jo was standing.

  The approval on her face was something new. Something good. Wow, she could be pretty when she smiled.

  “How was that?” He felt a little like a puppy begging for approval, but, for some reason, it was important to him.

  Her smile deepened. “You can be taught.”

  “I’m a very quick study.” He didn’t walk over to her or run his hand down her arm—all things that worked wonders in a club—but he didn’t need to. The blush that graced her cheeks was more than good enough to know that, no matter how icy or judgmental she could be, she was also a flesh-and-blood woman who responded to him.

  Oh, yeah—the chase was on.

  She looked away first. Aside from the blush and the smile, she gave no other sign of interest. She didn’t lean in his direction, she didn’t compliment him again. All she said was, “Watch,” as she looked at Sun.

  The horse was still trotting, but Phillip realized that each pass brought him closer to the buckets. Within a few minutes, he was making small loops back and forth right in front of the carrots.

  He could probably smell them. Phillip hoped the horse would realize they were treats.

  Sun slowed down enough that he was moving at a fast walk. He dipped his long nose into the bucket but before Phillip could allow himself to be hopeful, the horse knocked the whole thing off the fence, spilling the carrots and leftover grain on the ground. Then he was off again, running and bucking and throwing a hell of a fit.

 
; “Damn.”

  “It’s not you,” Jo said again. “It’s different. He’s got to get used to someone leaving him a treat.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  She shrugged. “We wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Wait for him to get tired.”

  He looked at her. “This is your grand plan to save him? Wait for him to get bored?” At his words, Sun began to rear up.

  Jo sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tired.” She spoke the word carefully, as if she were pronouncing it for someone who didn’t speak English. “Don’t you get tired of the days and the nights blending together with no beginning and no end? Of waking up and not knowing who you are or where you are or most importantly of all, what you’ve done? Tired of realizing that you’ve done something horrible, something there’s no good way to move on from, so you angle for that blackout again so you don’t have to think about what you’ve become?”

  She turned her face to him. Nothing about her was particularly lovely at this moment, but there was something in her eyes that wouldn’t let him go.

  “Doesn’t it ever just wear you out?”

  He did something he didn’t usually allow himself to do—he glared at her. She couldn’t know what she was talking about and, as far as he was concerned, she was not talking about him.

  Still, her words cut into him like small, sharp knives and although it made no sense—she was wrong about him and that was final—he wanted to drink the rest of his coffee and let the whiskey in it take the edge off the inexplicable pain he felt, but she was watching him. Waiting to see if he’d buckle.

  Well, she could just keep right on waiting. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His voice came out quieter than he’d meant it to. He almost sounded shaky to his own ears. He didn’t like that. He didn’t betray weakness, not to his family, not to anyone.

  A shadow of sadness flickered across her face, but it was gone as she turned back to the paddock. “If that’s what gets you through the night.” She didn’t wait for him to deny it. “Sun’s been in this paddock for three straight days now. Sooner or later, he’s going to get tired of doing the same thing over and over again. He’ll want to do something different. Anything different, really, as long as it’s not going mad. That’s when I’ll get him.”

  Going mad. Was that how she thought of the horse? Of him?

  He needed to get the conversation onto firmer ground. Thus far, she’d responded best when he’d actively engaged her about horses and donkeys—not when the focus had been on him. “If he gets bored, won’t he start cribbing or something? We’ve got collars that keep him from doing that, but I don’t want to try and put one on him at this stage.”

  Cribbing happened when horses got bored. They bit down on the wood in their stalls or their rubber buckets and sucked in air. It seemed harmless at first, but it could lead to colic. And colic could be deadly.

  Jo pivoted—not a sideways glance, but her whole body turned to him. He kept his eyes above her neck, and saw how she looked at him—confused, yes. But there was more to it than that.

  “Really.” The way she said it, it wasn’t a question. More a wonderment.

  He kept his voice casual. “You may not believe this, but I actually know a great deal about horses. My father had a racehorse back in 1987 that died of colic when the former farm manager hadn’t realized the mare was cribbing. Yet another stumbling block in my father’s eternal quest to win a Triple Crown.”

  That had been a bad year. Hardwick Beaumont had fired the entire staff at the farm and some of his employees at the Brewery and had been so unbearable to be around that he’d probably hastened his second divorce by at least two years.

  Needless to say, it hadn’t been much fun for Phillip. Even back then, the farm had been a sanctuary of sorts—a place to get away from half-siblings and step-parents. A place where Hardwick realized he had a second son, where they did things together. Even if those things were just leaning on a pasture fence and watching the trainers work the horses.

  Hardwick had talked to Phillip during those times. Not Chadwick, not his new babies with his new wife. Just Phillip. The rest of the time, Hardwick had always been too busy running the Beaumont Brewery and having affairs to pay any attention to Phillip. But on the farm...

  Phillip had cried that day. He’d cried for Maggie May, the horse who’d died, and he’d cried when the farm staff—the same grizzled old cowboys who’d always been happy to saddle up Phillip’s pony and let him ride around the property—had been kicked out. Up until that day, he’d always thought the farm was a place safe from the real world, but all it had taken was one prize-winning mare’s death to rip the veil from his eyes.

  “Maggie May—that was the mare’s name, right?”

  Phillip snapped his attention back to the woman standing four feet from him. She was looking at Sun, who’d calmed down to an almost-mellow trot, but there was a sadness about her that, for once, didn’t carry the weight of disappointment. It was almost as if she felt bad for the horse.

  “You know about that?”

  This time, she did give him the side-eye. “I’m also a quick study.”

  Electricity sparked between them. He felt it. She had to have felt it—why else did that pretty blush grace her cheeks again? “What else do you know about me?”

  It was unusual to ask, more unusual to not know the answer. But she’d confounded him at every single turn thus far and, he realized, it was because she knew far more about him that he was anticipating.

  She shrugged. “I always do my homework before I take a job. You’re an easy man to find online.”

  But Maggie May—that horse wouldn’t pop up in the first twenty pages of a web search. That sort of detail would be buried deep underneath an avalanche of Tumblr feeds and press releases. That was the sort of detail someone would really have to dig to come up with.

  “Are you always this thorough, then?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Always.” Her blush deepened. “But how can I be sure that your reported horse sense is on the level?” She tried to give him a cutting look, but didn’t quite make it.

  So she was aware of the magnitude of his reputation. That certainly explained her disapproval of his high-flying lifestyle. But there was something underneath that, something deeper.

  Something interested.

  He recalled doing an interview in Western Horseman. He’d had a particularly bad month of headlines. Chadwick had been ready to kill him, so his half-brother Matthew had suggested setting up the interview to show people that there was more to Phillip Beaumont than just scandals.

  The reporter had spent three days on the farm with Phillip, following him around as he evaluated his horses, worked with Richard, and generally projected a sane, in-control appearance. The write-up had been so well received that Chadwick had been almost charitable to him for months after that.

  That had to be what she was talking about. She’d probably assumed that one main article about him being a real cowboy was a PR plant. And she hadn’t been half wrong.

  Except he was a real cowboy—at least, he was when he was on the farm. This was the only place where he fit—where he could be Phillip instead of Hardwick’s forgotten second son. The horses never cared who he was. They just cared that he was a good man who looked out for them.

  Was that what she needed—to know that the horses came first for him? “I guess I’ll have to prove myself to you.”

  “I guess you will,” she agreed.

  Oh, yeah—the chase was on. Jo was unlike any woman he’d ever pursued before. Instead of being a turn-off, he was more and more intrigued by her. She refused to cut him a single bit of slack, but all the signals were there.

  Maybe she was a good girl
who was intrigued by his bad boy antics. Maybe she’d like a little walk on the wild side. But the things that got her attention weren’t the bad boy things. She noticed his interactions with the horses more.

  Bad boy with a healthy dash of cowboy—that was something he could pull off. If she needed to know that his horse sense, as she called it, was on the level, then he’d have no problem showing her exactly how much he really understood about horses.

  Starting now. “I need to get to the foals,” he said, leaning toward her just a tad. She didn’t pull back. “I’ll stop by later and see if Sun ate his carrots.”

  She did not turn those pretty eyes in his direction, but her grin was broad enough that he knew he’d said the right thing. “I’d like that,” she said in a low voice. Then she seemed to remember herself. Her cheeks shot bright red. “I mean, that’d be good. For Sun.” Then, before he could say anything else, she opened the gate and walked into the paddock, the tiny donkey at her heels.

  Interesting. She might try to act as if she were a tough-as-nails woman, but underneath was someone softer—someone who was enjoying the chase.

  Oh, yeah—it’d be good, all right.

  Might even be great.

  Four

  What the hell was she doing?

  Jo stood in the middle of the paddock as Sun wore down. At least he was finally wearing down after three days. He kept looping closer to where the carrots lay in the dirt near his bucket.

  The horse was calming down, but Jo? She was beginning to spiral out of control.

  She had absolutely no business flirting with Phillip Beaumont. None. The list of reasons why started and ended with whiskey. And vodka. And tequila. She’d always been partial to tequila—she thought. She couldn’t really remember.

  And that was exactly why she had no business encouraging him. Really, Jo? Really? It’d be good if he stopped by later?

  She didn’t want to look forward to seeing him again. She was not the least bit curious to know if he’d bring her more coffee or Betty and Sun some carrots. She didn’t even want to know what he was doing with the Percheron foals.