How to Train a Cowboy

by Caro Carson

  “Okay, now let’s see you do it.” They hopped up onto stall doors, ready to enjoy themselves at the greenhorn’s expense.

  Emily tried to be invisible as she kept her favorite mare in her stall and began brushing her quickly. Then Emily smoothed a saddle pad over the horse’s back and turned to her saddle. She laid the stirrup and straps over one side of the saddle and hefted it—swung it with some momentum, really, for saddles were heavy—over her horse’s back, then rocked it a bit, making sure it was seated correctly.

  She stole a look down the aisle. Graham had plopped a saddle on the gelding and was tightening the girth, but he’d forgotten the pad. Sid and Bonner were loving it. “Yeah, good job. Go ahead and mount up, see how it feels.”

  The gelding would be confused that someone was mounting him in the building, a stranger at that. He’d be confused why he was being mounted while wearing a halter instead of a bridle, and he’d be unhappy with the saddle rubbing directly on him without a pad. He might even buck to get the saddle and rider off. Graham wouldn’t know how to keep a seat on a bucking horse. It was a huge challenge for Emily, and she was a top rider with a lifetime of experience.

  They were standing on the concrete center aisle. If Graham were bucked off...man versus concrete...

  She could hardly look at Graham, as embarrassed as she was that he’d witnessed her humiliation at being turned down for the job she’d bragged she was perfect for, but she had no problem glaring at the idiots messing with the horse. She left her mare in the stall and walked into the aisle.

  “Sid! Bonner.”

  They both looked her way, surprised.

  “You two don’t know how to train a cowboy to save your lives.”

  They tried to splutter some weak objections—not a cowboy, he’s a greenhorn; meant no harm. She spoke right over their excuses. “If you had any sense, you wouldn’t let the horse learn to hate that saddle, not one single time, not for your own entertainment.” She was truly angry; horses weren’t for entertainment. “I get that you want to get your jollies at the greenhorn’s expense, but you can’t do it at the horse’s expense. It’s not your horse to screw around with, is it?”

  They wouldn’t meet her eye. They just sat sullenly, awkwardly, on their perch on the stable doors.

  It was, she realized, her horse, as far as they were concerned. Just as Gus had said, she was part of the family, the owners’ family. The two ranch hands were as embarrassed at being busted by her as they would have been getting caught by Luke—or Trey, now.

  “This horse is part of the James Hill. If you don’t respect that, you don’t need to be part of the James Hill. You’re more easily replaced than the horse.”

  “We wouldn’t have let the greenhorn mount up on a bad saddle,” Bonner muttered, his halfhearted attempt to defend himself.

  “Bull.” Emily had been raised here. She knew when a cowboy was full of it. “Go see Gus. Tell him you’re available to do something else.”

  While they were still in earshot, she snapped at Graham. “Get that saddle off. You’re not riding this horse today.”

  He started loosening the cinch, but he winked at her. He winked.

  “Don’t w—” She had to stop. Sid and Bonner were still in hearing distance. She settled for a scowl. Don’t wink at me.

  “Well done,” he said quietly, so only she could hear. Then he went to lift the saddle. She didn’t imagine that flash of pain on his face and the way his left hand slipped.

  “Are you hurt?” Dumb question. Obviously, he was. She was going to kill Sid and Bonner.

  “No, fine.” He lifted the saddle barely high enough to clear the gelding’s backbone and pulled it to his chest. “What’s next?”

  “That all depends on how badly you’re hurt.”

  He was surprised at that. “I’m not.”

  She was just as surprised that he’d lie. “Your left shoulder or hand or something.”

  “It’s fine.” He shook his left arm out, keeping the saddle over only his right arm—she couldn’t do that, because the saddles were heavy enough that she needed both arms to carry them.

  A sexual memory hit her, Graham’s bare chest and arms, muscles that flexed in the moonlight. Of course he could hold the saddle with one arm—but he was human, and it was heavy.

  “Set the saddle down.” She waited until he did, and she watched how he didn’t use his left arm much at all. “Listen, I can guess that your military background means you keep going when you’re injured, but you’re on a ranch now. The goal around here is to keep everything healthy. If a horse was favoring his left leg, I wouldn’t work him until I knew what was going on. I’m not going to work you if you’re hurt.”

  He was silent.

  Suddenly, it was just Graham and Emily, talking all night long, and she had standards when it came to conversation.

  “Silence isn’t an answer, Graham.”

  He sighed, extra loud. “If you’re waiting until my left shoulder improves, you’ll never get a day’s work out of me. It’s an old injury.”

  “How bad?”

  He put his left arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “It works well enough to do the important things.”

  He bent his head, paused over her parted lips and then he kissed her. Nothing else mattered. It felt like she was kissing him for the first time in a year, finally, oh finally, welcome home.

  She felt herself melt into him, felt that sexual pull, but it was all mixed up in a roller coaster of emotions. The kiss brought back all the elation she’d felt by the lake, all her high hopes—all the hopes that had been dashed. She clung to him harder as he kissed her, but she still felt some of the shock that Graham had the job she wanted. She couldn’t forget the humiliation of Gus lecturing her or her mother’s ultimatums last night. She had to go back to college.

  Graham was going to be so disappointed in her. She wasn’t anything like the woman she’d thought she was at the lake.

  She ended the kiss and backed into the horse, then automatically apologized as if she’d backed into a person in a crowded bar. “Oh, sorry.”

  She tried to laugh it off. “I suppose you would advise me not to apologize to the horse.”

  Graham didn’t laugh.

  Emily concentrated fiercely on the saddle at his feet. His shoulder—this had all started with his shoulder. “Let me see you put the saddle on him.”

  “Emily.”

  Oh, she hated that be sensible tone of voice. It was all she’d heard last night from her mother and stepfather. “I want to see you put the saddle on the horse. I’m not just looking at how your shoulder works. I’m looking to see how many bad habits Sid and Bonner managed to instill in a short amount of time.”

  “Ah, Emily.”

  Well, that was a little better. Less paternal. More like a lover.

  “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.”

&nbs
p; 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.”