by Dahlia West
Powell grimaced and looked at Erin. “Hope it’s not out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
Erin’s jaw dropped. “No! Oh, no! It’s not like that, sheriff. Jack’s not like that. He’s worked so hard. He’s already got the barn roof fixed and most of the fence line. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
She looked right at Jack when she said that last part and he could tell by the look on her face and the tenor in her voice that it was true. Erin needed him and was grateful to have him.
He was unfamiliar with both those sentiments, so he turned his head away. “Got more chores to do,” he announced, giving the sole of his boot one final rub on the grass. “Be seeing you,” he told Powell, though in truth that was the last thing Jack wanted.
When the cruiser was out of sight, Jack turned to Erin, who looked a bit shaken.
“People were bound to ask,” he reassured her. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
Erin sighed and nodded. “I’ve known Sheriff Powell my whole life.”
Jack scowled at her. “Doesn’t make him your friend.”
“I know.”
“You did fine,” he told her. “Just let it go. Get back to your routine. Forget about it.”
Her shoulders slumped and Jack fought back the urge to take her into his arms. He turned away from her instead and got back to his own routine. He had things to put out of his own mind.
* * *
The next day, Erin was still nervous but for an entirely different reason.
Jack helped her load King into the small, two-slot trailer and levered himself behind the wheel.
“Out past Highland,” she told him and took to biting the nails of her good hand.
Jack frowned at her as he turned the wheel and set them on the highway. “Do you have to do this?” he asked. She looked like a small animal caught in a trap.
She sighed and nodded. “It’s part of the agreement. An assessment with Doctor Shaw every six weeks, to check on King’s progress. My progress,” she amended bitterly. “It’s all riding on this,” she said, staring out the window. “This first visit. I had to talk a blue streak to get Tucker DelRay to agree to let me work with King in the first place. But it’s a trial basis. If they don’t like what they see today…”
They slipped through town easily and came out the other side. Doctor Shaw’s place was just outside the city limits, a large, white farmhouse with an outbuilding behind a sign that said Veterinary Services.
King rattled the trailer impatiently, not particularly fond of the change in surroundings, Jack guessed.
Erin slid out of the passenger seat and headed toward a large man in blue jeans, a matching denim shirt, and the whitest cowboy hat Jack thought he’d ever seen.
“Mr. DelRay,” Erin said warmly and held out her hand.
DelRay took it, but Jack noticed that he didn’t quite return the friendly sentiment. Instead he eyed Erin skeptically and nodded at her cast.
“My boy didn’t do that, did he?” he asked.
Erin gave him an embarrassed smile, getting better at telling this particular lie every time. “Oh, no, sir. I was out for a ride with Bee. She slipped in the creek and I ended up in the mud. It’s not slowing me down though,” she added.
Tucker DelRay didn’t look all that convinced but he turned away, watching the vet and his assistant wrestle King out of the trailer and into a round pen a few feet away.
Jack watched as the stallion gave the two men hell. He considered stepping in and offering to help, but he didn’t want to get in the way or ruin anything for Erin.
In the pen, the assistant worked him with the same long line, trotting him slowly in a circle. It was obvious that King still had a bit of a limp, though it was hard to tell since he was prancing about, refusing to settle down.
All Erin’s earlier nervousness had disappeared, at least outwardly. She stood tall, tattered briefcase in hand, and presented nothing but a calm, collected, professional demeanor. Like Jack, Erin seemed to understand that attitude was half the battle when dealing with people.
They half-dragged, half-coaxed King through a large bay door at the back of the outbuilding where Doctor Shaw took X-rays of King’s leg. After several false starts, because King wouldn’t hold still, they appeared satisfied with what they had and left the horse secured in a stall while Shaw gestured for them to come into the building.
They gathered in a small, windowless room, DelRay, Erin, Jack, and the vet. The vet’s assistant brought him two X-ray scans and the wiry old man clipped them to the light-box on the wall. He darkened the room and illuminated the side-by-side films.
The vet spoke aloud, using terms Jack didn’t really know. Pastern, fetlock—Jack wasn’t certain what it all meant, or if any of it was good.
In the dark, he was surprised, though, when Erin’s hand found his. She gripped it tightly and he could tell she was shaking a little. Even in the dim glow of the light-box, he could see her nervousness all over her face. She was biting her lip so hard he expected to see a trickle of blood at any moment.
Jack didn’t know if she needed to be that worried. He’d watched her in the round pen working with King for hours at a time. She was dedicated. She was determined. He understood that much, at least.
Finally, the lecture was over and the lights came back on.
“So?” DelRay demanded immediately. His shrewd eyes fixed on Shaw, ignoring Erin entirely for now.
“Well, he’s got a long ways to go, Tucker,” the vet explained. “But this?” he said, handing the man the most recent film. “I’d say this is a very, very promising start.”
Erin’s placid appearance rippled just a bit and she couldn’t keep from grinning widely.
Jack watched from the corner while she, DelRay, and Doctor Shaw sat around the desk and Erin meticulously laid out her plans for King’s continued therapy. She’d use the creek for water rehab, alcohol injections. The vet listened with rapt attention, pausing to ask questions once in a while.
For every question, Erin had a ready answer. From her scuffed briefcase, she produced sources from the latest veterinary medical journals, the newest therapies, expert opinions.
By the time she was done, Jack was ready to let her take a look at him, for God’s sake. He was fairly certain that this was the smartest woman he’d ever met, or was ever likely to.
DelRay gladly handed over a check with a whole lot of zeroes and Jack was sure that Erin had earned every last penny. The stodgy older man seemed to have lost all reservations about Erin providing physical therapy to King. He smiled and patted her on the shoulder, nodding encouragingly as she spoke.
Erin volunteered to get King back into the trailer by herself. At first the men protested, but Erin simply snapped on a lead rope and took him straight outside.
DelRay chuckled as he stood beside Jack, watching her load his precious cargo. “Isn’t that something?” he remarked.
Jack nodded, hand tightening on Erin’s briefcase. Better than being asked to hold a purse, he thought. “She definitely is,” he agreed.
* * *
Back at Thunder Ridge, the excitement was infectious. Bee bounced back and forth in her stall as Erin returned King to his. King turned agitated circles in the enclosure, anxious to be let out. To keep Bee occupied, Jack produced an apple for her. The mare’s eyes shone when she spotted it. He flipped the latch on the gate, and the lanky mare nosed out of the stall, lips twitching for her treat. Jack let her have it and she munched happily.
Across the way, King kicked the wall of his own stall, rattling the slats.
Bee started to make her way toward him.
“Careful,” Erin said, pushing past Jack and herding the mare back into the stall. “They’ll fight if you let them get too close to each other.”
Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise but stepped out of the way so that Erin could re-latch Bee’s stall door. She patted Bee’s blond mane reassuringly, then headed off toward the house with her briefcase in her arms.
&nbs
p; Jack watched her go, then took another apple from the bag. He offered it to King this time, who snatched it away and nearly devoured it in one bite. The snack didn’t seem to do much to distract the large male for long, though. His chest bumped the gate as he tried to push it open. When the bar held fast and King realized he was stuck in his stall, he took his frustration out on the wall again.
“You’re going to fuck up your other leg,” Jack warned him. “Then you’ll be here longer. Though,” he mused, “guess that wouldn’t exactly be a problem for you, would it?”
Jack gave King a pat on the forehead, then headed for the barn door. He looked back over his shoulder at the two horses who were stomping around their respective enclosures, rattling the steel doors, and appearing generally surly. He chuckled under his breath.
Erin might be an expert on injury rehabilitation, but she didn’t seem to know much of anything else about animals.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‡
Erin was up with the chickens, as usual, and raking a brush through her sleep-mussed hair. Life was back to normal now with the cast finally off. Her fingers flexed, good as new, and took on any task with ease, which was a relief. The skin on her forearm was whiter, though, than the rest, and the muscles still needed a bit more work to build back up. She smiled ruefully and figured she was more qualified than anyone to create a rehab regimen for herself.
She was doing just that, when suddenly she heard a loud crack from outside. It sounded like a tree falling. She dropped the brush and ran to the window. Through the glass she saw that Jack had let King out into the adjoining pasture with Bee.
She cursed herself for not explaining that they couldn’t go out at the same time. Forgoing boots or even pants, she sprinted down the stairs, panic overtaking her.
She burst through the back door and ran across the lawn where King had given the weather-worn fence a final death blow with his hooves. “NO!” she screamed as the huge stallion burst through the splintered wood.
Bee on the other side of her own pasture let out a loud whinny and King charged across the field, grass and clumps of dirt flying in his wake.
Erin made it to the part of the fence closest to her and grabbed the top rail. She jammed her bare foot on the bottom one and tried to scale it. King was already halfway to Bee now, grunting and bellowing like a demon who’d sighted his prey.
Erin started to throw her leg up over the rail when a pair of large hands grabbed her and snatched her back. “Let go!” she cried and reached again for the fence. “They can’t be outside together!”
Jack dragged her back. Her fingernails chipped on the wood as she tried desperately to hang on. Jack held her tight in his grip, though, arms around her like a vise and pulled her away. “No,” he told her. “Don’t.”
Erin fought, struggled against him, to get to the fence, to get to Bee. “He’ll kill her!” she shouted and attempted to pry Jack’s arms apart to free herself.
“No, he won’t,” Jack insisted, pulling her farther away from the fence and the pasture beyond it.
“Jack!” she argued, twisting frantically.
Jack slammed her body back against his and locked his arms across her torso. His lips found her ear and he began speaking in low, hushed tones, the way she did when a horse was stressed or overexcited. “Erin,” he said calmly.
It was maddening to her, because he couldn’t possibly understand the danger. Bee would be kicked to death. Her body torn by King’s vicious teeth. “Jack!” she protested breathlessly. “He’s huge. He’s dangerous. He’s—”
“Erin, I know you can’t understand this. Not really. But this is something I get that you don’t. He’s not going to hurt her.”
Erin watched helplessly as Bee struck out again with her back foot. She narrowly missed King’s chest. A scream threatened to tear loose from Erin’s throat. “Bee,” she sobbed.
“It’s fine,” Jack insisted. “There’s nothing you can do to intervene. It’s too dangerous. You can’t go in there, Erin. But he won’t hurt her. I promise. I’m sorry I let them out together. I didn’t know this would happen. You said the stalls needed to be cleaned. I was just getting a head start on the day. It’s going to be fine, though, Erin.”
Erin shook her head. Tears stung her eyes and she clamped down on Jack’s muscled arms. “You don’t know anything about horses!” she snapped. “You don’t know—”
Jack’s voice rumbled in her ear again, a low timbre that shook Erin’s insides in spite of everything. “Trust me. I know about large, dangerous males,” he half-whispered. “I know how frightening they are, how deadly they seem. And they are. But Bee belongs to King. She’s his female and he’ll never, ever hurt her.”
Bee struck out again and Erin sucked in a sharp breath. “But—”
“Oh, she’ll make him work for it,” Jack told her. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from a horse that belongs to you, Erin. But she wants him, too.”
King abandoned his rear pursuit of Bee, circled her, and came at her again, this time from the front. He stood two full hands taller than Erin’s little mare and he crowded her, his large chest pushing Bee back a little, toward the fence behind her.
In a few short steps, King had Bee backed into the corner. With nowhere to go, the mare gave a short whinny. She didn’t sound frightened, though, just irritated, the way she sounded when Erin was late with the grain or the hay.
Erin tightened her grip on Jack’s arms, clinging to him this time in fear. She watched King move to Bee’s side. His lips curled back, revealing his solid teeth. Once, on her father’s ranch, Erin had seen a stallion tear into a careless groomer’s shoulder, just a scant few inches from the man’s jugular. Only the grace of God had saved that man’s life that day, but he’d been permanently disabled.
King moved in on Bee and extended his head to Bee’s neck. His mouth came down over her mane. Erin cried as she expected to see the blood start pouring. Poor Bee’s beautiful long, blond mane would be stained red. But Bee stomped her foot impatiently, and King moved even closer, pressing his broad chest to her shoulder. It was just a slight nip, a love bite, really, of the type Erin had seen dozens of times with courting horses.
Erin watched in astonishment as Bee extended her own head. Instead of attacking King, trying to defend herself, the little mare rubbed her muzzle against King’s withers, nickering softly. King let go and Bee bolted forward. The stallion gave chase but to Erin’s eye, Bee wasn’t running at a full gallop. The four-year-old quarter horse maintained an easy gait almost as if she knew about King’s previous injury and didn’t want to push him too hard.
King pursued her from behind, then managed to pull ahead and get in front. He turned, gradually, corralling the little mare into a wide turn. They both came to a stop at the edge of the creek running through the north pasture.
Bee nickered again, then turned away from King. With a flick of her long, blond tail, she signaled that she was ready.
The stallion approached slowly, taking up his part of the mating ritual Erin had seen so many times before. He rubbed her hocks with his muzzle, nudged her tail farther aside to check her readiness. He must have been satisfied with his thorough inspection of the young mare because he rose up on powerful hindquarters and finally covered her.
Jack chuckled low in Erin’s ear and she began to relax in his arms. “Guess that’s enough foreplay,” he whispered.
Erin groaned. “Oh, God. It’s theft, technically. King’s worth a lot of money, even more than Bee is. It’s unethical to let him mount her. If she takes, the foal will be worth thousands.”
He laughed again and tightened the hold he had on Erin. “You can’t stop it now. Nothing on Earth could come between them. I think both of them would maul you for trying.”
Bee squealed and pushed back against the stallion covering her. It seemed Jack was right. King was being careful with his hooves and his teeth. Erin saw no broken skin or potential for injury.
Jack found her ear
and pressed his lips over it.
Erin shuddered at the familiarity.
“Now there’s something else I understand,” he whispered. “Certain females lose all control around large, potent males, almost desperate to be taken by them.”
Erin licked her lips nervously and gripped his arms hard, as if she could somehow hold him off. “I—”
“I wasn’t offering,” he said, cutting her off sharply.
He let go of her then and Erin hesitated before stomping off, back toward the house. She wasn’t about to try to wrangle King back into the barn in her sleep shorts and bare feet. And truth be told, she needed to get as far away from Jack as possible.
Putting distance between them seemed to have the opposite effect, though. With every step, every rub of her thighs, she recalled him holding her tightly. He’d been hard. She’d felt it through the thin fabric of her shorts.
She couldn’t blame him for that. She supposed he was a man, after all. But he hadn’t been interested in her.
I wasn’t offering.
Erin grunted and slammed the kitchen door behind her. Wasn’t offering. She wasn’t offering!
She stomped up the stairs and turned on the shower but only stood in the center of the room, trying to quell the urges tugging at her insides. It was all too much, the way he’d held her, the dark velvet of his voice in her ear—and it’d been a long time for her.
Sneaking glances at Jack while he worked was definitely not helping the situation. She had to stop doing that. For the sake of her sanity. And her poor, overworked vibrator. It was about to get another workout, though, because Erin couldn’t seem to cool the hot, pooling liquid in her belly.
She turned away from the water and back to the sink. She pulled open the top drawer and dug all the way into the back. She’d hidden it since the night Jack had discovered it. She supposed it might be better off in her underwear drawer, or in her closet, but the shower was where she used the damn thing and she wasn’t going to sneak it back and forth between her bedroom and the bathroom like a damn smuggler.
It was her house, damn it!