Maybe she was scared of him.
He hoped so. Because he wasn’t scared of grizzly bears, rattlesnakes, or charging bulls, but he was definitely scared of women.
“Hang on around my waist,” he said.
She set one hesitant hand on each of his hips. Honey pawed a front hoof and snorted again.
“No, I mean really hang on.” Nate grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms around his waist. She clasped her hands tight, her knuckles whitening. Good thing he was wearing his granddad’s old rodeo buckle. If it weren’t for that two- by three-inch plate of chased silver, she’d have hit the danger zone.
Honey bunched her hindquarters and gave a little hop to the right, bouncing his passenger up into the air and back down hard on her tailbone.
“Ow!” she said.
“Shhhh.” Nate stayed firmly in place and patted the horse’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” Charlie said. “I mean, I’ve ridden before. When I was a kid.” She sighed. “Before I realized how wrong it was.”
Nate glanced back at her, then returned his attention to the horse. “I figured that.”
“You did?” She sounded pleased.
“Yeah. It’s Honey I’m worried about.”
He felt her stiffen against him. That probably wasn’t what he was supposed to say, but heck, if the woman had ridden before, it must have been a birthday-party pony ride. She sat the horse like it was an electric chair on death row.
“Honey’s just new to all this, so try not to be nervous. She can feel it.”
“Okay.”
Nate murmured a few sweet nothings in Honey’s ear and felt her blow out her tension in a long, slow breath. At a click of his tongue, she stepped out briskly, nodding her head in time with each step.
The woman squeezed him tighter despite Honey’s easy gait.
“Just relax,” Nate said. “Relax your thighs.”
He fondled the crest of Honey’s mane and tried not to think about Charlie’s thighs. She was squeezing the mare’s flanks so hard she was liable to urge the horse into a jog, and that would probably land both of them in the dirt. With any luck, he’d land on top of her. He shut his eyes tight, banishing the image of the two of them wrestling in the dust.
“Don’t worry, Honey,” he murmured. “We’ll take this real slow. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I know,” Charlie said. She hung on a little tighter, and he felt an involuntary flood of warmth wash over more than just his face this time.
He didn’t like this woman. He wished she’d go away. But some part of him was glad she didn’t mind being called Honey anymore.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong part of him, and it was harder to control than a hungry horse hell-bent for the barn.
Chapter 3
Charlie shifted her hands away from Nate’s belt buckle, but that left them flat against his stomach, where she could feel his muscles tensing under her fingers. To make matters worse, every move of the horse made her breasts brush against his back. Between that and the rocking motion of the horse under her pelvis, she was in serious danger of enjoying the ride a little too much.
She tried to concentrate on the horse. She could feel repressed energy pulsing in Honey’s flexing muscles as if the animal was holding back, trying not to break into a run. Maybe horses didn’t mind being ridden. Maybe the partnership worked out for everyone, like Nate said.
“You rode before?” he asked. He sounded doubtful.
“A long time ago. I went through one of those horse-crazy phases as a kid. Got over it, though, and it’s been a while.”
“Well, you’re working way too hard at it. You need to relax. Just hang on to me and forget about staying on. I don’t plan on falling off.”
“Okay.” She did her best to relax, shifting her pelvis forward and letting her legs dangle, but that only brought her into closer contact with Nate. When she sat up straighter, her breasts pushed into his back, so she slouched again and gave in to the pleasure of the horse’s rhythmic gait.
“Good job,” he said.
She felt a rush of pride, then realized he’d offered the praise in exactly the tone he’d used on Honey—except his voice lacked the silky, intimate tone he used with the horse.
“Just relax and do what feels right,” he said. “That way, we’ll all work together—you, me, and the horse.”
Unfortunately, what felt right was her hands laced across his stomach, his back warm against her breasts, and the gentle rocking motion of the horse. She pushed her libido aside and let her mind go blank—a skill she’d perfected in late-afternoon seminars on sparkling topics like “Cognitive, Affective, and Social Aspects of Behavior” and “Qualitative Research Methods.”
Once she stopped thinking about the cowboy and the horse, she could appreciate the scenery. Somehow, what had looked bleak and featureless from the front seat of her car looked completely different from the back of a horse. The late-afternoon sun streaked the grass with golden highlights and cast deep-blue shadows under every rock and tree. A bird started up from under the horse’s feet and flew away with a high, piping call, dipping and rising in eccentric flight. The ground stretched ahead of them, broken by rills and escarpments and speckled with brown and white cattle grazing serenely on the hillsides. In the distance, a single light sparkled near the horizon.
“Is that the ranch?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“It’s still a long way away, isn’t it?”
“A ways. You okay if we jog a little?”
With a jolt of surprise, she realized she was. She’d forgotten to worry about her riding skills, and they’d somehow improved dramatically.
“Sure,” she said.
Nate clicked his tongue and Honey broke into a smooth, easy trot. Charlie tightened her grip, then caught herself and relaxed. For a minute she was off rhythm, and her pelvis punched into Nate’s Wrangler butt at every downbeat. Centering herself, she took a deep breath, and suddenly they were moving in perfect harmony, the three of them merged into one graceful being.
“There,” Nate said. She couldn’t see his face, but she thought she heard a smile in his voice. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Go faster,” she said, breathless.
He pressed his heels into Honey’s ribs and the mare rose into a graceful lope, her long stride eating up the terrain, her hooves thumping out a rhythmic tattoo. Charlie laughed, delighted, as her hair swept back from her face.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Nate said.
“It’s wonderful.” Without thinking, Charlie clutched him a little tighter in a grateful squeeze.
Nate steered Honey up to the top of a rise and pulled her to a reluctant stop. The sun hung inches above the horizon, and the sky was tinted with luminous jewel tones of aquamarine and amber.
“That’s the ranch down there,” he said, pointing toward the west. Beneath the golden flare of the setting sun, Charlie could barely make out a cluster of buildings nestled in a shallow valley, surrounded by a network of fences defining paddocks and pastures that held an assortment of cattle and horses. A row of spindly cottonwoods bordered a shallow creek that mirrored the sky’s subtle colors.
“It doesn’t look much like the brochure.”
As a matter of fact, the place looked almost deserted, like a movie set from a B Western that had been abandoned to the elements. A few horses grazed in the surrounding pastures, but not a single human enlivened the landscape. Charlie was alone in the back of beyond with a total stranger.
She wasn’t afraid, though. Partly it was because of the way he’d treated the horse, but mostly it was because she was from Jersey. The only things she was afraid of were mobsters, five o’clock traffic, and the prices at the Menlo Park Mall. A lone cowpoke was nothing compared to the dangers Jersey had to offer.
“I’m going to have to take a look at that brochure,” he said. “See what Sandi promised you.”
“It blew away, remember? But never mind,” Charlie said. “I’m starting to think Sandi made a lot of promises she never intended to keep.”
“Yeah.” Nate clicked his tongue and steered Honey down the rock-strewn slope that led to the ranch. “I’m starting to think that too.”
As they descended the slope at a slow walk, Nate leaned back, adjusting his posture to the angle of the horse’s back. Charlie tried to parallel his stance, but with her arms around his waist, the position felt strangely intimate, as if he was lying in her arms. She was relieved when they reached the end of the slope and straightened up to head across the flat.
As they neared the weathered buildings, Charlie realized the place looked even worse from close-up. The buildings in the brochure were unpainted and aged to a quaint chestnut color, like old-fashioned cabins. The actual ranch buildings were unpainted all right, but the sun had leached all the life out of the warped gray siding. The only signs of life were a few chickens pecking in the barnyard and an impressively overweight dog lying a few feet away, its belly swelling like bloated roadkill. As they approached, the dog lifted its head and whuffed out a half-hearted greeting, then settled back to sleep.
Honey strolled up to the barn with no guidance from Nate and blew loudly through her nose, impatient for rest and food. The barn was by far the biggest building of the bunch, and by far the best kept. Its doors sported shiny new hardware, and it appeared to have been painted sometime in the past decade.
Reluctant as she’d been to mount the horse, Charlie was even more reluctant to dismount—especially since she couldn’t figure out a graceful way to do it. She swung her right leg out and back over Honey’s hind end, but the motion flung her forward against Nate and her left breast pressed into the hard muscle of his arm as she slid to the ground.
“Nice,” Nate said. She wondered if he was referring to her dismount or the breast-pressing. He seemed like a pretty straight-laced guy, so she decided he was just being polite.
He swung down from Honey’s back in one fluid motion, then flipped the reins over her head. “I’ve got to take care of Honey,” he said.
Without another word or a backward glance, he turned and led the horse into the barn.
It was a good thing he couldn’t see Charlie’s face, because a pout wasn’t her best look. She was a damsel in distress here, but she might as well be a stick of wood for all he cared.
Charlie was starting to understand why Sandi, whoever she was, had bailed out. Still, it was nice to see a man who cared more about animals than women, even if the woman was her. And it was surprising to find a guy like that under a cowboy hat.
She glanced around at the surrounding buildings, trying to distinguish the house from the chicken coop. All the structures were in similar states of disrepair, but Charlie decided chickens probably wouldn’t have much use for a front porch or a chimney, and they wouldn’t have lights on at this hour either. She didn’t know a lot about farm animals, but she remembered roosters crowed at dawn and figured they’d want to hit the sack by sundown.
She thought the front door was locked at first, but it was just stuck, warped into place by the sun. A hard shove popped it open, revealing an old-fashioned kitchen that looked like it was stuck too—in time. The fifties, to be exact, judging from the red and white color scheme and the wallpaper, where bright red cherries burst from a black-and-white checked background.
Charlie felt something fill up her chest and give her heart a quick tug. She knew that wallpaper. One of the apartments she and her mother had shared was decorated with the same tacky stuff. Looking at it, she could almost smell her mother’s baking and hear the rush of traffic outside the window. For just a second, she felt ten years old again.
Shaking off the memories, she scanned the rest of the room. Sandi had apparently left some time ago, judging from the stack of dishes teetering in the kitchen sink. A wastebasket overflowing with empty Hungry-Man boxes and bent aluminum trays showed how Nate had solved his culinary issues. He was evidently partial to Roast Turkey Dinner with Stuffing.
Thanksgiving every day.
That would be a psychological study, Charlie thought. Could you judge a man’s personality by his choice of TV dinners? The roast turkey might mean Nate longed for home and family.
More likely, it meant he got sick of Salisbury steak and was too lazy to cook. Or maybe he didn’t know how. There was a distinct odor of burnt toast about the kitchen, and a peek into the refrigerator revealed the decomposing corpses of several unrecognizable entrees.
That didn’t bother Charlie. As a grad student, she’d eaten her share of overcooked ramen noodles and cold Spaghettios. She just hoped Nate had some other selections in the freezer, because she didn’t eat meat.
And besides, Turkey Dinner didn’t come with dessert.
Chapter 4
The uninvited guest was standing at the sink staring out the window at the last remnants of the sunset when Nate strolled inside.
“Don’t bother with the dishes,” he said. “I’ll get to them later.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she said. “I might have been born a girl, but I didn’t inherit the tidy gene.”
He caught the sarcasm in her tone and gave himself a mental pat on the back. Sandi always said he wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it bit him in the butt, but he’d caught it that time. Maybe Sandi was just too subtle. Maybe it wasn’t his fault.
Charlie Banks sat down at the kitchen table, a chrome-and-Formica dinette set his grandmother had bought with green stamps. A glass tumbler filled with daisies and bright purple dame’s rocket sat on a white doily in the center. She reached out and adjusted one of the daisies.
“We always have flowers on the table,” he said. “I make sure they’re always there, in case…oh, never mind.” He frowned and turned away, busying himself with his boots, stamping off the muck on the doormat and wishing he could use one to kick himself in the ass. This woman didn’t want to hear about his family traditions. She probably didn’t want to hear about anything but dinner.
“There are TV dinners in the freezer. I could make you one.”
“Got macaroni and cheese?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“How ’bout fettuccine Alfredo?”
“Nope. Just Turkey Dinner.”
“The gravy on that one’s gross. Like congealed snot,” she said. “Besides, I don’t eat meat. Got any cereal?”
He set a box of Lucky Charms on the table, along with some milk. He glanced at the kid in the photo on the side of the milk carton and decided she didn’t look any more lost than he felt. He’d hardly even looked at another woman since meeting Sandi in high school, and now he was sharing his home with an alien creature.
New Jersey? She might as well be from the moon. Hell, he didn’t even know what to feed her. It was like getting an exotic pet before he had a chance to read up on care and feeding.
Fortunately, the woman seemed happy enough crunching on her shamrocks and pink marshmallows while Nate nuked his frozen dinner. He sat down across from her and picked at the slabs of meat with a bent fork.
“I never thought of that before,” he said. “About the gravy.”
Just the sight of it turned his stomach now. He pushed his chair back. “I don’t think I can eat this.”
“Sorry.” She spooned the last of the pink-tinted milk out of her bowl and stretched. “I’m bushed. Where am I sleeping?”
“You can have my room.”
“You don’t have a place for guests?”
He shook his head. “There’s a bunkhouse, but it’s a mess.”
“No other bedrooms?”
Nate stiffened. “Just in the attic,” he said. “And that’s—you can’t use that one.”
He shrugged. He didn’t have to explain himself to this stranger. The attic was off-limits. That was all she needed to know.
“I’m probably not the only one who got that brochure, you know. If it got all the way to Jersey, your girlfriend must have gone nationwide. You’re going to need every bedroom you’ve got.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I doubt anybody else will come. It’s hardly deluxe accommodations.”
“Yeah, but she made the place look like a luxury dude ranch. You’re going to end up with a full house.”
He doubted that. It would take a feat of magic to make Latigo look luxurious. Maybe Charlie’s professor or whoever had sent her here just wanted to get rid of her. She seemed like she might be a little hard to get along with.
“So if I sleep in your room, what’ll you do?” she asked.
“I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
“I could do that,” she said. “It’s your place. And I’m not picky.”
Maybe she wasn’t so difficult after all. “No,” he said. “Butt sleeps on the sofa. It’s gross.”
“Who sleeps there?” She looked puzzled. “Did you say Butt?”
“My dog. Sandi named her Buttercup, but that sounds stupid, so I call her Butt.”
“Bet Sandi loved that.” She laughed. “I don’t mind dogs.”
“Butt likes to roll in the cow patties,” he said. “I try to catch her and hose her down, but she’s wily.”
“Okay,” she said. “You can have the sofa.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t slept in the bed since Sandi left anyway. It’s—big.”
Charlie stretched and yawned, lifting her arms high above her head. Her top hiked up, revealing a tanned stomach accentuated by a rhinestone belly button ring. The tantalizing edge of an unidentifiable tattoo peeked out from the top of her jeans.
Nate looked away and tried to think about his great-aunt Martha. Aunt Martha was usually good at chasing pretty girls out of his head.
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