Cowboy Lessons

Maybe it was the he-man way he’d loaded the hay. Maybe it was the way he so casually leaned against the tailgate of the truck. Or maybe it was because he suddenly didn’t look a thing like a computer genius. Whatever it was, she had to struggle to remember his question.

Hubba, hubba, what a man.

Hubba, hubba…have you lost your mind?

“Now what?” she repeated to herself. She stiffened. “Er, ah. Now you go out to the pasture and feed them.”

“The bulls?”

“No, no…they have enough to graze on. The hundred heads of steers next to the bulls.”

“All right.” He came toward her. And suddenly Amanda went on heightened alert. If she was a submarine, her red lights would be blinking. He stopped right in front of her.

Warning. Warning. Warning.

“You have some dust on your face.”

Dust?

“It probably dropped from the barn roof,” she said, her voice seeming to come from a distance.

“Do you want me to remove it?”

“Sure,” she said, before she recalled the way she’d felt when they’d bumped into each other in the house, the way she felt right now, because there could be no denying the way her whole body buzzed as he came near, the way the look in his eyes made her stare up at him unblinkingly, the way she felt as he lifted a hand, then gently, oh so gently wiped the dust away from her cheek.

“There,” he said.

And, oh, my, she couldn’t believe it, but just that touch made her grow damp between the legs.

She was attracted to Scott Beringer.

Get a grip, Amanda.

She felt dizzy, realized it was because she was holding her breath, then sucked in a blast of oxygen. That helped. Marginally. “How—” She had to work her mouth in order to make the words come out. “How do you see without your glasses?”

“I don’t need my glasses for anything but reading. In fact, I’ll just move them to the truck, if you don’t mind.”

Mind? Mind what? Oh, yeah. The glasses. “No. That’s fine.”

He smiled. Amanda just about melted. It was a crooked smile. Not suave. Not flirtatious, just a genuine crooked smile that made her heart all but melt at the boyish, yet masculine friendliness of it.

She stepped back, waved a hand at her face, saying, “Dust,” in case he thought she was doing something silly, like waving the heat out of her cheeks, which she was.

Lord, you’ve got the hots for Scott Beringer.

There were a million reasons why that shouldn’t be, not the least of which was that he’d stolen their land. And yet she couldn’t deny the truth, despite what she tried to tell herself.

“Um, if you don’t mind, I’m going to let you do the feeding part all by yourself.”

“By myself?”

She nodded and said, “It’s easy.” And it was. “You just drive about two hundred yards out and start feeding. Honk the horn when you’re done.” She turned away from him before he realized the reason why she wouldn’t meet his gaze was because she was in danger of doing something silly, like touch him. Or maybe even jerk his head down and kiss him.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

“Into the house to make breakfast.”

“But I’ll do that.”

Oh, no, he wouldn’t, because just right now she didn’t need to admire him any more than she did, and she had a feeling Scott would cook as well as he did everything else.

“I’ll cook,” she said over her shoulder, nearly running into the door in the process.

Get a hold of yourself, Amanda.

“You just remember to close the gate when you’re done.”

She didn’t know if he nodded or not, didn’t know because she was halfway across the barnyard before she heard the truck start up.

Breakfast first, then part two of her plan. She could handle that, right?

Right?

Chapter Four

It was a sign of how discombobulated she was that it took her nearly a half hour to realize something was wrong. Very wrong.

By Amanda’s calculations, it should have taken Scott roughly twenty minutes to feed the steers, and that was taking into consideration his inexperience. But when the clock struck a quarter hour, Amanda figured she’d better check on him. Turning off the stove, Amanda removed a pot of sizzling sausages, their basil-and-garlic smell making her stomach growl.

What had he done?

She saw for herself a few seconds later.

Scott Beringer sat in the back of the truck atop a bale, only when he saw her, he shot up like a patio umbrella. Surrounding him on the ground were bales of hay, unopened, frustrated cattle milling around as they tried to get to the food. Scott tried to shoo them away so he could jump down, but he was simply out-numbered and likely too afraid to plunge into the midst of a hundred head of cattle.

She heard his faint cry of help.

“Well, I’ll be,” she murmured.

Why the heck hadn’t he opened the bales?

Because you didn’t tell him to.

She slapped her forehead. “You idiot,” she yelled, but it was hard to say who she meant, her or Scott.

She’d have to go rescue him.

SCOTT COULDN’T BELIEVE how relieved he was to see Amanda Johnson riding her horse toward him. Granted, it was usually the man that rescued the woman, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, this particular knight looked great atop a horse—better than he would. Her hair had dried into its masses of ringlets, the breeze picking up a red strand and playing with it. She looked glorious with the morning sky as a backdrop, and all he wanted to do was touch her. Unfortunately, she didn’t look half as impressed with him as he was with her.

“Nice going,” she said as she pulled her horse to a stop just outside the herd of cattle.

“I’d only fed a few bales and suddenly I was surrounded.”

“You’re supposed to open them first.”

“Open them?”

She shook her head, and he wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain she rolled her eyes, too. But then she kicked her horse forward, and the cattle parted as if her horse were a bowling ball and the cattle the pins.

“If you wrap the hay hooks around the twine,” she said as she got close enough for him to see that her waist was tiny when tucked into jeans, “it’ll snap the cord. You throw flakes to the steers, not the whole bale.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“No, I didn’t,” she admitted with a total honesty that took him by surprise. “My mistake.”

This woman was apologizing? Was the sky falling?

“Here,” she said. “Climb aboard. We’ll let them eat what they can and then come back to move the truck later.”

He’d like to climb on top of her.

But, of course, that would never happen. Not at his present rate of impressing her.

She held the horse in place while he slipped a leg over, then settled behind her with an ease that took him by surprise. But the moment his front made contact with her back, he grew instantly hard. Darn, she turned him on. Maybe it was the whole country girl thing, but suddenly he wondered if she’d look good in gingham and pearls.

“Wrap your arms around my waist.”

For real? She wanted him to touch her? He didn’t hesitate.

“Now, hold on.”

He held on, pulling her up against the front of his chest. Darn. She may have a hard body, but she was all woman beneath.

“Haven’t you ever watched a western before?” she asked, tilting her head a bit to stare at him out of the corner of her eye.

It took a moment for her words to penetrate the lust-induced haze he’d sunk into. And even then, he still couldn’t follow what she meant.

She must have seen his confusion. “Didn’t you ever wonder where those little flakes of hay came from?”

He had to force himself to swallow before saying, “Sure I’ve watched westerns, but I never paid close enough attention to them to know those little bricks open up.”

“Bales,” she mumbled, and he could have sworn he heard laughter in her voice. “They’re called bales.”

Good thing the back of her saddle separated their lower extremities, otherwise she’d figure out fast that the only hay he was thinking about was the hay he wanted to roll her in.

“I’m not off to a very good start, am I?”

He felt her stiffen, felt her kind of jerk a bit before saying, “Actually, you’re not doing too bad.”

They were the first kind words he’d had from her, and they made Scott’s heart pitter-patter.

“Yeah, well,” he croaked before coughing to dispel the odd crick in his throat. “I’ve decided to hire someone to do the feeding.”

She was silent a long moment. The horse swayed beneath them. The smell of leather rose up to mingle with her scent. Lemons. She smelled like a giant lemon, and he liked it.

“It must be nice,” she said.

“What?”

“To be able to buy whatever you want.”

“It is.”

She turned quiet after that. That was fine, Scott was too busy wondering if she’d mind taking a turn around the pasture. It was a beautiful morning. Very Sound of Music. Off in the distance a chicken clucked. Behind them steers mooed. All he needed was a pair of chaps, some pistols and a rope. And Amanda. John Wayne always got the girl.

“When I was in high school I had it in my head that I wanted to be the National High School Rodeo Association champion barrel racer,” she broke the silence by saying. “We had a horse that my dad picked up at auction. He was short, but man was he fast.”

She paused before the gate, but she didn’t move to open it. The horse shifted beneath them, but she seemed lost in another world. “At the beginning of my senior year nobody could touch us, and this girl, Andrea Thomas was her name, must have gotten sick of it because her dad showed up at our house one day. I didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t ask, just watched him go into the house to talk to my dad.” She paused, shaking her head a bit, a strand of her hair tickling his face. “You want to know what he wanted?”

He nodded, even though he had a feeling where she was going with this.

“He wanted to buy my horse, only, see, it wasn’t my horse. It was my dad’s. He’d bought it and I guess he felt he had a right to sell it.” He felt her whole body tense just before she said, “He did.”

If Scott had thought her father a total loser before, he was even more of a loser now. “He didn’t.”

She nodded. “For a bunch of money. Oh, he gave me some of it…to buy myself a new horse he said, as if the hours I’d spent on Thumper’s back could be bought back.” She shook her head again. “I’ve spent as many hours—more, actually—running this ranch, tending to the cattle, breeding them, selling them, and once again my father went and sold it from under me. Well, not sold, just lost it, which in some ways is even worse.” She tilted her head, and for the first time there was no animosity in her eyes as she said, “If you go back on your word to sell this place back to me if ranching isn’t your thing, Mr. Beringer, I promise I’ll buy the best hit man I can afford. You have my word on that.”

At that moment, he almost offered to sell the place back to her. Right then and there. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not when it’d always been a dream of his to own a ranch—a real ranch—like this. But if he decided to keep the place, maybe he could work something out with her. He might not be able to give her Thumper back, but he could give her the next best thing.

“Don’t move,” she said.

Scott was about to ask why, but she threw a leg over the front of her saddle and slipped from his arms before he could say a word.

She didn’t get back on, either, just led him through the gate like a child on a pony ride. And she never looked up at him, either. He suspected it was because she didn’t want him to see what was in her eyes. But he knew. Yes, he knew. Right after his parents had died, he’d watched as the State had sold all their personal belongings before placing him in foster care. He’d only been allowed to pack up one box. Granted, he’d never had a lot of toys, but he still remembered the hurt at having to leave some of them behind.

“Let me down.”

She must not have heard him at first because she kept leading the horse.

“Amanda, I need to get down. Now.”

She stopped then, the horse doing the same. When she looked up at him, Scott saw himself in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, just mimicked what she’d done a few minutes before. He almost fell flat on his face but clutched at the foot-strap thingies when he landed, which saved him—stirrups, they were called.

“What is it?” she repeated as he closed the distance between them.

Scott lifted her chin. “I’d buy you ten Thumpers if I could.”

He saw her eyes widen, that gaze a splendid mix of blues and greens and grays. Then she blinked and swallowed at the same time. It took him a moment to realize that it was because she’d teared up. Ah, hell.

He kissed her.

He’d wanted to do it all morning, and he wasn’t sorry that he did so now. He expected peaches and cream. He got a Fourth of July firecracker, right down to the sparks.

She gasped in surprise. So did he. But then he was slipping his tongue inside her mouth, tasting her. Wanting her. Lapping her up.

And she kissed him back. She didn’t protest. Didn’t jerk away from him. She seemed to feel the instant kapow that he did.

Her hands came up to his head, her fingers entwining the hair at his nape. His hands explored her sides, a part of him calculating the risk it would be to move his hand up and cup a breast…or two. Man, how he wanted that. But he couldn’t.

Instead he forced himself to draw back. One of his hands lifted to cup her chin again. Her eyes were closed. Freckles dusted her nose, her lashes long against her tanned cheeks.

Then her eyes suddenly sprang open and she looked a tad bit freaked, so he said, “I hope you don’t mind my doing that, but you seemed like you needed something to turn your mind from Thumper.”

She stiffened in his arms. “Scott—”

“No,” he said. “Don’t say a word. You needed a kiss. Don’t make more of it than it is.”

She didn’t look like she believed him. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t believe himself.

“Thank you,” she said.

A second later she turned toward the house. And Scott just stood there, arms hanging limply at his sides, wondering why it was he felt so weird.

It was only when he realized she’d left her horse behind that Scott realized he wasn’t the only one thrown.

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