A Cowboy's Angel

Good-looking, friendly and willing to talk to her about how they might save unwanted racehorses’ lives.

“Oh, um...” Not really. “Sure,” she called back, hoping he didn’t see the way she wilted against the side of her car.

Maybe having dinner with him was a bad idea.

Go on. Move. He’s not going to bite.

No, but she wished he would bite the side of her neck, maybe suckle it—

Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.

Why, oh why, did the man have this kind of effect on her? It was crazy how every time she saw him, her heart would beat like the skin of a drum. Her palms would grow sweaty. And her body would buzz and warm in places it had no business buzzing and warming. None at all.

“Come on. We’ll use the golf cart. I already fed the barn.”

He walked toward her. All she could do was nod and then push away from the side of her car.

Get a grip.

Sexual attraction. Inconvenient, inconceivable, stupid sexual attraction. In college she’d had the hots for one of her professors. Eventually it’d worn off. Hopefully, this would, too.

“Um, nice place.” She ducked beneath the canvas roof of the cart as she climbed in next to him and he smelled... Oh, he smelled sooooo nice. Like sage and sawdust with a hint of sweat.

“Thanks.” He started the engine, the reverse gear popping into place with a jerk, something that seemed to be universal to golf carts the world over. “My parents built the barns and the fencing, but the house is original to the property.”

Should she admit she knew that? Wouldn’t he find that stalkerlike? “I read about that on your website.”

He glanced at her quickly. Yup. Definitely thought her stalkerlike.

“I research all the racehorse owners.”

Beneath his straw hat, a mixture of amusement and devilry shone in his skyline-colored eyes. “Oh, I’m sure. I bet you have dossiers on all of us.”

He shifted the cart into first gear, and she had a feeling he looked away only because he’d been about to laugh.

“It’s nothing personal.”

Why are you defending yourself? Geez, get a grip.

Because it was personal with him, she admitted, and all because of this damn ridiculous physical attraction. She’d known it from the start too. Usually, she went online to find out more about a racing stable’s operations—the number of stallions they had, if they bred their own broodmares, how many foals dropped in a year, that kind of thing. She’d be lying, though, if she didn’t admit to clicking around on the Triple J Ranch’s website looking for more information about Zach. What had he called himself? Small-time? Something like that, and they were. The Triple J Ranch could easily house dozens of racehorses, but she’d only counted four broodies out front. They didn’t have a stallion at stud, either. She’d heard they’d had to put him down a couple years ago, but she couldn’t deny that all that information had been secondary to finding out if he had a wife or kids or a girlfriend.

She was such an idiot.

“Sorry about your horse,” she blurted, because there she went blushing again. They were driving toward a shed, one that served as cover for the pasture animals on one side and looked to be some kind of storage facility on the other side. “Bad luck.”

“You have no idea.”

A soft breeze wafted across her face. It blew the smell of him away from her and allowed her to focus more on what she was at the Triple J to do.

Thank God.

“If Doc Miller suggests a fasciotomy, don’t do it.”

She felt him glance over at her. She was trying to keep her eyes straight ahead, but it was hard to resist the urge to turn and meet his gaze.

“It’s an unproven procedure that might end up doing more harm than good.”

Don’t look at him. Do not look at him.

She looked at him.

Zap!

That was what his stare felt like. Zing. Zoom. Zam.

“More internet research?” he teased.

Breathe.

“Actually,” she all but wheezed, “I’m a vet.”

He slammed on the brakes. She had to throw her hands forward to avoid slipping off the seat.

“What?”

They’d made it to the shed, but one glimpse into his eyes and she realized she’d shocked him. Good. If she kept him on his toes, maybe then he wouldn’t spot the way she blushed every time their gazes met.

“A vet. Graduated two years ago. That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I have some ideas about the aftercare of horses with an injury like Dasher’s.”

She really wished he would quit looking at her like that. It made her all kinds of uncomfortable and...quaky inside. Yes, quaky, especially since she was closer than she’d ever been to him before. She could see up close how perfectly his features all melded together into a picture of utter male handsomeness.

“Where’s your practice?”

“I don’t... Well, I mean, I do have one. I mean, I could if I wanted to, and I do, sort of....”

She took a deep breath. “I work for nonprofits, mostly. Did a year in Mexico and Chile gelding stallions for rural farmers. These days I’m focusing on problems that are closer to home. I work for a temp agency that specializes in placing veterinarians. It means I have to travel a lot, but that’s okay. Working temp jobs gives me lots of free time to focus on CEASE.”

There. That hadn’t sounded so bad. He didn’t need to know that she’d been looking for full-time work for months now. Let him think she selflessly devoted herself to her cause.

He turned off the cart. “Be right back.”

“What? Wait. I’ll go with you.”

“No, no. Just stay there.”

He left her there sitting all alone.

She slumped against the seat in disappointment. She’d been hoping for a “Good for you,” maybe even a “Wow, I’m impressed,” but all she saw was his impressive backside disappear inside the shed.

You should be grateful he put some distance between the two of you.

Instead she dwelled on her disappointment at his nonreaction, and that worried her all the more. What did she care if he wasn’t impressed by her vocation? He was a racehorse owner. The enemy.

A handsome enemy.

She covered her face with her hands and groaned. She had the hots for him, all right. And she had them bad.

“Not good,” she heard herself say.

Not good at all.

* * *

A VET.

Zach pulled the string on a brand-new bag of grain, the threads sliding free with a pop-pop-pop-pop, all the while trying to figure out what would make a woman go through years and years of schooling only to toss them all away and found an organization like CEASE.

Crazy.

Well, he knew that. Everyone at Golden Downs knew it. When she and her buddies had picketed the entrance to the track, she’d arrived in a horse costume, complete with long flowing mane made out of yarn.

Crazy.

Outside he heard the rhythmic thud of horses’ hooves. Belle and Baby must have spotted his arrival and were now galloping to the shelter in anticipation of gorging themselves on grain. One of them nickered along the way.

“Hold on, hold on,” he said, opening a feed door along the back wall. Two anxious faces stared back at him, ears pricked forward, eyes bright. He smiled. “Did you honestly think I would forget about you?”

They nodded their heads as if answering his question but were really just exhibiting equine impatience, manes flying, forelocks waving. He poured out the feed. They acted starved. The two of them had all the grass in the world, but he gave them supplements to help the growth of their unborn foals.

“Slow down, you guys. You’re going to choke.”

“I, ah, I think I’m going to head on up to the house.”

He just about jumped. His horses, too, both of them lifting their heads as if to ask, “Who’s that?”

A pain in his backside.

She stood in the doorway, her pretty hair lit up like a sorrel-colored horse. He’d never seen hair such a golden-red before and not for the first time he wondered if it was fake or natural. He would bet natural.

“I brought something I should warm up, and so if you don’t mind...” She motioned back toward the parking area. “I don’t want it sitting in the sun, either.”

“Hang on. I’ll drive you.”

He tossed the horses some grain, then all but threw the scooper back into the garbage can he used to store their feed and closed the lid with a snap before turning back around and brushing by her, their arms grazing. She jumped as if he’d hit her with flames.

It drew him up short. “Did I scratch you or something?”

“No, no.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I’m fine. Just a little off-balance.”

He spotted the blush then. Saw how her pulse beat at the base of her neck. The way her gaze darted all over the place—anywhere but at him.

She was aware of him.

He stepped closer. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. Great. Just hungry. That’s why I want to start heating up my dish. I didn’t have any lunch and I’m starved. I’m such an idiot sometimes. I really should eat. Surprised I don’t just keel over sometimes.” She made the sound of a splat, using her forearm to mimic falling over. “Plop. That’s going to be me one day. Not eating makes me light-headed. That’s all.”

Who was she trying to convince? Him? Or her?

He almost laughed. And she still wouldn’t look at him, and that was when he knew. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she found him attractive.

Well, well, well.

Little Miss Animal-Rights Activist was into him. He wasn’t sure if he should be flattered...or scared.

“Don’t worry,” he said softly, closing the distance between them and tipping her chin up.

She gasped.

He tried not to laugh. He had no idea why he did it except maybe he supposed it had something to do with the number of times she’d driven him insane with her actions and her comments and her innuendos and assumptions.

He pretended to examine her. “Your eyes aren’t dilated or glazed over, so no hypoglycemia.”

“That’s good,” she said softly.

“But if you fall down, I’ll catch you.”

He released her. She blinked. He smiled. She turned the same color as her hair.

Oh, yeah. She found him attractive, all right.

So what are you going to do about it?

Drive her crazy, he told himself. Completely and utterly crazy. Maybe then she’d leave him alone.

Chapter Three

She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Mariah ran back to her car while he finished up with the pasture horses. With any luck, she’d have gained control of her emotions by the time they met up again, at least she hoped so, anyway, as she pulled to a stop in front of his home. She found herself pausing for a moment after reaching between the passenger seat and driver’s seat and grabbing a brown bag with her hors d’oeuvres.

She peered out the front windshield in curiosity. His home was gorgeous. A real showplace. Absolutely nothing of the original ranch remained. The outside consisted of three A-frames that sat side by side, with the middle portion bigger than the rest. Redwood siding complemented the massive windows along the front. The landscaping alone had to have cost 100 grand.

When she opened the car door and stepped outside, she could smell the redwood mulch used to line the planters of the gardens.

At least she didn’t smell him anymore.

He’d told her to go on inside, but it still felt odd to open one of the double doors.

“Wow.”

Okay. There was nice, and then there was niiiice. Cavernous didn’t begin to describe the place. Huge beams supported the middle-section roofline—like the rib cage of a dinosaur. A parquet floor stretched from the fireplace on her right to the entertainment center on her left. Straight ahead a trio of windows overlooked the backside of the ranch with a stunning view of low-lying mountains outside.

“Must be nice,” she heard herself mutter, heading to the left, where she could see the gleam of state-of-the-art kitchen appliances. After vet school she’d inherited a pile of debt and a liability insurance policy the size of a mortgage. It was why she didn’t have her own practice. Not yet, anyway. By the time she made her student loan payment and paid the rent and insurance, not to mention a medical truck payment, she’d be lucky to clear five hundred dollars a month, not enough to live off, and certainly not enough to start her own business. Getting hired by an established vet—someone who could split expenses with her—was the first step toward that happening. And so she waited, and in the meantime she filled in for vacationing veterinarians whenever she could, which wasn’t nearly as often as she needed. Thus the old jalopy outside.

The kitchen was just as spacious and grandiose as the foyer. Stainless-steel everything, light brown countertops with spots like quail eggs, tile on the floor instead of parquet. She set the bag down on the island in the middle, almost afraid to make a mess. If this was being small-time, where did she sign up?

Five minutes later she had just finished stirring the Parmesan cheese into her spinach dip when she heard the front door open.

Oh, dear.

Two seconds later he walked into the kitchen, the smell of him reaching her before he did: it wasn’t shavings she’d smelled on him earlier, but some kind of fresh-cut grass and sweat and some sort of pine-scented aftershave that had caused her just as much discomfort inside as it had outside.

“Whatever that is, it looks delicious.” He cocked his cowboy hat back a bit and peered into the dish. “What is it?”

He was tall. She liked tall men. They made her feel feminine and secure and somehow safe.

He’s a racehorse owner, the sane part of her screamed. Heck, and a horse trainer, too.

But he’d agreed to let her help him. That meant something.

“It’s cheesy spinach dip.” She tried like heck not to edge away from him, but she could feel the heat radiate off of him, which, in turn, made her feel flush. “There’s enough calories in that to clog an artery or two.”

He leaned down close to her, so close she could see the dark blue ring around his eyes. “You trying to kill me, then?”

He could have no way of knowing how just being next to him was killing her. No way at all, but she could have sworn she saw the glimmer of something in his eyes, something that made her skin prickle.

“It’s really good.” She sounded like a timid little girl.

He had really white teeth and a smile that made it difficult to hold his gaze. “What do we dip?”

She pointed with her chin toward the brown bag. The moment he stepped away, the muscles in her shoulders collapsed. Her legs damn near did, too.

He found the pieces of the French loaf she’d cut up earlier, his look of pleasure as he dipped a fluffy piece of bread, lifted it to his mouth, then chewed doing strange things to her insides.

“Forget dinner. We should eat this.”

“That’s okay with me.”

He smiled. “Nah. I have something special planned. Braised short ribs with a port arsenic reduction.”

It took her a moment to follow his words, which just went to show how discombobulated she was. “Uh-huh.”

All right. So he made her feel all silly and tongue-tied and teenager-like inside. Oh, well. She’d get over it.

“Just kidding.”

He was? She straightened in embarrassment. How had she missed that?

You were too busy ogling him.

“Seriously,” he said. “I’m making fajitas. Simple.” He went to the fridge and began pulling out the ingredients—a package of beef, a bell pepper, an onion and grated cheddar cheese—and then set them on the island next to her brown bag. “Only takes a moment. Sit down while I brown the meat and onions. You can tell me your plans for Dasher.”

She told herself to focus on what she’d come to do, not how the light from a window along the front of the house cast a glow onto his face, highlighting the dusky outline of his whiskers. He had a chin right out of a comic book and the shoulders to match. Hours out of doors had turned his skin a deep mahogany that emphasized the cobalt of his eyes. He kept peeking at her as he unwrapped the meat and set it on a cutting board.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

She took a deep breath. Okay. Focus.

“I bet Dr. Miller suggested stall rest and some kind of therapy for Dasher.”

He nodded as he began chopping the meat. “And maybe surgery.”

“Don’t listen to him.”

He paused. “You care to tell me why I shouldn’t listen to a doctor with thirty years of experience caring for racehorses?”

“For exactly that reason.” She spotted a barstool beneath the center island far enough away from where he stood that maybe she could concentrate. “He’s old-school.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

How could someone so handsome do something so deplorable for a living? It was hard to reconcile the man in front of her—good-looking, cooking dinner for her—and the mental image she’d built up of him as some kind of evil ogre.

“I wrote a paper my senior year on high suspensory tears in equines. In it I completely disproved the validity of the traditional treatment options used by modern-day veterinarians.” She frowned. “Although not without ruffling a few feathers.”

Including Paul’s, but she wasn’t going to think about that.

“I’ll bet,” he said, pulling a pan from somewhere and scraping the meat into it. “You’re good at ruffling feathers.” But he shot her a smile meant to take the sting out of his words, his grin causing her to shift her gaze to the granite counter. No, not granite, marble, she suddenly realized.

“They didn’t like that I was right.” When she lifted her gaze, it was in time to see him turn away, pan in hand, the click-click-click of the gas burner filling the air. “I might not have had as large a control group as they wanted, but I proved that conventional medical treatment guaranteed no more success than my method. In fact, my method actually had more success, something the review board chalked up to luck.”

And it still burned her when she thought about it. Luck. As if fate had had something to do with the successful rehabilitation of two show horses.

“And what is that method?”

The sizzle of cooking meat made her stomach growl. She reached for a piece of bread and scooped a bit of the dip. She was pleased with how good it tasted.

“Let me ask you something.” She resisted the urge to snatch up another piece. “If you were to tear your ACL or your meniscus, what do you think the doctors would prescribe as treatment?”

His back was still toward her as he shrugged, and Mariah couldn’t help noticing the muscles beneath his polo shirt. They were as well defined as a professional boxer’s. Must be all that hay he lifted.

“Rest. If that didn’t work, surgery.” She watched as he moved the meat around the pan. “Therapy afterward.”

“Exactly.” She gave in and scooped up more of the dip. Chewing gave her a moment to gather her thoughts. “Therapy. But what do they suggest you do? Lock your horse up for months on end, then walk him for another two months. No turnout. No movement. No real exercise. Nothing but rest, and that’s not good for an animal that’s genetically programmed to roam the range. Keep them cooped up for a few weeks and what happens?”

He turned, glancing up at her as he grabbed the onion pieces. “They blow.”

“Exactly,” she pronounced again. “And then you’re right back where you started from, sometimes in an even worse position. I’ve seen some injured horses go crazy in their stalls from lack of activity. So you drug them, but you can only keep them drugged for so long before they have health problems, and then what?”

He went back to cooking and it smelled divine, especially when he grabbed some spices from a rack above the stove. The scent of whatever he sprinkled caused her to close her eyes and inhale.

“So what do you suggest we do for Dasher?”

She had to force herself to open her eyes, because it was far easier to concentrate when she wasn’t looking at him. “Minimal stall rest, enough time to let the injury heal, then right back to work. Not,” she quickly interjected, “regular work, but therapeutic activity, the same type of therapy your own doctor might prescribe. Stretches, leg lifts, weights, followed by massages and hot-and-cold therapy.”

“You going to put Dasher on a treadmill, too?”

“I just might.”

Once again he turned around and she couldn’t mistake the laughter in his eyes, or the curiosity. He might be somewhat distracted cooking his scrumptious-smelling fajitas, but not so much that he hadn’t heard what she had to say. What felt like butterfly wings brushed against her stomach. She had to look away, for fear he’d see the pleasure in her eyes.

He’s the enemy. Best to remember that.

“My research shows it’s important to keep a horse moving.”

Too bad her professors had dismissed her findings. As if torn suspensories grew on trees. It would take years to compile enough data to appease them. Meanwhile, horses would continue to languish.

She shook her head. “Just like for a human, a lack of movement can cause the supporting tendons and muscles to atrophy. Standing still is the last thing you want them to do.”

He went to the refrigerator and pulled out tortillas, then went back to stirring the pan.

“So what you’re saying is you’d like me to do the exact opposite of what Doc Miller says.” He picked up the pan and flipped all the ingredients like a master chef, and Mariah tried hard not to seem impressed when he glanced back at her afterward. “I’m supposed to just trust you.”

Well, when he put it that way...

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I also know I’m right.”

With a quick flick of his wrist, he turned off the stove, pulled out a pot holder from a drawer, tossed it on the counter, then set the steaming pan down on top of it.

“That smells so good,” she said.

“Help yourself.” He motioned toward the tortillas.

“No, no. You go first.”

“Absolutely not. Ladies first.”

A gentleman. Figured he’d be the exact opposite of what she’d expected.

“There’s cilantro in the bag there if you want some.” He pointed. “Oh, and I have salsa, too.” He moved to the fridge and pulled a jar off a shelf. “Here.”

She piled some meat and veggies onto a tortilla, hardly paying attention to what she grabbed because he was right next to her again and she’d begun to realize that being close to him was dangerous to her peace of mind.

“Thanks,” she said.

Why did he have to be a racehorse owner? Why couldn’t he have been a regular horse trainer? The kind that showed animals. One of the good ones, because even show-horse trainers could be bad. He wasn’t. He was a racehorse trainer and owner. So she found herself ducking her head and trying like the devil not to notice how gorgeous his eyes were and how his smile came with dimples.

She couldn’t retreat to the far end of the island fast enough. She nearly lost her appetite when he took a seat next to her.

“Do you like it?”

Had she taken a bite? Goodness, she hadn’t even noticed. “Yes. It’s great.”

And it was. Great cook. Good man. Gorgeous dimples. Crap.

She’d finished half her plate before she said another word, and then only to say, “Thanks for cooking.”

“My pleasure.”

Was there any way she could get up and move without seeming rude? Probably not. So she forced herself to stop eating and say, “I really think with a few months of therapy, Dasher could be sound enough to ride. Not to race, of course, but good enough to go on to a career as a show horse or something. I’d want to see the ultrasounds Dr. Miller took today, of course, just to make sure, but I don’t anticipate I’ll change my mind. A torn suspensory is a torn suspensory.”

“I’ll have them for you first thing in the morning.”

“It’s okay. Take your time. He’s going to need at least a month off. Then we’ll get to work.”