Never Tell

“I’ll check it out.” Hunter got up, taking the Zest article with him. He was relieved not to have to spend time he didn’t have browsing in the Galleria. Clapping a hand on Hank’s shoulder, he moved toward the door. “Thanks. I appreciate it, Hank.” Passing the sideboard, he took a couple of apples from a bowl and headed for the door to get his hat.

Once out of the house, he took a deep breath and followed the path leading to the barn. The air was sweet, the sky was already as blue as only a Texas sky can be and the birds were singing. The sun, high now on the east horizon, had burned off traces of morning mist. A perfect day for what he had in mind. Near the barn, Cisco, one of the two regular ranch hands on the payroll, was climbing onto the seat of a tractor hooked up to a trailer loaded with hay bales. Hunter raised his hand in greeting as Cisco headed out to pasture.

The noise faded as Hunter entered the barn. Taking in the familiar smells of hay, horses and manure, he welcomed the hush. A soft whicker came from the first stall. Jasper, an Appaloosa stallion Hunter had bought a year ago, lifted his head and flicked his ears back in recognition. Hunter pulled one of the apples out of his jacket pocket.

“Hey, boy. Ready for a ride?” Standing outside the stall, he fed the apple to the horse, rubbed him behind the ears, then reached for a bridle hanging on a hook. Jasper crunched the crisp apple and blew out a soft, gentle sound, stamping a foot. Hunter grinned, recognizing impatience as he slipped the bridle into place. “Looking forward to a good workout, huh? Well, me, too. Just let me get that saddle and we’re outta here, buddy.”

The gear was in the tack room at the rear of the barn. As soon as he saddled up, Hunter planned to spend the next few hours skirting the perimeter of the ranch. Cisco and Earl were paid to see that the fences were in good shape, but Hunter liked to check himself from time to time. After the week he’d endured, he looked forward to a few hours to himself.

“I knew I’d find you here.”

Hunter turned with the saddle in his hands. Kelly Colson stood in the doorway. Blue-eyed, slim as a boy in boot-cut jeans and a baseball hat on her auburn head, she looked more like a teenager than a thirty-three-year-old veterinarian. “I thought you’d be sleeping in this morning,” he told her, hefting the saddle onto his shoulder.

She stepped aside to let him pass. “Is that why you didn’t call me?”

“I drove in early. Hank hit me at the door with paperwork. I only escaped ten minutes ago.” He hadn’t thought to call her, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “You’re up early, too.”

“I never went to bed,” she said. “Tom Erickson called around midnight. His prize bull got out and was hit broadside by a teenager in a pickup. I didn’t get away until a few minutes ago. I spotted your car as I was passing on my way home.”

“Not that bull he imported from Colorado?”

“Uh-huh.”

Hunter pushed Jasper’s stall door open. A man could buy a whole ranch for what some prize bulls cost. “Were you able to save him?”

“Luckily nothing was broken, so he’ll survive.” She caught Jasper’s bridle as Hunter put the saddle blanket on his back. “He won’t be doing his job for a while, but when he’s called on to perform in a week or two, he’ll do his duty.”

“Poor baby.”

Kelly specialized in large animals, which is why she’d chosen to set her practice outside Houston. There was opportunity galore to practice in the city, where there were plenty of youngsters whose parents could afford the expense of a horse, but like Hunter, Kelly preferred breathing country air. It was one of many interests they shared. They had a lot in common, from a love of horses and country living to family history.

She watched him pull the cinch tight around the horse and then reach to adjust the stirrup. “Looks like you’ve got plans for the day.”

He glanced over at her, picking up something in her voice that made him proceed with caution. “At least, for most of the morning,” he told her. He and Kelly had drifted into a relationship of sorts lately. She’d stayed overnight at his condo once in a while when she was in the city, and they were often together on weekends when he made it out to the ranch. But today he craved a few hours by himself. “I thought I’d check the fence line,” he said, and bent back to his task, hoping she wouldn’t want to mount up and go with him.

They’d been friends since childhood, which was understandable seeing the close connections of their parents. It was when Kelly finished her training and returned to establish her practice near the ranch that he realized she wanted them to be more than friends. She was an up-front, direct kind of woman who went flat out for whatever she wanted. And she made it plain that she wanted Hunter. He admitted he hadn’t put up much resistance; even so, he’d felt a little uncomfortable the first time they’d wound up in bed. Not that the sex wasn’t good, it was. Kelly didn’t seem to feel any qualms and had settled happily into their affair. What he couldn’t quite figure out was why—to him—something didn’t feel exactly…right.

“Isn’t that Earl’s job?”

“Riding fence?” He’d almost forgotten what they were talking about. “I do it for the fun of it. He indulges me.” When she failed to smile, he reached for the reins and she let go. “I’ve been fighting traffic and breathing interstate exhaust night and day for two weeks, Kell. Once I’m out of the barn, it’s just me and Jasper and open air. You know the feeling.”

“I guess that means you don’t want company.”

He had Jasper out of the stall now. He put his foot into a stirrup and mounted up. The stallion danced and snorted, eager to be moving, but Hunter held him in check for another moment. “You’ve been working all night. Get some sleep. I’ll come over later. We’ll drive into Brenham and get something to eat.”

“Did you even think of calling me, Hunter?”

Since he wasn’t sure in his own mind why he hadn’t, he wasn’t in a mood to admit or discuss it now. “See you around seven tonight.”

Three

Erica’s Art was the name of her shop and Erica loved it. She loved stocking it with her designs and watching customers pick and choose from the collection of quilts and jackets and then leave pleased to own something she’d created. It surprised her that she was a good merchant. As an artist, she preferred solitude to produce her creations, and she was shy when she had to assume the role of salesperson. That was Jason’s thing and he was so good at it that she didn’t often have to actually deal with a customer. Everything else about the shop she loved, even the end-of-month accounting. It was satisfying to run the numbers and find they were solidly in the black.

Today, she had holed up in the office at the rear of the store preparing tax records for their accountant. Finally done, she closed the books just as a ping sounded, announcing a customer. She glanced up, caught a glimpse of a tall man entering the store before he moved from her line of vision to browse. Jason had returned from a lunch date a few minutes ago, which relieved her of having to drop what she was working on to go out and sell. She knew it was silly that she found it awkward standing by while perfect strangers fingered her quilts, or squinted critically at her jackets. She had no problem accepting that what she created and stocked in the shop wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but it was so…well, awkward pretending that it wasn’t somehow personal, when creating every design was, in fact, somehow very personal.

Turning to a shipment of fabric that had arrived an hour ago, Erica tore the wrapping from material intended for a series of jackets still in the design stage. She pulled yardage from the first bolt and ran a palm over the weave, pleased with both texture and color. She itched to get started, but she’d have to wait until Jason could help her take the shipment upstairs to her studio to begin cutting. She made all originals of her jacket designs herself before handing the pattern and fabric to the two women who sewed the numbered replicas. She never authorized more than six of a single design.

“Psst! Erica, come out here for a minute.” Jason stuck his head around the door, doing funny things with his eyebrows.

She frowned at him. “What?”

“You’ll see,” he hissed. “Just drop that and walk out here on the floor.”

“Not until you tell me why.” She’d been on the receiving end of his practical jokes before. Refusing the bait, she reached for a second bolt.

He gave an exasperated sound but had to withdraw when someone—the customer, she assumed—called, “Hey, I’m on my lunch hour here.”

“Sorry, I was just consulting with the designer,” Jason said, giving the man a boyish smile, one that was usually effective in softening up the most hardened sales-resistant browser. As she tore at the wrapping, she heard Jason launch full bore into his sales pitch. Apparently the customer’s choice was narrowed to one of the evening jackets. Dismissing them, she removed silk shantung in a stunning shade of crimson from the packing material. She held the length of silk up to the light, visualizing a beaded design. Jet beading, she decided with a forefinger pressed to her lips. With a long black skirt or skinny black pants, it would make a fabulous holiday outfit. She reached automatically for her sketch pad.

“Why don’t we ask Erica to help us out.” Jason was again at the door, but this time he’d dragged the customer with him.

It took her a moment to bring them into focus. She looked beyond Jason into dark eyes deeply set in an unshaven face of chiseled angles and shadowy planes, a bone-deep tan—which she knew did not originate in a tanning booth—and hair a rich, sun-streaked, tobacco-brown. He was tall with an athlete’s build and wore a battered leather jacket and black T-shirt. He looked tough and not quite housebroken. She noted all this with her artist’s eye before realizing with an unsettling start that he was studying her, as well. Setting her sketch pad aside, she said, “What’s the problem?”

“No problem.” Jason glanced at his customer as if dishing him up on a platter for Erica. “This is Hunter McCabe. He’s thinking of buying his mother a jacket for her birthday. Hunter, meet the artist herself, Erica Stewart.”

“My pleasure.” Hunter leaned around Jason and extended a hand.

“Hello.” With no other option, she put her hand in his and found it as hard as his jaw. She quickly withdrew hers. He definitely did not spend his days behind a desk.

“From Hunter’s description of his mother,” Jason said, beaming at the two of them, “she’s probably about your size, Erica. Am I right?” he asked Hunter.

“Yeah, but that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends.”

Erica flushed as his gaze held hers a heartbeat too long, before dropping to her chin, then drifting down past her midriff all the way to her feet. Her bare feet. She had a habit of kicking off her shoes while she worked. It irritated her that she hadn’t remembered to put them on after getting up from her desk and tackling the new shipments.

“Erica’s a size six,” Jason said helpfully. “I know it’s difficult to judge one person’s size by another, but if you think she’s about Erica’s height and weight, we should be safe in choosing a size six.”

Standing with his arms crossed, Hunter cocked his head, considering. “I’d know for sure if you’d put on one of your jackets.”

“Great idea.” This from Jason.

“Jason, I don’t think—” But he was off like a shot. “Excuse me,” she said to Hunter, then turned to find her shoes. Something about the way he was looking at her made her feel stripped as bare as her feet. Which was a ridiculous reaction, she told herself, gazing around the tiny room. Where the heck had she put her shoes?

“Looking for these?”

She turned to see him pluck her shoes from beneath the pile of wrapping paper on the floor. “Yes, thanks.” She took them and stood on one leg to put them on, thinking she must look like a flamingo. That done, she took a deep breath, straightened, tugged her sweater down over her jeans and met his eyes. He was openly amused.

“Do you always work in bare feet?”