The Cowboy Meets His Match

Despite her foul mood, she laughed so hard she almost dropped her saddle.

“Don’t tell me,” she managed between sputters of mirth. “You rescued them from a rendering plant?”

“Girl, you don’t know nothing about horses, do you? These ain’t riding-academy nags, they’re genuine mountain mustangs. Some call ’em Indian scrubs. They’ve got the endurance of doorknobs.”

She looked askance at their dish faces, bushy tails, and mongrelized confusion of colors and markings—no controlled bloodlines here.

“I won’t ride a pretty horse like yours up in the mountains,” he assured her, guessing her thoughts. “A pretty horse is a petted horse. And a petted horse is a spoiled horse.”

Something aggressive in his tone hinted he wasn’t talking just about horses.

She looked at him. By his glance he was obviously summing her up, taking in her designer black quilted barn jacket, her English custom-made paddock boots, and subtracting them from the value of her character. But then his gaze seemed to linger along the generous swells of her chest, and suddenly her net worth seemed to rise again.

It was still dark enough outside to hide the embarrassment heating her cheeks. Leave it to a macho redneck to view a woman like a piece of meat. But she supposed being a flank steak was better than an icicle.

She turned her attention back to the ponies. “Look, they’re not just ugly. They’re also so…little,” she objected.

“‘Praise the tall, but ride the small.’ Sure, they’re barely fourteen hands. But look at those short, thick, strong legs. That’s what you need on rocky, narrow trails. These animals were born in the mountains, they’re surefooted as wild goats. That bluegrass beauty of yours ever been up high in the rim-rock in a forty-mile-an-hour wind?”

That goading twist to his mouth made her anger flare. She felt half-tempted to slap it right off his arrogantly handsome face.

“No,” she admitted, resenting him for his know-it-all smugness and the way his eyes still seemed to lower to places below her neckline.

“You can leave that English saddle behind, too. I brought you a better one.”

“Better one?” She snorted derisively. “I’ll have you know this was custom-made for me at—”

“Sure, it’s just fine—for a dog-and-pony show in London. But it’ll be useless to you up in the mountains. Price tags ain’t the issue. Up there you’ll need something between your legs.”

She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I beg your pardon?” she demanded. Each syllable was so distinct it seemed chiseled.

He grinned. She was convinced he had see-in-the-dark eyes like a cat because she swore this time he saw her blush.

“Ease off, girl. I’m talking about a saddle horn. You’ll need one to stay mounted on steep slopes.”

He closed the trailer door on the mustangs.

“C’mon, girl,” she called to her mare. “We’ll let the cowboy have his eight seconds. You get to stay home.”

She tried to coax Boots to come to her so she could lead the mare back into her stable. But the sorrel was excited by the presence of unfamiliar horses; she kept sidestepping away each time Jacquelyn tried to grab the lead line.

A.J. moved up beside her and gave a soft, fluting whistle. Boots answered with a friendly whicker, then trotted right over and nuzzled the hollow of his shoulder as if they were old and dear friends.

You damned traitor, she thought, watching her horse with a petulant frown. She grabbed the lead line and took Boots back toward her stall.

A.J. greeted her when she came back outside. “Hazel asked me to give you this.” He added, smirking, “Seeing’s how you took off so suddenly yesterday.”

He slid a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his vest.

“What is it?”

“An itinerary, I think she called it. Hazel’s got some definite ideas how she wants this trip to be.”

She started to unfold the sheet, but he stayed her hand with an iron grip. The calluses, thick on his palm, brushed her skin like friction burns.

“You can look at it in the truck,” he told her brusquely. “I don’t waste time when I’ve got something to do. Let’s go.”

She pulled her hand free. It tingled afterward, so much so she tucked it along with the sheet in the hip pocket of her jeans.

He had his door halfway open when she said, “Before we get going here, I just want to make one thing clear—while you seem to be very good at giving orders, I expect you to be my guide, not a drill sergeant. I’m going with you because my job has led me here. But it’s not the rodeo ring, and I’m not one of your adoring fans you can tell jump.”

“Not yet,” he conceded with a whisper and an infuriating grin.

She took a deep breath to fire another salvo, but he stopped her by raising one hand like a traffic cop.

“Look, Scarlett, I ain’t doing this baby-sitting job because I like your company, either. I’m doing a favor for Hazel. She put me in charge of this little excursion because I know where to go and how to get there. So let’s get this straight from the start—when you’re under my watch, I say how it’s going to be, and that’s the way of it. You don’t like those terms, stay home. I’ll tell Hazel you went puny on her.”

Jacquelyn felt as if a steamroller had just gone over her. “You don’t negotiate at all, do you?”

Again he trapped her in the full force of his metallic-gray gaze. “Depends what I’m after.”

Her heart skipped.

He gave a harsh bark of scorn. “Now get in,” he ordered, “or stay here. I’m damned if I care what a rich, spoiled, snot-nosed bawler like you does, but if you’re not going, tell me so I can get these ponies back to their pasture before they founder.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then, for reasons she couldn’t shape into words, she lumbered up into the passenger seat of the pickup.

They turned onto the road in strained silence, away from Mystery Valley to the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

As for the “itinerary” Hazel had sent along… Jacquelyn realized, only moments after unfolding the hand-drawn map, that the scheming cattle baroness had some grand design in mind.

She couldn’t believe how detailed Hazel’s notes were regarding what she was to write about. Not only was she to follow Jake’s exact path, but Hazel insisted she was to camp in the same spots. The culmination of the trip was to be a night spent in the log cabin on Bridger’s Summit—the original dwelling where Jake had taken his new bride on their honeymoon.

Numbly she folded the paper up and tucked it into her jacket. At least it’s not the dead of winter, she consoled herself, staring at the man hunkered down in the seat next to her.

Still, she couldn’t help thinking this trip was going to be a lot more grueling—and perhaps even dangerous—than it looked on paper.

The two-and-a-half-hour drive led them gradually lower, along tortuously winding mountain roads. Their route, according to Jacquelyn’s map, roughly paralleled hidden Eagle Pass and McCallum’s Trace.

The adventure still wasn’t real to her. She looked at the man sitting next to her and wondered what kind of character he would ultimately prove to be. She would certainly know more about him on their return trip to Mystery.

He glanced at her and caught her staring.

She looked away, uncomfortable with the feeling of being virtually trapped with a man so utterly different from her that she lacked any vocabulary to describe him. A. J. Clayburn was indeed entirely unlike anyone she’d ever met before—and yet she couldn’t deny a certain…fascination in watching the solid thigh and calf muscles bunch under his blue jeans as he worked the clutch and brakes.

The shared silence wasn’t free of conflict. She had nothing against country-and-western music, in moderation. But she was convinced he deliberately kept the radio volume near full blast to unsettle her. And it was working. Her nerves jangled to every twang.

A little over an hour into their drive the road dipped sharply, and the old pickup bounced hard like a tank leaping a ditch. One of the chrome radio knobs fell off.