The Wrangler

“What the hell happened?” Clinton burst out.

The two women glanced up. Samantha slowly sank back down to the couch. And then they were holding hands. Worse, he recognized the expression on his grandmother’s face: she wanted to pull Samantha Davies into her arms.

“Go on with you,” his grandmother said, releasing one of Samantha’s hands and wiping her own eyes. “We were just having a little heart-to-heart.”

“About what?” he asked.

“Our mustangs.”

And if Clinton had been near that damn couch, he’d have sank into it, too. Never. Not once. Not in all the years that he’d been alive, had his grandmother ever admitted to a stranger that their mustangs were more than local legend.

“Gigi,” he said gently.

“Sit down, Mr. McAlister,” she said, patting the couch. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” he asked, preferring to move forward and sit in one of two armchairs across from them.

“Don’t play stupid, young man. You’ll be gathering our horses next week. I want you to take Samantha here along.”

Samantha gasped. “Oh, Mrs. Baer. I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“It’s too much of an imposition.”

Well, at least one of them was acting sensibly. “Gigi, please,” he said. “She’s right. It’s not feasible, not to mention that it’s highly dangerous. Why, can she even ride?”

She could be a reporter, he thought to himself. Or some kind of damn animal rights activist. Lord. The possibilities were endless.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his grandmother said. “Of course she can ride. She’s from the east coast.” She said it as if everyone in that part of the country rode horses.

“What the blazes does that have to do with whether she can ride or not?”

“But I can ride,” Samantha said in a small voice.

Clinton leaned back. He stared at the two women in front of him. Somehow, Samantha Davies had managed to wrap his grandmother around her little finger…and he wished he could figure out how she’d done it in such a short amount of time.

“I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t bring her along. It’s too dangerous.”

“Poppycock,” Gigi said.

“Gigi, think about this. We don’t even know this woman.”

“She has a big heart,” Gigi said, taking the woman’s hand. “I can see it in her eyes.”

“Thank you,” Samantha said.

Clint released a sigh of frustration. “I’m telling you, Gigi, she might end up getting hurt. The spring gathering is tough. The weather’s unpredictable.” He motioned outside where the sun had started to pop through the clouds, the unsettled pattern typical for this time of year. “It’s a long ride. She’d have blisters on her bottom in two hours flat.”

“Excuse me,” Sam said. “I’m right here in the room with you and I assure you, I can ride. I can ride really, really well,” she punctuated. “No blisters would be sprouting on this bottom.” She smiled.

He ignored it. “Oh, yeah? Should we just take your word for that?”

“Of course not,” she said. “You have horses here, right? Test me. Right now, if you like.”

“Excellent idea,” Gigi said, standing. “Let’s go.”

“Gigi,” Clint said, “this is crazy.”

“It’s not crazy,” his grandmother said. “At least no more crazier than anything you’ve done in recent days, Mr. Ranch Manager. I want to do this.” She glanced in Samantha Davies’s direction. “For her.”

Clinton didn’t have a choice. “Hell’s fires,” he muttered. This day just got better and better.

Chapter Four

Clinton stormed out of the house, so upset he nearly slammed the door.

“Damn, foolish women.”

Gigi had insisted Samantha go and change, which meant Clint had been left with the task of fetching her suitcase. “Of all the stupid, ridiculous ideas. Probably wants me to go saddle up a horse, too,” he grumbled under his breath.

As it turned out, that’s exactly what his grandmother asked him to do.

“Please,” Gigi added with a smile. Clint stared between his grandmother and his “guest” and envisioned a cartoon character of himself—one with an angry red light shooting up his face like a thermometer.

“Sure,” he said sarcastically, having to resist the urge to slam the door a second time.

The rainstorm had passed—gone as quickly as it’d come. He paused for a second in the barn’s aisle. He wanted to saddle up the rankest bronc he could find, but as much as he was tempted, he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want to kill the woman, no matter that she’d seriously pissed him off by batting her big green eyes at his grandmother. It didn’t matter that he owned the ranch, either, and that he had every right to tell Samantha Davies to get lost. He wouldn’t do that, either, because the plain and simple truth was, he loved his grandmother. He would do anything for her. She knew it, too. Gigi Baer had been a rock in his life and if she wanted Miss Samantha Davies to go along on the spring gathering, he’d let her go along.

If she could ride.

He wouldn’t compromise her safety, the safety of his men and the safety of his livestock just because some city slicker had a wild hair up her you-know-what.

“Oh!” he heard his grandmother say when less than ten minutes later, the two of them, Samantha and his grandmother, entered the barn, their footfalls clearly audible on the packed dirt. “You’ve saddled Red.”

Clint was tightening the girth—Red on cross ties in the middle of the aisle—the smooth leather strap Clint held gliding through the metal ring. Samantha now wore jeans, he saw, and a light green shirt.

“She said she could ride.” Red was at least sixteen hands, and about as wide as he was tall, too. Lots of power.

When he glanced up, Samantha was staring at him. Horses chomped on the midafternoon snack he’d given them, their softly muffled snorts breaking the silence, and he thought to himself that she didn’t seem afraid of Red at all. She came right up to him, offering the palm of her hand for the horse to sniff.

“Hey there, Red,” she said softly.

The horse started to nibble at her palm—as if trying to eat an invisible treat.

“Do you happen to have an English saddle?” she asked, green eyes shifting in his direction.

“Excuse me?” he asked, leather girth forgotten.