Kissed by a Cowboy

She felt so small in his arms. Hated that she noticed again how wide his shoulders were. Loved the way his eyes lit up when he smiled.

She stepped back.

“Sorry. I just think...” You have the sexiest eyes I’ve ever seen. “You won’t be disappointed.”

She turned away before she forgot it all—forgot the pain and sorrow and wasted tears she’d spent on one man after another. Forgot the crushing disappointment and how stupid she felt afterward, forgot how many times she’d gotten her hopes up by telling herself, once again, that it would be different this time around.

It never was.

She started to turn away again.

“Wait.”

She didn’t turn back, didn’t want to look him in the eyes. She didn’t want to connect with him at all.

“Don’t you have more for me to look at?”

“Nope.” She gave him her profile. “He’s it.”

“Well, all right, then,” he said. “What time do you want to hook up at the arena?”

“One o’clock. He’s the third one out.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. He would either be there or he wouldn’t. From here on out it was horses and horsemanship. That was it.

Too bad she had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.

Chapter Four (#ulink_572eac1a-2ce9-506c-a4fe-9f6f386a0f63)

“She’s an odd one, isn’t she?”

Cowboy peered up at him intently.

And you’re getting desperate, buddy, if you’re talking to your dog.

A cute oddball, he amended, watching her walk away, but an oddball just the same.

Desperate straits call for desperate measures.

The words had become his mantra recently. If Bugsy hadn’t pulled up lame... He shook his head in disgust and disappointment. Now he was dead in the water and a fully trained replacement horse would cost a fortune, which was why he’d traveled to Red Bluff this weekend to look at prospects. The equine equivalent to a Hail Mary pass. He had to find a horse that could nudge him over the half-million-dollar mark in earnings. Pronto. If he didn’t... Well, he couldn’t even think about that.

“Come on,” he said to Cowboy.

Two hours later she stood right where she’d said she’d be, out in front of the two-story brown building that served as a horse arena. She wasn’t alone. A woman with blond hair and blue eyes stood next to her.

“Wes,” Jillian said, barely making eye contact. “This is Natalie.”

He glanced at Natalie, offering a “Nice to meet you” before looking back at Jillian and puzzling through why she seemed so cold all of a sudden.

“Wow,” he heard Natalie say. “You weren’t kidding when you said he was good-looking.”

He had a front-row seat to Jillian’s reaction. She flinched, turned on her friend and sharply whispered, “Natalie!”

Now, that was more like it. At least she had some color back in her cheeks.

She thought he was good-looking?

For some reason that made him stand up a little straighter.

“And who’s this cutie?” Natalie said.

“This is Cowboy,” Wes said.

Natalie squatted down to meet his dog. “Hey there, boy. Gonna watch some horses work with us?”

Cowboy barely shot Natalie a glance. His dog only had eyes for Jillian. The canine stared at her as if she held the keys to a room filled with bones.

“We better get in there before the seats all fill up,” Jillian said.

She still wouldn’t look at him. It’d grown colder since that morning. Overcast. Both women wore jackets, Natalie’s made of leather and Jillian’s a black knitted cardigan that hung past her hips to midthigh. It hugged her petite body but didn’t look all that warm, and he knew it would be even colder inside.

“Are you excited?” Natalie asked Wes.

“I’m curious,” he replied. “The horse Jillian chose for me isn’t exactly what I was looking for.”

Natalie nodded. “I know how you feel. She narrowed the field down to three for me, and not a one of them is what I would have picked for myself. But I’ve learned over the years to listen to her. You’ll learn the same thing, too.”

Great, he thought as they headed inside. Two crazy women.

The building had been built in the ’50s. A beige stucco facade on the outside and a concrete floor that seemed to radiate the chill. They were a little late to be finding a seat, most of the grandstands already filled, but they wedged themselves into a spot near the top. Cowboy settled at Wes’s feet. It looked like a sea of cowboy hats from where they sat, as if you could hop from brim to brim and never touch the ground.

“I’m so excited,” he heard Natalie say. She wore her long blond hair in a braid, a brown ball cap on her head, one with rhinestones in the shape of a horseshoe catching the light. The glimmer of the stones nearly matched the blue in her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”

“Me neither,” Jillian said, and Wes noticed she’d made sure Natalie sat next to him and that Jillian sat on the other side of Natalie—as far away as possible. “I have no idea how you’re going to wedge in learning to ride a reining horse and continue with your show jumping career, too.”

“Who’s your reining trainer?” Wes asked.

“I don’t have one.”

Wes pulled his gaze away from a horse just entering the arena, an average-looking bay gelding with big ears and a bushy black tail, and shot her a look of surprise. “You’re buying a reining horse and you don’t have a trainer?”

“I am a trainer,” Natalie said.

“You ride English.”

“Yeah, which means I know how to ride.” He tried to keep a straight face; clearly he failed. “You try and ride a horse over a five-foot fence.”

“No, thanks, I prefer to keep my feet on the ground, but I know someone who would take up your challenge.”