Cowboy Lessons

Ten minutes later he was done. A little winded and a bit sweaty, but done. He turned to her and said, “Now what?”

Amanda had to close her mouth.

Maybe it was the he-man way he’d loaded the hay. Maybe it was the way he so casually leaned against the tailgate of the truck. Or maybe it was because he suddenly didn’t look a thing like a computer genius. Whatever it was, she had to struggle to remember his question.

Hubba, hubba, what a man.

Hubba, hubba…have you lost your mind?

“Now what?” she repeated to herself. She stiffened. “Er, ah. Now you go out to the pasture and feed them.”

“The bulls?”

“No, no…they have enough to graze on. The hundred heads of steers next to the bulls.”

“All right.” He came toward her. And suddenly Amanda went on heightened alert. If she was a submarine, her red lights would be blinking. He stopped right in front of her.

Warning. Warning. Warning.

“You have some dust on your face.”

Dust?

“It probably dropped from the barn roof,” she said, her voice seeming to come from a distance.

“Do you want me to remove it?”

“Sure,” she said, before she recalled the way she’d felt when they’d bumped into each other in the house, the way she felt right now, because there could be no denying the way her whole body buzzed as he came near, the way the look in his eyes made her stare up at him unblinkingly, the way she felt as he lifted a hand, then gently, oh so gently wiped the dust away from her cheek.

“There,” he said.

And, oh, my, she couldn’t believe it, but just that touch made her grow damp between the legs.

She was attracted to Scott Beringer.

Get a grip, Amanda.

She felt dizzy, realized it was because she was holding her breath, then sucked in a blast of oxygen. That helped. Marginally. “How—” She had to work her mouth in order to make the words come out. “How do you see without your glasses?”

“I don’t need my glasses for anything but reading. In fact, I’ll just move them to the truck, if you don’t mind.”

Mind? Mind what? Oh, yeah. The glasses. “No. That’s fine.”

He smiled. Amanda just about melted. It was a crooked smile. Not suave. Not flirtatious, just a genuine crooked smile that made her heart all but melt at the boyish, yet masculine friendliness of it.

She stepped back, waved a hand at her face, saying, “Dust,” in case he thought she was doing something silly, like waving the heat out of her cheeks, which she was.

Lord, you’ve got the hots for Scott Beringer.

There were a million reasons why that shouldn’t be, not the least of which was that he’d stolen their land. And yet she couldn’t deny the truth, despite what she tried to tell herself.

“Um, if you don’t mind, I’m going to let you do the feeding part all by yourself.”

“By myself?”

She nodded and said, “It’s easy.” And it was. “You just drive about two hundred yards out and start feeding. Honk the horn when you’re done.” She turned away from him before he realized the reason why she wouldn’t meet his gaze was because she was in danger of doing something silly, like touch him. Or maybe even jerk his head down and kiss him.

“Where are you going?” he called after her.

“Into the house to make breakfast.”

“But I’ll do that.”

Oh, no, he wouldn’t, because just right now she didn’t need to admire him any more than she did, and she had a feeling Scott would cook as well as he did everything else.

“I’ll cook,” she said over her shoulder, nearly running into the door in the process.

Get a hold of yourself, Amanda.

“You just remember to close the gate when you’re done.”

She didn’t know if he nodded or not, didn’t know because she was halfway across the barnyard before she heard the truck start up.

Breakfast first, then part two of her plan. She could handle that, right?

Right?

Chapter Four

It was a sign of how discombobulated she was that it took her nearly a half hour to realize something was wrong. Very wrong.

By Amanda’s calculations, it should have taken Scott roughly twenty minutes to feed the steers, and that was taking into consideration his inexperience. But when the clock struck a quarter hour, Amanda figured she’d better check on him. Turning off the stove, Amanda removed a pot of sizzling sausages, their basil-and-garlic smell making her stomach growl.

What had he done?

She saw for herself a few seconds later.

Scott Beringer sat in the back of the truck atop a bale, only when he saw her, he shot up like a patio umbrella. Surrounding him on the ground were bales of hay, unopened, frustrated cattle milling around as they tried to get to the food. Scott tried to shoo them away so he could jump down, but he was simply out-numbered and likely too afraid to plunge into the midst of a hundred head of cattle.

She heard his faint cry of help.

“Well, I’ll be,” she murmured.

Why the heck hadn’t he opened the bales?

Because you didn’t tell him to.

She slapped her forehead. “You idiot,” she yelled, but it was hard to say who she meant, her or Scott.