Outlaw Hartes: The Valentine Two-Step / Cassidy Harte And The Comeback Kid

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “Steve does a good job with the cattle. But to be honest, I’m looking for a little more when it comes to my horses. I can’t expect somebody to spend thirty thousand and up for a competition-quality cutter that’s not completely healthy.”

He smiled suddenly, and she felt as if she’d just been thrown off one of those champion cutters of his. “I’d like to have a veterinarian on staff who’s not content with only one tool in her toolbox. What do you think?”

She blew out a breath, trying to process the twists and turns the day had taken. The chance to be the Diamond Harte’s veterinarian was an opportunity she’d never even dared dream about. She couldn’t pass it up, even if it meant working even more closely with Matt.

“Only your horses?” she asked warily. “Not the cattle?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, Steve seems to be handling that end of things all right.”

Steve. She gave an inward wince. What would he think when she took the lucrative Diamond Harte contract from him? It would probably sting his pride, at the very least.

On the other hand, he had no qualms about doing the same thing to her countless times since she arrived in Star Valley. If she was going to run her own practice, she needed to start thinking like a businesswoman. They were friends but they were also competitors.

“Do we have a deal?” Matt asked.

How could she pass it up? This is what she wanted to do, why she’d traveled fifteen hundred miles and uprooted her daughter and risked everything she had. For chances like this. She nodded. “Sure. Sounds great. When do you want me to start?”

“Maybe you could come out sometime after the holiday weekend and get acquainted with the herd and their medical histories.”

“Okay. Monday would work for me.”

“We can work out the details then.” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “And, uh, if you’re at all concerned about what happened here today, I swear it won’t happen again. I was completely out of line—a line I won’t be crossing again. You have my word on that.”

She nodded and turned to Mystic, not wanting to dwell on all the reasons his declaration made her feel this pang of loss in her stomach.

Chapter 8

Hours later, Matt sat in his favorite leather wing chair in the darkened great room of the Diamond Harte, listening to the tired creaking of the old log walls and the crackle and hiss of the fire while he watched fat snowflakes drift lazily down outside the wide, uncurtained windows.

He loved this time of the night, when the house was quiet and he could finally have a moment to himself to think, without the phone ringing or Lucy asking for help with her math homework or Cassie hounding him about something or other.

Ellie Webster would probably call what he was doing something crazy and far-out, like meditating. He wouldn’t go that far. His brain just seemed to work better when he didn’t have a thousand things begging for attention.

When the weather was warm, he liked to sit on the wide front porch, breathing the evening air and watching the stars come out one by one—either that or take one of the horses for a late-night ride along the trails that wound through the thousands of acres of Forest Service land above the ranch.

Most of his problems—both with the ranch and in his personal life—had been solved on the porch, on the back of a horse or in this very chair by the fire.

And he had plenty of problems to occupy his mind tonight.

Ellie and her daughter had gone home hours ago, but he swore if he breathed deeply enough he could still smell that sweet, citrusy scent of her—like lemons and sunshine—clinging subtly to his skin.

She had tasted the same way. Like a summer morning, all fresh and sweet and intoxicating. He thought of how she had felt in his arms, of the way her mouth had softened under his and the way her body melted into him like sherbet spilled on a hot sidewalk.

He only meant to kiss her for an instant. Just a brief experiment to satisfy his curiosity, to determine if the reality of kissing her could come anywhere close to his subconscious yearnings.

So much for good intentions.

He might have been content with only a taste—as tantalizing as it had been—but then she murmured his name when he kissed her.

He didn’t think she was even aware of it, but he had heard it clearly. Just that hushed whisper against his mouth had sent need exploding through his system like a match set to a keg of gunpowder, and he had been lost.

What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t the kind of guy to go around stealing kisses from women, especially prickly city vets who made it abundantly clear they weren’t interested.

He’d been just as shocked as she was when he pulled her into his arms. And even more shocked when she responded to him, when she’d kissed him back and leaned into him for more.

He sipped at his drink and gazed out the window again. What was it about Ellie Webster that turned him inside out? She was beautiful, sure, with that fiery hair and those startling green eyes rimmed with silver.

It was more than that, though. He thought of the way she had talked so calmly and without emotion about her childhood, about being abandoned by both her parents and then spending the rest of her youth in foster homes.

She was a survivor.

He thought of his own childhood, of his dad teaching him to rope and his mom welcoming him home with a kiss on his cheek after school every day and bickering with Jess and Cassie over who got the biggest cookie.

Ellie had missed all that, and his chest ached when he thought of it and when he realized how she’d still managed to make a comfortable, happy life for her and her daughter.

Despite his earlier misconceptions, he was discovering that he actually liked her.

It had been a long time since he had genuinely liked a woman who wasn’t related to him. Ellie was different, and that scared the hell out of him.

But any way he looked at it, kissing her had still been a damn fool thing to do.

He must be temporarily insane. A rational man would have run like the devil himself was riding his heels after being twisted into knots like that by a woman he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have.

But what did he do instead? Contract with her to take care of his horses, guaranteeing he’d see plenty of her in the coming weeks, even if it hadn’t been for the stupid Valentine’s carnival their girls had roped them into.

It was bound to be awkward. Wondering if she was thinking about their kiss, trying to put the blasted thing out of his own mind. He was a grown man, though, wasn’t he? He could handle a little awkwardness, especially if it would benefit his horses.

And it would definitely do that. He’d meant it when he told her he’d never seen anything like what she’d done to Mystic. He never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. Something had happened in that barn while she was working on the horse. He wasn’t the sort of man who believed in magic—in his own humble opinion, magic came from sweat and hard work—but what she had done with Mystic had been nothing short of miraculous.

Maybe that was one of the reasons for this confounded attraction he had for her—her wholehearted dedication to her job, to the animals she worked with. He respected it. If not for that, he probably wouldn’t have decided to go with his gut and offer her the contract to care for all of his horses.

He had given up plenty of things for the good of the ranch in the years since his folks died. It shouldn’t be that hard to put aside this strange attraction for a smart-mouthed little redhead with big green eyes and a stubborn streak a mile wide.

Especially since he knew nothing could ever come of it anyway.

The room suddenly seemed colder, somehow. Darker.

Lonely.

Just the fire burning itself out, he told himself. He jumped up to throw another log onto it, then stood for a moment to watch the flames curl and seethe around it. It was an intoxicating thing, a fire on a snowy night. Almost as intoxicating as Ellie Webster’s mouth.

Disgusted with himself for harping on a subject better left behind, he sighed heavily.

“Uh-oh. That sounded ominous.”

He turned toward his sister’s voice. She stood in the doorway, still dressed in her jeans and sweater. “You’re up late,” she said.

He shrugged. “Just enjoying the night. What about you? I thought you turned in hours ago.”