Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,32

lot of freezing mornings checking your fence line. Gotta love it to do it, or you wouldn’t do it at all. And the third answer …” He pulled out his phone and swiped around. “This is my place.”

“Oh,” Dyma said blankly, peering at the phone intently. “You do have horses. And a log house. And mountains.”

“Well, yeah.” He was still looking amused. “Horses kind of go with the territory. That’s why they’re on the license plate. And I don’t have mountains, not on my land. They’re in the background, but they sure look nice there, don’t they? Got some real nice high country, though, with white marble cliffs that are about the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. You could quarry the stone out, but it always seems like a shame to do it.”

“So you can ride a horse?” she asked.

He smiled some more. “Hard to be a rancher out here if you can’t. Got to be a pretty big horse, of course. Good thing horses come in different sizes. Here. This is my best horse. Grizzly. Crossbred Percheron. He’s big, but a whole lot faster than he looks, and a pretty good cutting horse, too. The Percheron was a war horse. Heart of a lion.”

“Kind of like you,” Kris said.

“Aw,” Owen said. “Now you’re just being nice.” He started going through more pictures, talking about cattle breeds and diets and pastures and the high country, and Dyma sat there, totally absorbed. “I grew up on a ranch,” he told her. “Not this one, but my dad was a ranch manager. And, yeah, I saw a lot of things. So when I got in a spot to set up my own, I figured—here’s my chance to do things differently, right?”

“Right,” she said, and smiled back at him. Hugely. “That’s so awesome. Show me Grizzly again. He’s so beautiful.”

Jennifer thought, Of course he’s liking you that much. You’re telling him he’s awesome and complimenting his horse and asking him questions about himself. Which was when he put his phone away and said, “So what about you? You sound like there’s a life plan. Let’s hear it.”

“University of Washington. Engineering. A&A. That’s Step One.”

“Aeronautics and astronautics? Seriously?” He laughed. Not in a mocking way. In a delighted way.

“You know what it is,” she said. “Nobody knows what it is.”

“Hey,” he said. “Mechanical engineering here. University of Texas.”

“Wow.” It was a breath, and then she shoved up the sleeve of her slim-fitting tee and showed him her bicep.

He grinned. Enormously. And laughed. “Man, I never thought I’d meet somebody this cute who had Bernoulli’s Equation tattooed on her arm. What are the odds?” And Dyma sparkled and shone and smiled and put a hand into her hair, Owen looked at her edgy haircut and her piercings and clearly wondered how many more she had and where they might be and exactly how much fun she enjoyed having and how reckless she’d be doing it, and Jennifer thought, This is so dangerous..

She didn’t know what to say or do here, in this moment, so she told Kris, “If you have a degree in astrophysics and are about to lecture me on the dynamics of flight, just don’t.”

He laughed. “Nope. Mine’s in business. It seemed easier, and I’m pretty sure it was. Ask me what I know about it.”

“All right. What do you know about it?”

“Just enough to know I should’ve paid more attention,” he said, and this time, she laughed. He added more seriously, keeping his voice low, “Don’t worry. Well, maybe worry, because she’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. You know how they say, ‘Cute as a bug?’ I think that’s what you made there. But the guy you’re worried about isn’t going to be Owen.”

She glanced at the two of them. Dyma had both elbows on the table—Jennifer had spent eighteen years telling her not to do that, though she might as well have saved her breath—and was gesturing with her hands and talking a mile a minute, while Owen was turned all the way towards her, listening hard. She said, “Not what it looks like to me.”

“I’ve got three little sisters,” Kris said. “Trust me. It’s not going to be Owen.”

His blue eyes were serious, and so was the rest of him. He’d said “trust me” again, but he’d meant it. She could tell. And she felt exactly like she had when he’d tackled her out of the way of that snowmobile. Breathless. Stunned.

Almost convinced.

Harlan said, “Good night,” watched Jennifer