Wrangling the Redhead - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,23
had a coat that gleamed in the weak rays of sun filtering through the window behind her.
“She’s beautiful,” Lauren said, then inched closer to the stall. “Aren’t you, girl?”
The horse showed little interest in her or in Wade. She just stood there silently, head hanging. Even when Lauren extended a chunk of carrot on the palm of her hand, Miss Molly barely lifted her head to examine it. Finally, with little enthusiasm, the horse took the carrot, chewed slowly, then turned her back on both of them to poke her head through the open window and gaze at the pasture beyond.
“What can you tell me about her?” Lauren asked Wade.
“Like I said, I bought her at a sale in Cheyenne. She was a spirited little thing, and she was training well. Then we came here and…” He shrugged. “You can see how she is.”
“Where were you before? What was it like?”
“It was another ranch. The barn wasn’t half as nice as this one.”
“A lot of other horses?”
“No more than here.” He regarded her curiously. “What are you thinking?”
Lauren hesitated to say. She was no expert in animal behavior. What she knew came from instinct and experience—but Wade was actually regarding her with genuine attention, awaiting her verdict.
“Okay,” she said finally. “This may sound crazy, but could she be homesick?”
A bark of laughter erupted before he could contain himself. “Homesick? She’s a horse, not a college freshman. Besides, she wasn’t in that barn all that long. How could she have gotten that attached to anything?”
Lauren reacted defensively to the instantaneous derision in his voice. “It was just a thought. Ignore it, if you think it’s stupid.” She whirled around and left the barn.
She was outside at the railing watching Midnight in the distance when Wade finally joined her.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.
“For?”
“I asked for your opinion. I had no right to make fun of it when you gave it.”
“True,” she agreed.
“So, let’s say you could be right about this. What the hell do I do? Move back to the other ranch?”
“That seems a little extreme,” she said, grinning at the frustration in his voice. “Let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with something less drastic.”
“I hope so,” he said, giving her another of those thoroughly disconcerting looks. “I’m just starting to like the scenery around here.”
After several days Wade was forced to face the fact that he’d misjudged Lauren when he’d assumed she was nothing more than some pampered rich girl who was visiting the ranch on a lark. She had a head on her shoulders and a real knack with horses—all horses. She was like some kind of pied piper with them. Although she hadn’t solved Miss Molly’s problem yet, she was doing well with Midnight. He came to her almost eagerly now, which Wade could readily understand. The horse was male, wasn’t he? And Lauren was every inch a female.
He was even more impressed by the way she pitched in and did chores in the barn without being asked. Did them like a woman who was familiar with them, too. She didn’t seem to care how messy the chore was. She never complained about the heat, or the broken fingernails, or the straw that tangled in her hair.
At the end of the first week they’d spent working together, she stood before him, hands on hips, jeans filthy, her blouse damp, her cheeks flushed. “Anything else?” she asked.
Because he couldn’t resist, because he was a fool, he murmured, “Only this,” and claimed her mouth in a kiss that raised the temperature in the barn to a dangerous level. With all that flammable material around, it was a wonder the whole place didn’t go up in flames.
Big mistake, he told himself the minute he managed to force himself to release her. Once a man had crossed that kind of line and discovered that the temptation was every bit as spectacular as it had promised to be, he was pretty much doomed to repeat it.
“What was that for?” Lauren asked eventually.
She was regarding him with a dazed expression that made him want to kiss her all over again. “I wish I knew,” he muttered and walked off before she could start analyzing the kiss to death.
He worked himself to the point of exhaustion for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, nothing he did drove out the memory of his lips on hers, of the softness of her curves pressed against him.
“Fool,” he muttered to himself a thousand times. It