Ace High (Lost Creek Rodeo #6) - Heather B. Moore Page 0,4

her, of course. Someone like cute Mallory.

And he was wearing his cowboy hat right now, the one he always wore. She’d seen him plenty of times with his hat off, and his dark auburn hair only accentuated the changing colors of his eyes. “Oh, well, that’s good. I just know Mallory was really excited to spend time with a ‘handsome cowboy.’” She laughed, but Lars didn’t join her. She quieted. “Something wrong?”

Lars scratched the two day’s scruff along his jaw.

Yeah, she’d noticed that, too.

“In my opinion,” he said, those eyes still intent on hers, “Mallory is like a kid standing in the middle of a candy shop. She likes everything she sees, but that’s because she likes sugar.”

Kellie frowned. “I’m sure she sees you as more than sugar, Lars.”

“I disagree, Sunshine.”

Well. He hadn’t called her Sunshine in a while. It was a nickname he’d started using when they were first hanging out during his and Ryan’s community college days. He started calling her that when she’d brought a couple of homemade pies to one of their rodeo nights. Lars had taken one bite of her lemon cream pie and said, “It’s like eating a plateful of sunshine.”

But then things changed. Kellie got more busy with her degree. She’d met and gotten married to Brad. Believed all his promises. They’d moved. Twice. She didn’t get back to Lost Creek as much as she’d liked. She was too busy keeping tabs on her husband and trying to build her own career. And the in-between times she’d been around the Original Six, Lars had had a girlfriend. Shelly? Suzi?

Kellie mustered up a brief smile, because her stomach was doing flips for some reason. “All I know is Mallory hasn’t stopped talking about you since yesterday. And since you don’t have a girlfriend, and you’re not dating anyone that I know of, who was I to dissuade a pretty woman like her?”

His brows tugged together as if he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. “She doesn’t know me at all, Kellie,” he said in a low voice, completely somber now. “I’m thirty years old, and I’m not going to date a woman just because she bats her eyes at me. In a year or two, I’ll be back to ranching, and if there happens to be a woman at my side, she’s gonna be a rancher’s wife. Now, tell me the truth—do you see Mallory as a rancher’s wife?”

Kellie bit her lip and pretended to think.

“Really? You have to think about it?”

She pressed her lips together to stop herself from smiling. “You’re right.” She thought of Mallory and all the pink she wore, and the hours she spent on her appearance. Kellie looked down at her faded jeans with two holes, her T-shirt that had seen better days, and the boots that should probably be cleaned at some point. “Probably not a ranch wife.”

Lars chuckled, and Kellie relaxed. Maybe she hadn’t completely annoyed or offended him.

“As long as we’re on the same page, Sunshine, that’s good enough for me.”

Kellie nodded. “Well, yeah, I guess I’ll stop interfering in your dating life.”

“I’ve never known you not to interfere in everyone’s lives, Kells.”

“Hey.” She slugged his arm, and he laughed.

She loved his laugh. Well, she loved laughter. But Lars had a nice laugh.

He led his horse past her and walked into the barn.

Kellie continued around the barn to where the four-wheelers were lined up. She’d take a bit of a break, clear her mind, and look for any part of the vast amount of fences on the ranch that might be in need of repair, so she’d be productive, too.

First, though, she started checking the gas gauges on the four-wheelers to make sure they were over half-filled. She needn’t have worried, because Ryan was good at keeping up on that stuff. Just as she picked the four-wheeler she’d take out, Lars came out of the barn.

“You scoping out the fences?” he asked, leaning against the barn door, his arms folded.

“Sure am.”

“Want an extra pair of eyes?”

Wow, he really didn’t want to be around Mallory if he was volunteering to help out with something she could easily do on her own. “If you’ve got the time,” she hedged. Why was her stomach all fluttery now? He was still on the rodeo circuit, and for part of the day, when he wasn’t helping Ryan out, Lars spent his time training at the arena. So, she’d figured if he wasn’t hanging with Ryan, then he’d take