Backlash Tender Trap Aftermath - Lisa Jackson Page 0,137

body that five hours of sleep each night couldn’t replenish.

“It’ll get better,” he told himself, but secretly wondered if the reason he was tired all the time was that his nights were filled with wild dreams of Cassie—startling, vivid images that he couldn’t erase from his mind. He’d wake up burning for her, wishing there were some way to douse the fire searing through his mind and body.

Short of finding a woman, he had no cure. As he saw it, he had two options. Chase her down and start rebuilding a relationship or find someone else.

“Fat chance of that,” he told himself, knowing that as long as Cassie was nearby, no other woman would do. He jammed his pitchfork into a bale of hay, then made his way outside. It had been two days since he’d seen Cassie, and it seemed a lifetime.

Glancing around the sun-dappled fields, he felt a kinship with this land he hadn’t experienced in years. Swollen-bodied mares grazed, picking at grass. Red Wing and Ebony, Tessa’s favorites—the pride of her small herd—moved slowly with the rest of the mares. Colton hoped they wouldn’t foal until Tessa and Denver returned, as Tessa had been anticipating the birth of her prize stallion, Brigadier’s offspring, for months.

In another field, yearlings cavorted, kicking up their heels and playfully nipping one another’s necks.

No, this place wasn’t so bad if you could stand the lack of excitement, he decided as he strode to the Jeep. It was fine for Denver. His older brother had changed over the years. But Colton hadn’t, and if it weren’t for Cassie there wouldn’t be anything for him here.

The turn of his thoughts worried him. Admitting that Cassie was more than a passing attraction bothered him. But there it was. Colton believed in “calling ’em as he saw ’em,” and unfortunately he was forced to recognize the simple and annoying fact that Cassie Aldridge had gotten to him all over again. A restlessness overcame him—the same restlessness he’d experienced every night since that evening when he’d first seen her again.

“Idiot,” he muttered, striding across the yard and up the steps of the back porch. He flung open the back door and stopped dead in his tracks.

In the kitchen, an old apron tied around her thick waist, Milly Samms was polishing the stove. Her steel-gray hair had been freshly permed, and she bit her lower lip as she worked furiously. She glanced toward Colton, then stopped, her mouth dropping open. “Well, look at you,” she said, a wide smile cracking her round face. “I barely recognized you without your beard!”

“I got tired of it,” he said, eyeing her as she continued her work at a fever pitch. “I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”

The housekeeper nodded. If she noticed his impatience, she didn’t comment. “I wasn’t. But I heard about Black Magic and decided to cut my vacation short.”

“He’s been found.”

“That’s what Curtis said, but I didn’t want to let Denver and Tessa down.”

Colton grinned in amusement as he hung his hat near the back door. “We were surviving.”

With a frown, Milly motioned to the cluttered counters and spotted wood floor. “Looks like you could use a little help—a woman’s help. Tessa spent all last fall remodeling this house, the least you could do is keep it up while she’s gone.”

“I’ll remember that,” Colton replied, noting the freshly painted cupboards, tile counters and polished oak parquet floor. Between his sister-in-law’s hard work and Denver’s financial help, the old farmhouse had taken on a fresh luster.

“Do!” Milly said with mock severity as she placed a cup of coffee on the counter near Colton. “So tell me all about Black Magic. The way I heard it from Madeline Simpson, you think he was stolen again.”

“That’s right,” Colton allowed, blowing across his cup before explaining the events of the past three weeks. Milly didn’t stop scrubbing and shining every pot and pan in the house as well as the countertops, refrigerator and light fixtures. She listened to him, interjected her own two cents when appropriate and never once sat down.

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Milly finally said when Colton had finished. She washed her hands for what had to be the tenth time, then wiped them on her apron.

“If it’s ended.”

“You don’t think it’ll happen again!”

“I hope not, but we don’t know for sure, do we?” he replied, his eyes narrowing.

“I suppose not,” Milly said absently. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, surveying her work. The