expect that mothers feel the same no matter what the species. Think about a mama cat. She would take on an elephant if it tried to mess with her kittens,” Pax answered.
Alana caught a whiff of his shaving lotion—something woodsy and sexy. Meantime, her hair was a fright from working outside all day. She had perspired so much her skin felt to her like she’d been rolled in salt. Her tank top was dirty and her work shirt likely ruined.
Pax let go of her hand and reached out to brush her hair away from her face. “Congratulations on a job well done, ma’am.” He bent to brush a sweet kiss across her lips.
* * *
“One of each.” Pax smiled at Alana. She might look like a mess right then, but to him she was beautiful. He recognized the pride at having two new calves to add to her herd and knew exactly what she was feeling. He’d had the same bursting feeling in his heart when any new calf was born over on the Callahan Ranch.
“You got a girl over there.” He nodded in the direction of the other stall. “And a boy right here. Both seem healthy, and that bull calf looks to me like he could be a good enough breeder to pay for a semester of college.”
“Yep,” she said. “Thanks for being here with me.”
“Aw, shucks!” He kicked at the straw on the barn floor. “You would’ve done fine without me.”
She looked him right in the eyes without blinking. “Maybe, but it felt good to have you here, Pax.”
“Then you are so welcome. Bringing those calves into the world meant more than going out dancing,” he admitted.
“Spoken like a true rancher.” She took a deep breath, as if she was about to say something else, but changed the subject. “I need a shower. I can feel dirt growing on me.”
“I guess I should go,” he said.
“Why?” She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him along with her. “I’m too nasty to even get in either of our trucks. There’s a bathroom off the tack room. I’ll take a shower there and then we can watch a little television or talk.”
She opened the door to the neatest tack room he’d ever been in. Most barns that had a storage room for things like saddles and tools smelled like old sweaty leather and had no air-conditioning. This place was spic-and-span, clean and cool. Alana went to a small refrigerator and took out a beer for him. “Remote is on the end table. Is something wrong?”
“No, but our tack room sure doesn’t look or feel like this,” he said.
“Daddy turned it into his little poker cave a few years ago, back when we sold the last of our horses and went to four-wheelers to round up cattle. Then he built a room on the back side of the barn to store what was left in here when he got rid of the saddles. The only ones left on the place are my saddles. The one that I used to ride my Shetland when I started training to barrel race, and a couple of others are at the house on display in Daddy’s den.”
“I thought you were a bronc rider.” Pax turned the bottle up and drank from it.
“I was until a couple of years ago. I got tired of the aches and pains,” she admitted as she disappeared behind a door.
Pax sunk down in a buttery-soft leather futon and looked around. A poker table, complete with chips in the middle of it, was to his left and a desk with a computer on the top sat to his right. When he and his friends played poker, it was usually around the kitchen table. He picked up the remote, but before he could push the power button, he caught the reflection of pictures on the wall behind him on the television screen. He stood up and turned around to see a collection of photos of Alana. The center one was of her on a Shetland pony, holding a blue ribbon. A couple of the pictures had Alana’s mother, Joy, in them with her and her pony.
“She sure looks like Joy did,” he muttered.
His eyes went back to the first photo, and he remembered Alana wearing her hair in two braids like that when they were in elementary school. She’d always been tall, but to him, she’d been beautiful even then.
“And she intimidated the hell out of me,” he whispered as