of one of the horse’s stalls and into his bucket. With the exception of Clancy, a paint gelding with a nasty cut on his foreleg who needed to be confined, she would turn out the rest of them as soon as they finished eating. They’d congregate near the hackberry trees on the eastern perimeter of the property, where they’d drop their heads, let their eyes drift closed, and switch their tails to chase away flies.
Then she heard footsteps outside. Freddie Jo’s voice behind her. “Shannon? Somebody’s here to see you.”
Shannon turned around and was stunned into silence. No. It couldn’t be.
Luke?
Chapter 5
Heat rushed to Shannon’s face, flooding her with an unnerving sense of being caught off-guard. The brim of Luke’s hat shadowed his face, but what she could see of his expression gave away nothing about why he might be there. He wore a brace on his knee, evidence that he’d probably had surgery, but the physical limitation did little to detract from the strength he radiated with every breath.
She never walked away after feeding the horses in the summer without stalks of hay in her hair and a sweat-soaked shirt, so she didn’t need a mirror to know what she looked like right then. She shoved a strand of hair away from her forehead, then turned back to dip the scoop into the grain bin again.
“Luke,” she said nonchalantly. “Thought you were long gone.”
“I was. Change of plans.” He pulled a folded-up section of newspaper from his hip pocket and tossed it onto a nearby bale of hay. “I’m here about the caretaker’s job.”
Shannon dropped the scoop, spilling the grain back into the bin again. She stared at the newspaper, then back at Luke. “You’re what?”
“Have you filled the job?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Then I want it.”
“Hallelujah!” Freddie Jo said, looking heavenward. “This is our lucky day!” She gave Luke a big smile. “It’s about time somebody came to our rescue. A few more weeks of this, and—”
“Now, hold on a minute!” Shannon said.
Freddie Jo’s face fell. “What’s the matter?”
Shannon couldn’t believe this. Of all the things she might have expected Luke to do, this was absolutely last on the list.
“You can’t work here,” she told him.
“Why not?” Freddie Jo said.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Why not?”
Why not? Was he serious? He thought he could just walk in there and ask for a job as if the past had never been? Still, the last thing she wanted was to dredge that up now. Fortunately, she hardly needed that as justification not to hire Luke when he had another more obvious shortcoming.
“Look at you,” she said. “You can barely walk. How are you supposed to do the job?”
“I had the surgery. The doctor said I need to start rehabbing my knee, and that includes making sure I get plenty of exercise. Give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll be doing all the heavy lifting I need to.”
“And there’s plenty he can do in the meantime,” Freddie Jo said.
“Like what?” Shannon said.
“He can groom the horses. Dose the cats with ear mite medicine. Feed the llamas.”
“Llamas?” Luke said. “Now, there’s something that wasn’t around here eleven years ago.”
“We have everything but dinosaurs now,” Freddie Jo said. “We’re just praying nobody figures out time travel, or the back pasture is going to look like Jurassic Park.”
Shannon couldn’t deal with this. It made her nervous just to have Luke standing in this barn, much less working there. If she’d felt hot before he showed up, she was positively sizzling now. He seemed to fill every space he walked into, crowding her mind until she couldn’t think straight. No matter how rational she tried to be, all it took was one glance to remind her what it had felt like to touch him and to imagine what it would be like if she did it again.
But there was another side to Luke now, one she’d do well to keep in mind. On their way to and from Austin after he’d hurt his knee, he’d shown her quite clearly how angry, abrupt, and resentful he could be. The last thing she needed these days was to deal with that kind of attitude.
She turned back to the grain bin. “Sorry, Luke. This interview is over.”
“Interview?” Luke said. “Was that what that was?”
“Yes. And you didn’t get the job.”
“I didn’t even get to tell you about my experience. As luck would have it, I’ve worked here before.”