His for the Taking - By Ann Major Page 0,20

enduring some awful man’s abuse. Or worse, abusing her own child.

Cole opened another stall and led out a tall bay gelding. “And this is Raider. He and I go way back. He’s half Arab and half quarter horse and pretty challenging to ride.”

“In what way?”

“He doesn’t like white rocks. And he insists on bossing all the other horses. He thinks he should decide which hay pile the horses can eat, and if they don’t agree, he lays his ears back and charges them.”

“Oh, dear.” She began to stroke him. “A big boy who doesn’t play well with others. In my line of work I meet a lot of people with your problem.”

“Lily is so agreeable that he isn’t threatened, so he doesn’t get up to many of his bad tricks when he’s around her.”

Outside, the wind rustled in the trees. Raider stomped, snorted and tossed his head, eagerly anticipating their ride.

Cole gave Maddie another moment to stroke and talk to Lily. Then they mounted and headed for the narrow, shady trail that wound through the brush. “I keep the trail groomed in the summers, just for riding,” Cole said.

“Do you ride often?” she asked wistfully, unable to imagine such a luxury.

“I’ve been away a lot overseeing my rigs and haven’t had time when I’m here, so getting out today will be fun, especially since you’ll be with me.” His words, warm and seductive, sang along her nerve edges.

Don’t say things like that. Don’t make me long for what I can never have.

“Riding will be a special treat for me, too. As a single mom, I don’t take off much time for myself.”

The sky was a deep blue, and the clouds against the horizon looked as soft as huge tufts of cotton. The light breeze curling the grasses made the late afternoon cooler than expected. Maddie, who rode behind Cole, found herself enjoying the ride more than she’d enjoyed anything besides Noah in years.

He set off on a gallop. Laughing aloud, she raced after him across one of his endless pastures with her hair streaming behind her. Her blood tingling from the thrill of it, she felt like a girl again with the big animal beneath her. When Cole turned and their eyes met, excitement charged through her in a white-hot jolt. Later, when he pulled up on his reins and headed in the direction of the river, she followed.

“The ground is not firm enough here to gallop,” he said as he waited for her to come alongside him.

She wasn’t surprised when Cole chose the pool where he’d discovered her earlier that day as their destination to water their horses and picnic.

When Cole helped her dismount, she stood beside Lily, stroking the horse, pretending she felt as calm as the mare, who dipped her mouth into the pool and drank through golden lips.

Cole opened a cold beer can and offered it to Maddie. When she accepted it, he popped the top off a tonic water and lifted it to his sculpted mouth. Studying his dark, angular face, especially his mouth, and the reflections of the trees and sky in the green water, she fought to pretend she felt nothing for him. But her blood was buzzing even before she drank deeply.

“So, who are you now, Maddie Gray?” he whispered as he led her to a limestone rock that served as a bench. “Now that you’re all grown up and educated? What have you made of yourself?”

“My story is probably pretty ordinary.”

“Not to me.”

“I don’t have your lineage of famous pioneer Texans. I was just a child here, going hungry on occasion and feeling trapped in that awful trailer with Mother when she was there. And when she wasn’t, I was always too scared of the neighbors in the next trailer to play outside.”

He frowned as if he genuinely empathized with the child she’d been. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“You asked,” she said, touched by his response. She’d never talked about these things with him before. Or with Greg, she thought. Greg knew next to nothing about her past, and she didn’t want him to. For some reason that she didn’t understand, she felt like talking to Cole this afternoon. Since they both needed closure, maybe telling him as much of the truth as she dared would help.

“Yes. Maybe it’s time I did talk about it. Mother didn’t come home lots of nights—sometimes she’d be gone several nights in a row. Out on dates, I suppose. Dates that lasted all