Refusing to worry about an uncertain future, Kyra stifled the thought. Assuming the sale of her temperamental horse went off without a hitch, she and Jesse would at least have one more evening together—alone—before he walked away from the Crooked Branch for good.
And no way in hell would they spend it thinking.
* * *
G
RETA
SCRAMBLED
to stub out her cigarette as she spied Jesse walking toward the barn.
Finally.
She’d seen him drive in an hour ago just as she’d been leaving the training facility after her talk with Kyra. Greta had delayed hitchhiking home and headed right back to the Crooked Branch, unwilling to leave Jesse in the hands of her biggest competition for his affection.
After he’d parked his Harley in the barn and disappeared into one of the outlying buildings, Greta had staked out his bike and settled in to wait. No way would she track him down amidst a slew of smelly barnyard animals.
Draping herself over the seat of the motorcycle, she managed to strike a sultry pose just as he yanked open the door to the barn. Crossing her hands behind her head, she knew her breasts would be cranked to an appealing height.
And one of the benefits of eating all the fried dough she wanted was that the mammary twins had put on a little weight over the past few weeks.
“Going my way?” she called out across the well-lit expanse of concrete, hanging tools and small tractors. She considered flexing her legs up and over the handlebars, but she wasn’t certain how well she could execute that kind of maneuver.
Besides, the disadvantage to all the fried dough was that her body wasn’t always totally well balanced.
His step slowed as he neared her. “Do I even want to know what you’re doing here?”
“I’m paving the way for us to be together, of course.” She lowered her arms and held them out to him. “Feel free to start showing me your gratitude anytime.”
And Jesse was so deliciously capable of adoring a woman. Greta hadn’t fallen into all that many beds, but she’d been with enough guys to know Jesse was different. He had a way of making her feel special. Important.
Too bad he didn’t seem to recognize an invitation when he heard one.
“What’s the matter?” she prodded, her arms falling to her side—empty—as she sat up on his motorcycle. “Afraid your
business partner
will see us?”
She couldn’t help the sarcasm that dripped from her words.
“She’s my best friend,” Jesse snapped, with none of his usual trademark charisma. Perhaps he realized as much because he let out a deep sigh. “Could we keep Kyra out of this?”
“My thought exactly.” Greta would gladly let Kyra eat her dust as she sped off into the sunset on the back of Prince Charming’s bike. “Why don’t you come with me to Miami this weekend? We can go jet-skiing and I’ll take you to the international swimwear show that all my friends will be in.”
Most men salivated at the prospect of leggy models in bathing suits. Jesse looked like she’d just consigned him to Dante’s third circle of hell.
“Sorry, Greta. I’m not on vacation anymore—can’t do those spur-of-the-moment trips.” He made a big production of peering at his watch. “In fact, I’m late for a meeting right now.”
Greta scrambled to straddle the bike, ready to follow Jesse wherever he might be headed. She’d come to Tampa for white picket fences and happily ever after, damn it. She wasn’t leaving this town without a man in tow.
“That’s great.” Greta smiled, batted eyelashes and tapped the most basic weaponry in the female arsenal. “Why not drop me off wherever you’re going?”
“A vacant lot in the middle of nowhere?” Jesse leaned down and scooped her up in his arms. “I don’t think so.”
Before she could fully appreciate the titillation of being wrapped in those big, strong arms, Greta was plunked unceremoniously to her feet in between an all-terrain vehicle and a horse trailer.
“Wait!” She stormed back toward the bike, but her shout was lost in the throaty roar of the Harley kicking to life.
And much to her dismay, Jesse Chandler hauled ass out of the barn, leaving
her
in the dust.
This
was her Prince Charming?
If it wasn’t for the serious pleasure the man could bring a woman, Greta might have had to rethink her choice for significant other.
As it stood, she merely shouted a string of epithets in his wake as she barreled out of the barn under the power of her own two feet. She may have been living a privileged life the past few years, but Greta still remembered how to work for the things she wanted.
By the time her feet hit the smooth pavement of the winding main road, Greta had reapplied her lipstick, fluffed her hair and adjusted her attitude.
For Jesse—the perfect man for her—she was willing to put forth a little effort. Once he realized they were meant to be together, he’d come around. And then he could apply himself to the task of making up for his wretched behavior toward her today.
A blue pickup truck rolled out onto the county route from an unmarked dirt road a few hundred yards away. Lucky for her, the vehicle was headed in her direction, back toward Tampa.
Promising herself she would learn to drive and buy herself a car very soon, Greta flicked out her thumb to hail the oncoming truck. She’d met some interesting people while hitchhiking, but she knew every time she hopped in a car with a stranger she was taking a ridiculous risk.
And jet-set, international models might take risks, but settled women who lived in houses with picket fences did not.
The truck slowed to a stop beside her. The passenger door swung out, pushed from inside. Greta stepped on the running board to pull herself up into the shiny, midnight-blue vehicle, wishing she could have had a better visual of the truck’s driver before she committed to getting in.
She recognized the scratchy Southern drawl at almost the same moment she came face-to-face with the tall, weathered cowboy in the driver’s seat.
“Doesn’t a city girl like you know better than to take a ride with a stranger?”
8
H
ORSE
BREEDER
Clint Bowman had always been a gentleman. Treating women with courtesy and respect had been a cornerstone of his strict, Alabama backwoods upbringing and he’d implemented those teachings with every woman he’d ever met.
So it made no sense to him that he would be sitting in his truck cab stifling a chuckle at seeing Greta Ingram’s million-dollar cover-girl smile morph into a red-cheeked huffy pout today.
But then, nothing about Greta Ingram made him feel much like a gentleman.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” she asked, nose tilted in the air as she settled into his passenger seat and fastened her seat belt.
Clearly, she didn’t consider him a threat to an unsuspecting hitchhiker.
Reaching across her world-famous legs, he yanked her door shut. “Two
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit covers in a row sort of makes you a household name, doesn’t it?”
All of America had seen her face on countless magazines over the past five years. Her perfect features, dominated by her generous, trademark lips. The woman was a walking sexual fantasy.
At the mention of her well-known status, she preened with a vengeance. Greta sat up straighter, angled her shoulders, tossed her head...Clint lost track of her flurry of movements, all no doubt designed to make a man drool.
“Good.” The hair-fluff thing she did was pure diva. “Then perhaps you won’t mind dropping me off downtown. Preferably near the Gasparilla events.” She didn’t ask. She issued orders.
“And do you find that trading on your famous face makes people more inclined to forgive the bad manners?” Shifting the truck into gear, he pulled out onto the main road.
He expected her to get all puffed-up and indignant again, but this time she only rolled her eyes and started digging through her mammoth purse. “My manners surely aren’t any worse than yours. But then, the world rather expects me to be haughty. I’m rich and pampered and I find that conceit makes a damn good weapon in a cutthroat business. What’s your excuse?”
He wasn’t about to share his excuse. Lust—pure and simple—didn’t seem like a wise thing to own up to right now.
“Nothing nearly so rational as yours, I guarantee you.” He watched her wave a silver cigarette case in one hand while she excavated shiny compacts and lipstick tubes from her handbag with the other. “Need a light?”
“Would you mind?” She dropped her handful of lipsticks back in the purse. The look of gratitude she flashed his way hit him like a thunderbolt. He caught a nanosecond glimpse of what it might be like to be on the receiving end of other, more sensual gratitudes....
Scavenging through a pile of roadmaps in his truck console, Clint refused to let his mind wander impossible paths. He found a long unused lighter and flicked up a flame after two dry runs.
She leaned close to catch the fire, holding his hand steady with her own. A spark jumped from her flesh to his that had nothing do with the combustible vial of fluid he clutched.
When she glanced up at him with shock scrawled in her bright green eyes, Clint flattered himself to think maybe she felt that bit of electricity, too. Although, judging by how fast she scrambled back into the far recesses of the passenger side, it was pretty damned obvious she didn’t appreciate the connection.
“You want one?” she extended the case across the cab, her hand a little unsteady.
Did he make her nervous? Hard to believe the woman who thought nothing of hitchhiking on an isolated Florida back road would be unnerved by old-fashioned sexual chemistry.
Still, he didn’t see the need to say as much. At least not yet.
“No thanks. I quit.” Across the spectrum of his bad habits, smoking had been the easiest to kick.
“Really?” She rolled down her window halfway and exhaled into the sultry Florida air. “I find recovered smokers to be the most sanctimonious.”
She seemed to relax a little behind the weapon of her sharp tongue.
“Not this one.” He tossed the lighter back in his console and half wished he hadn’t discovered touching Greta was even more explosive than talking to her. “I’m a firm believer in ‘to each his own.’”
She cast him a cynical look over one shoulder before staring out the truck window again. Engaged in constant, jittery movement, Greta was either nervous as hell around him or severely caffeine-addicted.
Either way, Clint couldn’t help wondering if there was any way to slow her down for a few minutes.
Or for a few days. Nights.
“I’m Clint Bowman,” he offered, remembering the manners she’d suggested he didn’t have as they sped by local produce stands advertising oranges and boiled peanuts. “Want to have dinner with me tonight and I’ll behave at my non-sanctimonious best?”
He probably shouldn’t have subjected his ego to looking across the cab at her, but he’d never been a man to take the easy way out. Sure enough, her eyes widened in surprise—at least he hoped it was surprise and not mild horror—her jaw dropped open, and her cigarette fell from her hand, straight out the truck window.
Not exactly good signs for his suit.
“I don’t think so.” Shaking her head with more vehemence than was strictly necessary, she folded her arms across her body and shouted her refusal with every facet of her body language.
“You have better things to do with your time than hang out with an Alabama cowboy?” Normally, he wouldn’t needle a woman about that sort of thing. But Clint’s psychology degree and every instinct about human nature told him Greta Ingram felt more comfortable conversing under the shield of verbal sparring.
“I’ll be with Jesse Chandler. I assume you know him if you’re familiar with the Crooked Branch?”
He was familiar all right. “We met this morning when he was having a conniption over me getting too close to Kyra Stafford. Guess I assumed they were a couple.”
Steam practically hissed from Greta’s ears as they rolled through a construction site near the interstate.
“Hardly. Jesse and I have been an item for months.” Her mutinous look dared him to contradict her.
“Then it strikes me as damned funny I saw him roaring away from the ranch on a Harley not ten minutes before I found you hitchhiking on the side of the road.” Clint would stake his horse-breeding business on the fact that Jesse Chandler was tied up in knots over Kyra.
Which, to Clint’s way of thinking, left Greta very much available to a man with a little bit of patience.
Or ingenuity.
“He must not have known I was at the ranch then, I suppose.” She sniffed. Tilted her perfect nose high in the air.
“Dinner with me might make him jealous as hell.” So he was ten kinds of no-good for tossing that out there to serve his own ends. But it was definitely in keeping with today’s lack of manners.
The notion caught her attention.
She arched a curious brow in his direction. “You think so?”
“Nothing like a little competition for a woman to make a man get his head out of the sand.”
She pursed her perfect lips. Clint stared at her mouth, so mesmerized by the sight he nearly took out a few orange construction cones on the side of the road.
“Okay,” she finally agreed. “But we’re only going through with it if we can find a time Jesse will be around to notice. And you need to behave like an attentive gentleman.” She flashed him a narrow look as if still debating whether or not he could pull off such a thing. “If we’re going to do this, we do it on
my
terms.”
Yes.
“Honey, I’m all yours.” Clint swallowed the smile that tickled his mouth.
He’d just talked himself into an evening with a walking, talking spitfire who also just happened to be one of the world’s hottest women.
Which only proved that sometimes it didn’t pay to be a gentleman.
* * *
N
EARLY
TWO
WEEKS
LATER
, Jesse put the finishing touches on a custom-made strip of crown molding with his jigsaw and realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to think of another woman.
God knows, he’d been trying—hard—for days now.
Switching off the saw, Jesse brushed a fine layer of sawdust from the elaborately carved piece of wood before leaving his workshop for the day. Ten days had passed since he last tore out of the private driveway that led to the Crooked Branch, kicking up gravel in his wake. Yet for long, torturous days on end, the only woman he’d been able to conjure seminaked in his mind had been Kyra Stafford.
Not good.
Out of desperation, he’d finally hightailed it out of town over the weekend. His older brother Seth had asked him to deliver his boat to the sleepy Gulf coast town of Twin Palms and Jesse had jumped at the chance for temporary escape.
Too bad the trip hadn’t helped him take his mind off Kyra. If anything, seeing his brother’s newfound happiness with artist Mia Quentin had only hammered home the fact that Jesse didn’t have a clue how to make a relationship work.
As he checked his watch, he realized he needed to haul ass if he wanted to make it over to the ranch in time to say goodbye to Sam’s Pride.
And to Kyra.
He couldn’t put off seeing her any longer. And he couldn’t delay a serious conversation in which he unwound the complications of their relationship and put them back on firm “just friends” footing.
Shoving a helmet on his head, he straddled his Harley and headed north, grateful for the long ride to the Crooked Branch so he could get his head in order. For days he’d made excuses not to think about the ramifications of his night with Kyra, telling himself they hadn’t really done anything anyway.
Of course, in some long-buried portion of his conscience, he knew that was a lie.
They had done something monumental that night. Had touched each other in ways that scared the hell out of him if he let himself think about it for too long.
That’s why tonight had to be a quick, efficient case of get in, get out.
And
not
in a sexual way, damn his freaking libido.
He’d say goodbye to Sam’s Pride because the three-year-old was a damn good horse. Jesse and Kyra had been at the ranch together the night Sam’s Pride had been born. And for some reason, the horse had always followed Kyra around like a shadow, had even rescued her from the river one night when another horse had thrown her.
Jesse sort of owed it to that animal to at least be there when he got booted off the Crooked Branch so Kyra could make enough profit for her controlling partnership.
Damn, but that bothered him.
Half an hour later, as he pulled into the drive leading to the Crooked Branch, Jesse wasn’t any happier with the situation, but at least he had a plan for his approach. Balancing his helmet on his bike’s seat, he coached himself on the basic principles he needed to remember. As he walked toward the exercise arena, he could already see Sam’s Pride trotting in circles and he ran through the mission in his mind.
Give Kyra her controlling percentage and say his own goodbyes. To the horse, to the ranch and—much as it didn’t feel right—to her.
Get in. Get out.
Figuratively, damn it.
And—above all things—try not to think of Kyra naked.
Rounding the corner of the private stables, Jesse caught a better view of the exercise area and the fence surrounding it. Two figures leaned up against the rails, much as he and Kyra had earlier last week.
He didn’t need to see the tall guy’s face under the Stetson to know Kyra’s companion was Clint Bowman—Sam’s Pride’s personal psychologist and Kyra’s obvious admirer. The guy wasn’t touching her right this second, but give him two minutes and he probably would be.
The oddly foreign sense of jealousy that he’d experienced the last time he saw them together roared back with a vengeance. All his “get in, get out” mental coaching was lost in a firestorm of “get your hands off Kyra and get the hell out of my way.”
Clint noticed him then and nudged Kyra to let her know they had company. Jesse might have bristled more at the physical contact of that nudge, but then Clint took an obvious step back away from Kyra.
Smart man.
“Hey, Jesse,” Kyra called, her faded jeans skimming gently curved hips and covering a pair of worn red cowboy boots she’d had since high school. Her red tank top was new, however. At least to his eyes. It bore little resemblance to the men’s T-shirts she usually favored for working and it definitely showcased the amazing body he’d only just recently discovered she possessed. “Sam’s Pride is in great form tonight.”
Sam’s Pride wasn’t the only one. Kyra looked so good it hurt.
As Jesse neared, he could see the animation in her blue eyes, the restless energy of her movements. She was genuinely excited about starting a new chapter in her life. One that didn’t involve him, or the horse they’d helped deliver.
Not that he intended to care all that much. She was entitled to be independent, to kick up her heels a little, right?
“He looks good,” Jesse agreed, forcing his eyes to move over the sleek black three-year-old instead of the thin sliver of bared skin between Kyra’s jeans and the hem of her tank top.
“Clint says he’s been responding really well all week, so I’m pretty optimistic about tonight.” Her gaze settled on him. Lingered. “You okay?”
He was walking away from the one steady friendship he’d managed to form in his life tonight and he hadn’t been able to work up desire for any woman but her in over ten days.
Hell yeah, he was just peachy.
“Never been better.”
She eyed him critically while Clint called to Sam’s Pride behind her.
Thankfully, the sound of tires crunching on gravel and the squeak of a trailer in tow saved Jesse from further questioning.
“Looks like your customer has arrived.” Jesse steeled himself for the easier of the two goodbyes he planned to make tonight.
A shiny black pickup truck with two cherry-red racing flames down the side slowed to a stop on the other side of the stables. Kyra strode forward to shake hands with the newcomer—a crusty rancher with a mountain-man beard and a black-and-red jacket to match his truck.