CHAPTER SIX
Sidney lay flat out on her bed in the barn, her door open to accommodate Eli, not knowing what to do with her unexpected time off. It was only early afternoon and she’d succumbed to exhaustion, her lunch untouched on the counter, except where Eli had nudged the bread off her sandwich and stolen the slice of lettuce.
She closed her eyes, but she was too worried about her job to sleep. Eli, on the other had was sleeping just fine, his lips resting on her belly as she rubbed a hand up and down his long face. A pile of horsehair formed a semicircle on her shirt around his muzzle. A few of the hairs had worked their way through the T-shirt, making her skin itch. She ignored them, as well as the thin layer of sweat covering her body.
The sun had heated the barn. She had no window for ventilation, and she had an eleven-hundred-pound hay burner packed into the room, blocking the breeze.
Eli flicked an ear back and cracked on eyelid a second before Sidney heard the clomp of boots in the aisleway, though neither one of them bothered to move.
“I could come back if you two lovebirds want your privacy,” Bryan said.
Sidney glanced up to see Bryan’s head and chest above Eli’s rump in the doorway. “Stay,” she said. “He’s only using me for scratches and hay.”
She shooed Eli out of the room with a wave of her hand. Eli backed out and eyed Bryan for a few seconds before clip-clomping his way back down the barn aisle. Bryan stepped into the room, dressed in cargo shorts and a blue T-shirt that said, “I put my pants on one leg…”
He held out his hand to her.
“What?”
“Come on. We’re blowing this joint.”
“Why?”
“You seriously need to ask me—”
He spun around the room, took in her packed bag on the chair, then swung back around to her. “What the fuck, Irish?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because it looks a hell of a lot like you packed your bag and are trying to get up the courage to tell Mac and the rest of us that you’re leaving.”
“Okay, so maybe it is what you think. Kinda.” She sat up and brushed the horsehair from her shirt.
He crossed his arms and glared down at her. “What part did I get wrong?”
“The part where I actually leave.”
“How so?”
“I forgot my truck is still dead.”
“For hell’s sake.” He paced the room like a WWE wrestler before his first cage fight. Then he plopped down on the bed beside her. He cocked his head and looked at her, his eyes a deep, dark sapphire that pulled her in.
“Were you really going to leave?” His timbre resonated in her chest.
“Yes…no.” She raised her hands in the air and dropped them on her lap. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You don’t like it here?”
“I love it here.” She didn’t hesitate. “It’s my dream job.”
“And you were going to drive off and throw it all away? Let that bastard win?”
“This from the guy who told Mac not to hire me?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You won me over. Winning over the rest of the world should be easy.”
“But that won’t help the Lazy S in the meantime. They need trained horses to sell. They can’t afford to pay me and foot all the feed costs to wind up with a string that’s unsellable because of my reputation.”
“Hockley isn’t the only buyer out there.”
“No, but it sounds like he’s the most influential.”
Bryan didn’t argue. Instead he stood and said, “Grab your horse, grab your bridle, and meet me out front.”
“Where we going?”
Backing out of the room, he zipped his lips closed. She groaned as she stood, her muscles stiff, her joints half-frozen. By the time she’d shuffled out of her room, Bryan was nowhere in sight. She snagged Eli’s bridle out of the tack room and whistled for her horse.
Eli trotted in from the backside of the barn. His pace picked up as soon as he saw the bridle. He skidded to a stop in front of her. Fumbling with the bridle, she had to fight to get it on Eli because he was trying too hard to help. “Jesus, it’d be easier putting a sweater on an octopus.”
Finally, the bit slipped into his mouth. She pulled the leather behind his ears and the reins over his head, adjusted his fluffy forelock and brushed it flat with her hand.
“Ready?” she asked her horse.
Eli didn’t say anything as he headed toward the barn doors.
Outside, Bryan came trotting up astride an enormous blue roan horse, like Alexander the Great on Bucephalus without all the heavy armor.
The roan’s black mane and tail billowed like a flag in a stiff breeze, his nostrils flaring from his effort, his footfalls so light he practically floated above the ground.
“Nice horse,” Sidney said.
“This is Angel, but don’t let his name fool you.”
“Yours?”
“Nah, belongs to Hank’s daughter Jenna. I keep him legged up for her while she’s away at college.”
“Whoa,” Bryan said to Angel. Then he said to Sidney, “Ditch the boots.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
Once she’d tugged her boots and socks off, she swung up onto Eli’s back and gathered up her reins.
“Try to keep up.” His grin flashed, but even before he could completely turn his horse around Sidney squeezed Eli into a canter and headed toward the range gate.
Bryan cantered after her. She lost him when Eli sailed over the closed gate. Behind her, she heard the scuffle of hooves and the clank of metal on metal as Bryan worked the gate open and closed. One glance back and she squeezed Eli into a hand gallop. Angel was wicked fast and gaining.
Grass and short scrub flashed by in a blinding whirl of greens and yellows. The air stung her eyes, making them water while the wind whipped at her shirt. Eli’s hooves thundered beneath her, her heart pounding in counter rhythm.
Out of the corner of her eye, Angel’s nose eased into view. Feeling the pressure, Eli surged, but he ran out of gas. Bryan overtook them, pulling his horse up, his fist raised in a cry of victory. All he lacked was a battle ax and his face painted blue and he could have showed up Mel Gibson for the lead in Braveheart.
Sidney slowed to a walk beside him, all four of them breathing hard—fire in their eyes and freedom in their hearts.
“Holy damn, Irish, you cleared that fence with more than a foot to spare!”
She patted Eli on his neck. Her hand came away covered in hair and sweat, bringing a huge grin to her face. She’d been so busy training the mustangs, she hadn’t had a chance to take Eli out and shake off the cobwebs. She exhaled, blowing away the stress and defeat, fatigue and biting disappointment.
Bryan was right, giving up, giving in, giving Hockley the power to destroy her wasn’t the answer.
“This way.” Bryan turned his horse down a steep, rocky trail.
She followed behind in single file, watching the play of muscles along his back, her girly parts sending urgent, repeated requests to her brain to rethink her decision of exiling Bryan to the friend zone.
But that was the hormones talking. Okay, screaming, hollering, yelling, waving her white panties in utter defeat and surrender.
The splash of water brought her back to herself a few steps before Eli plunged into a large stock pond after Angel and Bryan. When Eli was belly deep, Sidney’s toes touched water. She squealed and jerked her feet up to Eli’s shoulders. “That’s freaking cold!”
Bryan howled with laughter, then dropped his reins and tumbled off the side of his horse and into the water. He sank, the water murky now that the horses had stirred up the silt from the bottom.
He didn’t come up. No splashing, no air bubbles, no sign of him. Her heart tripped and fell in her chest, and her stomach jumped up to take its place. “Bryan? Bryan!”
Angel eased toward the bank, but Sidney didn’t dare move, afraid Eli might step on Bryan. She was about to dive in when he surfaced on her right and grabbed her ankle. “You scared the—”
Reaching up, he locked his other hand onto the waistband of her jeans, pulling her off balance. She didn’t have time to yell or protest or curse his mother. She barely had time to fill her lungs with air before she tumbled into the freezing water.
The first thought that shot across her synapses after her brain reengaged was that she was so thankful Bryan didn’t drown, because now she could kill him.
Her face cleared the surface of the water and she laughed and sputtered as she drew in a breath. Bryan treaded water beside her, a mischievous grin on his face.
“You’re dead,” she said, but he grinned wider.
She sent a wave of water over his head, lunged for him, and dunked him. He vanished beneath her and came boiling up from below, his hands grabbing her hips and catapulting her into the air.
She sailed across the surface of the pond, arms and legs pinwheeling in midair. She landed with the grace of an elephant executing a swan dive at the state fair and sunk like a rock. A hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the surface.
“You okay?” Bryan said as she came up for air.
She spit frigid water into his face.
His eyes lit like sparklers on the Fourth of July, full of pleasure, full of heat, and way too full of himself.
“You’re an a-ass,” she pointed out, but there wasn’t any heat behind her words. In fact, there wasn’t any heat in her fingers or her toes or the rest of her body. Her teeth chattered. “I-I’ve had ice baths t-that were w-warmer.”
“Snow runoff.” He jerked his head toward the three-foot-high waterfall at the head of the pond about twenty yards away. “Keeps things on the cool side.”
She did a backstroke toward the edge, before she became a human popsicle.
“This way.” He grabbed the collar of her shirt and tugged her along.
He brought them to a large, flat rock hanging over the water. He climbed out and reached over to give her a hand up. She flopped onto the rock’s surface like a landed fish and rolled to her back. The rock was warm from the sun, but her clothes felt as if they’d been woven with ice crystals.
He hopped over to the horses a few paces away and removed their reins so they wouldn’t trip on them. By the time he got back, she shivered uncontrollably.
“Take your clothes off.”
“Is this how you n-normally get your dates n-naked?”
“This isn’t a date. No one’s getting naked. We’re wringing out our clothes.” Balancing on one leg, he dropped his shorts, then sat back down beside her on the rock.
“I guess that answers the boxers or briefs question.”
He tugged on the bottoms of his boxer briefs and winked. “You’ve been thinking about my underwear?”
“Not really.” Not much. At least not during the day. Or even at night, because then she was thinking more about him out of them. He didn’t have to know that.
“What was that look about?” he asked.
“What look?” She shivered again. She couldn’t stay in the wet clothes any longer.
“The one where you were wondering about what was under my underwear.”
“Was not.”
He raised his brows in that tell-me-another-lie kind of way and reached over to help her wrestle her clothes off. “Just so we’re clear, and in the interest of full disclosure, the water is fucking cold, and shrinkage—”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, it looks like shrinkage was minimal.”
“Ah ha! You did look.” He wrung out their clothes and laid them out on the rock in the sun to dry.
“It was eye level. Kinda hard to miss.”
“Nothing hard about it,” he teased. He waved a hand in front of her face, then forked his index and middle fingers toward his eyes. “Eyes up here, Irish. You keep staring at me like that and all that could change, freezing temperatures or not.”
Heat rushed up—her neck, her cheeks, her forehead—not stopping until her scalp buzzed. “Sorry.”
“I’m not.” All hint of humor vanished from his voice, replaced with a rawness, a vulnerability she hadn’t expected from him.
“Bry—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”
Reaching back, he fumbled with his shorts and came away with his flask in hand. He took a couple of swigs then offered some to her. “Go ahead, it’ll warm you up.”
Not much of a drinker, she sipped with caution. The liquor burned a streak down the back of her throat and settled warm in her stomach like coals banked for the night. She held a hand to her mouth to hold in the cough as she handed the flask back to him. He tossed a couple of chugs into the back of his throat before screwing the lid back on and setting it on the rock beside him.
Leaning back, he folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the sky. She copied him. Between the warmth of the rock leaching into her body from below, the sun from above, and the heat of the alcohol in her belly, Sidney’s shaking finally eased.
The sky was bold and blue and brilliant, with a few billowy white clouds here and there. High overhead the contrail of a plane creased the blue. The horses grazed about ten yards away, occasionally blowing dust out of their noses as they ate. Between their rhythmic chewing, the white noise of the insects as they buzzed in the short, stubby grass, and the booze, Sidney relaxed for the first time in two very long weeks.
Beside her, Bryan snoozed lightly. She rolled onto her side, propped her head on her hand and watched him sleep. His chest rose and fell, slow and steady. He had a smattering of dark hair on his chest that arrowed down over the dips and valleys of his abdominals and trailed beneath the hand he rested low on his belly.
He’d flung his other arm over his eyes to block the sun. That’s when she noticed the puckered scar high on his torso beneath his arm. Old enough to have faded from pink to silver.
The entry wound from when he and Mac were ambushed?
The air whooshed out of her lungs and she found breathing difficult. One look at the scar told her how lucky he was to be alive. Did she really have the right to judge, to question him on how he dealt with the aftermath?
She could never fully understand what he’d been through. That didn’t stop her from wanting to try.
Reaching out, she lightly traced the scar with her finger. He flinched and drew in a quick breath, startling her. “Sorry. Did that hurt?”
He raised his arm high enough to glance at her beneath it. “It tickled.”
“You’re ticklish?” She reached her hand toward his ribs again.
He jackknifed up, capturing her hand in his with a laugh. “No, you don’t.”
Her eyes caught his and the smile slipped from her lips. The heat in his gaze was unmistakable, but so was the uncertainty. He dropped her hand. She wanted him to take her hand back. Reaching out, she cupped his cheek, his short beard somehow both rough and soft. Her focus shifted to his lips. They were full and inviting, and despite her concerns about his use of pain meds and alcohol, she really liked the man, liked his honesty, liked his support and his unwavering belief in her.
She even liked that she wanted another taste of him.
Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his. Light at first, teasing, testing. He didn’t pull back, but he didn’t encourage her either. She tugged and nipped at his bottom lip, until he groaned softly and opened to her gentle assault.
The tang of whiskey mingled on their tongues. He deepened the kiss, taking over where she’d left off, soft yet demanding, sweet yet powerful.
He smelled of sweat and sun and spring water, and something that was uniquely Boomer the Marine and not Bryan the man. Her pulse kicked up and her head got light, and if her panties hadn’t already been wet before, they were now.
With a hand on his shoulder, she eased him back against the rock and followed him down. She broke the kiss and worked her way over his jaw—his whiskers scraping softly, heightening the sensation.
She placed open-mouth kisses on his neck, on his shoulder, and started working her way down, her hand leading the way through the soft mat of hair on his chest, down, down, down, until she brushed the damp band of his underwear, wanting to dive beneath the fabric like Cousteau in search of treasure long buried. His fingers cupped the back of her head, a tight grip on her hair that sent zings of awareness along her nerves and synapses.
She laved the tight peak of his nipple, felt the shudder of his stomach muscles under her hand. With one finger, she traced the band of his briefs, then dipped a finger beneath.
He sucked in a breath and his free hand clamped down on her wrist. “What’re you doing?”
“Is that a trick question?” She tried to move her hand. His grip didn’t hurt, but she couldn’t move it unless he allowed her to.
Sitting, he pushed her up with him. “Nothing has changed, Irish. I’m still the same man I was twenty minutes ago. The same man I was two weeks ago. I still drink. I still pop pain pills like Tic Tacs. Nothing has changed.”
Then why did it feel like things had changed? She could even see the difference in his eyes, the heat and the desire. If that weren’t enough, the tenting of his briefs gave him away. He wanted her.
His gaze swept over her, down and up, and a rash of goose bumps broke out on her body and her nipples peaked. Neither escaped his notice. His nostrils flared and she leaned in to kiss him again.
He didn’t meet her halfway, and before her lips touched his he said, “Stop.” The word sounded forced, like he’d marched it out of his mouth a gunpoint.
She smiled.
He didn’t smile back.
“Wait. You’re serious.”
“As the clap.” He rested his forehead on hers and blew out a harsh breath.
She choked on the laugh. “You don’t want me.”
“Did I say that?”
The imaginary herd was back, dancing on her chest, making breathing something she needed to concentrate on to accomplish. The sun glinted off his flask and she got a sharp pain behind her right eye. The booze looked better and better, but it probably couldn’t touch the cold that had settled inside her. She pulled away.
“Look,” he said. “I…”
When he didn’t continue, she glanced up at him, his expression a strange marriage of what she could interpret as conflict and resignation. “You what?”
“I’m going to screw this up.” He scrunched up his face like he knew the words would leave a bad taste in his mouth.
She so did not want to hear this. “Spit it out.”
“I like you. I can’t hide that.” He glanced down at his crotch with a self-deprecating smile. Apparently, despite the conversation he was trying to have, he liked her a lot. “But you shoved me in the friendship box—”
“Shoved is an awfully harsh—”
“No, hear me out.” When she nodded, he continued. “You shoehorned me into this box, and I get it. Don’t like it, but I get it. I respect it.”
“Bry—”
He raised a brow at her and it shut her up. “Here’s the thing, Irish. Once I’m in that box, you can’t take me out whenever you want to play. So think long and hard about what it is you really want, because once I’m out, I’m not going back in.”
Was what he said true? Was she playing with him, toying with him? She wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
She tried to lighten the mood. “Is that a threat?”
He didn’t smile. “No, Irish, that’s a goddamn promise.”
Angel snorted and startled a few thundering steps. Eli’s head popped up and he stopped chewing mid-mastication, tufts of grass sticking out the corner of his mouth. He called out, his whinny ear piercing, shaking his entire body. Eli glanced at Sidney, then jigged a few steps and trumpeted, his tail raised.
From somewhere far off, a horse answered the call.
Her heart rate spiked. Adrenaline surged, heating her veins like steam through a boiler system. They’d been at the Lazy S long enough for Eli to get to know all the horses. “He doesn’t know who it is.”
Bryan hopped up as she grabbed for the reins they’d unclipped from the bridles. She didn’t think Eli would run off after them, but she wasn’t willing to take that chance. Before she could go after the horses Bryan hissed, “Get down!”
* * * *
Catching a glimpse of the incoming riders, Boomer clambered down the flat rock. Difficult enough with his prosthetic, damn near impossible to do quietly without it. No hoof beats yet. Eli put his head back down, tore a couple of hard, nervous mouthfuls before his head shot up again.
Boomer didn’t have a weapon. Not even his knife, for fuck’s sake. Idiot. What the hell were you thinking? No, that wasn’t right. He was thinking all right, but with his dick and not his brain. He hadn’t even brought his damn leg. And that chapped his ass worse than sweaty underwear under fatigues.
The coarse grass and scrub dug into the bottom of his foot like razor wire, making hopping hurt like hell. As soon as he hit the rocks, it wouldn’t exactly be stealthy. On his hands and knees, he shuffled over to one of the few trees that grew around the stock pond and dug around in the underbrush.
The first stick he found was too short and brittle. He searched again and his hands brushed against a branch a couple inches in diameter. It wasn’t quite long enough to use as a makeshift cane, but it would have to do.
Behind him, Sidney blew a short, soft whistle. He turned around, and as he did he heard the first thuds of hooves coming their way. Sidney had his shorts in her hand and made like she was going to throw them to him. There wasn’t enough time.
As he waved her off, Eli and Angel trotted by on an intercept course with the strangers, snorting with their tails high in the air. He knew the moment the horses had crested the rise around the pond, because there came a couple of shouts and a rapid-fire conversation in Spanish. Then, in English, a third voice called for quiet.
Boomer’s heart rate crept up to the high end of normal. At least three distinct voices. He had to assume they were armed. Even in the best of circumstances, he wouldn’t want them spotting Sidney in her underwear, and it wasn’t just to protect her modesty.
Outnumbered, with only the thick branch for defense and one good leg. As much as he preferred a good offense as a defense, it would be suicidal to think he’d could take them all if he had to.
Number one priority was her safety. Crouching, he turned toward her. She’d managed to get her shirt on, though it was still wet and clung to her body. She was attempting to shimmy into her jeans, but she was out of time.
She looked up, and he made a cutting motion across his throat. She stopped her struggle. He pointed to her, then pointed to the waterfall. She followed his motion, and her eyes owled. She shook her head.
But there was no other cover, no other choice. Just because he could no longer hear any hoof beats didn’t mean they weren’t coming. It meant they weren’t stupid enough to boldly trespass when there were two unknown riders nearby.
If it were him, he’d have dismounted and approached on foot. To Sidney, he mouthed the word “Now,” pointing emphatically.
When she edged toward the water, he wanted to kiss the ground and praise every God that anyone had ever praised before. When she was waist-deep in water, she looked back at him, then pointed at the waterfall.
He shook his head. She narrowed her eyes and her lips went flat. He was too far away to make it in time. He puffed his cheeks and pretended to hold his nose, then made swimming motions with his arms. She nodded and sank down, swimming underwater to the relative protection of the waterfall.
Staying low, he crab-walked as best he could with one leg and the branch to another large, flat rock to use as cover. With luck, the men would move on. But he heard the unmistakable swoosh, swoosh, swoosh as the men trudged through the stream to the head of the waterfall.
He pressed tight against the rock, peeking out from down low. Three men stood at the rock ledge over the falls.
Boomer caught a flash of movement. Sidney. The cascade of the water almost completely obscured her. She’d be safe, for now, if she didn’t die of hypothermia first.