"You ever been up close and personal with one of these before?"

He thought himself a gentleman for asking, but when Dylan raised her head from behind the bowed back of the mare she was brushing, he could see that he was mistaken. Her eyebrow arched like it was spring-loaded, and she asked him with her eyes if he seriously required a response.

"Yes, Charlie, I have seen a horse before. Up close, even," she answered finally. "I've even ridden one. Back when I was a kid."

"The plastic horse outside the Galleria doesn't count." It had been his idea to invite Dylan out to Wildhorse Ranch on her next day off.

Now, he secured the saddle for her and watched as Dylan hauled herself up onto the red roan Trevor had suggested for her. Charlie patted Copper’s neck and followed suit. Copper was old and reliable, and while Charlie might have preferred to try out one of the newer, faster horses just to see if he still had it in him to ride one after all these years, maybe it was a better idea to start slow. Dylan's caution was rubbing off on him. He didn't hate it as much as he had thought he would.

Charlie settled himself into the saddle, and steered Copper with a casually lifted wrist and a click of his tongue. The horse started obediently forward, and Dylan, after a moment spent observing, followed suit. She hadn't been lying: Charlie could tell by the erect way she carried herself that she had sat astride a horse before. English-style lessons, maybe, although that was something for Trevor to divine later during a more official lesson.

"Smitty said something funny to me," Dylan mentioned as she trotted up beside him.

"Really? Like genuinely funny?" Charlie feigned his surprise, and Dylan laughed.

"No…I mean, he doesn't seem like a guy given to a lot of joking. He takes his job almost more seriously than I do." She shook her head. "He said you didn't just come home to Lockhart to rehab your knee. He said you're here to rehab your image. I wonder what image that could be?"

Charlie grunted. "Well, don't wonder too hard. At the very least, don't strain yourself pretending like you don't know exactly what he was talking about."

Dylan laughed again, bright and confident. Not a lot of women laughed like that, Charlie reflected as he cast his eyes toward her. It came out of nowhere sometimes like a shot. Even better when he was the one responsible for it.

"I thought it was interesting, that's all. Lockhart Bend seems to hold this mysterious, magic property for some people—myself included. People really do come here to heal in a lot of different ways. To better themselves."

"That why you came here?" Charlie asked her. He turned his horse into hers slightly until the animals strolled side by side, and his knee bumped up against hers.

"I came here to get away from the city," Dylan admitted. "I fell in love with Lockhart Bend the first time I drove through here, late at night. It's so…quieting. I really feel like I can get so much more done here, without all the bullshit.”

"I feel the same." Charlie wasn't embarrassed to say it. Not with Dylan.

She chuckled. "You're not going to believe it, but once I wanted to be a cheerleader."

"That why you were staring at all the ladies in the skybox that first night we met?"

Dylan leaned over her saddle to punch him in the shoulder. "You know why I was watching them so intently. Thanks a lot for inviting me along and then forgetting all about me, by the way. I don't think I ever made you feel sorry for that."

"You made me sorry every hour of every therapy session after," he reminded her. "I couldn't figure out what the hell you had against me. Now I know you were just jealous."

Dylan made a noise in her throat, half-enraged and half-dismissive. He saw the fire enter her eyes before it ignited her to action; all at once, she flicked her reins and pressed forward in her saddle. The red roan mare took off, leaving Charlie and Copper to choke on their dust.

"Dylan!" he called after her. "You really sure you want to do that?"

"No!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Holy shit, Charlie! How do you stop this thing?"

"Told you. Plastic horse outside the Galleria," Charlie muttered to Copper as he urged his own horse on after her. Thankfully, the mare Dylan had sped away on knew an amateur rider when she felt one. The moment Dylan gave up the reins to hang off the saddle horn, the roan slowed to a trot and bounced back around to the driveway, where she stopped to crop the green grassy patch by Dylan's car. Charlie swung down easily out of his own saddle before Copper had fully halted; a slight twinge in his knee told him the old, familiar maneuver was a mistake, but that didn't stop him from going directly to Dylan and pulling her down out of the saddle.

"Whoa!" She stumbled into him, laughing and raising a hand to her wind-tousled hair.

"Little late for that," Charlie mused as he helped plant her upright after her wild ride. "But next time, try saying that when you're astride the horse."

"I'll keep that in mind." She flattened her raven hair as best she could. She looked up at him, eyes shining. Her cheeks were tinged rosy-pink from her brief time in the sun, and there were small freckles scattered around her nose that he had never noticed before. "Hey." She touched a hand to his arm and ran it up his arm. God, she could make him purr if she wanted to. "Can I choose the location of our next session?" she asked him.

"This wasn't a session, Doc," he told her. "This was supposed to be a date."

"I know." Dylan huffed in mild exasperation. "When I say session, I really do mean therapy session. I'd like to mix it up a bit. I promise what I have in mind will easily fit into your schedule with the Teamsters, now that you’re working out with the team again."

He found himself disliking this sudden turn back to work in their conversation. He knew his knee occupied the forefront of Dylan's brain most days—hell, it occupied the forefront of his brain, considering it was his career on the line—but something about the shift back to basics between them didn't feel right.

Dylan was more to him than just a hookup or a means to a Super Bowl ring. He thought he had made that abundantly clear on their outing today, but maybe she required a firmer signal.

He roped her around the waist and pulled her in against him. Dylan came unresisting, a warmer look of affection threatening to overtake her more clinical expression. Overtake away, Charlie thought, as he caught her chin and lowered himself to her for a kiss.

The touch of those slick, full lips should have been familiar to him by now. After all they had been through together, even a kiss from his beautiful doctor could still take his breath away like it was the first time. Dylan pressed her hands into his chest, but it wasn't to ward him off; it was a signal of surrender, even encouragement. When his tongue threaded along the seam of her lips, she opened to him with a sigh, and her arms slid up around his neck.

"Why do you think I wanted to plan something different for us?" she asked him when he could finally bring himself to pull away. "Just trust me, will you? What I have in mind won't just improve our working relationship." She trailed a finger down his chest, and he tensed his muscles out of habit. A beautiful woman's touch always brought out the instinct to flex in him

"If you say so," Charlie rumbled. He couldn't imagine how multiple sets of leg lifts and squats might come together to form a romantic interlude, but if anyone could find a way, it was Dylan.

"I do." She raised herself up on her toes to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. "You're going to like it, I promise."

Charlie groaned. He could think of a million and one things to do with her that he would also like, but Dylan chose that exact moment to shake out her shirtsleeve and check her watch.

"Oh, crap. I told accounting I would e-mail them about how to split the money from the fundraiser. We made more than enough to cover your splurge. I've got to head out." She slipped out from beneath him before he could wrap his arms around her and throw her over his shoulder, Neanderthal-style, and carry her into the farmhouse. If there was one thing Charlie regretted about their first evening—their first kiss—together, it was letting it all unfold on the couch, when Trevor had a perfectly good guest bed that could do with a bit of breaking in…

"Aren't you supposed to be having a day off?" Charlie called after her, but he couldn't suppress his smile at watching her go. Whatever she had in store for him later this week, he had his own ideas about how to spice things up to his liking—to both their likings.

He just hoped Dylan was ready for the workout he had in store for her.