Abbie And The Cowboy. Cathie Linz

he murmured right back with a lift of one devilish eyebrow. “And how do you figure that?”

      “Are you looking for a job?” she asked.

      “Why? Are you aimin’ on hiring me for something?”

      “Maybe. I know you’re experienced…with horses, I mean,” Abigail added in a rush. She felt like an idiot. “I write better dialogue than this,” she muttered.

      “You do?” Dylan replied. “That mean you’re a writer?”

      “That’s right.” She lifted her chin, waiting for the inevitable question—What do you write?

      Instead, he cautiously said, “What kind of job are we talking about here?”

      “I don’t suppose you take dictation, do you?” she couldn’t resist inquiring with the slightest of smiles.

      “You’d suppose right.”

      “How about typing?”

      “Nope.”

      “Is that championship belt buckle you’re wearing really yours?”

      His dark eyes gleamed in the sunlight. “Want to check out the initials yourself?” he inquired wickedly, propping his two thumbs behind the wide silver buckle in a gesture that was downright inviting and very, very sexy.

      For a moment, Abigail wondered what he’d do if she called his bluff. Then she decided she’d better not find out. At least, not right now. “I’m looking for a temporary ranch foreman,” she said briskly. “During the past few years, my uncle wasn’t able to keep up with things, and the property and fences show it. There’s also livestock to be taken care of. I need someone willing to work hard. Hoss has put out the word, so none of the men around here will apply for the job. I should warn you that if Hoss scares you, then this isn’t the job for you.”

      “Hoss doesn’t scare me.” You do, Dylan almost added. The blond librarian might be old Pete’s niece, but she looked city bred and very high maintenance. Her jeans weren’t anything fancy, nor was her denim shirt, but she had a way of carrying herself that was downright feminine. Yet she’d been quietly confident when she’d checked her horse, moving with quick capability. The woman was a study in contrasts. And she smelled like lily of the valley. Damn.

      Her problems weren’t his, he reminded himself. If he had a lick of sense, he’d remount and head on out. But cowboy chivalry demanded otherwise, just as it had decreed that he rescue her when he’d seen her wildly racing off across the meadow. Dylan wasn’t the kind of man who went looking for trouble, but somehow trouble always seemed to find him anyway, despite the fact that he liked to keep moving.

      His roving life-style suited him just fine; he wasn’t looking to settle down. His older brother might have gotten married and his sister might have eloped, but Dylan wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture just yet. Not by a long shot.

      Still, Dylan never could resist a challenge, be it from a horse that they said couldn’t be ridden or a woman as bristly as a porcupine. There was something about both that made his Gypsy blood run hot.

      Wild Thing snorted and impatiently stamped her foot, as if publicly declaring her irritation with being ignored.

      “I think I will take you up on that offer for a lift,” Abigail decided. “Then we can talk some more about the foreman’s job when we get to the ranch house.”

      Once the horses were safely ensconced in the double horse trailer and Abigail had climbed aboard the front bench seat of his pickup, she had the distinct feeling that she’d just taken the first step in an entirely new direction for her life. Only problem was that she wasn’t sure this was the right direction.

      Dylan wouldn’t stay long; cowboys rarely did. But maybe he’d stay long enough for her to get someone more permanent for the job. Someone older and preferably married. Someone settled down.

      Not that the words settled and cowboy often went together. They never had in her experience. Her third and final relationship with a cowboy had ended two months ago with him heading for Arizona and her nursing a broken heart. She’d be the first to admit that it was rather ironic that a successful writer of Western romances like herself could write a best-seller of a happy ending, but couldn’t seem to find one for herself. At the moment, she was more concerned with finding out exactly who’d sabotaged her horse—putting both her and Wild Thing’s safety, if not their very lives, in jeopardy.

      “What the hell is that?” Dylan demanded, staring in disbelief at a strange-looking structure perched alongside the gravel lane heading to the ranch house. The compact building looked as if it had sprung from the earth and, unless his eyes deceived him, it even had grass on the roof. He knew Pete had been getting a little eccentric in his later years, but he wouldn’t have built something this bizarre.

      “That’s Ziggy’s place,” Abigail replied as Dylan pulled his pickup truck to a slow halt.

      “Who the hell is Ziggy?”

      “A friend of mine.”

      “And you let him build that monstrosity on your land?”

      “Ziggy is an artist.”

      As if to accentuate that point, the sudden and unmistakable roar of a power saw filled the air, causing a jay sitting on a nearby cottonwood branch to go skittering across the sky in raucous disapproval.

      The sound of horses’ hooves hitting the bottom of the horse trailer conveyed their nervous reaction to the unfamiliar loud noise.

      “Get him to turn that damn thing off!” Dylan ordered her in a growl. “He’s upsetting the horses.”

      “Wait a second, who’s the boss around here?” she demanded, but she was speaking to empty air since Dylan had hopped out of the pickup cab and gone around back. By the time she’d slid out of the truck, Dylan was already marching over to Ziggy’s place as if determined to shut him up himself.

      Even though the day was sunny and warm, Ziggy was wearing his customary Swiss army cap. His shaggy white hair stuck out at wild angles from beneath it. Baggy overalls, a plaid lumberjack shirt and work boots completed his outfit. The middle-aged outdoorsman and wood-carver was described as unique by his friends, crazy by his enemies and talented by those who bought the sculptures he carved out of whole tree trunks. He was up to his ankles in sawdust and standing to one side of the weird dwelling he’d built.

      Ziggy spoke English with an accent, but whenever he was upset he reverted to German and French curses mixed with a touch of Italian—a result of his Swiss heritage. When Dylan interrupted him, Ziggy glared and the international string of swear words filled the air instead of the sound of the power saw.

      “How can I work when I am always interrupted?” Ziggy demanded of Abigail, his tone much aggrieved.

       “Baaaaaaaah.”

      “Now see what you are doing? You are upsetting Heidi und Gretel,” Ziggy stated.

      “Who are they? Your kids?” Dylan asked.

      “In a matter of speaking,” Abigail replied on Ziggy’s behalf. “Goat kids,” she added, pointing to the grass roof, where a trio of goats was munching on the grass.

      To her surprise, the beginning of a rueful smile tugged at the corners of Dylan’s lips, making her realize what perfectly sculpted lips they were. As before, the brim from his hat shadowed much of his face from her view, but the sun shone full force on his mouth, accentuating the aesthetic curve of his upper lip and the sensual fullness of the lower one.

      “Nice friends you’ve got here,” Dylan drawled.

      “No kidding,” she replied with a grin of her own.

      He groaned. “You didn’t say anything about bad puns being part of this job.”

      “That bother you?” she inquired saucily.