Must Love Horses. Vicki Tharp

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      Other Books by Vicki Tharp

      Lazy S Ranch series:

      Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

      Must Love Horses

      And coming in July 2018: Hot On The Trail

      Must Love Horses

      Lazy S Ranch

      Vicki Tharp

      LYRICAL PRESS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Lyrical Press books are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2018 by Vicki Tharp

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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      First Electronic Edition: February 2018

      eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0450-5

      eISBN-10: 1-5161-0450-1

      First Print Edition: February 2018

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0451-2

      ISBN-10: 1-5161-0451-X

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      To those who champion our wild horses, in big ways and small.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Trouble had a pretty face…and a rocking ass.

      After two tours in Iraq, Bryan “Boomer” Wilcox could sniff out trouble like a drug dog sniffs out crack. And the woman training the black and white colt reeked of it.

      Sidney worked from the center of the Lazy S’s fifty-foot round pen, the young horse cantering along the rail. Boomer stood next to Mackenzie Nash, his arms on the top rail. He tugged on the brown ponytail sticking out the back of her baseball cap.

      She grabbed his hand and latched onto the pressure point, stopping short of causing real pain, and dropped it. Dangerous mistake, forgetting her quickness.

      He shook the annoying sensation away. “If Patton had a way, way, way younger sister, it would be you.”

      “And you’re like a bad rash: prickly, irritating, and always popping up in the most inconvenient places.”

      “Who told me to check out the new trainer you might want to hire?”

      The colt made another pass, his nostrils flaring, sweat lathering his neck, his hooves kicking up dust. Blobs of dirt rained down, hitting his leg and plopping a clod into his ice water. He picked it out and flicked it away, wiping his fingers on his cargo shorts.

      “Look how she handles that horse.” Mac’s lips curved higher and higher like a hot air balloon on a cold day. “She’s little, but tough. And she’s accomplished more with this horse in fifteen minutes than I have in the past few weeks.”

      “Because she’s a horse trainer, you’re not.”

      “Look, he joined up with her, and that crazy-ass, crackhead horse is following her around like a lovesick puppy.”

      Boomer grunted. The hair on the back of his neck didn’t raise, the water he’d drunk didn’t slosh in his belly, and his stump didn’t tingle beneath the socket of his blade prosthetic, but something about the trainer was off. If Mac pulled her head out of the clouds, maybe she would see it too.

      He slipped his sunglasses down over his eyes, but it wasn’t the sun setting behind the Rockies that prevented him from seeing the truth.

      Sidney led the colt to the middle of the pen and started desensitizing him to the lunge whip. She stood in front and a little to the side of the horse, holding a lead rope attached to his halter. She smacked the ground with the tip of the whip, only stopping when the horse licked his lips, cocked his hip, or showed other signs he’d relaxed.

      Mac rubbed at her combat-injured shoulder. Was her shoulder bothering her, or did something not sit right with her either? “We should hire her.”

      “Don’t,” Boomer said. “She’s trouble.” And not the sweaty-sheets-and-sticky-sex kind of trouble.

      “Get real.” Mac’s voice climbed a rung on the octave ladder. “She’s exactly what our training program needs.”

      “Someone like her, yes. Her? No way.”

      Mac’s lips went flat, flapjack flat. The way they did when she thought someone was being difficult. Only he wasn’t being difficult, just wary.

      “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t hire her, that doesn’t include her cup size,” Mac said.

      “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I’m more of an ass man.”

      He waited a beat for the eye roll. She didn’t disappoint.

      “Come on,” Mac said. “Spit it out.”

      He stared at the ground. The heat edged up his neck, one hair to the next and the next. He glanced up. “She hesitated before saying her last name.” Yeah, sounded just as stupid outside his head as it had inside his head.

      Mac laughed, the pitch a little off, as if he’d stripped his gears and spun off into crazy land. Then she took the glass from his hand and sniffed. No hooch in his drink. Not this time. But the fact that she’d checked made his chest tighten.

      She didn’t trust him.

      Not completely.

      Not like before.

      He snatched the glass back. “I’m just keeping an eye on your six, sis.”

      “I’m not your sister and this isn’t Fallujah. No mortar rounds. No sniper fire. What do you have to protect me from, Marine?”

      “One epically bad decision,” he said, about twenty decibels louder than intended.

      Sidney glanced their way, turned the horse loose in the pen, and walked over to them. The horse stuck his neck through the metal rails on the opposite side and nibbled the tips of the long, leggy grass.

      “You have a problem with the way I worked the horse?” Sidney’s words carried a quiet heat, as if all she needed was a drop of fuel to go from a low simmer to a full-on boil.

      “No. No problem,” Mac said, “We were very—”

      “What did you say your last name was?”

      Mac