Must Love Horses. Vicki Tharp

      She looked from him to Mac and back to him. Her shoulders twitched as if she was fighting off a cringe.

      “Why does that name sound familiar?” Boomer asked.

      Sidney drew her body up and sucked in a deep breath. Boomer tried not to notice how her T-shirt tightened across her chest.

      Tried real hard.

      He wasn’t a complete cad.

      Now wasn’t the time to notice her breasts or her pixie face or even her short, red hair—a style that should have looked masculine, but didn’t. She looked like an Irish fairy, especially when those green eyes flashed with a redhead’s fire. Maybe she had Mac under a spell. Would explain why Mac refused to listen to him.

      Sidney’s lips moved, but her words didn’t register as he contemplated how she’d feel beneath—

      Mac elbowed him in the gut.

      “Ow!” He rubbed a hand over his belly and tuned back in.

      “Clive and Marta Teller are my parents.” Sidney’s words came out like a dare. Like she dared him to pass judgment on them. On her.

      “That couple in the news a few years back? The ones who beat and abused their horses, went to prison?”

      At her slight nod, he huffed out a harsh laugh. Vindicated.

      That was one hell of a stink-ass albatross dangling around her neck.

      * * * *

      Shock. Disgust. Revulsion. Boomer’s face flicked through the expressions and settled on contempt. Not a good look for him.

      Those reactions Sidney had expected. What she hadn’t expected was his lack of surprise. Like he’d known something was off about her. Like her parents’ savagery had rubbed off on her, tainted her and made her unworthy. Her heart thumped in her chest, like a kick from a pissy mare—powerful, painful, destructive.

      Because of her damn parents, her career was doomed almost before it got started. Horse training was her life. Long, hard days and short, sleepless nights. Aching muscles and saddle sores. Soft muzzles and hard hooves. She craved it all.

      Boomer gave her a calculated look, as if he was ten moves ahead and reaching across the table to knock Sidney’s queen off the chessboard.

      “Mind explaining what I’m missing here?” Mac asked Sidney.

      Sidney had to look up to meet her in the eye.

      “Spell it out for me,” Mac said. “Big, bold, blocky letters, so I don’t have to read the fine print.”

      Mac’s expression remained blank of emotion. No frustration. No anger. No apparent ego for a boss lady. Had Sidney found someone who would give her the break she needed? There was a tingling in her chest, pins and needles and hope.

      Sidney’s parents’ crimes were all public record anyway. Here goes nothing. The pins and needles pricked and poked, ripped and rent. “My parents were respected horse trainers until they were arrested on multiple counts of animal cruelty—starvation, beating, neglect. They made Michael Vick look like the poster boy for the Humane Society.

      “I wasn’t involved,” Sidney added maybe a tad too quick, “but the truth is, if I hadn’t made excuses, if I hadn’t stayed away, if—”

      “If, if, if,” Mac said. “Ifs are nothing more than half-fleshed skeletons in your closet stinking up your life. Sometimes the best thing to do is bury them.”

      “But if I’d gone home, I would have noticed. Would have done something about it. Before the horses suffered.” Before my family’s reputation suffered.

      The man beside her—Boomer, was it? What the hell kind of name was that?—stood with his arms over his broad chest, his eyes unreadable behind his reflective lenses. His dark hair was close cropped, his full lips now pressed thin, his expression stuck somewhere between a scowl and resignation.

      Probably best she couldn’t see his eyes; she didn’t think she’d like what she would see there. Contempt? Derision? Pity?

      Yowza. Better she didn’t know.

      “I’ll work for a trial period. No charge. Let me show you what I can do, let me prove to you what I am, what I’m capable of.” Her words bumped together as if she’d never learned punctuation. Her stomach tipped and dipped and dived. Her heart thumped a slow, hard, bruising beat against her chest, waiting for Mac to speak. Waiting to hear her fate.

      “No,” Mac said.

      No? Sidney’s gut twisted like it had been hog-tied with a lariat. She opened her mouth to argue. To beg, maybe. No. Not beg. She would fight, would work hard, would graze her horse in hand on the side of the highway if she had to, but she had too much pride to beg.

      “No,” Mac repeated. “If you’re going to work here, you’re going to get paid. Starting wages, plus room and board for you and your horse. A month trial. A raise after that if you work out. You’ll report to Bryan, nickname’s Boomer.”

      The lariat was now a noose. She pasted on a strangled smile.

      “Mac,” Boomer said, a warning and a reproach.

      Mac turned to him. “My decision.”

      Boomer shifted his weight back, then pulled his sunglasses down his nose and eyed Mac over the top with a look that clearly said I don’t want any part of this. She held Boomer’s gaze and Sidney could tell they were having a whole lotta conversation without saying a word.

      Finally, Mac said to Boomer, “So, we good?”

      “Dandy,” he said, the word slathered in sarcasm. He nodded, but the throbbing vessel at his temple said he was probably a few beers away from dandy.

      Sidney tried to act cool, like of course she’d gotten the job, but the goofy grin cramping her cheeks blew the cool away. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

      Boomer grunted. Gruff. Disgruntled. But he could piss and moan all he wanted. She was there to train horses, not to make him happy.

      “Where do I put my things?”

      “We’re limited on space until Boomer finishes building the new cabins. You can bunk with him, or you can stay in the barn. The caretaker room is practically a closet, and the bathroom is down the barn aisle, but you’re welcome to it if you prefer a place to yourself.”

      “The barn works.” If she wasn’t mistaken, Boomer’s lips twitched a fraction with an infinitesimal smile she read as relief.

      “I’ll help you get settled.” He sounded like the perfect gentleman, but his face was concrete on a hot Texas day—hard, gritty, impenetrable.

      She could have unloaded by herself, but after the fourteen-hundred-or-so-mile haul from Texas, she was too tired and road weary to argue.

      The sun had slipped halfway down the distant ridge line of the Rockies, and a cool breeze kicked up. Her buckskin fox trotter pawed impatiently at the fender of her two-horse bumper pull trailer, making an irritating clang-scrape, clang-scrape as he hit his hoof on the fender and dragged it across the rusty paint because his hay net was now empty.

      “Where do you want me to drop my trailer?”

      He pointed to the left side of a new looking barn, where other trailers and tractors were parked. She headed for her truck while he peeled off and headed for her horse. Her truck was one of those small Ford Ranger pickups with only a front bench seat. At one time the paint had been green, before the hot Texas sun had faded and stripped the color away like a brunette gone to gray. Once the gas tank hit empty and Eli’s last two bales of hay were eaten, the insurance company could declare it totaled.

      Sidney watched Boomer in her side mirror until he had Eli safely away from the trailer, then turned the key in the ignition. The engine spun. She pumped the gas, but the engine refused to catch.