Must Love Horses. Vicki Tharp

looked her up and down, not in a creeper sort of way, but as if he might have seen the real Sidney for the first time without all the prejudiced, parental bullshit.

      “Bryan Wilcox.” She rolled his name around on her tongue and liked the way it felt there. “So how did you get the name Boomer?”

      When he smiled, it was big and genuine and mischievous as hell. “’Cause I used to like to blow shit up.”

      Popping the door latch, he stepped out of the truck and she followed after him. She climbed on the bumper and reached into the back of the tail bed and palmed the flask, sliding it into the back pocket of her jeans.

      She reached the front of the office first, pulled the door open. She turned back. Bryan straggled behind. Not because his leg slowed him down. In fact, his limp was so slight, she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking.

      He was lost in his own little world, a dreaminess in his eyes. Eyes that were firmly planted on her ass.

      “You staring at the flask or my ass?”

      He stepped in close, blocking out the sun. Her pulse thumped up a notch. “If we’re being honest with one another, I’m gonna say both. That a problem?” He tipped his Stetson with a cocky grin and stepped inside.

      “The honesty or the staring at my ass?”

      “Either.”

      “No.” She had the pleasure of watching his eyes widen when he turned, liking that she’d surprised him. Liking that she’d unbalanced him. Liking that he liked looking at her ass.

      She couldn’t fault him for looking. She looked all the time. Appreciation for the human form shouldn’t be reserved for stuffy museums or the glossy pages of a coffee table book. Life was too short for that.

      Two hours later, from the observation road outside one of the corrals, she lowered the binoculars and gave Bryan the neck number of the last horse she’d picked out. Four horses total. All geldings. Two sorrels—one with white stockings, one without—a bay, and a buckskin—because she had a thing for buckskins.

      Though even the buckskin kept with the Lazy S’s requirements. Stout, to carry the winter hunters. Bold, so they would be steady on the trail. Quality confirmation, to withstand the rigors of packing supplies or riders through the mountains day in and day out. And a soft eye, meaning a horse that was calm and mellow.

      Bryan stuffed the pen into the chest pocket of his jacket. As they walked back to give their selections to the adoption coordinator, a stiff breeze blew off the plains and lifted the Stetson from his head.

      He fumbled with his hat as it hit the top of the six-foot-high corral, but he was a half step behind and the hat tumbled into the pen. He bent down to grab it, but it was out of reach on a fresh pile of manure.

      “Oh, shit,” she giggled. “That’s not good.”

      He harrumphed, but it lacked heat. “I’ll see if I can get one of the wranglers—”

      She lost the rest of his sentence because a wild burro trotted up to the hat, braying and hee-hawing, not caring at all that they stood a few feet away.

      Bryan made a loud, distracting noise, waving his arms in the way you do to try to scram hundreds of pounds of animal away from you. The burro didn’t scram. As he stepped to the fence he stepped on the brim of the hat, grinding it into the manure and dirt. He brayed at them again, his hot donkey breath wafting over them.

      He seriously needed one of Bryan’s mints.

      Bryan tried to shoo him again, but the animal stared at him with his big brown eyes. The burro blinked, long and slow, sniffed them from a foot away, then blew little blobs of donkey snot over them.

      “Nice,” Sidney deadpanned as she scrubbed her face with the tail of her shirt. “Really swell.”

      Then the donkey returned to the hat and lipped the crown a few times. When the wind tried to take it away, he stomped a slim hoof on the brim then bit a standing edge, raised the mangled hat in the air, and shook it, the hat whacking him on his long nose over and over again. A couple of the other donkeys looked over, but most pointedly ignored the shenanigans as if they refused to see the silly.

      She glanced over at Bryan, a hilarious combination of horror and acquiescence registering on his face. Where was a camera when she needed one?

      “Sonofabitch,” he grumbled.

      Then, with one last head toss, the burro’s teeth slipped and the hat flew up, up, up. Bryan leaped up onto the cross rails of the corral, leaned out into the pen, and snagged the hat in the air. The burro spun and Bryan struggled to stay balanced, his upper body tipped over the top rail into the pen. Sidney grabbed him by the belt and yanked him back over the fence.

      His momentum drove them into the ground. They landed in a heap of arms and legs and torsos. She elbowed him in the gut, trying to get up.

      “Ommph.” Bryan struggled to sit up.

      “My bad.”

      The donkey hit the fence. The metal clanked as the animal pawed at the lower rail and brayed its frustration. Bryan beat his hat on his leg, dislodging some of the dust and debris, reshaped the crown as best he could, and plopped it firmly back on his head.

      The burro stared down at them. It looked over its shoulder at its buddies, then looked back and gave them a self-satisfied blink.

      To the donkey, Bryan said, “You’re such an ass.”

      * * * *

      Boomer was one paddock over from the ass that stomped his hat. The damn hat was practically brand new. Now one corner of the brim dipped down, obscuring some of his peripheral vision.

      The wranglers would cut Sidney’s selections from the different paddocks and herd them into a single corral so they could run them down the chute and into the back of their stock trailer.

      While Sidney was inside finishing the adoption paperwork, his mood deteriorated. His stomach grumbled, but his sour mood was about more than hunger. All the standing and the waiting around was harder on his leg than running, riding, or even climbing up and down the construction ladders. The end of his stump ached and his sweaty skin itched inside the socket. He was ready to be back at the ranch, ready to pull his leg off, put his foot up, and, yes, have a freaking beer or two.

      Things could be worse, so he couldn’t complain too much. He could be back on the streets of Iraq, with a hundred pounds of gear, an M16 strapped to his chest, and a bull’s-eye painted on his back.

      Yeah, it could be a helluva lot worse.

      “Gate!” one of the wranglers yelled to him.

      He pulled the gate lever on the chute and the wrangler drove the horses up into the trailer, their hooves tapping out a nervous staccato on the floorboards. They whinnied, calling out to their herd mates left behind.

      He tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t ignore the fear in their high-pitched cries. It grated on his nerves, tightened his chest for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.

      Reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, his hand came up empty. No flask. He cursed and pounded his fist into the back of the trailer.

      “Problem?” Sidney asked.

      He turned and scowled, unsure if he was angry at her for taking his booze or angry at her for sneaking up behind him. For the second time today. Being back in the states had made him soft.

      “No.” He slid the trailer door closed and released the lever on the chute. “Everything is freaking dandy.” He didn’t raise his voice, but even to his ears it was colder than the breeze blowing off the plains.

      She looked up at him and blinked like the donkey had. “Fantastic, then there’s no reason for you to be an asshole.”

      Right. He closed his eyes and counted backwards from three. He didn’t have the patience