The Wrangler's Bride. Justine Davis

      “Don’t be. It was flattering, even when it was embarrassing.”

      “I never meant to embarrass you. I promise,” she added solemnly, “it’ll never happen again.”

      One corner of his mouth twitched. “Too bad. Now I might appreciate it more.”

      He turned on his heel and walked on before she could respond to that. So Grant McClure still had a wicked sense of humor, she thought. Because he had been joking. He had to have been.

      She trotted a few steps to catch up with him. He didn’t slow to accommodate her shorter strides, but she was used to that, and just walked faster to keep up. It helped keep her in shape, she reasoned, which was a good thing, no matter how annoying it might be.

      “So Chipper just started working here?”

      “Year-round, yes. He worked summers before, and used to come out on weekends, with his mother.”

      His mother? Mercy thought. “Oh?” was all she said.

      “Rita does some cooking for us.”

      Rita. An image of a dark, flashing-eyed brunette passed thorough her mind, and she couldn’t stop herself doing the math. Chipper was eighteen; if his mother had married young, she could be as young as thirty-six now. Only six years older than Grant. Hardly a prohibitive difference.

      She hoped Chipper’s father was big and burly and cranky, then chastised herself for the thought. What did it matter to her, anyway?

      “She only cooks on weekends?” she said brightly.

      “Yes, but she cooks up a storm. Enough for the whole week, and we freeze it. And she taught a couple of us enough to get through the winter when we run out of her stuff.”

      “Sounds like a good plan to me,” she said.

      “The cooking in advance, or teaching us to cook?”

      “Both,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not much of a cook myself, as Kristina can tell you.”

      “She already did. Right after she informed me of how politically incorrect it would be of me to assume that because you’re female, you would cook.”

      “Well,” Mercy said in exaggerated relief, “I’m glad that’s out of the way.”

      “I’m sure her warning saved me from a horrible fate.”

      “Assuredly,” Mercy agreed in mock seriousness. “But I do a fine job washing dishes. Perhaps that talent might be of some use?”

      “Take it up with the guys. They usually draw straws.”

      “They? Not you?”

      He grinned. “There are some perks to being the boss.”

      She was still smiling back at him, and marveling at this unexpected lightheartedness that seemed to have overtaken her, when a trumpeting neigh snapped her head around. She turned to stare at the animal who stood in the large corral beside the biggest of the two barns she could see.

      The phrase that popped into her head was flash and fire, because this animal certainly seemed to have both. He was spectacularly marked. His head, neck and forequarters—she thought that was the right term on a horse—were a glistening black. From the shoulders, or whatever they were—she knew that wasn’t right—back over his rump and halfway down his legs, he was a pristine white with scattered dark oval spots that ranged from speckles to almost four inches across.

      Something tugged at the edges of her memory. When she was so infatuated with the teenage Grant McClure, and with all the industriousness of a young girl in the throes of her first crush, she’d determined to learn all about the things Grant was so enamored of and she knew nothing about. So she’d read, endlessly, it had seemed, about horses. And although she’d never gotten close to a real one before, beyond driving past some in a pasture somewhere, a lot of that had stuck in her mind. Not the word for shoulders, but a picture of a horse marked like this one, although brown and white, instead of black.

      “An…Appaloosa?” she asked, trying the word out tentatively as she walked toward the fence.

      “Yes,” Grant said, sounding surprised. “He’s an Appy.”

      “I saw a picture of one once,” she said, keeping it vague; never would she have admitted the lengths the child she’d been had gone to to learn about what he cared about. “Only it was brown and white.”

      “They come in all colors. And some are all white, with the spots. Leopard Appies, they call them. I’ve got a leopard mare who’s in foal to him,” he said, nodding toward the big horse.

      She came to a halt, staring at the animal who towered over her. But she wasn’t afraid of him, especially when he cocked his head to look at her with every evidence of interest.

      “He’s…beautiful.” The horse snorted as if he’d understood, tilting his big head as if preening. Mercy laughed.

      “He’s a direct descendent of Chief of Four Mile, a premier Appaloosa stud in Texas thirty, forty years ago. But don’t let the fancy lineage fool you. He’s a clown,” Grant said dryly.

      “I can see that,” she agreed. “And that spot over his eye makes him look like one.”

      It was true, she thought, that odd-looking white patch over one eye gave the horse a slightly off-center look that was comical despite his size and obvious power.

      “Careful,” Grant said as she leaned on the top rail of the fence. “He may look and act like a clown, but he’s a stallion, and they can be unpredictable.”

      She backed up a half step. “You mean like biting and kicking? He does that?”

      “Well…no. At least he hasn’t yet.”

      “Oh. So you haven’t had him very long?”

      “A little over a year and a half.”

      She blinked. “He hasn’t kicked or bitten anyone in all that time, but you’re still worried?”

      Grant looked a little sheepish. “I’m not worried, I’m…baffled. I’ve never known a stallion who didn’t have at least one bad habit.”

      “And he doesn’t?”

      “Not unless you count knocking my hat off every time I get close enough,” he said wryly.

      Mercy chuckled, and the sound was quickly echoed by a soft whicker from the big horse. It was as if he’d had enough of being ignored. She glanced at Grant, who lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.

      “You’ll be okay. He really does have excellent manners. Just don’t make sudden moves that might startle him. Or touch him before he invites it.”

      He didn’t explain, so Mercy assumed it would be clear to her if and when that happened. She took back the half step she’d surrendered at Grant’s warning. The horse stretched his nose over the fence toward her, nostrils flaring as he sniffed. She let him. His breath stirred her hair, and then, amazingly, she felt the soft touch of his velvety muzzle as he snuffled her ponytail.

      The horse whickered again. He nudged the side of her head with his nose, then drew back, as if expectant. He repeated the action after a moment when she didn’t move, and Mercy felt like a not-too-intelligent creature the big Appy was trying to train. Was this the invitation Grant had meant?

      She glanced at him; he was watching intently, but his expression was unreadable, and he gave her no clue. Was he testing her somehow, for some reason of his own? And if she failed, would she be banished to the house for the duration of her stay?

      You, she told herself, are paranoid.

      And with a smile she reached up very slowly, very carefully, and patted the sleek black neck. The whicker came again, only this time Mercy would have sworn it held a note of pleasure—whether at her touch or at the