Cowboy Comes Home. Carrie Alexander

grabbed the fence rail to steady herself. She didn’t want Rio to know how badly she was thrown. “What brings you here?”

      He glanced away. “My mother’s still around.”

      She understood the underlying implication. “Around” meant living in as a housekeeper for William Walker Stone on his multimillion-dollar spread east of town. Any Treetopper asked would have said that Rio returning to the Stone ranch was about as likely as Meg coming back to her father’s place.

      Well, look at them now. There must be some fine skating in hell.

      “I heard that,” she said. He was glowering. Still holding a grudge? “But I meant here. Wild River.”

      “You wrote an ad. Help Wanted.”

      The classified ad for a stablehand had been running in the Treetop Weekly for the past month. She’d had two applicants, a kid who could only work after school, and the town drunk who had a history of holding odd jobs only long enough to fund his next bender. She’d taken the kid’s number.

      Rio rested his hands on his hips, face turned to follow Sloop, who was prancing at the far end of the pasture. Rio wore jeans and a chambray shirt beneath a new-looking leather jacket lined in fleece. The black hair she’d once braided down his back barely reached his collar. He’d filled out some during the past decade, but the weight was all broad shoulders and lean, hard muscle. He’d be twenty-nine now. One year older than herself. Only one, yet even when they were kids he’d been the wiser and nobler one. He’d already known that love could mean sacrifice.

      She still hadn’t looked into his eyes. Her gaze was fixed somewhere near his left shoulder.

      Rio’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Room and board, the ad said, plus a small salary.”

      “You’re applying for the job?”

      “You’re shocked.”

      “What—” She bit the inside of her lip. “My dad passed away. It’s just me here now.”

      “So I heard.”

      “Right. Even though I swore I’d never return.” With all the fervor of a hot-blooded teenager who had no idea of how rough life could really get.

      Rio’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you?”

      “I had nowhere else to go,” she said before she could stop herself. Rio didn’t have to know that she’d retreated here, a failure. If he realized how barren her life had become, he might get the idea that she was looking for more than help with the horses.

      He nodded perfunctorily. “I know what that’s like.”

      Meg could sympathize. While her dad had been a hard, emotionless man with no idea how to raise a daughter, Rio’s father had never even acknowledged him. Of course he’d understand what it felt like to be homeless. Her estrangement had been her own choice.

      She cleared her throat, hoping to keep the shakiness out of her voice. “You’ve been in the army all this time.”

      “Yeah. Until five weeks ago.”

      He’d been deployed to heavy action in Afghanistan several times, she’d heard around town. There were old acquaintances eager to fill her in. Stop-lossed the last time, they’d said, called back to action just when he’d thought he was out for good. His mother had been devastated.

      Meg’s eyes squeezed shut. My fault.

      She certainly owed him a job, at the least. Why he’d want work as a stable hand was a mystery she’d have to consider later. Right now, the prospect of having Rio live on the ranch with her was almost incomprehensible. Only in a small, hidden place deep inside had she ever considered seeing him again. Making it up to him.

      She wasn’t ready for any of that.

      “I don’t think it’s going to work out,” she said. The part-time kid would have to do.

      Rio didn’t question her. He moved along the fence. Sloop had stopped showing off and was watching them with his head hung low, his ribs bellowing. The bucket of grain she’d been using to lure him was parked nearby.

      “How many horses?” Rio asked.

      “Just three.” Her training and boarding business wasn’t off to a flying start. “But I’ve got two more coming to board for the winter—” maybe “—and I thought I’d pick up a few green prospects at the fall auction in Laramie. Work with them through the winter, sell for a profit in the spring.”

      Rio shed his jacket. “Make you a bet.”

      “What?” Once she’d have taken up any challenge, but she’d lived in Vegas the past six years. Wagering was a losing game.

      “If I can get that horse into the barn within ten minutes, you’ll hire me on a trial basis.” He didn’t wait for her assent, just climbed the fence and picked up the bucket and the halter. He coiled the rope neatly, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Much like the stubborn chestnut, except his whites barely showed.

      Rio had dark eyes, a deep midnight blue that was nearly black. Her reflection in them used to make her feel beautiful, though the girl she’d seen in the mirror had been anything but.

      Meg looked at her grimy hands. She wiped them on her equally grimy sweatshirt. “His name’s Sloop.”

      Rio didn’t play coy. He walked directly to the gelding, cutting a swath through the fawn-colored field. She heard him murmuring—a soft, velvety sound that brought back memories of teenage trysts in the tight, enclosed space of his pickup truck. Lying together in the cool grass by the river. Their bodies tangled and wet in the hot golden light of the haymow.

      She closed her eyes. They’d been sixteen and seventeen. Too young to know that they were playing with fire.

      “Sloop,” Rio said softly, making her look again. He might as well have said sweet, the way he used to when he kissed her.

      The horse’s ears were on a swivel, flicking back and forth. He’d thrown up his head. His flanks quivered as Rio approached. But he didn’t move.

      Rio held out the bucket. Sloop lunged for it. The halter went on so fast the feat seemed almost a sleight of hand.

      “That was no fair,” Meg called. “I wore him down for you.”

      Rio’s sandpaper chuckle drifted across the pasture. “You ought to know, Meggie Jo. All’s fair in love and war.”

      She flinched. She hadn’t been called Meggie Jo in a very long time. Only her mom and Rio had been allowed to use the nickname, though her father had often said Margaret Jolene Lennox in his most forbidding tone, when he’d been calling her to his study for another dressing down.

      Rio rubbed a hand along the horse’s neck, giving Sloop a moment with the grain before he took the bucket. Meg got her emotions in check and went to push the corral gate open wider, then the Dutch door to the box stall, even though both were already ajar.

      Rio, living on her ranch. That couldn’t possibly work.

      But why not? First she could make it clear that she wasn’t looking for any sort of romantic reunion, and then she could make amends. If that even mattered anymore, so many years after she’d made a wreck of both their lives.

      Rio led Sloop into the stall. The horse was docile now that he’d been caught, nickering hello to his stablemates, then nudging his nose at Meg to prod her into fetching his feed.

      She ran her hand along the gelding’s flank, moving slowly only because Rio stood on the horse’s other side and suddenly the stall seemed smaller than before.

      He looked at her over the chestnut’s withers. “Flashy horse. Registered?”

      “AQHA.” American Quarter Horse Association. “Bonny Bar’s Windrunner, which somehow got translated into the stable name Sloop. He