The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

on his tongue, grumbling and yelling when they hit him in the eyes instead.

      Ben was the horse Ty had ridden the day before. He was a good horse, young, part mustang, a red roan, with about the softest eyes Ty had ever seen on a horse.

      “He’s a two-year-old, which is basically a baby in horse years.”

      “He seems very large for a baby,” Amy said cautiously. “His size alone makes me nervous.”

      “He’ll be nervous if you’re nervous. That’s the secret about horses. They are looking to you for leadership. He wants you to lead him. We should go ahead and get in there with him.”

      “I don’t know. He’s so big. He could kill us.”

      “It’s funny you should say that, because that’s exactly what he’s afraid of, too. Death by predator.”

      He was holding the baby, so when he went through the rails, she followed. Whether she would have if he didn’t have the baby, Ty wasn’t sure.

      “The road’s closed,” she reminded him in a terrified whisper. “What if something happens?”

      “Something is going to happen,” he promised. “Pure magic. Stick close to me, walk as if you’re a king.”

      “I’m the wrong sex to be a king,” she muttered.

      He was committed to wholesome. He didn’t even want her using that word right now. “He doesn’t know that, and a princess won’t do.”

      “You better know what you’re doing.”

      “Oh, I do.” He took them to the center of the paddock. He ignored Ben, who had watched them enter the corral with a certain shy caution. Then the horse circled them on feet muffled by snow, and was now tiptoeing along behind them.

      Ty turned. Amy, stuck to him like glue, turned with him.

      “Ah! I didn’t know he was right behind us!” She went to take a step back as the horse pulled up short, but Ty had anticipated it and placed a hand in the middle of her back.

      “Don’t step back from him,” he instructed softly. “Hold your ground. He is reading every single thing about you. He can probably tell your heart is beating too fast. So don’t step back. Because if you do, he’ll take that as a weakness, that you are less than him, and so he will move forward, claim your space, try to dominate you.”

      She froze and stared at Ty. He saw the light of understanding go on in the amazing depths of her hazel eyes.

      “Oh, my,” she whispered, “if that doesn’t sound like the story of my life!”

      “That’s the thing about watching someone with a horse,” he told her quietly. “You can tell every single thing about them. How you interact with a horse is exactly how you interact with life.”

      “Oh, dear.”

      “Whether you know it or not,” Ty finished, “you are telling people how to treat you all the time. Come. Come closer.”

      He went and stood right at the horse’s neck. The baby did not have her hesitancy. He reached eagerly for the horse, buried pudgy fingers in the silken strands of Ben’s mane. He cooed his love and approval.

      Ty leaned close and blew a gentle breath in the colt’s wide nostril. It blew back and he breathed in the scent.

      “Try that.”

      Amy hesitated, studied not the horse, but him, and decided to give him a most fragile gift. She trusted him.

      She leaned forward and blew.

      And then Ben blew back.

      “Breathe it in,” Ty said. “Breathe it in. That breath is what you have in common, the thread that connects you both to life. Breathe him in. Can you feel what he is? His essence?”

      “His breath is so sweet,” she said, awed.

      She turned and looked at Ty. Her eyes were shining with that moment of discovery. He knew he had her.

      “Okay, now we’re going to make the decision it’s time for him to leave, so push his shoulder now, and raise your right hand.”

      The horse moved away from them and out to the perimeter of the corral.

      “Keep your eye on his hip, keep your hand up, step toward him.”

      Fluidly, the horse broke into a relaxed canter and circled them, throwing up great puffs of snow.

      “I didn’t make him do that!” Amy said, awed.

      “Prove to yourself that you did. Back up, lower your right hand and raise your left, and then move one step toward him again.”

      “I don’t have a left!” she reminded him, and wagged her empty sleeve at Ty.

      He moved behind her, laughing, and physically lowered her right hand. There was the sweet temptation of her neck again.

      “Back up,” he instructed.

      The horse planted his feet as she backed up, and then Ty picked up the empty sleeve and waved it. Ben swiveled in one graceful move at the switch of hands. He cantered the other way.

      “He’s so beautiful,” Amy said. “I feel as if I’m in a movie.”

      The horse was beautiful, but his beauty was eclipsed by hers. Her curls were sticking out from under that silly hat, her cheeks were flushed from cold and exhilaration, her eyes were shining. A smile, so genuine it would have outshone the sun, if there had been any sun, played across her lips.

      Seeing her with the horse told Ty exactly who she was.

      And he knew how right he had been to take the high road with her, to fight the temptation of placing a kiss on the soft curve of her lips or her exposed neck.

      Because she was beautiful and soft and gentle to her very core.

      In other words, exactly the kind of woman that a rough-and-tumble guy who had known way too many hard knocks could do a lot of damage to.

      Still, enchanted with her reaction to all of this, Ty talked her through the sequence a few more times. Her face was absolutely glowing as she began to understand the horse was responding to her slightest move.

      “Everyone and everything is responding to us all the time, at some level. Sometimes it’s so subtle we don’t know what we’ve told them.”

      For instance, her kiss had told him she was hungry. But her eyes were saying she wasn’t ready.

      “Okay, lower your hand—” he let her empty sleeve fall “—and move your eyes to his shoulder.”

      The horse skidded to a halt. He turned in, his eyes riveted on her. “Step back.”

      She did, and the horse came into her, dropped his head in front of her in submission that was not surrender.

      “Scratch his ears. And his forehead. Say something to him.”

      “Ben, I think I’m in love with you.”

      Her voice was husky and sweet, and it seemed to him a man could die to hear such words coming from her.

      But his next instructions, intended for the horse, were instructions he needed to heed himself.

      “Now turn and walk away.”

      Not that he could. Not while they were snowed in here together, but there were many ways to walk away.

      And he should know because he’d done most of them at one time or another.

      “I don’t want to walk away,” she said, stroking Ben’s nose with soft reverence. “I want to stay like this forever.”

      Yup, she was the kind of girl who could turn a man’s thoughts to forever.

      “Sometimes