Her Mistletoe Cowboy. Marie Ferrarella

he regarded animals to be smarter than a lot of people realized, he was aware that, like people, some animals were smarter than others. In his estimation, Wicked was exceedingly smart.

      “Be right back,” Garrett told her, going inside the house.

      “Okay,” Kim said cheerfully. The man was modest. Getting on his good side with flattery was going to be harder than she thought, but she was determined to do it. If she could get him to open up, she was confident that all the details she needed for this article would just come pouring out of him and the story would wind up writing itself.

      Twenty-four hours and she was going to be out of here, she promised herself.

      Thirty-six at the most.

      Life with two overachieving parents and two overachieving sisters had taught her to hedge her bets—up to a point. Although, from what she could see, there wasn’t anything to write about here that could possibly keep her for even as long as a whole day, could it? she wondered. The brothers had a ranch, they worked with so-called troubled kids and they had some horses around. End of story. The challenge would be to flesh all that out to even a minimum length of words.

      Kim frowned to herself. She doubted that anyone would want to read what she’d just outlined in her head. There had to be some kind of an angle she could use to at least make this article somewhat interesting instead of the snooze-fest it was shaping up to be.

      “Jackson’s not here,” Garrett told her as he came out of the house a couple of minutes after he’d gone in. “He’s probably at the corral, still working with the boys.”

      “Okay.” Turning around on her heel, she left the porch and headed toward her vehicle again.

      Instead of following her, Garrett remained where he was—on the porch—and watched her. When he saw her opening the door on the driver’s side, he asked, “What are you doing?”

      “I’m getting into the car.”

      “Why?”

      Maybe she’d misjudged the man’s mental acuity. He certainly hadn’t struck her as being slow, but what other explanation could there be for his not understanding what she was telling him?

      “So I can drive to the corral.” He wasn’t picking up his horse’s reins. Why? “You are going to lead the way on your horse, right?”

      Instead of taking Wicked’s reins, he came around to her side of the vehicle.

      “You don’t need the car,” he told her, shutting the door for her. “We’ll walk.”

      “Walk?” Kim echoed in surprise, as if she was unable to fully grasp the concept.

      “Walk,” he repeated gently, taking her hand in his and fully intending to coax her along if he had to. “It’s what people do when they put one foot in front of the other.” He grinned. “You’d be amazed at how much ground you can cover that way.”

      Kim was hardly listening to him. Instead, she looked around the immediate surrounding area. She didn’t see anything beside the ranch house.

      “Just how far away is the corral?” she asked.

      Amusement highlighted his eyes, but he managed to keep a straight face as he replied, “Close enough not to have to take a canteen with us.”

      The straight face didn’t fool her for a second. This time, she called him on it. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

      “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he told her innocently, then added, “I might, however, be teasing you a little.” In the next breath, he apologized. “Sorry, I don’t get to have much fun. Working with Jackson and a bunch of boys can get pretty serious at times and I don’t get into town much.”

      She sincerely doubted that. She might not know much about ranches and towns in the middle of nowhere, but she felt she was pretty good when it came to judging people, and Garrett White Eagle did not strike her as a man who was resigned to living some sort of a monastic life. He looked, instead, like a man who knew how to have a good time.

      He also struck her as someone who knew how to read people and work an angle.

      This ranch, it suddenly occurred to her now that she wasn’t distracted, cursing at defunct Wi-Fi signals and guidance systems that refused to guide, could be a perfect source of income. Parents were known to become desperate when it came to trying to save an offspring who was on the road to self-destruction. One that would bring them everlasting shame, not to mention huge lawyer fees and who knew what all else if those kids really got going. And then one day, they hear about this supposedly altruistic place that promises to heal their wayward liability, turn him into a pillar of society for what they were probably told would be a “reasonable” sum of money.

      Who wouldn’t be sucked into taking a chance on that? Especially when rehabs were notorious for their rate of turning out repeat violators.

      An article like that could almost write itself, she thought as she all but trotted next to Garrett, doing her best to keep up.

      But why bother when Garrett could practically write it for her? Or, at the very least, give her the lead she wanted to go with.

      “Just how much can you and your brother pad the bills for these boys without arousing the parents’ suspicions?” she asked, almost sounding breathless as the question came out of her mouth.

      Garrett stopped dead in his tracks just shy of the corral. Had he just heard what he thought he just heard? Because, if he had, the last thing he needed or wanted was for Jackson to get wind of this writer’s current mind-set.

      He needed to change her mind, fast—or, barring that, he needed to send her on her way.

      Also fast.