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In the days that followed, that summer ten years ago, she saw Mason enough, though most often from a distance. He roped steers, he branded stock, he castrated calves, he shoed horses and he strung fence wire. The muscles of his back and shoulders, tanned from long hours laboring in the sun, moved fluidly as he worked, straining, then relaxing and drawing her eyes to the faded jeans that rode low on his hips. Dusty and torn, they offered a glimpse of a strip of whiter skin whenever he stretched, and that tantalizing slash of white, coupled with the curling golden hair on his chest, caused a warmth to invade the deepest, most private part of her, and she had to force her gaze away.
“You’re being silly,” she told herself on Tuesday evening when she was walking toward the stables and spied Mason leaning against a car—a yellow sedan—she didn’t recognize. The driver was a pert woman with short dark hair, an upturned nose and doe-like brown eyes that gazed upward through the open window to Mason’s face. The car idled, exhaust seeping from the tailpipe, the thrum of the engine competing with the sounds of warblers and sparrows singing in the trees and fields.
Mason, wearing sunglasses and an irritated expression, shook his head, and though Bliss’s ears strained to hear the conversation, she caught only snippets.
“…waited all night,” the woman said.
“No one asked you to.”
“…we had an understanding.”
“Did we? Wasn’t my idea.”
“Mason, please—” The woman cast a sidelong glance at Bliss, who increased her pace as she walked to the stables. The sun was hovering low in the western sky and the air was breathless and still.
Bored with listening to her tapes and reading old magazines, Bliss had decided to go for a ride. Her father had already pointed out the docile horses he wanted her to saddle, but Bliss had other ideas.
“Lousy son of a bitch!” The woman’s voice blasted through the hot air.
Bliss turned toward the car.
The driver gunned the engine. Gravel sprayed. Mason leaped away from the fender as the car took off at breakneck speed down the lane.
Swearing under his breath, Mason swung his fist in the air in frustration. “Damn fool—” He caught his tongue and threw his hat on the ground. Then, turning on a worn heel, he caught Bliss’s eye. Rather than be the target of his wrath, she ducked around the corner of the stables and snagged a lead rope coiled around a peg near one of the doors. The last person she wanted to catch in a bad mood was Mason Lafferty. No way. No how. The man was enough trouble when things were going right.
Squinting against a lowering sun, she eyed the horses grazing quietly in the shade of a stand of oak. She wasn’t interested in the docile palomino mare or lazy roan gelding her father had pointed out to her and smiled when she spied the animal who had unintentionally captured her heart—a feisty pinto three-year-old. His eyes were an
unusual pale blue—the only blue-eyed horse she’d ever seen—and he was a show-off in front of the mares, always hoisting his tail high, tossing his head and snorting as he galloped from one end of the field to the other.
“Okay, Lucifer, I think it’s time you and I got to know each other,” she said as he snorted and pawed the dry earth. “Come on,” she cooed, uncoiling the vinyl rope. “That’s a boy.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes suspiciously. He was wearing a leather halter. All she had to do was get close enough to snap the tether to the ring under his chin.
“It’s all right,” she assured him. She was only three feet away. One more step and—
He bolted. With a high-pitched squeal and a toss of his brown-and-white head, he galloped from one end of the pasture to the other, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake. His odd eyes sparkled in the sunlight, as if he knew he was taunting her.
“Don’t make me chase you,” she warned.
“Why not? He loves a good fight. Especially with a female.”
She stiffened at the sound of Mason’s voice. Glancing over her shoulder, she ignored the sudden jump in her pulse and shot him a glance guaranteed to be as cold as ice. “Seems like you should know,” she said.
“Can’t argue with that,” he admitted, though his jaw was hard as granite.
When he didn’t stroll off, she asked, “Was there something you wanted?”
He was leaning against the gate, his arms crossed, elbows resting on the worn top board, eyes still shaded by aviator glasses. His hat was resting on a post and his hair, sun-streaked and ragged, brushed his eyebrows and the tops of his ears. “Just watching you.”
She lied and told herself that the absolute last person on earth she wanted observing her was this sarcastic cowboy. “Don’t you have something more important to do? You know, like work? Isn’t there a cow to be branded, a horse to be shod or something?”
“Not just now. Besides, I wouldn’t want the boss’s daughter to get herself into some kind of trouble.”
She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t bother to respond. Nor did he move. Bliss gritted her back teeth together and inched her chin upward in pride. She’d die before she’d let him witness her humiliation from this headstrong piece of horseflesh.
“Want me to help?”
