Chapter 5
STEVIE
Stevie was mortified.
So mortified she barely took in any of Clay’s instructions as he led Gertie around the ring at a slow plod.
She’d been wearing this damn ring so long, she forgot it was there most of the time.
But now Clay was looking at her differently and it plucked at the fibres of her brain like an out-of-tune guitar.
She didn’t usually care what people thought about the ring, or what they thought about her because of the ring – she knew what it meant to her personally and that was all that mattered.
And, with Yolly hogging the spotlight, people hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to her anyway.
Those that did were, like most people in life, not particularly observant, the inscription usually going unnoticed.
But not this guy.
Of course this rough-around-the-edges cowboy who had set her pulse racing from the get-go would have Sherlock Holmes levels of observance.
And she did care what he thought. Which was who knew what after she’d blushed like a teenager, couldn’t meet his eye and practically stammered out her request to move things along.
His rather disinterested yes, ma’am was still playing on repeat in her head.
It was at times like this she really missed Yolly. Missed their girl chats. Missed how her sister constantly encouraged her to be more adventurous, to come out of her shell, to live on the edge a little.
Yolly would have loved Clay.
Who was she kidding? Yolly would have taken one look at the cowboy, smacked her lips like he was a tasty snack and called dibs and Stevie wouldn’t have stood a chance. Neither would have Clay.
Men – across the spectrum – had never resisted her sister.
The hot burn of jealousy rose in her chest and crawled to her throat, and Stevie absently rubbed at it, hating herself for the feeling. The fact she was now jealous of her dead sister only made her humiliation from earlier worse.
She’d give anything to have Yolly back. Even this cowboy, who was making her so hot and twisty inside she could barely sit properly without getting all tingly where the seam of her crotch met the leather of the saddle.
She was still thinking about that when Clay stopped and Gertie followed suit.
Stevie jolted slightly at the sudden cessation of movement, tuning back in to said cowboy, who was looking at her with thinly veiled impatience.
She figured it was supposed to be intimidating but the intensity of his expression fanned across her nipples like the hot wind rippling through the pastures behind, and she thanked God she wasn’t wearing the T-shirt she’d wanted to wear and which her mother had vetoed.
Stevie swallowed. ‘What?’
‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.’
‘I have,’ she denied as she desperately sorted through her brain for his last words. ‘Sit straight, go with the rhythm…’ And something else… Oh yes. ‘Posture.’ Stevie nodded vigorously, relieved to have remembered. ‘Relax.’
There. She had been listening.
‘So why are you holding the reins so tight you’re about to snap them?’
Another denial on her lips, Stevie glanced at the white of her knuckles.
‘The tension on the reins pulls on the bit in Gertie’s mouth. The tension in your posture and through your thighs…’
He glanced at her thighs briefly before his attention returned to her face, his expression one of complete indifference. Great. Just great… No man had ever looked at Yolly’s thighs so disparagingly.
Stevie knew her body was lanky rather than shapely, but were they that objectionable?
‘…conveys your nervousness,’ he continued as if he hadn’t just sent her into a spiral of self-consciousness. ‘Which makes her nervous. Stop sitting in the saddle like you’re a store mannequin. You need to relax.’
Stevie wondered if anyone in the history of the world had ever relaxed when it was being demanded of them so stridently. By an overbearing cowboy.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised, swallowing down her feelings of inadequacy to concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing instead of mentally panicking over whatever he was thinking about her stupid ring. ‘I’m relaxing.’
She made a concerted effort to wiggle her shoulders and arms and stretch her neck from side to side.
The motion shifted her seat in the saddle, which was a dangerous thing given the tingles already happening between her legs.
Tingles that cranked up another notch as Clay’s gaze suddenly snagged on the sway of the fringe decorating her shirt pockets.
He was staring at them with all the intensity of a hypnotist’s watch, which wasn’t remotely relaxing. Muscles low in her belly cinched tight and she suddenly felt like she was breathing through a straw.
Okay… maybe he wasn’t as indifferent as he made out?
Stevie’s lungs screamed at her as she stopped her stretching, no longer able to perform the task due to lack of oxygen and her onset of dizziness.
Her sudden stillness appeared to be the impetus Clay needed to drag his eyes up, fixing her with a scowl as if it was her fault he’d been staring at her with his brooding amber eyes.
‘You ready now?’ he asked gruffly.
Confused by the whiplash of his moods and the strange static circling like dust motes around them, Stevie nodded. ‘One hundred per cent relaxed.’
It was a lie but she congratulated herself on it coming out relatively normally and not as some kind of chipmunk squeak as her lungs recovered from their deoxygenated state.
He nodded brusquely before turning away and clicking his tongue. ‘Walk on.’
Gertie lurched to a start again and Stevie, her body still abuzz, reached for the saddle horn to steady herself.
Relax. For god’s sake, just relax already.
Unsurprisingly, just telling herself to relax wasn’t a silver bullet so she did the only thing she could think would work. Distraction.
For both of them.
‘What baggage?’ she asked as her eyes fixed on the broad spread of his shoulders that were hitched high like he, too, was tense.
He didn’t answer for a beat. ‘Baggage? What do you mean?’
‘You said the horse yesterday—’
‘Electra.’ He threw the name over his shoulder as he walked, obviously not willing to make eye contact.
‘Electra,’ Stevie repeated. Now that was an aptly named horse. Her fear and fury had been electric, infusing the scene with a danger that had been both powerful and enthralling. ‘You said she had baggage. What happened to her?’
Man and horse plodded along a few more paces before Clay answered, still without glancing her way. ‘She was one of a herd of mustangs that a landowner a few hundred miles from here just over the border in Colorado had captured and was trying to break in for sale, but Electra was having none of it.’
From her vantage point, Stevie saw the curve of his mouth tilt up at the edges as if he admired the filly’s stubbornness.
‘This guy’s methods were… well, let’s just say old school. She was malnourished, had whip marks that were infected and didn’t trust anyone. The rancher was arranging for her to be taken away for pet food.’
Stevie shook her head, her soft heart crushed at the thought that anybody could treat another living thing with such callousness. ‘How’d she get to the RVR?’
‘A buddy of mine – Ivan, he’s the local farrier – came across her, offered to take her off the owner’s hands and brought her here.’ He grinned then, his lips lifting in full humour. ‘With difficulty. She almost broke bones as she tried to kick the float to pieces.’
‘Why here?’
‘Because he knows that I’m the best and I appreciate a horse with high spirits.’
His cockiness might have been irritating on anyone else less competent but on Clay Calhoun, it was just plain sexy. He was so obviously comfortable in his skin and so sure of this environment. ‘Why not just… let her go?’
‘Because she’d needed treatment for her wounds and nutritional support and some time to get over the psychological wounds that her last owner inflicted.
But it soon became obvious she wasn’t going to be a great candidate to be released into the wild because she’s too mistrustful and anti-social to join a band of wild mustangs.
And a lone mustang doesn’t survive out there during the lean times. ’
‘Oh.’ Stevie’s soft sigh barely disturbed the warm air hanging heavy around her like a curtain. ‘The poor thing.’ Tension oozed from every muscle cell as Stevie was swept up in Electra’s plight.
‘It’s okay, she has a place here now.’
Stevie lifted her head, peering out from under her brim, squinting against the bright yellow hues of the landscape as she scanned around her at the grass heads that seemed to stretch on forever before craggy peaks rose to meet them in the distance.
Plenty of room to roam here, plenty of food and people who cared.
It wasn’t full run of the open plains, wind in her mane, the company of other wild mustangs by her side, but it would be a good life.
‘What if she wants to leave?’
‘By the time she’s socialised enough to be with other horses, she won’t want to leave. This will be her home.’
Once again his confidence did strange things to her pulse. ‘And how do you do that?’
‘Patience. Baby steps. Gain their trust, become their friends.’
‘She didn’t look particularly friendly yesterday.’
‘Each horse is different and depends on their backstory. Some horses are easy, some are more difficult, but you’ve got to start by meeting them where they are and every new stage of their handling will be like starting over.
I’ve been working with Electra for three months to get her to yesterday and she knows me and trusts me.
I can saddle her up easily now but getting on her back was another first and I always knew it was going to be a wild ride. ’
‘And you’re used to that? To being jostled around like that?’ Stevie remembered the sway and snap of his body as he rode Electra in perfect counterbalance to her furious, panicked bucking and rearing. She remembered his concentration. His calm.