Chapter Twenty-one #2
She was going to lose her mind with this man. He could rev her up and then set her on idle, all the while knowing exactly what it was doing to her. She growled at him and took the blanket from him wordlessly, mock glaring at him for good measure.
“Enough of that for now, Mr. West. You need to learn how to tack up.”
He held his hands up in placation and dutifully listened as she showed him how to set the saddle blanket and place the saddle, how to do up the cinch.
He’d said he was familiar with English tack, so she showed him the differences, then stood back and let him do it himself.
Sandy, as always, was the perfect teacher, sound asleep even when Jake pulled the cinch tight.
Once he’d done that, he moved around to Sandy’s front legs, and picked each one up, pulling it out.
Sandy woke up at that and obliged the odd behavior, wiggling her upper lip through Jake’s hair as Jake bent over to pick up the leg.
“Get in line, sweetie, I’ve already got a girl,” Jake murmured to the horse, then laughed and scratched the old mare’s jaw, which promptly put her back to sleep.
Liz stopped, registering that Jake had just called her his girl. Oh. It probably meant nothing. She refused to put more meaning behind a simple silly statement to a horse.
But it flipped her stomach.
“What the hell is he doing?” Tanner asked. He was standing in front of Chip’s stall. The horse’s head hung out the open stall door, ears forward toward him, but Tanner’s head was turned, and he was eyeballing Jake like he was a madman.
“Ask him yourself.” Liz stood back. No way she was getting between them.
“I’m pulling the skin tight under the girth, er, cinch. Smooths the hair out, prevents girth sores, from what I remember. I dated a show jumper, she did this with all her horses,” Jake replied directly.
Liz’s eyebrows shot up. ”Well, okay, then,” she said. “We don’t do that, but all the same, fill your boots, cowboy.”
“We gonna offer them a mint and tuck them into bed with lullabies after?” Tanner muttered under his breath, and went back to buckling Chip’s bridle. Jake didn’t reply.
“Don’t push his buttons today, you big friggin’ idiot,” Liz hissed at him.
Jake held the reins in his hands and fiddled with them as one side of his mouth lifted. “I’m not. If anything, I want to figure this shit out so we can maybe start over. Prove I’m not a useless citified idiot.”
She heard the frustration in Jake’s statement. Both these men needed to figure this shit out, but at least Jake was willing to try, it seemed. She didn’t answer him, choosing to let it lie. It was time to get a leg up and get into the fresh air. They all needed it
They finished tacking up, Jake proving efficient at bridling as well. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. She held up a hand to Trevor, who was pulling Finnegan out of his stall for her, having offered to tack him up so she could help with Jake’s horse.
“All ready?” Trevor asked as he handed the reins to Liz. She slid her eyes over her horse and, satisfied, nodded.
“Thanks, Trev. We won’t be out long. A couple of hours at most,” she said.
“All good. Go have some fun with this bunch. Or referee, maybe,” he replied, and winked before striding back into the stable.
Jake settled his father’s Stetson on his head. As she had expected, it fit perfectly, and he tipped it back and posed. “How do I look?”
She let out a snort of laughter, causing both Brady and Tanner to turn, and pulled the front down, settling it more over his forehead.
“Like a country music star ready to go on stage,” she joked, then patted him on the chest. “Seriously, though. Suits you.”
Which was the truth. He looked exactly like that picture of Brett standing in the middle of a sand ring, clipped from the paper after he won a roping contest. It hung on the wall of the back den in the big house with the ribbon. She wondered if Jake had seen it yet.
“Maybe I’ll wear this later too,” he said quietly, and grabbed her waist before she could step away, leaning in. “Would you like that?”
“Is that a promise?” she teased back, trying her best to hide how flustered the thought made her.
His eyes roved hers, the heat blazing out to her.
Her breath caught in her throat. He was sexy as hell right now, almost as much as when he was in the kitchen cooking.
It was attractive how capable he could look no matter what he was doing, and with his arm around her, her pulse rocketed in her ears.
“Anything for my girl,” he said, and then let her go to unhook Sandy from the cross-ties.
A weird sensation of fullness hit her like a hoof to her chest. He’d done it again, called her his girl.
She shoved the odd feeling deep down and slammed the door in her mind, because that kind of hope and connection was not what she wanted at all, even if her body was responding to it.
She cleared her throat and pointed behind her.
“I’m gonna go get on my, um, horse now,” she stuttered, and walked down the aisle before she gave her thoughts away, Finnegan hurrying to keep up with her.