nothing of the original ranch remained. The outside consisted of three A-frames that sat side by side, with the middle portion bigger than the rest. Redwood siding complemented the massive windows along the front. The landscaping alone had to have cost 100 grand.
When she opened the car door and stepped outside, she could smell the redwood mulch used to line the planters of the gardens.
At least she didn’t smell him anymore.
He’d told her to go on inside, but it still felt odd to open one of the double doors.
“Wow.”
Okay. There was nice, and then there was niiiice. Cavernous didn’t begin to describe the place. Huge beams supported the middle-section roofline—like the rib cage of a dinosaur. A parquet floor stretched from the fireplace on her right to the entertainment center on her left. Straight ahead a trio of windows overlooked the backside of the ranch with a stunning view of low-lying mountains outside.
“Must be nice,” she heard herself mutter, heading to the left, where she could see the gleam of state-of-the-art kitchen appliances. After vet school she’d inherited a pile of debt and a liability insurance policy the size of a mortgage. It was why she didn’t have her own practice. Not yet, anyway. By the time she made her student loan payment and paid the rent and insurance, not to mention a medical truck payment, she’d be lucky to clear five hundred dollars a month, not enough to live off, and certainly not enough to start her own business. Getting hired by an established vet—someone who could split expenses with her—was the first step toward that happening. And so she waited, and in the meantime she filled in for vacationing veterinarians whenever she could, which wasn’t nearly as often as she needed. Thus the old jalopy outside.
The kitchen was just as spacious and grandiose as the foyer. Stainless-steel everything, light brown countertops with spots like quail eggs, tile on the floor instead of parquet. She set the bag down on the island in the middle, almost afraid to make a mess. If this was being small-time, where did she sign up?
Five minutes later she had just finished stirring the Parmesan cheese into her spinach dip when she heard the front door open.
Oh, dear.
Two seconds later he walked into the kitchen, the smell of him reaching her before he did: it wasn’t shavings she’d smelled on him earlier, but some kind of fresh-cut grass and sweat and some sort of pine-scented aftershave that had caused her just as much discomfort inside as it had outside.
“Whatever that is, it looks delicious.” He cocked his cowboy hat back a bit and peered into the dish. “What is it?”
He was tall. She liked tall men. They made her feel feminine and secure and somehow safe.
He’s a racehorse owner, the sane part of her screamed. Heck, and a horse trainer, too.
But he’d agreed to let her help him. That meant something.
“It’s cheesy spinach dip.” She tried like heck not to edge away from him, but she could feel the heat radiate off of him, which, in turn, made her feel flush. “There’s enough calories in that to clog an artery or two.”
He leaned down close to her, so close she could see the dark blue ring around his eyes. “You trying to kill me, then?”
He could have no way of knowing how just being next to him was killing her. No way at all, but she could have sworn she saw the glimmer of something in his eyes, something that made her skin prickle.
“It’s really good.” She sounded like a timid little girl.
He had really white teeth and a smile that made it difficult to hold his gaze. “What do we dip?”
She pointed with her chin toward the brown bag. The moment he stepped away, the muscles in her shoulders collapsed. Her legs damn near did, too.
He found the pieces of the French loaf she’d cut up earlier, his look of pleasure as he dipped a fluffy piece of bread, lifted it to his mouth, then chewed doing strange things to her insides.
“Forget dinner. We should eat this.”
“That’s okay with me.”
He smiled. “Nah. I have something special planned. Braised short ribs with a port arsenic reduction.”
It took her a moment to follow his words, which just went to show how discombobulated she was. “Uh-huh.”
All right. So he made her feel all silly and tongue-tied and teenager-like inside. Oh, well. She’d get over it.
“Just kidding.”
He was? She straightened in embarrassment. How had she missed that?
You were too busy ogling him.
“Seriously,” he said. “I’m making fajitas. Simple.” He went to the fridge and began pulling out the ingredients—a package of beef, a bell pepper, an onion and grated cheddar cheese—and then set them on the island next to her brown bag. “Only takes a moment. Sit down while I brown the meat and onions. You can tell me your plans for Dasher.”
She told herself to focus on what she’d come to do, not how the light from a window along the front of the house cast a glow onto his face, highlighting the dusky outline of his whiskers. He had a chin right out of a comic book and the shoulders to match. Hours out of doors had turned his skin a deep mahogany that emphasized the cobalt of his eyes. He kept peeking at her as he unwrapped the meat and set it on a cutting board.
“Go on,” he encouraged.
She took a deep breath. Okay. Focus.
“I bet Dr. Miller suggested stall rest and some kind of therapy for Dasher.”
He nodded as he began chopping the meat. “And maybe surgery.”
“Don’t listen to him.”
He paused. “You care to tell me why I shouldn’t listen to a doctor with thirty years of experience caring for racehorses?”
“For exactly that reason.” She spotted a barstool beneath the center island far enough away from where he stood that maybe she could concentrate. “He’s old-school.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
How could someone so handsome do something so deplorable for a living? It was hard to reconcile the man in front of her—good-looking, cooking dinner for her—and the mental image she’d built up of him as some kind of evil ogre.
“I wrote a paper my senior year on high suspensory tears in equines. In it I completely disproved the validity of the traditional treatment options used by modern-day veterinarians.” She frowned. “Although not without ruffling a few feathers.”
Including Paul’s, but she wasn’t going to think about that.
“I’ll bet,” he said, pulling a pan from somewhere and scraping the meat into it. “You’re good at ruffling feathers.” But he shot her a smile meant to take the sting out of his words, his grin causing her to shift her gaze to the granite counter. No, not granite, marble, she suddenly realized.
“They didn’t like that I was right.” When she lifted her gaze, it was in time to see him turn away, pan in hand, the click-click-click of the gas burner filling the air. “I might not have had as large a control group as they wanted, but I proved that conventional medical treatment guaranteed no more success than my method. In fact, my method actually had more success, something the review board chalked up to luck.”
And it still burned her when she thought about it. Luck. As if fate had had something to do with the successful rehabilitation of two show horses.
“And what is that method?”
The sizzle of cooking meat made her stomach growl. She reached for a piece of bread and scooped a bit of the dip. She was pleased with how good it tasted.
“Let me ask you something.” She resisted the urge to snatch