being a vet, don’t you?”
She nodded. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“Why?” He was surprised to find he genuinely wanted to know. “What made you become one?”
She said nothing for several moments, her face pensive as she worked out an answer. He didn’t mind, strangely content just watching her and listening to the low, soothing sounds of the barn.
Finally she broke the comfortable silence between them. “I wanted to help animals and I discovered I was good at it. Animals are uncomplicated. They give their love freely and without conditions. I was drawn to that.”
Who in her life had put conditions on loving her? Dylan’s father? He longed to ask but reminded himself it was none of his business.
“Did you overrun your house with pets when you were a kid?” he asked instead.
Her laugh sounded oddly hollow. “No. My mother never wanted the bother or the mess.”
She was quiet for a moment, gazing at Mystic, who was resting quietly in the stall. He had the feeling Ellie was miles away, somewhere he couldn’t even guess at.
“I take that back,” she said slowly. “I had a dog once when I was ten. Sparky. A mongrel. Well, he wasn’t really mine, he belonged to a kid at one of the…”
She looked at him suddenly, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
“At one of the foster homes I lived in,” she continued stubbornly, her cheeks tinted a dusky rose. “But that didn’t stop me from pretending he was mine.”
Her defiant declaration broke his heart and helped a lot of things about her finally make sense. “You lived in many foster homes?”
“One is too many. And yeah, I did.”
She was quiet again, and he thought for a moment she was done with the subject. And then she spoke in a quiet, unemotional voice that somehow affected him far more than tears or regrets would have.
“My dad was a long-haul trucker who took a load of artichokes to Florida when I was five and decided to stay. Without bothering to leave a forwarding address, of course. My mother was devastated. She couldn’t even make a decision about what shampoo to use without a man in her life, so she climbed into a bottle and never climbed back out. I stayed with her for about a year and then child-protective services stepped in.” She paused. “And you can stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re feeling sorry for the poor little foster girl playing make-believe with some other kid’s dog.” She lifted her chin. “I did just fine.”
He didn’t like this fragile tenderness twisting around inside him like a morning glory vine making itself at home where it wasn’t wanted. Did not like it one single bit.
“I never said otherwise,” he said gruffly.
“You didn’t have to say a word. I can see what you’re thinking clear as day in those big baby blues of yours. I’ve seen pity plenty of times—that’s why I generally keep my mouth shut about my childhood. But I did just fine,” she said again, more vehemently this time. “I’ve got a beautiful daughter, a job I love fiercely and now I get to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Not bad for a white-trash foster kid. I turned out okay.”
“Which one of us are you trying to convince?”
Her glare would have melted plastic. “Neither. I know exactly where I’ve been and where I’m going. I’m very happy with my life and I really don’t care what you think about me, Harte.”
“Good. Then it won’t bother you when I tell you I think about you all the time. Or that I’m overwhelmed that you’d be willing to wade through blood and muck in your best clothes to save one of my horses. Or—” he finished quietly “—when I tell you that I think you’re just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen standing in my barn.”
Somewhere in the middle of his speech her jaw sagged open and she stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Close your mouth, Doc,” he murmured wryly.
She snapped it shut with a pop that echoed in the barn, and he gave a resigned sigh, knowing exactly what he was going to do.
He had a minute to think that this was about the stupidest thing he’d ever done, then his lips found hers and he stopped thinking, lost in the slick, warm welcome of her mouth.
For a moment after his mouth captured hers, Ellie could only stand motionless and stare at him, his face a breath away and those long, thick eyelashes shielding his glittering eyes from her view.
Matt Harte was kissing her! She wouldn’t have been more shocked if all the horses in the stable had suddenly reared up and started singing Broadway show tunes as one.
And what a kiss it was. His mouth was hot and spicy, flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. Pumpkin-pie sweet. He must have snuck a taste in the kitchen when he was cleaning up.
That was the last coherent thought she had before he slowly slid his mouth over hers, carefully, thoroughly, as if he didn’t want to miss a single square inch.
Ellie completely forgot how to breathe. Liquid heat surged to her stomach, pooled there, then rushed through the rest of her body on a raging, storm-swollen river of desire.
Completely focused on his mouth and the incredible things the man knew what to do with it, she wasn’t aware of her hands sliding to his chest until her fingers curled into the soft fabric of his sweater. Through the thick cotton, steel-hard muscles rippled and bunched beneath her hands, and she splayed them, fascinated by the leashed power there.
He groaned and pulled her more tightly against him, and his mouth shifted from leisurely exploring hers to conquering it, to searing his taste and touch on her senses.
His tongue dipped inside, and she welcomed it as his lean, muscular body pressed her against the stall. His heat warmed her, wrapped around and through her from the outside in, and she leaned against him.
How long had it been since she’d been held by a man like this, had hard male arms wrapped around her, snugging her against a broad male chest? Since she’d been made to feel small and feminine and wanted?
It shocked her that she couldn’t remember, that every other kiss seemed to have faded into some distant corner of her mind, leaving only Matt Harte and his mouth and his hands.
Even if she had been able to recall any other kisses, she had a feeling they would pale into nothingness anyway compared to this. She certainly would have remembered something that made her feel as if she were riding a horse on a steep mountain trail with only air between her and heaven, as if the slightest false step would send her tumbling over the edge.
She’d been right.
The thought whispered through her dazed and jumbled mind, and she sighed. She had wondered that day in her office how Matt would go about kissing a woman and now she knew—slowly, carefully, completely absorbed in what he was doing, as if the fate of the entire world hinged on him kissing her exactly right.
Until she didn’t have a thought left in her head except more.
She had no idea how long they stood there locked together. Time slowed to a crawl, then speeded up again in a whirling, mad rush.
She would have stayed there all night, lost in the amazing wonder of his mouth and his hands and his strength amid the rustle of hay and the low murmuring of horses—if she had her way, they would have stayed there until Christmas.
But just as she twisted her arms around the strong, tanned column of his neck to pull him even closer, her subconscious registered a sound that didn’t belong. Girls’ voices and high-pitched laughter outside the barn, then the rusty-hinged squeak of a door opening.
For one second they froze, still tightly entwined together, then