So much for good intentions.
He might have been content with only a taste—as tantalizing as it had been—but then she murmured his name when he kissed her.
He didn’t think she was even aware of it, but he had heard it clearly. Just that hushed whisper against his mouth had sent need exploding through his system like a match set to a keg of gunpowder, and he had been lost.
What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t the kind of guy to go around stealing kisses from women, especially prickly city vets who made it abundantly clear they weren’t interested.
He’d been just as shocked as she was when he pulled her into his arms. And even more shocked when she responded to him, when she’d kissed him back and leaned into him for more.
He sipped at his drink and gazed out the window again. What was it about Ellie Webster that turned him inside out? She was beautiful, sure, with that fiery hair and those startling green eyes rimmed with silver.
It was more than that, though. He thought of the way she had talked so calmly and without emotion about her childhood, about being abandoned by both her parents and then spending the rest of her youth in foster homes.
She was a survivor.
He thought of his own childhood, of his dad teaching him to rope and his mom welcoming him home with a kiss on his cheek after school every day and bickering with Jess and Cassie over who got the biggest cookie.
Ellie had missed all that, and his chest ached when he thought of it and when he realized how she’d still managed to make a comfortable, happy life for her and her daughter.
Despite his earlier misconceptions, he was discovering that he actually liked her.
It had been a long time since he had genuinely liked a woman who wasn’t related to him. Ellie was different, and that scared the hell out of him.
But any way he looked at it, kissing her had still been a damn fool thing to do.
He must be temporarily insane. A rational man would have run like the devil himself was riding his heels after being twisted into knots like that by a woman he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have.
But what did he do instead? Contract with her to take care of his horses, guaranteeing he’d see plenty of her in the coming weeks, even if it hadn’t been for the stupid Valentine’s carnival their girls had roped them into.
It was bound to be awkward. Wondering if she was thinking about their kiss, trying to put the blasted thing out of his own mind. He was a grown man, though, wasn’t he? He could handle a little awkwardness, especially if it would benefit his horses.
And it would definitely do that. He’d meant it when he told her he’d never seen anything like what she’d done to Mystic. He never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. Something had happened in that barn while she was working on the horse. He wasn’t the sort of man who believed in magic—in his own humble opinion, magic came from sweat and hard work—but what she had done with Mystic had been nothing short of miraculous.
Maybe that was one of the reasons for this confounded attraction he had for her—her wholehearted dedication to her job, to the animals she worked with. He respected it. If not for that, he probably wouldn’t have decided to go with his gut and offer her the contract to care for all of his horses.
He had given up plenty of things for the good of the ranch in the years since his folks died. It shouldn’t be that hard to put aside this strange attraction for a smart-mouthed little redhead with big green eyes and a stubborn streak a mile wide.
Especially since he knew nothing could ever come of it anyway.
The room suddenly seemed colder, somehow. Darker.
Lonely.
Just the fire burning itself out, he told himself. He jumped up to throw another log onto it, then stood for a moment to watch the flames curl and seethe around it. It was an intoxicating thing, a fire on a snowy night. Almost as intoxicating as Ellie Webster’s mouth.
Disgusted with himself for harping on a subject better left behind, he sighed heavily.
“Uh-oh. That sounded ominous.”
He turned toward his sister’s voice. She stood in the doorway, still dressed in her jeans and sweater. “You’re up late,” she said.
He shrugged. “Just enjoying the night. What about you? I thought you turned in hours ago.”
“Forgot I left a load of towels in the washing machine this morning. I just came down to throw them in the dryer.”
“I can do that for you. Go on to bed.”
“I already did it. I was just on my way back upstairs.”
She stood half in, half out of the room, her fingers drumming softly on the door frame. He sensed an odd restlessness in her tonight. Like a mare sniffing out greener pastures somewhere in the big wide world.
In another woman he might have called it melancholy, but Cassie had always been the calm one. The levelheaded one. The soft April rain to Jesse’s wild, raging thunderstorm.
Tonight she practically radiated nervous energy, and it made him uneasy—made him want to stay out of her way until she worked out whatever was bothering her.
He couldn’t do that, though. He loved her too much, owed her too much. If something was bugging her, he had an obligation to ferret it out then try to fix it.
“Why don’t you come in and keep me company?” he invited.
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“No bother. Seems like we’re always so busy I hardly ever get a chance to talk to you anymore.”
She studied him for a moment, then moved into the room and took a seat on the couch, curling her long legs under her. “What were you thinking about when I came in that put that cranky look on your face?”
It wasn’t tough for him to remember, since that stolen kiss in the barn with Ellie Webster had taken center stage in his brain for the last six hours. For one crazy moment, he debated telling Cassie about it. But he couldn’t quite picture himself chatting about his love life—or lack thereof—with his little sister.
“Nothing important,” he lied, and forced his features into a smile. Knowing how bullheaded she could be about some things—a lot like a certain redhead he didn’t want to think about—he decided he’d better distract her. “What did Wade Lowry want when he called earlier?”
Cassie picked at the nubby fabric of the couch. “He wanted me to go cross-country skiing with him tomorrow into Yellowstone.”
Could that be what had her so edgy? “Sounds like fun. What time are you leaving?”
He didn’t miss the way her mouth pressed into a tight line or the way she avoided his gaze. “I’m not. I told him we had family plans tomorrow.”
He frowned. “What plans? I don’t know of any plans.”
In the flickering light of the fire, he watched heat crawl up her cheekbones. “I thought I’d help you work with Gypsy Rose tomorrow,” she mumbled. “Didn’t you say you were going to start training her in the morning? You’ll need another pair of hands.”
And he could have used any one of the ranch hands, like he usually did. No, there was more to this than a desire to help him out with the horses.
“What’s wrong with Lowry? He’s not a bad guy. Goes to church, serves on the library board, is good with kids. The other ladies seem to like him well enough. And he seems to make a pretty good living with that guest ranch of his. He charges an arm and leg to the tourists who come to stay there, anyway. You could do a whole lot worse.”
She made a face, like she used to do when Jess yanked on her hair. “Nothing’s wrong