Wed By A Will. Cara Colter

it in the door.

      Pretending she didn’t have his full attention, he slipped his pocket knife from his back pocket and cut the twine.

      She came and watched.

      Her bosom was heaving nicely under her too large shirt.

      “See how the hay breaks apart?” he asked. “That’s called a flake.” He explained to her, carefully, how to feed the donkey, the repercussions if it wasn’t done right.

      There. He sounded like a reasonable man. A man whose mind was a million miles away from heaving bosoms. Really, it was one of the rotten parts of being a man. Nature noticing whatever the hell it wanted to notice, even when he’d already told his mind, no way, never, forget it.

      He turned swiftly away from her and shook the first two flakes out into the hay crib. The donkey thanked him by flattening his floppy ears to his ugly head and charging the fence. Robbie oohed and aahed as if he was seeing an animal that was both lovable and exotic. She was also smiling indulgently at the donkey’s exceedingly bad manners.

      Just above the barn smells, the fresh hay, and the donkey, he could smell her. Her shampoo, and her soap and her deodorant, and something else so sweet and soft it near took his breath away. Matt tried to place the scent and couldn’t.

      What he could do was never come back here again. Ever.

      Of course, if he chose that, he was going to have a crop of little mules running around next year, after that donkey pushed down the fences and bred all his mares. He could change the name of his pure-breed quarter horse ranch from No Quarter Asked, to No Quarter Assed.

      “Auntie,” Robbie announced sleepily, tucking his head against Matt’s belly as they headed for home a few minutes later, “I’m coming to see that donkey again real soon.”

      Somehow it didn’t even sound like a question, or a request.

      His nephew had just told him how it was going to be.

      Life was telling him how it was going to be, but he still fought it.

      “Don’t you think your own horse is better?” he suggested subtly. “You can ride her. Pet her. Get close to her.”

      “I don’t like Cupie Doll,” Robbie announced firmly. “She has real mean eyes.”

      Cupie Doll was a prizewinning brood mare that Matt had reluctantly retired. She wouldn’t take anymore. And Robbie, unfortunately was right. Sweet as shortcake when she was pregnant, she seemed miserable when she was not growing fat with a baby.

      As a riding horse she was a gem. Gentle. Predictable. A perfect mount for a child. But the sullen expression hadn’t left her face since her last heat had come and gone without her seeing any action.

      Maybe Robbie noticed more about the horses than Matt had given him credit for.

      “And that thing back there doesn’t have mean eyes?” Matt sputtered.

      “Corrie?” Robbie asked, indignant.

      Even Matt couldn’t make himself go that far. For all the bristle of her personality, there was no meanness in her eyes. “The donkey,” he said.

      “Oh, no. He doesn’t have mean eyes. Can I go back? Please, Auntie?”

      It was the first real enthusiasm he’d seen Robbie show for anything in a long, long time. The pair of them had been walking around in a daze since Marianne died.

      Six months ago, already.

      What was it about that donkey that so appealed to his nephew? Maybe being attracted to frightened things ran in the family.

      Whatever it was, he couldn’t put out the light in his nephew’s eyes. Not even for his own self-preservation.

      “We’ll go back in a few days.” He figured he’d left her over a week’s supply of grub for the donkey. He had to go look after those fences, anyway.

      “Okay,” Robbie agreed with a yawn. “She’s a pretty lady. I like her eyes. Lots of colors.”

      “Really.” He did not say this with anything approaching encouragement. He certainly did not let on that he had already committed the offense of comparing her eyes to crocuses.

      Lots of colors. He’d have to have another look when he went back over there and tried to set up a fence that would hold a determined donkey back.

      The fence that needed to go up, was the one around a mind that rebelliously wanted to recall her heaving bosom and delicate scent.

      Matt sighed. This was not the first time life had been wrested from his control. It just seemed that every time it happened, he could count on a bad ending.

      Corrine watched his truck pull away. It wasn’t until it was out of her driveway that she allowed herself to breathe again.

      What was it about a man’s easy strength that made a woman go weak with longing?

      When he’d hefted those bales, one in each hand, she’d been resentful. But right underneath the resentment, something else flickered dangerously to life.

      Desire.

      “Corrie Parsons,” she informed herself, doing one last check of the donkey, who flattened his ears menacingly when she got too close to his grub, “you will not be ruled by something so base.”

      A little voice inside her whined piteously.

      She ignored it, throwing herself into finishing cleaning the cabin.

      Finally, exhausted, she dragged a mattress in, and flopped on it in the middle of her living room floor.

      But her plan, to work herself to exhaustion so she couldn’t think of anything else, had backfired.