but for a woman to hold the job was a first. Her reputation in the horse world had made her a sort of celebrity, something she didn’t particularly enjoy; she would rather be with the horses than putting on an expensive dress and adorning a party, but the Stonichers, who owned Solomon Green, often requested her presence. Maris wasn’t a snob, but her position on the farm was worlds apart from that of a drifter hired to muck out the stables.
He knew his way around horses, though; she’d noticed that about him. He was comfortable with the big animals, and they liked him, which had drawn her helpless attention even more. She hadn’t wanted to pay attention to the way his jeans stretched across his butt when he bent or squatted, something that he seemed to do a thousand times a day as he worked. She didn’t want to notice the muscles that strained the shoulder seams of his shirts as he hefted loaded shovels or pitchforks. He had good hands, strong and lean; she hadn’t wanted to notice them, either, or the intelligence in his blue eyes. He might be a drifter, but he drifted for his own reasons, not because he wasn’t capable of making a more stable life for himself.
She’d never had time for a man in her life, hadn’t particularly been interested. All her attention had been focused on horses, and building her career. In the privacy of her bed at night, when she wasn’t able to sleep and her restless body felt too hot for comfort, she had admitted to herself the irony of her hormones finally being kicked into full gallop by a man who would likely be gone in a matter of weeks, if not days. The best thing to do, she’d decided, would be to continue ignoring him and the uncomfortable yearnings that made her want to be close to him.
Evidently she hadn’t succeeded.
She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the light as she watched him return the water glass to the bathroom, and only then did she notice what she herself was wearing. She wasn’t naked; she was wearing her panties, and a big T-shirt that drooped off her shoulders. His T-shirt, specifically.
Had he undressed her, or had she done it herself? If she looked around, would she find their clothes haphazardly tossed together? The thought of him undressing her interfered with her lung function, constricting her chest and stifling her oxygen flow. She wanted to remember—she needed to remember—but the night was a blank. She should get up and put on her own clothes, she thought. She should, but she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there and cope with the pain in her head while she tried to make sense of senseless things.
He was watching her as he came back to bed, his blue eyes narrowed, the color of his irises vivid even in the dim light. "Are you all right?"
She swallowed. "Yes." It was a lie, but for some reason she didn’t want him to know she was as incapacitated as she really was. Her gaze drifted over his hairy chest and flat belly, down to the masculine bulge beneath those tight boxers. Had they really…? For what other reason would they be in a motel bed together? But if they had, why were they both wearing underwear?
Something about those sophisticated boxer shorts seemed a little out of place on a guy who did grunt work on a horse farm. She would have expected plain white briefs.
He turned off the lamp and stretched out beside her, the warmth of his body wrapping around her as he settled the sheet over them. He lay on his side, facing her, one arm curled under his pillow and the other resting across her belly, holding her close without actually wrapping her in his embrace. It struck her as a carefully measured position, close without being intimate.
She tried to remember his name, and couldn’t.
She cleared her throat. She couldn’t imagine what he would think of her, but she couldn’t bear this fogginess in her mind any longer. She had to bring order to this confusion, and the best way to do that was to start with the basics. "I’m sorry," she said softly, almost whispering. "But I don’t remember your name, or—or how we got here."
He went rigid, his arm tightening across her belly. For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, with a muffled curse, he sat bolt upright, the action jarring her head and making her moan. He snapped on the bedside lamp again, and she closed her eyes against the stabbing light.
"Damn it," he muttered, bending over her. He sank his long fingers into her hair, sifting through the tousled silk as he stroked his fingertips over her skull. "Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?"
"I didn’t know I was." It was the truth. What did he mean, hurt?
"I should have guessed." His voice was grim, his mouth set in a thin line. "I knew you were pale, and you didn’t eat much, but I thought it was just stress." He continued probing, and his fingers brushed a place on the side of her head that made her suck in her breath as a sickening throb of pain sliced through her temples.
"Ah." Gently he turned her in to him, cradling her against his shoulder while he examined the injury. His fingers barely touched her scalp. "You have a nice goose egg here."
"Good," she mumbled. "I’d hate for it to be a bad goose egg."
He gave her another narrow-eyed look, something he had down to an art. "You have a concussion, damn it. Are you nauseated? How’s your vision?"
"The light hurts," she admitted. "But my vision isn’t blurred."
"What about nausea?"
"A little."
"And I’ve been letting you sleep," he growled to himself, half under his breath. "You need to be in a hospital."
"No," she said immediately, alarm jangling through her. The last thing she wanted was to go to a hospital. She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to stay away from public places. "It’s safer here."
In a very controlled tone he said, "I can handle the safety. You need to see a doctor."
Again there was that nagging sense of familiarity, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. There were other, more serious, things to worry about, however, so she let it go. She took stock of her physical condition, because a concussion could be serious, and she might indeed need to be in a hospital. There was the headache, the nausea…What else? Vision good, speech not slurred. Memory? Rapidly she ran through her family, remembering names and birthdays, thinking of her favorite horses through the years. Her memory was intact, except for…She tried to pinpoint her last memory. The last thing she could remember was eating lunch and walking down to the stables, but when had that been?
"I think I’m going to be okay," she said absently. "If you don’t mind, answer a couple of questions for me. First, what’s your name, and second, how did we wind up in bed together?"
"My name’s MacNeil," he said, watching her closely.
MacNeil. MacNeil. Memory rushed back, bringing with it his first name, too. "I remember," she breathed. "Alex MacNeil." His name had struck her when she’d first heard it, because it was so similar to the name of one of her nephews, Alex Mackenzie, her brother Joe’s second-oldest son. Not only were their first names the same, but their last names both indicated the same heritage.
"Right. As for your second question, I think what you’re really asking is if we had sex. The answer is no."
She sighed with relief, then frowned a little. 'Then why are we here?" she asked in bewilderment.
He shrugged. "We seem to have stolen a horse," he said.
Chapter 2
Stolen a horse? Maris blinked at him in total bewilderment, as if he’d said something in a foreign language. She’d asked him why they were in bed together, and he’d said they had stolen a horse. Not only was it ridiculous that she would steal a horse, but she couldn’t see any connection at all between horse thievery and sleeping with Alex MacNeil.
Then a memory twinged in her aching head, and she went still as she tried to solidify the confused picture. She remembered moving rapidly, driven by an almost blinding sense of urgency, down the wide center aisle of the barn, toward the roomy, luxurious stall in the middle of the row. Sole Pleasure was a gregarious horse; he loved company, and that was why his stall was in the middle, so he would have companionship on both sides. She also