him playfully on the head. “Be nice,” she warned, putting the cap back on, “or I might have to wrestle you.”
Bret went deathly still at the thought of that, her on top of him, pinning him to the ground, doing more than wrestling. Hell!
Shaking off the image before his body embarrassed him in front of the kids, he hurriedly completed the hole and adjusted both stirrups.
“Okay, this time if she trots and you don’t want her to, pull back on the reins—but gently. Make her obey you. And don’t yell like that again. You nearly busted my eardrum.”
The onlookers tittered.
“Sorry,” she said, exchanging a funny, Well, excuse me face with the children.
He walked out to the center of the corral. “All right, this is your last chance. Ride her this far so I’ll know you won’t kill yourself when we go out to the pasture.”
Whispering loudly, the children took bets on whether she’d make it.
“I say she drops the reins,” Tom predicted.
“Nah, she’ll fall off,” Adam said.
“Betcha she drops the reins and falls off,” Keith said.
The toddler, Henry, who thought she was purposely putting on a show, clapped his hands excitedly in anticipation of the next trick. “Faw,” he begged.
Morgan rolled her eyes. “Don’t you little maggots have homework or something?”
“It’s summer vacation,” Melissa said. “School won’t start till next week.”
“Chores?” Morgan asked.
“We did them when we got out of church,” LaKeisha told her.
“If I give you money, will you go away?”
They giggled. “No, ma’am,” answered Shondra. “We wanna stay here and watch you fall off.”
“Faw,” Henry squealed, clapping his hands more rapidly.
Bret interrupted by calling out, “Come on, Morgan, we don’t have all day to watch you make a fool of yourself.”
“Don’t rush me!”
“I should’ve known you couldn’t do it,” he said with a smirk. “You’re all bluff and no guts.”
“I might have to make you eat those words, Hayes.”
“Yeah? Well, you have to ride over here first,” he pointed out.
“Come on, Miss Kate,” Shondra yelled. “You can do it.” She started clapping and chanting, “Go…go…go…” The others quickly joined in.
She touched her heels to the horse’s sides and loosened the tension on the reins. The horse began to move. When it tried to break into a trot, she pulled back gently and it slowed to a walk. When she reached Bret, still mounted and still holding the reins, the children whooped their delight. Even those who’d bet against her clapped.
“Well, it’s about time,” he said. “At least you didn’t fall on your—” he remembered the kids were listening “—backside.”
“Gee, Hayes, watch out. All that lavish praise might go to my head.”
“You did okay.”
“Okay? Is that the best compliment you can come up with?” She looked to the children for help. “Was it just okay?” she asked them.
“You were super-endous,” one child yelled.
“Outta sight,” said another.
“See,” Morgan told him smugly. “I was superendous.”
Bret smiled. He couldn’t help himself. She was so damn outrageous at times.
She gasped. “Well, I’ll be… You actually have teeth!”
His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Wh-what?”
“You hardly ever smile. You always look like you’ve gotten a whiff of something foul. I was beginning to think your teeth were bad, or maybe you’d irritated the wrong person and he—or she—knocked them out.”
“I’ve occasionally had people threaten to knock them out, but I assure you they’re intact.” He gave her his best fake smile.
“Oh, very nice. Perfect, as a matter of fact.”
“Thanks. My stepfather would be overjoyed to hear you say that, considering how much work he did on them.”
“Oh, that’s right, he’s a dentist, isn’t he?”
“Uh, yeah. Retired now.” He cleared his throat with nervousness. That was a stupid mistake. “You have a nice smile, too.”
She cocked her head and grinned. “Why, thank you.”
The children giggled and made smooching sounds.
“All right, cut it out,” he warned them good-naturedly. He steered the conversation toward a more comfortable topic, patting the horse and telling Kate they’d ride out so he could show her the rest of the ranch.
“Am I ready for that?” she asked.
“Yeah, but listen to what I tell you and do exactly as I say. Exactly. No goofing off for the kids.”
“Okay. You’re the boss.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow at the comment.
“A mere slip of the tongue,” she said quickly.
TOM OPENED the gate and the “wagon train,” as one of the kids called it, began its journey. Hayes went out first, with Henry sitting on the horse in front of him. Kate moved to his left side, wanting him close in case her horse decided to act up.
“Don’t go too fast,” he warned as the other children passed them and took off at breakneck speed.
The road wound through pastures where round bales of freshly cut hay dotted the ground, and more hay, waiting to be cut, rippled in the wind. Henry, Kate quickly discovered, could be counted on to fill the brief moments of silence. His fascination with the scenery exceeded his vocabulary. He entertained them by periodically calling out the names of things he saw.
“Burrrd,” he said when a colorful bird flew past and landed on the barbed-wire fence.
“Eastern bluebird,” Hayes said. “And what sound does a bird make?”
“Tweee,” Henry answered.
Farther down the road Hayes motioned to the right. “We lease the hay fields to a cattle farm nearby, and, over that rise, is a pecan orchard that produces a good crop and income for the ranch each year.”
“I’m impressed,” she told him, a major understatement. From everything she’d seen, the ranch ran efficiently and utilized its natural resources. The administrator, Jane Logan, had given Kate a tour, and she appeared competent and genuinely enthusiastic about her job. The children seemed well cared for. “Do you spend much time out here? The children all seem to know you.”
“I’m out a couple of times a week, sometimes more.”
“Why kids?”
“Why kids what?”
“Why did you choose to support a charity for kids? A guy like you. Seems out of character.”
“Maybe you don’t know my character as well as you think.”
“I admit I find it hard to believe that you’re the same surly guy who yelled at me last night.”
“I apologize for that. I was out of line for losing my temper.”
“And I apologize for following you. I was wrong to take it to such lengths. Do you think we