friend.
“What did you want?” she asked.
The noise of the crowd in the arena made it hard to hear and so she headed for the atrium at the front of the building. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers filled the air and reminded her she hadn’t eaten lunch.
“You were right.” There was a pause, and she could perfectly imagine him shaking his head. Or maybe that was a visual she picked up from his dog. Hard to tell.
“I followed that horse back to the barn so I could watch the kid untack.”
“Oh?” She’d reached the exit and it was immediately quieter. “What’d you find out?”
A large man with a dog at his side blocked her path. The dog was a black-and-white border collie. She glanced up sharply, her heart flipping over in her chest. Beautiful green eyes smiled down at her from beneath a black cowboy hat, one nearly as dark as the man’s lashes.
“He about kicked the kid in the head.”
Her hand dropped, cell phone forgotten. His hand did the same, although he took the time to disconnect. She absently did the same.
“And then he yelled, ‘You crazy son of a bitch,’ before he spotted me standing there.”
Hey, Cowboy, she silently telegraphed the dog. A long black tail started to wag. She smiled and returned her attention to Wes.
So handsome. So ridiculously gorgeous. Mariah had been trying to set him up with one of the girls from the barn for ages, and he was so cute she might have been tempted to throw caution to the wind if they’d been introduced before now...before she’d pegged him as a doubting Thomas.
“Did he get nailed?” she asked to cover that particularly troubling thought.
Green eyes sparked. “Nah. He’s fine.” She saw his lips turn up in a brief smile as he remembered the incident. “But when he realized I’d heard, I could tell he was about to offer up some excuse. I told him don’t bother.”
“So you believe me now?”
And why did the thought make her so giddy? She knew what his answer would be even though she hoped for something different.
“I believe you intuitively knew something was off with that gelding.”
Intuition. A sixth sense. Men had excused her abilities a million times over. Women had, too, but it always felt different when it was a man.
“I’m usually pretty good at reading horses, but I’ll admit I missed the mark on this one.”
“That’s big of you.”
His smile was pure charm. “Mariah says you’re the real deal, a bona fide horse whisperer, and so I was thinking...”
No. Don’t say it. She didn’t want to spend any more time with him. To be honest, she had been glad when he let her walk away.
“...maybe between the two of us...”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. She knew what he was thinking.
“You want me to help you pick out some prospects, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, there was a part of her that wished that for once in her life she could meet someone and tell them the truth. It wasn’t a sixth sense. She picked up images from the minds of animals. Her friend Mariah said she talked to them, but it wasn’t really that. She could see what was going on in their minds, but she could never tell people that, not when she first met them. They’d call her crazy, but for some reason she wanted to tell Wes, and she wanted him to believe her.
It’s because you think he’s cute.
“What’s in it for me?”
She hadn’t meant the question to come out so cool, but something about the man set her teeth on edge. It was as if she fought an invisible force field, one she wanted to break through.
He doesn’t believe you and that hurts.
It shouldn’t have hurt. It never hurt. So why now?
“I don’t know. What do you have in mind?”
You.
She almost blanched. “Money.”
Beneath his black cowboy hat his brow lifted. “You mean like pay you for your services?”
“Something like that.”
“How much are your rates?”
“I’m expensive, but I have another idea.”
The brim of his cowboy hat tipped a bit. If she wasn’t mistaken, his gaze had just intensified, green eyes flashing with...what? Interest?
“Like what?”
Good Lord, he’d taken her words wrong. He was thinking something personal. “I’ll help you in exchange for a sizable donation to CEASE.”
If she’d told him she wanted to use the money to fly to the moon, he couldn’t have looked any more surprised.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. See, we want to hold a big fund-raiser, but we’re a little short on cash. If you want my help, you’ll have to help CEASE.”
She heard him huff something out under his breath. He wouldn’t accept, couldn’t accept. She had a feeling the whole “you have a good eye” thing was just an excuse to get to know her better. Chances were, as a farm manager, he had a good eye, too. He didn’t need her. Not really, but she could tell her offer had put him off. He might not breed horses, but she knew he didn’t like the group she hung out with; ergo, he wouldn’t like her...or so she’d thought. The dratted man actually appeared to be considering her offer.
Why had she ever opened her mouth about that horse?
Wes Landon could be dangerous to her health. Good-looking. Sexy smile. Horse lover. She’d never be able to resist his charms, and if she didn’t, she’d pay the price once he discovered the truth about her “sixth sense.” She always did.
“Let me get this straight.” He leaned in closer to her. “You want me, a farm manager whose mother breeds racehorses, to donate money to CEASE, the people who picket the racetrack where my mom runs her horses.”
“Yup.”
Don’t say yes. Don’t say yes. Don’t say yes.
But he didn’t look as perturbed as she’d expected. “Deal.”
God help her.
The next day she was still irritated as hell that she’d agreed to help. Granted, it was for a good cause, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a pain in the rear. She’d had to spend all day yesterday visiting the horses in the sale catalog. Natalie had joined her, and Jillian had mulled over each horse, trying to decide if it would work best for Natalie or Wes.
Fortunately, she hunted for two very different animals. Reining horses performed a pattern in an arena, trotting, loping and running, followed by working with a cow. Cutting was all about the cow, so it was easy to separate the two types of horses. By the end of Wednesday she’d picked out a horse for Wes, but instead of being excited to see him, he stared at the animal as if she’d lost her mind.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said Thursday morning.
The thing about his opinion of the horse was that it didn’t disturb her nearly as much as the man himself. There were times when you met a man and he just...did something to your insides. Wes was one of those men for