“You are late.”
“I know,” horse farrier Genevieve Lawrence said to her phone as she stepped on the gas. She hated to be late and yet, here she was, running behind again on the way to her next client. Spotting one of her favorite off-road shortcuts ahead, Genevieve downshifted her four-wheel-drive Chevy Colorado, jerked the steering wheel to take a hard right and then floored it once the hind end of her truck stopped fishtailing. Laughing as she sped over a large bump in the road that sent her truck airborne for a split second, Genevieve knew she was taking a risk using this dirt road. It had been a rainy late August in Montana and there would be mud hole mine traps everywhere. But she’d been off-road racing since she was a teenager and knew this road like the back of her hand. If she didn’t get stuck, she’d shave a good fifteen minutes off her time.
“What’s life without a little risk?” Genevieve gave a rebel yell, fighting the steering wheel to keep it straight when the back tires hit a slick pocket of mud that sent her sliding sideways.
“Now you are really late,” her phone gave her another verbal reminder.
“Nobody likes a know-it-all, Google!” Genevieve snapped as she went careening through a large puddle of standing water, splashing brown water onto her windshield and temporarily blinding her view.
Putting her wipers on high so she could see, she saw the end of the dirt road up ahead and, instead of slowing down, she floored it again. In Genevieve’s mind, this was the best part. This was the most dangerous, and therefore, the most exhilarating, part of this shortcut. If she got up enough speed and momentum, she would really catch some air off a large mound of dirt right before she had to make a sharp left onto the main road.
“Woo-hoo!” she shouted, loving that wonderful sinking feeling in her stomach that she always got when all four wheels left the road.
A loud honk of a horn brought her smashing back into reality and made her tighten her grip on the steering wheel. She had successfully navigated the sharp left turn onto the highway, but miscalculated how close the next vehicle was to her entry point and she ended up cutting them off—just a little.
“Sorry!” She waved her hand out of the window with another laugh. She had cut that one a bit too close for comfort. But in her mind, no harm, no foul. This was what living was all about! Taking risks for big payoffs.
By the time she pulled into the driveway to the Crawford’s cattle spread, the Ambling A, her heart was still pounding and her body was still crackling with adrenaline. She parked in front of the twenty-stall stable. When Maximilian Crawford, the patriarch of the Crawford family, purchased the ranch, the barn had been just a plain metal structure. Maximilian refurbished the barn, matching the exterior to the main house’s log cabin design, and now the once plain barn was an impressive showpiece by anyone’s standards. Everything about the updated stable wreaked of money—from the custom Ambling A windmill perched atop the cupola to the red brick rubber pavers in the long, wide aisle that provided a cushion for the horses’ legs and joints. The Crawford cowboys had already begun to fill that fine stable with some of the highest pedigreed Montana-bred quarter horses money could buy.
Working with those horses was an honor Genevieve never thought to have. In fact, she had been completely shocked when Knox Crawford, one of Maximilian’s six sons, had called to hire her as part of the Ambling A’s horse care team. From her experience, most ranchers still had a mindset that being a horse farrier was a job for menfolk. And that mindset went double for her father.
As she was shutting off her engine, Genevieve spotted Knox up in the hayloft above the barn. The two large doors to the hayloft were open and Knox was restacking bales of hay, presumably getting ready for another shipment. The moment she spotted Maximilian’s fifth-born son, she felt that same wonderful shot of adrenaline that she normally only experienced when she was bungee jumping from a bridge, off-road racing or winning a wager with some cowboy who thought that he couldn’t ever lose to a chick.
Knox Crawford was tall and lean with intense brown-black eyes; his body appeared to be carved out of granite from years in the saddle. When Genevieve saw Knox as he was now, shirt unbuttoned with the glistening sweat from his muscular chest making an eye-catching trail down to the waistband of his snug-fitting, faded jeans, it made her almost change her mind about leaving Rust Creek Falls for more open-minded pastures in California.
Almost.
* * *
Knox heard the crunching sound of tires on the gravel drive and that got his heart pumping just a little bit faster. He’d been checking his watch, anticipating pretty Genevieve Lawrence’s arrival. In fact, he’d found himself looking forward to seeing her all week. Knox hoisted one last bale of hay onto a tall stack nearby before he walked over to the wide opening of the hayloft to greet the horse farrier. Genevieve’s truck, white with a colorful horse mural painted on the side, was covered in brown mud. The petite blonde got out of the driver’s side door, looked up at him with an easy smile and waved.
“Sorry I’m late!” she called up to him and the sweetness in her voice rang some sort of bell in the deep recesses of his mind.
Ever since his father had tasked him with the job of finding a veterinarian and farrier for their horses, and Knox had stumbled upon Genevieve’s Healing Hooves website, something in his soul seemed to hone in on this woman like a heat-seeking missile aimed at its target. Surprisingly for him, it wasn’t the fact that she had long wavy, wheat-colored hair that framed her oval face in the most attractive way—even though he had always had a weakness for blondes. And it wasn’t those wide cornflower blue eyes and full lips that seemed to always be turned up into a smile when she looked at him. It was more than just her looks. She fascinated him; she made him laugh. In his mind, that was a mighty potent combination.
“Not a problem.” Knox took his cowboy hat off so he could wipe the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “Did you get stuck in a mudhole?”
Genevieve had walked around to the back of her truck so she could get her tools as she always did. With a laugh and a cocky smile, she said, “I took a shortcut.”
“Must’ve been one heck of a shortcut.”
“It sure was,” she said