Must Love Horses Read online

  Other Books by Vicki Tharp

  Lazy S Ranch series:

  Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

  Must Love Horses

  And coming in July 2018: Hot On The Trail

  Must Love Horses

  Lazy S Ranch

  Vicki Tharp

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Vicki Tharp

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  First Electronic Edition: February 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0450-5

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0450-1

  First Print Edition: February 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0451-2

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0451-X

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To those who champion our wild horses, in big ways and small.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Trouble had a pretty face…and a rocking ass.

  After two tours in Iraq, Bryan “Boomer” Wilcox could sniff out trouble like a drug dog sniffs out crack. And the woman training the black and white colt reeked of it.

  Sidney worked from the center of the Lazy S’s fifty-foot round pen, the young horse cantering along the rail. Boomer stood next to Mackenzie Nash, his arms on the top rail. He tugged on the brown ponytail sticking out the back of her baseball cap.

  She grabbed his hand and latched onto the pressure point, stopping short of causing real pain, and dropped it. Dangerous mistake, forgetting her quickness.

  He shook the annoying sensation away. “If Patton had a way, way, way younger sister, it would be you.”

  “And you’re like a bad rash: prickly, irritating, and always popping up in the most inconvenient places.”

  “Who told me to check out the new trainer you might want to hire?”

  The colt made another pass, his nostrils flaring, sweat lathering his neck, his hooves kicking up dust. Blobs of dirt rained down, hitting his leg and plopping a clod into his ice water. He picked it out and flicked it away, wiping his fingers on his cargo shorts.

  “Look how she handles that horse.” Mac’s lips curved higher and higher like a hot air balloon on a cold day. “She’s little, but tough. And she’s accomplished more with this horse in fifteen minutes than I have in the past few weeks.”

  “Because she’s a horse trainer, you’re not.”

  “Look, he joined up with her, and that crazy-ass, crackhead horse is following her around like a lovesick puppy.”

  Boomer grunted. The hair on the back of his neck didn’t raise, the water he’d drunk didn’t slosh in his belly, and his stump didn’t tingle beneath the socket of his blade prosthetic, but something about the trainer was off. If Mac pulled her head out of the clouds, maybe she would see it too.

  He slipped his sunglasses down over his eyes, but it wasn’t the sun setting behind the Rockies that prevented him from seeing the truth.

  Sidney led the colt to the middle of the pen and started desensitizing him to the lunge whip. She stood in front and a little to the side of the horse, holding a lead rope attached to his halter. She smacked the ground with the tip of the whip, only stopping when the horse licked his lips, cocked his hip, or showed other signs he’d relaxed.

  Mac rubbed at her combat-injured shoulder. Was her shoulder bothering her, or did something not sit right with her either? “We should hire her.”

  “Don’t,” Boomer said. “She’s trouble.” And not the sweaty-sheets-and-sticky-sex kind of trouble.

  “Get real.” Mac’s voice climbed a rung on the octave ladder. “She’s exactly what our training program needs.”

  “Someone like her, yes. Her? No way.”

  Mac’s lips went flat, flapjack flat. The way they did when she thought someone was being difficult. Only he wasn’t being difficult, just wary.

  “Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t hire her, that doesn’t include her cup size,” Mac said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I’m more of an ass man.”

  He waited a beat for the eye roll. She didn’t disappoint.

  “Come on,” Mac said. “Spit it out.”

  He stared at the ground. The heat edged up his neck, one hair to the next and the next. He glanced up. “She hesitated before saying her last name.” Yeah, sounded just as stupid outside his head as it had inside his head.

  Mac laughed, the pitch a little off, as if he’d stripped his gears and spun off into crazy land. Then she took the glass from his hand and sniffed. No hooch in his drink. Not this time. But the fact that she’d checked made his chest tighten.

  She didn’t trust him.

  Not completely.

  Not like before.

  He snatched the glass back. “I’m just keeping an eye on your six, sis.”

  “I’m not your sister and this isn’t Fallujah. No mortar rounds. No sniper fire. What do you have to protect me from, Marine?”

  “One epically bad decision,” he said, about twenty decibels louder than intended.

  Sidney glanced their way, turned the horse loose in the pen, and walked over to them. The horse stuck his neck through the metal rails on the opposite side and nibbled the tips of the long, leggy grass.

  “You have a problem with the way I worked the horse?” Sidney’s words carried a quiet heat, as if all she needed was a drop of fuel to go from a low simmer to a full-on boil.

  “No. No problem,” Mac said, “We were very—”

  “What did you say your last name was?”

  Mac cut him an I’ll-take-you-down look. “Boomer…”

  Sidney glanced away, then crossed her arms and met his gaze. “Teller. Sidney Teller.”

  She looked from him to Mac and back to him. Her shoulders twitched as if she was fighting off a cringe.

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” Boomer asked.

  Sidney drew her body up and sucked in a deep breath. Boomer tried not to notice how her T-shirt tightened across her chest.

  Tried real hard.

  He wasn’t a complete cad.

  Now wasn’t the time to notice her breasts or her pixie face or even her short, red hair—a style that should have looked masculine, but didn’t. She looked like an Irish fairy, especially when those green eyes flashed with a redhead’s fire. Maybe she h
ad Mac under a spell. Would explain why Mac refused to listen to him.

  Sidney’s lips moved, but her words didn’t register as he contemplated how she’d feel beneath—

  Mac elbowed him in the gut.

  “Ow!” He rubbed a hand over his belly and tuned back in.

  “Clive and Marta Teller are my parents.” Sidney’s words came out like a dare. Like she dared him to pass judgment on them. On her.

  “That couple in the news a few years back? The ones who beat and abused their horses, went to prison?”

  At her slight nod, he huffed out a harsh laugh. Vindicated.

  That was one hell of a stink-ass albatross dangling around her neck.

  * * * *

  Shock. Disgust. Revulsion. Boomer’s face flicked through the expressions and settled on contempt. Not a good look for him.

  Those reactions Sidney had expected. What she hadn’t expected was his lack of surprise. Like he’d known something was off about her. Like her parents’ savagery had rubbed off on her, tainted her and made her unworthy. Her heart thumped in her chest, like a kick from a pissy mare—powerful, painful, destructive.

  Because of her damn parents, her career was doomed almost before it got started. Horse training was her life. Long, hard days and short, sleepless nights. Aching muscles and saddle sores. Soft muzzles and hard hooves. She craved it all.

  Boomer gave her a calculated look, as if he was ten moves ahead and reaching across the table to knock Sidney’s queen off the chessboard.

  “Mind explaining what I’m missing here?” Mac asked Sidney.

  Sidney had to look up to meet her in the eye.

  “Spell it out for me,” Mac said. “Big, bold, blocky letters, so I don’t have to read the fine print.”

  Mac’s expression remained blank of emotion. No frustration. No anger. No apparent ego for a boss lady. Had Sidney found someone who would give her the break she needed? There was a tingling in her chest, pins and needles and hope.

  Sidney’s parents’ crimes were all public record anyway. Here goes nothing. The pins and needles pricked and poked, ripped and rent. “My parents were respected horse trainers until they were arrested on multiple counts of animal cruelty—starvation, beating, neglect. They made Michael Vick look like the poster boy for the Humane Society.

  “I wasn’t involved,” Sidney added maybe a tad too quick, “but the truth is, if I hadn’t made excuses, if I hadn’t stayed away, if—”

  “If, if, if,” Mac said. “Ifs are nothing more than half-fleshed skeletons in your closet stinking up your life. Sometimes the best thing to do is bury them.”

  “But if I’d gone home, I would have noticed. Would have done something about it. Before the horses suffered.” Before my family’s reputation suffered.

  The man beside her—Boomer, was it? What the hell kind of name was that?—stood with his arms over his broad chest, his eyes unreadable behind his reflective lenses. His dark hair was close cropped, his full lips now pressed thin, his expression stuck somewhere between a scowl and resignation.

  Probably best she couldn’t see his eyes; she didn’t think she’d like what she would see there. Contempt? Derision? Pity?

  Yowza. Better she didn’t know.

  “I’ll work for a trial period. No charge. Let me show you what I can do, let me prove to you what I am, what I’m capable of.” Her words bumped together as if she’d never learned punctuation. Her stomach tipped and dipped and dived. Her heart thumped a slow, hard, bruising beat against her chest, waiting for Mac to speak. Waiting to hear her fate.

  “No,” Mac said.

  No? Sidney’s gut twisted like it had been hog-tied with a lariat. She opened her mouth to argue. To beg, maybe. No. Not beg. She would fight, would work hard, would graze her horse in hand on the side of the highway if she had to, but she had too much pride to beg.

  “No,” Mac repeated. “If you’re going to work here, you’re going to get paid. Starting wages, plus room and board for you and your horse. A month trial. A raise after that if you work out. You’ll report to Bryan, nickname’s Boomer.”

  The lariat was now a noose. She pasted on a strangled smile.

  “Mac,” Boomer said, a warning and a reproach.

  Mac turned to him. “My decision.”

  Boomer shifted his weight back, then pulled his sunglasses down his nose and eyed Mac over the top with a look that clearly said I don’t want any part of this. She held Boomer’s gaze and Sidney could tell they were having a whole lotta conversation without saying a word.

  Finally, Mac said to Boomer, “So, we good?”

  “Dandy,” he said, the word slathered in sarcasm. He nodded, but the throbbing vessel at his temple said he was probably a few beers away from dandy.

  Sidney tried to act cool, like of course she’d gotten the job, but the goofy grin cramping her cheeks blew the cool away. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  Boomer grunted. Gruff. Disgruntled. But he could piss and moan all he wanted. She was there to train horses, not to make him happy.

  “Where do I put my things?”

  “We’re limited on space until Boomer finishes building the new cabins. You can bunk with him, or you can stay in the barn. The caretaker room is practically a closet, and the bathroom is down the barn aisle, but you’re welcome to it if you prefer a place to yourself.”

  “The barn works.” If she wasn’t mistaken, Boomer’s lips twitched a fraction with an infinitesimal smile she read as relief.

  “I’ll help you get settled.” He sounded like the perfect gentleman, but his face was concrete on a hot Texas day—hard, gritty, impenetrable.

  She could have unloaded by herself, but after the fourteen-hundred-or-so-mile haul from Texas, she was too tired and road weary to argue.

  The sun had slipped halfway down the distant ridge line of the Rockies, and a cool breeze kicked up. Her buckskin fox trotter pawed impatiently at the fender of her two-horse bumper pull trailer, making an irritating clang-scrape, clang-scrape as he hit his hoof on the fender and dragged it across the rusty paint because his hay net was now empty.

  “Where do you want me to drop my trailer?”

  He pointed to the left side of a new looking barn, where other trailers and tractors were parked. She headed for her truck while he peeled off and headed for her horse. Her truck was one of those small Ford Ranger pickups with only a front bench seat. At one time the paint had been green, before the hot Texas sun had faded and stripped the color away like a brunette gone to gray. Once the gas tank hit empty and Eli’s last two bales of hay were eaten, the insurance company could declare it totaled.

  Sidney watched Boomer in her side mirror until he had Eli safely away from the trailer, then turned the key in the ignition. The engine spun. She pumped the gas, but the engine refused to catch. It didn’t even sound like it was trying.

  She checked the gas gauge: needle-width above E. A problem she didn’t have the money to fix. She yanked the key from the ignition and banged her forehead on the steering wheel.

  Eli nickered as her door latch clunked and Boomer forced her door open. The rusty, bent hinges creaked and groaned like an old arthritic man. With her forehead still on the wheel, she turned her head as Boomer—no, Bryan, she liked his real name better—leaned on the edge of the open door. Eli stepped up and rubbed his soft nose on her forearm like he was telling her everything was going to be okay, but it was also past his feeding time. Eli did like his pellets. So it could have gone either way.

  “Where’re your bags?”

  “Tack locker of the trailer.”

  They unloaded her bag and tack and led Eli to the barn. Once inside the sliding doors, Sidney dropped the saddle and pad in the aisleway while Bryan dumped her duffel in the room. She let Eli’s lead go and checked out her new home. A counter and sink lined the far wall. It had a foot of prep sp
ace, a coffeepot, a microwave above, and a small refrigerator beneath.

  “Breakfast and dinner is served at the big house. Lunch is on your own, but they’ll supply the groceries.”

  Bryan stepped around her, opened the cabinet above the sink, pulled out a giant Ziploc baggie with bedding, and tossed it on the naked mattress. Eli wandered past the open door, sniffing his way down the aisle, checking the place out.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I can take it from here.”

  He nodded, and she saw a flash of buckskin in the room’s only window overlooking the foaling stall. Eli had slid the stall door open; he was bad that way. His legs buckled beneath him and he rolled in the thick shavings, kicking his muscled legs in the air. Then he stood and shook the shavings out of his jet-black mane and tail. He walked over and blinked at her through the window.

  She glanced at Bryan. He had a lazy smile on his face as he watched her horse. Her stomach felt light and wiggly and she waited for it to grumble, to demand to be fed, but it didn’t.

  It didn’t want food.

  Well…crapola.

  Okay, so being attracted to her boss wasn’t so bad. He was easy on the eyes, especially when he smiled like that, but that didn’t mean she liked him. In fact, she was pretty sure she didn’t, and was confident that the feeling was mutual. Still, that didn’t stop her from eying his cargo-shorts-clad caboose as he turned to leave.

  At the door, he turned back. Her eyes shot up to his, but not before he’d caught her ogling. Double crapola.

  His eyes lit with amusement, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he glanced at the watch on his left wrist. It was clunky, with a big face and some kind of dial on top. It looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast and remotely pilot the International Space Station. “Dinner at the big house in fifteen. You coming?”

  She hadn’t had a solid meal since that morning, but the bed called much louder than the food. And she still needed to feed Eli and settle him in for the night.

  Eli nickered as if he was Carnac the Magnificent and could read her mind. He stomped an impatient foot and licked the window.