Rich, Rugged Rancher

Fee instinctively shook her head. “He’s not going to hurt me, Lu. Oh, his tongue might raise some blisters, but he’d never raise a hand to me.”

“How do you know?”

Fee lifted both shoulders and ran her hand through her hair. “I have a strong gut feeling about him. He’s not dangerous…sad, confused, bitter, sure. But he won’t hurt me.”

Lulu sighed. “And you see his lack of manners and his rudeness as a challenge.”

“Sure. Someone needs to set him straight. I’m sorry he lost a leg but it doesn’t give him the right to act like an ass.”

Lulu pinned her to her seat with hard eyes. “Oh, I know you, Seraphina Martinez—and I know what this is really about. Yes, bad manners and rudeness annoy you, but you also see him as a challenge. You want to know if you can be the one who can break through to him, make him more sociable.”

Fee avoided eye contact, waiting for Lulu to drop the topic. But her friend wasn’t done.

“I don’t think he’s going to like being one of your projects, Fee,” Lulu told her, worry coating every word. “He’s not going to bend under the force of your personality and if he wanted friends, he would make his own. You don’t need to rescue every stray who comes across your path, Seraphina.”

Lulu’s use of her full name was a solid clue to her seriousness. Fee wrinkled her nose. “Do I really do that?”

“You know you do! You have the strongest rescue gene of anyone I know! He’s a veteran, you have a soft spot for soldiers because you grew up on an army base. Add hero and wounded to the mix and you want to wrap him up in a blanket and coddle him.”

“I’d rather unwrap him and do him,” Fee admitted. She pulled a face and forced the words out. “I’m crazy attracted to him, Lu.”

“Any woman, and more than a few guys, would be,” Lulu replied. “And that’s okay. Although you’re not big on one-night stands or brief flings, if you want to sleep with him, do. But when he puts his clothes back on, don’t try to fix him, Fee. Respect his right to be alone, to choose how he interacts with the world. From the sound of it, he’s gone through hell and back. If he wants to be left alone, he’s earned the right.” Lulu gripped her hand and continued. “Fixing him might make you feel better but it’s not about you, it’s about him.”

Lu’s words smacked her in the chest. She stared down at the folder, her breath a little ragged. She did like the feeling of accomplishment she got when she managed to solve someone else’s problems. Sometimes it felt like she was filling in pieces of herself. But Lu was right, this wasn’t a makeover, or a blind date, or a rescued horse. This was a man of pride, honor and discipline who’d served his country with distinction. He’d trained hard, sacrificed much, seen and experienced situations no one should have to see and she had no right to make judgments about his life. Or to presume she knew what was best for him.

Fee pulled in a deep breath and met Lulu’s eyes. “Okay.”

“Okay…what?”

“Okay, I won’t try to fix him, to rescue him from his lonely life,” Fee clarified. “But I am going to confront him about his rudeness and his lack of manners. You can be a hermit without being an ass.”

Lulu slapped her hand against her forehead and groaned. “And are you still going to pay him off with toy money?”

Fee nodded. “Damn right I am.”

“And are you going to sleep with him?”

She couldn’t lie, she was very tempted. Fee lifted one shoulder and both her hands. “He’s tempting, so tempting, and I shouldn’t…”

“But?”

Fee didn’t want to be attracted to him, and as God and Lulu knew, she wasn’t in the habit of falling into bed with guys on a whim—or at all—but she didn’t think she could resist the sexy, sad, rude cowboy. “But if he asks me, I just might.”

Clint hated surprise visitors—he never wanted to be caught without his prosthetic or using crutches—so he’d installed cameras all over the ranch and had them wirelessly connected so they sent an alert to his phone whenever he had company. He grabbed his cell from the back pocket of his jeans, pulled up the screen connecting him to his camera feed and saw another convertible—red, this time—flying up his driveway.

Yep, she was back.

Clint, walking a mare that had colic, whistled and when Darren’s head popped out from a stall, he jerked his head. “Can you carry on walking Belle for me?”

Darren’s eyes widened with concern. “LT, I have no experience with horses and this one is, so I hear, one of your best.”

Clint smiled at the familiar nickname for lieutenant. “It’s just walking, Darren, and we’re civilians now—you can call me Clint. If you run into trouble with her or you think something is wrong, just yell for Brad. He’ll hear you and take over.”

Brad, his foreman, didn’t always agree with his policy of hiring out-of-work veterans instead of experienced hands but Clint insisted that learning to muck out stalls and fix fences didn’t require experience. The ranch needed people who wanted to work and there were so many vets needing to find a way to support themselves and their families.

And, as he knew, open skies, fresh air and animals were a great way to deal with the memories of war.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Darren nodded, took the reins and led the horse to the entrance of the stable. Clint broke into a jog, heading for his dirt bike parked just outside. Gunning the accelerator, he headed back to his house, cutting around the back of the stables to arrive at the main house at the same time she did.

They both cut their engines at the same time and Clint rested his forearms on the handlebars of his bike, watching her from behind his dark glasses and the brim of his Stetson. The sun was starting to dip and he could probably ditch both but they provided a shield he badly needed…

He couldn’t let her know how attracted he was to her, how he wanted nothing more than to take her inside and get her naked and horizontal.

Actually, he just needed her naked because vertical worked too.

Clint watched as she shoved an expensive pair of designer shades into her hair, the arms raking her loose curls off her face. She wore less makeup today than she had yesterday. Her lips were a pale pink instead of bright red and her outfit consisted of a cranberry-colored jersey that worked well with her creamy skin and those brilliant dark eyes.

God, she was hot. He couldn’t invite her into the house: first, because his crutches were leaning against the wall in the hallway—he’d put on his leg while sitting on the bench in the hallway early this morning—and second because he wasn’t sure he could resist her.

Fee opened the door of the rental and climbed out, shapely legs in tight blue jeans tucked into low-heeled, knee-high boots. The jersey clung to her breasts and curves of her hips and Clint felt all the moisture leave his mouth.

He’d stormed houses filled with terrorists in Afghanistan, had faced down a Somalian warlord and protected his guys while they waited for an evac after the crash but he’d never experienced such a dry mouth.

But this woman, with her black-brown hair and expressive eyes, managed to achieve what a dozen treacherous situations hadn’t…

And that scared the crap out of him, which added another layer to his grouch.

“Have you got my money?” he demanded, staying where he was.

“Hello, Fee, how are you? Did you find the place okay?” Fee singsonged, calling attention yet again to his lack of manners.

Tough. He didn’t have the time and energy to play nice; he just wanted her to be gone before he made a stupid suggestion like, “Let’s go to bed.”

Because that was a disaster waiting to happen. He’d have to explain he was missing a limb and then, if she didn’t rabbit, he’d have to wait and see if she could deal with his stump and scars.

Such fun…

Nope, it was a game he was better off not playing.

“You’re wasting my time, Martinez,” Clint warned, dismounting the bike and pocketing the keys. He waited for her at the bottom of the stairs leading up to his wraparound porch and the front door. He wouldn’t invite her inside but they could, at least, get out of the sun.

Instead of following him, Fee placed her hands on her hips and tipped her head back to look at the house he still thought of as his Grandpa’s—the place where he’d visited the family patriarch every summer from the time of his dad’s death when Clint was five until he turned eighteen and enlisted.

At the time he hadn’t cared where the army sent him, as long as it kept him away from his mother’s hounding to study law or something equally boring. He couldn’t have known that shortly after he enlisted, his beloved grandpa would die, and Clint would become the fifth Rockwell to own the land.

Grandpa Rockwell always said that he didn’t want the land to be a burden, to be a noose around his neck. He’d been the biggest supporter of his military career so Clint hadn’t felt the need to rush home when he died, comfortable to place the ranch in Brad’s capable hands until his return.