A Forever Family

Whatever it took, she wanted the horse’s owner to see she loved big, domestic animals. When her hand caressed the stallion’s coat, she wanted the owner to recognize her skill and knowledge.

Her steps slowed.

Manure, dust and cut clover tracked through the late June air. A fly whirred past her face. The stallion’s lips tightened, its ears flattened. He stood transfixed.

She held out a hand. “Hey, big boy.”

Nose lifting higher, his eyes widened.

“What the hell are you doing?”

At the thundering voice the stallion galloped away, its elegant sorrel head swinging side to side, its tail glinting in the westerly sun like a sheaf of prairie grain.

Shanna darted a look over her shoulder and considered high-tailing it across the pasture to join her equine partner. The man standing opposite the gate was not who she’d expected. All six-feet-plus of him in tailored dark trousers and linen shirt, he stared at her as if she’d called his mother a foul name.

“Oh.” She purged the instinct to set a hand to her throat the way Jane Eyre might have done with Mr. Rochester. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Obviously.” He opened the gate and stalked toward her. “What’re you doing rubbing noses with an animal you don’t know?”

“I was—” If the animal she’d surveyed moments ago had taken on a human persona, it would have been this man—from his dense, saddle-burnished hair to his spit-and-shine loafers. “I was introducing myself to him.”

“He bites.”

“It’s all right, I know horses.” This man couldn’t be the foreman, not dressed like that. Was he the M. Nelson from the newspaper ad?

“You know horses. Huh.” His chilled gray eyes cut to the stallion watching them from the middle of the small pasture, red-gold on jade-green. “You’re out of your league with him, miss.”

“Shanna. Shanna McKay. For what it’s worth, I’ve lived around horses most of my life.” She looked at him pointedly, considered her options and, as usual, tossed them aside. “I know to approach with caution and a soft voice the first time.”

The man’s eyes cut back to her. A small pock to the right of his upper lip whitened. “Are you saying I didn’t? For what it’s worth, Ms. McKay, I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to approaching stallions, or any horse for that matter.”

“Know what, I was about to leave. It was nice meeting you.” This particular job she did not need. There were others. Dammit, there had to be. Jobs where people were less abrasive and the money-men more congenial.

She stepped past him.

“Just a minute.” He blocked her path. “Why are you here?”

Ignoring his knife-edged cheekbones and grim jaw, she looked square into the steel of his eyes. “I came about the job advertised in the paper.”

The man blinked once, clear shock on his face. “You want to milk cows?”

If it meant keeping a roof over her brother’s head and money in his college fund. She hiked her chin. “I have experience.”

He scanned her body. “A little slip like you? Shoving around thousand-pound cows?” A soft chuckle. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m not a slip. I’m five eight and weigh—”

“One-twenty.”

Her turn to blink.

“I’m a doctor. I know the human body.”

He was…Michael Rowan? Top surgeon at Blue Springs General? Well, no doubt he knew the female body best of all, then. With that face, he probably had a different girlfriend every weekend.

“You need to eat more,” he continued, jerking her rumination off balance. “You’re at least fifteen pounds underweight.”

“Excuse me?” So she didn’t eat properly half the time. He didn’t know her life. Didn’t know she slogged every night at her accounting courses. Of her need for a career, a stable source of income. Dr. Michael Rowan knew nothing about her.

His eyes softened abruptly. “I apologize. Bad habit I have, giving unwanted medical advice. Need to curb that.” A tiny smile altered the line at the edge of his mouth.

She nodded. “Just tell me where I can find M. Nelson.” In minutes she’d be out of his hair, out of his life.

“She’s out of town.”

“Your foreman’s a woman?”

“No foreman. My grandmother.” In a placid state his eyes were dull silver. “A combination of family names as well as ownership. I didn’t want the clinic staff hounded with a bunch of calls.” He tilted his head, a pleat between his black brows. “You were to answer the ad through The Blue Sentinel.”

Her face warmed. She had wanted to impact with charm, wit and intelligence. Face-to-face. Michael Rowan, she saw, was not a man easily impacted. “Well,” she said. “I’m probably late, anyway.” The ad had run in three issues of the biweekly paper.

He studied the horse in the distance. “How’d you know it was Rowan Dairy?”

“Word gets around.”

Weariness marked his eyes as he studied her. Scraping his hands down stubbled cheeks, he released pent-up air. “Again, my apologies.” He held out a hand. “Michael Rowan.” His fingers wrapped around hers, warm and firm. His look wrapped around her heart, cool and steady. She let go.

“I know. We went to the same high school.” The way his eyebrows took flight had her lips twitching. “I was beginning middle school when you graduated.”

“McKay… The name’s familiar. Have you been to the clinic?”

“I don’t get sick.”

“Live around here, then?”

“In Blue Springs.”

“I see.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his black dress pants and looked at her as if he could see beyond her skin, into her body. Into her.

She turned toward the knapsack sitting in the dirt by the gate. Hoisting the bag to her shoulder, she said, “I need this job, Doctor Rowan. Are you hiring?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

His hands came free of their pockets. Dust scuffed his shoes as he walked toward her. “On your expertise.”

“Four years, three months.”