Rancher and Protector

Anything for Dee.

She turned back to the horse. Its name was Flash, or so she’d read outside the stall. She hoped that didn’t mean it’d trample her in a flash.

“It goes the other way,” he told her when she held up the halter.

Oh, yeah. That was right. She’d been told that by Jarrod, the man who was supposed to mentor her through the process. He’d shown her how to halter a horse yesterday. Obviously, she hadn’t been paying attention too well. She flipped the thing around.

“Not that way,” Colton said with a small shake of his handsome head. She hated overly attractive men. They always made her feel so … so uncomfortable.

“The hole goes over the nose,” he added. “The long strap buckles behind the horse’s ears.”

“Right …” she murmured.

“Here.” The stall gate, which was on rollers, whooshed open like supermarket doors. “I’ll do it for you.”

“No, no,” she said quickly, her feet bogged down in wood chips once again. He was tall. That was another thing she didn’t like. Tall men intimidated the hell out of her. Jarrod, the registered hippotherapist she was working with, was short and blond. She could deal with short and blond.

She could deal with this, too. “I can do it.”

She heard the stall door close with a bang just the same, and the sound startled Flash.

What followed was not Amber’s proudest moment.

She shrieked; the horse turned away from her. The back end of the animal bashed into the wall with a boom, sending dust and debris down from the rafters. Her feet became entangled in the wood chips again. She started to fall….

He kept her from going down with a hand against her shoulder.

“Sorry about that,” he told her. “I didn’t think it would close so easily.”

You idiot, she wanted to say. But he wasn’t paying attention to her, anyway. Flash was now dancing around the stall as if Amber was a monster.

“Don’t move,” Colton told her. “Easy there.”

Easy? There was nothing easy about this horse. The iron-shod animal had to be at least six feet tall.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I don’t mean to sound panicked, but shouldn’t we get out of here while the getting’s good?”

He appeared to be sizing her up. “We’ll be fine,” he said, stepping toward the horse.

Over her shoulder, she could see that the brown beast was back to eyeing her nervously. Its swishing tail sounded like a jump rope in motion.

“No offense,” she said, “but are you sure you’re qualified to give direction to nonhorsey people?” After all, it was his fault the animal was acting up.

She saw Colton’s eyebrows rise. They were a little too thick for her taste. “I’ve spent a lot of time on ranches.”

“And I’ve spent a lot of time in a city. Doesn’t mean I know how to teach people to drive.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a cowboy smile—which was more of a smirk. “Point taken. I’ve ridden horses my entire life. I’m comfortable sharing what I know.”

“In that case,” she said. “I’m really glad to meet you, Colton. I’m Amber Brooks.”

“Colt,” he quickly corrected. “And I know. You’re an intern here. You’re learning to become a hippotherapist.”

“I’m actually one of the camp’s speech therapists, too. Hippotherapy is just something I’m hoping to study while I’m here.”

He was giving her that look again. The one that made her want to wiggle like a worm on a hook. “Don’t take this wrong, but you sure you want to work with horses?”

“No.”

“No?”

She turned toward Flash, releasing a sigh. How to explain her life? How to explain about Dee, the nephew she loved so much? How to explain the situation with Dee’s dad? That Sharron was dead, and that Dee’s father was in jail … because he’d killed her sister. Not intentionally, but just about.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

And she shouldn’t explain, anyway. The fact was Dee had been enrolled in Camp Cowboy this season, and the only one who knew that was the camp director, Gil. Amber planned to keep it that way, too.

“Try me,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, seriously, it’s not worth getting into. I just want to learn about horses. Hippotherapy intrigues me.”

And there he went, staring at her again. It was the oddest sort of look. As if he was trying to peel back the rind of a pomegranate, to get to the ruby-red seeds beneath. “You don’t look like any kind of therapist,” he mused.

“That’s because I left my thick-framed glasses in my room.”

He smirked again. “So you mind me asking why someone who doesn’t know a thing about horses, and who doesn’t want to become a hippotherapist, is trying to put a halter on one?”

She had to turn away.

“I’m an equine intern. That means I’ll be lending a hand with the kids throughout the next few weeks. That means working with horses, obviously, so I need to get used to them. The horses, I mean.”

She sneezed before she could stop herself. The horse’s head popped up, and she braced herself for impact.

Nothing happened.

Flash returned to nuzzling the ground, apparently intrigued with something it found there. Ah. Food.

“Should I bother it while it’s eating?”

“Nope. Horses are always looking for something to munch. If you wait for him to stop, you’ll be standing there all day.”

Damn, but his accent was really Southern. “If you say so.” She gave Flash the same look she used when dealing with a petulant child. “Horse, prepare to be haltered.”

COLT ALMOST LAUGHED.

Almost.