Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) (3 page)

Logan was holding out his hand, looking down at her like it didn’t occur to him she’d decline to take it. “Hop on. It’ll be faster.”

She did it almost automatically, toe finding the stirrup he’d momentarily vacated, arm flexing against the pull of their clasped hands for leverage as she lifted off. There was an awkward moment as she shifted into position against the back of the saddle, when she grabbed for leather and may or may not have accidentally groped a certain amount of denim-clad cowboy butt along the way. Then she had to figure out where to put her hands, finally settling them on Logan’s waist as Charley started the short stroll to the barn.

Lamar assessed Mindy’s skills as rusty but adequate, and matched her to a slightly standoffish but soft-mouthed bay mare with a gait like flowing water. Mindy hadn’t been on horseback since leaving Bolero, but she found that after a few minutes, it all started coming back to her. Even out of practice, she could tell when she was riding a quality animal.

“This is no rescue horse,” she called to Logan, who watched from Charley’s back as Mindy put the mare through her paces.

“You’re right about that. Poppy is my mom’s horse, actually. I’m not supposed to let the customers ride her, but she needs the exercise. And you’re sort of similar to an old friend, so I think I can get away with it. You used to ride dressage, right?”

A lifetime ago, all through elementary and into middle school. She had stopped competing when she started cheerleading in high school, because there just wasn’t enough time in the day. When her family moved to Dallas, they’d taken their horses, but her dad had kept them in the divorce he’d initiated a few months later.

“It’s been a while,” she admitted.

“You’ve still got a great seat.”

His smile was too slow and broad to be anything but suggestive. He was confident in a way that bordered on arrogance, and
ping
ed her unique sexual radar loud and clear. He certainly hadn’t ever smiled like
that
back in high school. Although maybe he had, and the braces just spoiled the effect. It was disconcerting, seeing the boy she’d known as this almost too-handsome, too-confident man. She’d recognized him easily enough, some essence of him hadn’t changed . . . but at the same time,
everything
had changed. Mindy didn’t like to think of herself as shallow, so she stuffed down the flashback of water caressing Logan’s sun-kissed chest, the association of him with the smell of warm leather tack, and concentrated instead on the animal beneath her. The little bay mare felt tense, fractious after going too long without a rider. She would take some watching, and Mindy was out of practice. Extra caution would be required.

She swept past Logan and Charley at a slow, controlled canter, and caught his appreciative nod from the corner of her eye. He looked like a good guy in a Western, white horse and all, like the Lone Ranger without the mask to hide his beauty. But that smile was pure Black Bart. Mindy had been foolish and conceited to assume she could wrap him around her finger; she’d be lucky to keep herself from acting like a fool over the man Logan Hill had become.

Extra caution would
definitely
be required.

L
ogan excused himself after only a few minutes of watching her ride, and Mindy tried not to make a spectacle of herself watching him ride away. Watching his horse’s ass, to be specific, since Logan himself never looked back. She wouldn’t admit to herself that she was watching Logan’s ass. She knew herself well enough to know that nothing good ever came from ogling the asses of vanilla men. That way lay only disappointment and bitterness on both sides.

But
damn
. He not only looked like Fantasy Cowboy Dom, he literally smelled like horse, leather, and yes,
man
. If e-books could be worn out through overuse, by now Mindy would have run through several copies of a few cherished romance novels featuring heroes who were more or less Logan Hill captured on the page.

Except for the financial insecurity and the goofy horse
, she reminded herself. A romance novel Dom would be a billionaire oil mogul who ranched as a sideline—J. R. Ewing with a bullwhip. Or some younger, more picturesque version of her stepfather. Never mind that the actual Doms of Mindy’s acquaintance tended to be network analysts, or mid-management types. Or engineers. Fantasies were fantasies for a reason.

“ ’Bout time to call it a night, here,” suggested Lamar from his perch on the paddock rail. “It’ll be supper time soon.”

He hopped down, and Mindy let Poppy have her head to trot in his direction. The mare stopped neatly one pace away from him, making no fuss during dismount. She seemed to have calmed down a bit during the course of even that short ride, and she really was a pleasure to work with; Mindy couldn’t wait to see how she did on the trail.

“So, how have you been, Lamar? You’re not going to tell me I look just the same, too, are you?”

“Logan said that?
Pfft.
Boy’s an idiot. They ain’t feeding you in Dallas, I guess,” the old man chided as he walked the mare back to her stall.

“I just don’t have time to eat.” It was the airy stock response she always gave. Everyone said it, nobody meant it. In her world, the statement was code for
I count every calorie, and spend an hour a day at the gym or in spin class. I have nightmares about hidden carbohydrates. I would kill somebody for a truly guilt-free piece of chocolate cake
.

“That’s a shame.” In Lamar’s world, apparently it just meant you didn’t have time to eat. “You’ll eat good here, Robert knows what he’s doing in the kitchen. And you’ll have time. Enough to do some riding, too. I can see you’re rusty.”

“I haven’t been on a horse since the summer before I left for college. I’m lucky I didn’t just fall right off,” she joked.

She was also rusty with the tack, apologizing to Lamar and Poppy several times in the course of unsaddling as she flipped straps the wrong way and dropped things everywhere. What had once been second nature now felt as awkward as toddling. By the time she slipped the reins back on their hook in the tack room, she felt curiously exhausted.

Lamar was quick to reassure her. “You’ll pick it back up. By the end of the week you’ll be helping me give the lessons again.”

Mindy laughed, recalling all the times she’d helped Lamar and his wife at their boarding stables near her home, giving lessons to younger kids in between training sessions. She’d ridden Western and English dressage back then, back before high school. Before cheerleading and unexpected popularity had siphoned away her free time, and her parents began to push so hard to move away from Bolero. At one point in seventh grade or so, she was sure she and her horse, Jimbo, were destined for international competition, with Lamar as her coach all the way. That seemed like another life entirely now. She’d heard her father had sold Jimbo to some family with a little girl.

“You and Margaret still have the stables?”

The old man tugged at his beard. “Naw, we sold out a couple years ago. Bewliss owns it now. Along with about half the property on Jackson Street. But his daughter, Jane, is doing a good job running it, and she has some good folks giving the lessons. Not too bad.”

“Mr. Bewliss . . . he isn’t still the mayor, is he?”

“Who else? Nobody but him wants the job.”

“Jeez. Things really are just the same.”

“They get more the same every year,” Lamar agreed with a snort. “Maybe you should head into town some time this week, see for yourself.”

Mindy shrugged, noncommittal. She might drive into town—some time when she wasn’t trying to talk herself into doing the job she’d come here for. “We’ll see.”

“You’re wasting your time, you know.”

She was startled enough to stop in her tracks for a second. Lamar kept on walking, and she trotted after him. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me, missy. Logan may not know who the Valek girl ended up going to work for, but I sure do. It’s a small town, and your daddy’s people are still from here, even if your daddy moved away and left you and your momma high and dry. We still get the gossip. I’m happy to see you again, but if that’s your plan for the whole week—nagging my boss about a mineral lease—then you might as well grab your bags and head on out right now, ’cause it ain’t happenin’. Ain’t nobody gonna talk Logan into selling away them rights.” His tone was sympathetic, even if his words were harsh.

“It’s not nagging. It’s negotiation, and it’s what I do for a living.” It was at least what she hoped to do for a living, even if she wasn’t quite there yet. And damn the tiny town grapevine. “And a lease isn’t a sale.” This was technically true—although in Texas, once those rights were leased away and oil exploration started, they were nearly always gone for good in practice. Especially if the exploration was successful.

Lamar shot her a look full of subtext she didn’t want to read. “Suit yourself, then. Guess you’ve changed, after all. Have a good night, Miss Mindy.” It was clearly a dismissal.

“Oh. Well, you, too, Lamar.” After another few steps, she stopped and let him go on without her.

He was clear of the stable yard before she allowed herself to acknowledge what was about to happen. He was going to tell Logan. She’d missed her window. Now Logan would be suspicious of her motives—rightly so—and she’d never even get the chance to sell him on the benefits of a deal. She’d lost, because she hadn’t even realized the game had started long before she stepped foot on the ranch.

Should she have tried to deny it? Claimed that the reasons she’d given Logan for her stay here—which were, after all,
completely true
—were the
complete truth
?

And not only had she screwed up, but she’d gambled a sizable chunk of her savings to pay for this now-pointless “vacation.” Almost a month’s rent, or a few months’ worth of car payments. If she lost the job, though, that month or so of extra cushion really wouldn’t help her much anyway. Or so she tried to tell herself, since she was stuck here now either way.

Fuck
. Stuck, and kind of lost. She should have gotten directions from Lamar. Now she wasn’t even sure which way her cabin was.

Trying to get her bearings, she turned in a slow half circle, taking in the distant barn and stable buildings, the wide lawn and scattered trees in front of the main house . . . and yes, the head of the gravel path that led down the hillside and off toward the guest cabins. Everything was lit in shades of rose gold, as the sun melted into the hilltops. The breeze carried a hint of something sweet and spicy, magnolia maybe, and the soft churring symphony of the evening creatures was tuning up. Despite those noises, it was quiet, so quiet—a deep-in-the-bone stillness that Dallas could never offer her.

Mindy shook her head and cast off the spell of the sunset. She made herself move, setting out for her cabin to get a flashlight before she returned to the main house for dinner. Her practical, analytical mind told her she was too young to be sentimental, and reminded her that even if she lost her job, she’d find another one in Dallas because it was the land of opportunity. Bolero, conversely, was the armpit of Texas, and she’d been thrilled to get out.

Her senses, meanwhile, rejoiced in coming home.

* * *

Logan wanted to punch something.

Jameson
. He wanted to punch Bud fucking Jameson, for spoiling his mood and sending his luscious lackey to spy. If it hadn’t been for Jameson, Logan wouldn’t have seen Mindy Valek again, wouldn’t have thought there was a spark there, wouldn’t have made an idiot of himself staring at her like a lovestruck schoolboy.

Wouldn’t have entertained the notion that she might be staring back. Wouldn’t have ever
seen
her ass, much less gotten fixated on the idea of taking his hand—or a paddle, or maybe even a bullwhip—to it.

What the hell was he thinking? He should have suspected something was up from the first moment he recognized her. A girl like that didn’t come to a dude ranch for a vacation, especially not alone. Former homecoming queens came back to town in state, guest-starring at people’s baby showers and holding court at class reunions. They didn’t need to sneak into the outskirts of town and hide out on a guest ranch, riding horses and shooting guns for a week. There were horses and shooting ranges in Dallas, if Mindy really wanted to do those things.

Of course, there had been horses and ranges in Houston, too, but here Logan was. Almost out of money, certainly out of his depth. But strangely enjoying himself despite the tension. He wanted the ranch to work out, and today he’d actually felt for a time like it might after all. He’d liked meeting the guests, making them comfortable. He was looking forward to the week, getting to know these folks and helping them find things to do with their time at the ranch. He’d been nervous, but it felt right all the same, greeting the little crowd and giving them the rundown. Orchestrating things. It had been fun.

Until Lamar had broken the news that Mindy Valek was an agent of the devil.

Logan didn’t know why she’d bothered to lie about it, to pretend she was here for a vacation. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got at that part. Jameson had obviously gotten tired of the runaround on the phone and sent somebody to confront Logan in person. Somebody who seemed ideal for sweet-talking Logan into this scheme. What would she have told her boss? That Logan Hill was the dweeb who used to tutor her in math? That she could have him eating out of the palm of her hand?

The cynic in him wondered how far she’d intended to go to secure the deal. Flirting? Seduction? Maybe he should milk the situation a little before flat-out telling her it was a waste of her time. He’d come into his own now, figured his shit out, and he was no slouch at mind games; he could have had little Mindy eating out of the palm of
his
hand if he’d wanted to, even without the overtly kinky stuff that would no doubt horrify her.

“Who am I kidding?” Logan mumbled, jerking the refrigerator door open and extracting a frosty longneck. People didn’t do that sort of thing.
He
didn’t do that sort of thing. The cynic in him existed, but it was a puny thing, easily overwhelmed by the manners and values instilled in him since birth. Besides, he was a Dom, not a pickup artist. Mindy might be a manipulative liar, but that didn’t mean she was a tramp bent on sleeping her way into business deals. And even if she was intent on that, it didn’t mean Logan was ever going to take advantage of it. Of her.

Even if it had been a while. Far too long, in fact. Months.
Jesus
.

He took a long pull off his beer and thought about Allison, his ex-girlfriend, currently on a cruise in the Bahamas with the guy she’d started seeing after she left Logan. She’d thought the whole guest-ranch scheme was insane, and she’d told him so. The lack of support had come at the worst possible time; their breakup after that conversation would have been inevitable even if she hadn’t been stuck in Houston for her job. Not that he’d asked her to come to Bolero with him; he’d never even considered that. But he would have been fine with a long-distance relationship. Except it wouldn’t have lasted long, anyway, because he and Allison were already nearly at the end. Knowing that didn’t make the end any easier, though. She hadn’t just scoffed at the plan, she’d scoffed at Logan, calling him a loser and an idiot.

Logan realized soon after she left that Allison had always been kind of a bitch, and that she’d been unpleasantly inclined to top from the bottom. Not that she’d necessarily been wrong about the relative sanity of the scheme to start the ranch back up. And she’d almost certainly been right to assess his use of his life savings for this purpose as less than wise. But she’d been, to his mind, needlessly blunt in her response. He’d seen that quality in her before, but it was different being on the receiving end of it in a non-sexual context.

Allison would definitely call him some choice names for refusing to even discuss a mineral lease with Bud Jameson. It was money on the table, there for the taking, and all he had to do was sign away some rights to parts of his land he never saw anyway. Except that he would see it being wrecked when the oil company inevitably used those “sub-surface” rights to destroy the land in their quest to get at the black gold underneath. He knew
exactly
what the land was worth, and what would happen to it . . . though he was glad Mindy had no idea just how well he knew. Glad he hadn’t told her what
kind
of engineer he was: a petroleum engineer. God only knew who Jameson would’ve sent in her place if she’d reported back
that
little tidbit.

Logan knew what drilling would do to the place, because he’d been around it all his professional life. Fracking would be even worse, if they went that route. He didn’t want that to happen to
his own land
. Even so, from a partial lease the money could help keep him afloat awhile longer. He’d given a lot of thought to leasing.