Claim Me, Cowboy

“You didn’t grow up around horses?”

“No,” she said, taking a timid step toward the paddock. “I grew up in Portland.”

He nodded. “Right.”

“Always in apartments,” she said. Then she frowned. “I think one time we had a house. I can’t really remember it. We moved a lot. But sometimes when we lived with my mom’s boyfriends, we had nicer places. It had its perks.”

“What did?”

“My mom being a codependent hussy,” she said, her voice toneless so it was impossible to say whether or not she was teasing.

“Right.” He had grown up in one house. His family had never moved. His parents were still in that same farmhouse, the one his family had owned for a couple of generations. He had moved away to go to college and then to start the business, but that was different. He had always known he could come back here. He’d always had roots.

“Will you go back to Portland when you’re finished here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I’ve never really had a choice before. Of where I wanted to live.”

It struck him then that she was awfully young. And that he didn’t know quite how young. “You’re twenty-two?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding almost defensive. “So I haven’t really had a chance to think about what all I want to do and, like, be. When I grow up and stuff.”

“Right,” he said.

He’d been aimless for a while, but before he’d graduated high school, he’d decided he couldn’t deal with a life of ranching in Copper Ridge. He had decided to get out of town. He had wanted more. He had wanted bigger. He’d gone to school for marketing because he was good at selling ideas. Products. He wasn’t necessarily the one who created them, or the one who dreamed them up, but he was the one who made sure a consumer would see them and realize that product was what their life had been missing up until that point.

He was the one who took the straw and made it into gold.

He had always enjoyed his job, but it would have been especially satisfying if he’d been able to start his career by building a business with his brother and sister. To be able to market Faith’s extraordinary talent to the world, as he did now. But he wasn’t sure that he’d started out with a passion for what he did so much as a passion for wealth and success, and that had meant leaving behind his sister and brother too, at first. But his career had certainly grown into a passion. And he’d learned that he was the practical piece. The part that everybody needed.

A lot of people had ideas, but less than half of them had the follow-through to complete what they started. And less than half of those people knew how to get to the consumer. That was where he came in.

He’d had his first corporate internship at the age of twenty. He couldn’t imagine being aimless at twenty-two.

But then, Danielle had a baby and he couldn’t imagine having a baby at that age either.

A hollow pang struck him in the chest.

He didn’t like thinking of babies at all.

“You’re judging me,” she said, taking a step back from the paddock.

“No, I’m not. Also, you can get closer. You can pet them.”

Her head whipped around to look at the horses, then back to him, her eyes round and almost comically hopeful. “I can?”

“Of course you can. They don’t bite. Well, they might bite, just don’t stick your fingers in their mouths.”

“I don’t know,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Except he could tell she really wanted to. She was just afraid.

“Danielle,” he said, earning himself a shocked look when he used her name. “Pet the horses.”

She tugged her hand out of her pocket again, then took a tentative step forward, reaching out, then drawing her hand back just as quickly.

He couldn’t stand it. Between her not knowing what she wanted to be when she grew up and watching her struggle with touching a horse, he just couldn’t deal with it. He stepped forward, wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her closer to the paddock. “It’s fine,” he said.

A moment after he said the words, his body registered what he had done. More than that, it registered the fact that she was very warm. That her skin was smooth.

And that she was way, way too thin.

A strange combination of feelings tightened his whole body. Compassion tightened his heart; lust tightened his groin.

He gritted his teeth. “Come on,” he said.

He noticed the color rise in her face, and he wondered if she was angry, or if she was feeling the same flash of awareness rocking through him. He supposed it didn’t matter either way. “Come on,” he said, drawing her hand closer to the opening of the paddock. “There you go, hold your hand flat like that.”

She complied, and he released his hold on her, taking a step back. He did his best to ignore the fact that he could still feel the impression of her skin against his palm.

One of his horses—a gray mare named Blue—walked up to the bars and pressed her nose against Danielle’s outstretched hand. Danielle made a sharp, shocked sound, drew her hand back, then giggled. “Her whiskers are soft.”

“Yeah,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips. “And she is about as gentle as they come, so you don’t have to be afraid of her.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Danielle said, sticking her hand back in, letting the horse sniff her.

He didn’t believe that she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was definitely tough. But she was brittle. Like one of those people who might withstand a beating, but if something ever hit a fragile spot, she would shatter entirely.

“Would you like to go riding sometime?” he asked.

She drew her hand back again, her expression... Well, he couldn’t quite read it. There was a softness to it, but also an edge of fear and suspicion.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“You seem to like the horses.”

“I do. But I don’t know how to ride.”

“I can teach you.”

“I don’t know. I have to watch Riley.” She began to withdraw, both from him and from the paddock.

“I’m going to hire somebody to help watch Riley,” he said, making that decision right as the words exited his mouth.

There was that look again. Suspicion. “Why?”

“In case I need you for something that isn’t baby friendly. Which will probably happen. We have over a month ahead of us with you living with me, and one never knows what kinds of situations we might run into. I wasn’t expecting you to come with a baby, and while I agree that it will definitely help make the case that you’re not suitable for me, I also think we’ll need to be able to go out without him.”

She looked very hesitant about that idea. And he could understand why. She clung to that baby like he was a life preserver. Like if she let go of him, she might sink and be in over her head completely.

“And I would get to ride the horses?” she asked, her eyes narrowed, full of suspicion still.

“I said so.”

“Sure. But that doesn’t mean a lot to me, Mr. Grayson,” she said. “I don’t accept people at their word. I like legal documents.”

“Well, I’m not going to draw up a legal document about giving you horse-riding lessons. So you’re going to have to trust me.”

“You want me to trust the sketchy rich dude who put an ad in the paper looking for a fake wife?”

“He’s the devil you made the deal with, Ms. Kelly. I would say it’s in your best interest to trust him.”

“We shake on it at least.”

She stuck her hand out, and he could see she was completely sincere. So he stuck his out in kind, wrapping his fingers around hers, marveling at her delicate bone structure. Feeling guilty now about getting angry over her eating his Pop-Tarts. The woman needed him to hire a gourmet chef too. Needed him to make sure she was getting three meals a day. He wondered how long it had been since she’d eaten regularly. She certainly didn’t have the look of a woman who had recently given birth. There was no extra weight on her to speak of. He wondered how she had survived something so taxing as labor and delivery. But those were questions he was not going to ask. They weren’t his business.

And he shouldn’t even be curious about them.

“All right,” she said. “You can hire somebody. And I’ll learn to ride horses.”

“You’re a tough negotiator,” he said, releasing his hold on her hand.

“Maybe I should go into business.”

He tried to imagine this fragile, spiky creature in a boardroom, and it nearly made him laugh. “If you want to,” he said, instead of laughing. Because he had a feeling she might attack him if he made fun of her. And another feeling that if Danielle attacked, she would likely go straight for the eyes. Or the balls.

He was attached to both of those things, and he liked them attached to him.

“I should go back to the house. Riley might wake up soon. Plus, I’m not entirely sure if I trust the new baby monitor. I mean, it’s probably fine. But I’m going to have to get used to it before I really depend on it.”

“I understand,” he said, even though he didn’t.

He turned and walked with her back toward the house. He kept his eyes on her small, determined frame. On the way, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders forward. As though she were trying to look intimidating. Trying to keep from looking at her surroundings in case her surroundings looked back.

And then he reminded himself that none of this mattered. She was just a means to an end, even if she was a slightly more multifaceted means than he had thought she might be.

It didn’t matter how many facets she had. Danielle Kelly needed to fulfill only one objective. She had to be introduced to his parents and be found completely wanting.

He looked back at her, at her determined walk and her posture that seemed to radiate with I’ll cut you.

Yeah. He had a feeling she would fulfill that objective just fine.

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