âI think of you a lot. And the baby.â
Her curiosity got the best of her. âDo you?â
He faced her and, if it werenât hot enough already outside, her cheeks instantly heated beneath his intense scrutiny.
âIn fact, I think about that night a lot.â
âHmm. The sex.â
âNot the sex.â He dipped his head. âThough, it was good. Mighty good.â
âCole, we canât.â She moved away, putting some much-needed distance between them.
He stopped her with a gentle tug on her elbow. âWhat I think about is the talking. The holding. The sleeping in each otherâs arms and waking up together with you beside me. The smell of your hair and the softness of your skin.â
Vi could feel her resistance slowly melting.
Chapter One
âEasy does it, Hotshot.â
Cole Dempsey nudged the paint gelding slowly forward. One step, two steps, then wait.
The six steers at the end of the corral shifted nervously and bunched closer together. Several ears twitched impatiently. Every pair of eyes stared unblinkingly. No one, not horse, rider or steer, moved for a full thirty seconds.
âSee him?â Cole murmured. âNumber 497.â
As if in answer, Hotshot turned his head to the left, something horses did to bring an object into better focus. In this case, it was the steer with the white patch on his chest. The one getting ready to bolt.
Cole was pleased. What the horse lacked in experience he made up for with inherent cow sense. A few more monthsâ training under his belt, and Hotshot would make a respectable, if not outstanding, cutting horse. Cole might even cross-train the horse for calf roping. Along with cow sense, both required speed, agility and fearlessness.
âLetâs go!â He pushed Hotshot into a quick run at the small herd, which split at the center like pins being scattered by a bowling ball.
Number 497 took off, instinctively heading for the gate. Cole and Hotshot followed, matching the steerâs every twist and turn as if attached by an invisible cord. Within seconds, they separated the steer from the rest of the herd and ran him to the far end of the corral. He reached the corner and turned to face them, awaiting his fate.
Cole pulled Hotshot to a stop. In a real team penning event, they would have herded the steer into a small holding pen, then gone after the next one until the required three were rounded up and contained. Today, they settled for simply boxing him in a corner.
âGood job.â Cole reached down to give Hotshot a pat on the neck.
The horse had hardly broken a sweat, while Cole was drenched in it, his hair plastered beneath the tattered straw cowboy hat he wore. Mid-May, early afternoon, and the temperature was already in the high eighties. Southern Arizona tended to be like that, alternating between an oven and a boiler room six months of the year. Far different from northern California, where Cole grew up.
Some might say he hailed from here, Mustang Valley. Technically, theyâd be right. But his mother had taken him and his older brother, Josh, away when Cole was five to live with their grandparents. California was and always would be home to him. Dos Estrellas, his late fatherâs six-hundred-acre cattle ranch, now owned by him, Josh and their half brother, Gabe, was a temporary place for Cole to hang his hat. Nothing more.
As soon as the ranch was free of the debt incurred during their fatherâs lengthy battle with colon cancer, and Coleâs brothers purchased his share, he planned on returning to the rodeo circuit and his life as a professional cowboy.
In the meantime, he filled his days working as a wrangler and learning the cattle business, whether he wanted to or not. Whenever he found a free hour or two, he trained one of Joshâs girlfriendâs rehabilitated mustangs. Hotshot was the first to show potential for being more than a dime-a-dozen ranch horse. The first to light a fire in Cole, albeit a small one.
Practicing on green broke cutting horses wasnât the same as busting broncs or riding a bull, but team penning was a close cousin to rodeo and, for a while anyway, allowed Cole to be his old self.