Her Last Chance. Deanna Talcott
eyes moved over her lips, and he wondered, insanely, what it would be like to nibble the softness he saw there. “No, not a piece of meat, not at all. All I see is…nice,” he revised. “Tough, as in…determined. Yes, determined, I’ll give you that.”
“Mmm. You make that ‘pistol packin’ mama’ thing sound…desirable.”
Desirable. Not a word choice he needed to hear. Chase hesitated, painfully aware they’d moved imperceptibly closer to each other. His hip was against the countertop; hers was, too. Their bodies seemed to move with a will of their own, leaning, straining nearer. His breathing was shallow, his nerve endings tingled with anticipation.
It would only take one move.
One.
He vaguely wondered if, in Narwhal, they beheaded red-blooded American men for compromising unmarried women?
It just might be worth it.
Mallory drew a deep, cleansing breath, and Chase noticed it was just enough to make her breasts shudder beneath her silky white top.
So. The heady game they were playing was getting to her, too.
“It is desirable,” he said huskily. “It’s also sexy as hell.”
Her eyes widened, as if she was startled and taken completely off guard by the suggestive comment.
“I have to finish the coffee cups,” she said abruptly, turning back to the sink and plunging her hands into the dishwater. “Then I’ll take a walk before it gets dark and get a little fresh air. Will you join me?”
Chase stared at her profile. The upturned nose, the graceful curve of her jaw. No. Absolutely not. Being in the dark, with a little moonlight and few freckles of stars in a blue-black sky, with a woman like Mallory—a woman who made his hands itch and his blood pound—was an invitation to trouble. “Nah,” he said, brushing aside the invitation. “Go ahead. I’ve got some reading to catch up on.”
Mallory tossed the coffee cups in the dish drainer and pulled the plug on the sink. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
A hint of disappointment clouded her features.
She probably wasn’t used to being rejected, he thought irritably as he reached for last week’s stock market analysis. Either that or she liked to call the shots on everything, even a tumble through the sheets.
Yet, when she strolled out the back door and into the gathering dusk, it was he who experienced the greatest regret.
Chase couldn’t concentrate; nothing he’d read made any sense. Mallory was probably fine, but he shouldn’t have let her go out by herself. He glanced at the clock. She’d been gone almost an hour, and it was dark. Maybe she’d started talking to one of the hands; they followed her like lapdogs whenever they had the chance. Gabe, a fresh-faced twenty-year-old, loved to brag to her about his bull-riding exploits. Tony, with a couple of drops of Spanish blood running through his veins, had started wearing clean shirts and peppering his sentences with “señorita” every time she was near—as if he’d been raised across the border instead of in Boise.
Tossing the paperwork on the table, he stretched his legs, crossing one booted foot over the other. He may as well admit it, the woman was wreaking havoc with his senses and with his life. When she went home, he imagined he and his ranch hands would feel as if someone had taken the plug out of the fourteen-karat sunshine she seemed to spread.
She sure knew her horses, he’d give her that. She may have claimed she didn’t want blue-ribbon horseflesh, but all her petty criticisms said otherwise. He grinned, remembering her lame excuse for not wanting Pritchett, the last mare he’d offered her.
Her ears were just a little “too pointy.” Yep. Pointy ears would get you every time.
Chase flexed his hand and studied the bandage, remembering the way Mallory’s fingers brushed against the sensitive spot inside his wrist as she examined his palm. His flesh still tingled, nearly blotting out all the pain.
Huh. The way Peggy Sue was having at him, she made him look like a beat-up cowpoke who didn’t have one lick of horse sense. Yesterday she’d stomped on his instep, the day before she’d charged him, catching his shoulder against the wall. The duplicitous little vixen had astounding strength, even though she was so sickly, most days she could barely hold her head up. It was time to make a decision about what to do with her—and the sooner the better. She was beginning to be a risk, even a liability. His reasons for keeping her were beginning to dwindle and fade.
He flexed his hand again and grimaced. He didn’t know why he was spending so much of his time thinking about Mallory, because it was Peggy Sue who was leaving her mark on him.
Painfully he hauled himself out of the chair and dragged his weary body over to the door. Snagging his hat from the peg, he pulled it low over his eyes. “Time to find the little woman,” he muttered.
The moment he stepped out on the back porch and saw that the sliding door to the east barn had been pushed open, a feeling of dread washed over him. The overhead light inside the barn was on. He immediately forgot his pain, and his boot heels barely hit the stair treads as he picked up the pace.
The moment he slipped inside the barn he knew. He could hear Mallory’s soft, crooning voice. He heard Peggy Sue whicker in answer. His heart did a double-time dance in his chest, and his blood went cold.
If anything happened to her…
The door to Peggy Sue’s stall was open. Chase’s knees went weak.
Barely breathing, he inched down the alleyway, until he was even with her stall.
Peggy Sue immediately tossed her magnificent white head, going wild-eyed, as her nose curled to expose bared teeth. The filly, even though she was on the small side, carried herself with a regal, haughty stature. Her alabaster coat faded into steel gray dappling over her rump. Her long mane and tail, also white, was tangled and dirty.
“Whoa, baby, what’s the matter?” Mallory murmured. With her back to Chase, she stood at Peggy Sue’s withers, and ran a hand down her neck. In her opposite hand she held a currycomb.
“Mallory,” Chase said quietly, “get out of that stall now.”
Mallory whirled, surprised by his entrance. “I found her, Chase,” she said breathlessly, her face animated. “The one I want. This is it! This is the horse I’ve been looking for!”
Behind her, Peggy Sue startled, her front feet coming a foot off the ground.
“Mallory, I said get out of that stall. Now.”
Mallory lost her balance and stumbled as Peggy Sue bumped her shoulders, her back. But Mallory, unfazed, squared off, planting her feet. “She’s wonderful, she’s spirited, she’s—”
“She’s going to kill you. Now, get out.”
Mallory’s eyes flashed and she straightened. “Don’t be silly,” she laughed. “I don’t care what this horse costs. I have to have her. She’s all I’ve ever imagined—and more.”
Chase’s muscles tensed. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Mallory.”
“Oh, but I do,” she said, leaning back and affectionately sinking her shoulder blades against Peggy Sue’s neck. Chase’s eyes briefly shuttered closed, willing the animal not to swing around and take a sizable bite out of her. “This horse is the thing legends are made of,” she said, her voiced filled with awe. “She’s a descendant of European stock. Her neck. Her head. Her coloring.”
“That horse,” Chase warned, his voice low, the cadence carefully measured, “is the meanest, orneriest she-devil this side of the Mississippi. She’s got mixed blood in her. Mustang and Morgan. And she’s not for sale. She’s sick and mean and crazy. Now, either you get out of that stall, or I’m taking you out.”
Mallory’s