This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum
not to trample you if you understand his heartfelt desire not to be sold to the nearest glue factory.”
“Something like that.” He grinned at her as he ran his hands down the animal’s flank and across the thick, well defined muscles of his chest. “He’s got decent lines. More than decent, actually. But he’s got a shaky history.”
She braced her elbows over the half door and studied the horse. “You’re right. I’ve had him for less than a month. God knows what happened to him before I found him in that auction. But I’m not giving up on him just yet.”
“Horses like this are unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst, like today. He could kill you in a heartbeat if he took it into his thick head.”
Maggie reached up to scratch Geronimo under his chin. “He’s scared, not mean. I know the difference.”
“Dead’s dead. Nobody will care later what his intentions were.” Cain turned his back on her and finished rubbing the horse’s flanks with the blanket.
“You’re right, “she said evenly. “I’ll be more careful.”
He nodded without reply.
“So…you seem to know your way around horses.”
“Yup.”
Maggie braced her arms across the half door of the stall, resting her chin there. “Huh. A monosylabic résumé. That’s a unique approach.”
He relinquished a small smile. “I thought you weren’t looking for a résumé.”
“I’m not…exactly. Just curious, I guess. You don’t look like the sort of man who’d be drifting, that’s all.”
He gave Geronimo a final pat, then gave her damp hair and battered cheek a fresh perusal. “And sad-eyed beauties dressed in city clothes who sit alone in cafés don’t usually run ranches. So there you go.”
Color crawled up her neck as Cain drew near enough to smell the scent of soap on her. And for the briefest of moments, he had the crazy impulse to bury his face in her hair and simply breathe in the scent of her.
“You’re not the first person who thinks I don’t belong here.”
Cain narrowed his eyes. “I never said that.”
“Well, that puts you miles ahead of the competition.”
“Competition?”
“Never mind.”
She turned and he knew he’d said something wrong. Dammit.
“No, wait. Mrs. Cortland. I may be a little outta practice, but I think I just stepped on your toes. I’m…sorry.”
Maggie turned around, her expression thawing as she hugged herself with her arms. She exhaled slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— It’s been a bad day. You have nothing to do with that.”
“Look—” He stared down at a callus on his hand. “Maybe I should just go.”
“No, don’t. I mean…” She pressed her hands together and he had the oddest feeling that what he’d heard in her voice was desperation. “What I mean is, I still have to feed you. You did say you’d stay for lunch? Right?”
Her eyes had gone dark. Not desperation. Fear. Not of him, but of something. Like a child scared of being alone in the dark, afraid the boogyman would come out of her closet.
He shouldn’t care, he told himself.
No, make that, he didn’t care.
He couldn’t afford to get involved with this woman’s troubles. He had enough of his own. But something about her—maybe it was her stubborn pride—made him want to tell her that everything would be all right. Hold her against him until the worry melted from her eyes.
Hell.
As if he could. As if he had it in him to try. She was a means to an end. That’s all. She’d offered him food and he’d take it and go. Simple. Clean.
No fuss, no muss. That was his motto. And he’d damned well better stick with it if he was ever going to—
“Why don’t you come in and wash up,” she said, before he could finish his thought. Turning abruptly, she headed toward the house. “I hope you don’t mind chicken. I thought I’d fry it.”
Chicken? His mouth watered instantly at the very sound of the word and his empty belly growled.
No fuss, no muss, he thought, falling in behind her with all the self-restraint of a back-door dog.
Yeah, right.
Chapter 3
Four hours and a dozen chores later, Maggie stood in her doorway holding the glass of lemonade she’d poured for Cain, watching him wield an axe over the ancient limb of the oak that had fallen across her yard in the last storm. She hadn’t asked him to do it. He’d insisted. Something about paying her back for the chicken and biscuits she’d fixed him.
She allowed herself a smile, remembering how he’d devoured the meal she’d made him. She suspected that it had been more than a couple of days since his last full meal. It made her wonder about him. A drifter, but not like any drifter she’d ever known. What had brought him to this? Where had he been and what had happened to him?
It was none of her business, of course, and she settled for the fact that she had, in a small way, repaid the debt she owed him for saving her life. How odd, she thought, that it could give her such pleasure, such a simple, old-fashioned thing as watching a man sate his hunger with her cooking. It made her feel useful. Necessary.
But now, as the rhythmic sound of the axe echoed across the shadow-drawn yard, she realized that “necessary” didn’t adequately describe what she was feeling as she watched him. She felt her pulse skitter and told herself she shouldn’t stare. But with his back to her, she indulged herself.
Where Ben had been compact, Cain’s build was lean and powerful. The muscles in his back and arms bunched and flexed as he hefted the axe over his head and brought it down hard against the ancient wood. There was a controlled violence to the way he dismantled that limb. Piece by piece. Stroke by stroke. The only break in his rhythm had come when he’d paused to add the chopped wood into a neat and growing pile that stood now to his left.
He was thinner than he’d been once. She could see that in the way his jeans fit—loose and low on his hips—and in the definition of his ribs. But whatever muscle mass he’d lost to hunger was more than compensated for by the sleek, animal-like grace with which he moved.
It wasn’t so much an economy of motion, she decided, studying him, as it was a deliberateness. She wondered absently where a man like him learned that kind of self-containment. And what in his past that had taught him to always watch his back.
Almost as if he’d heard her thought, he stopped chopping, catching sight of her watching him. Jigger, who’d been lying in the shade watching Cain, too, lifted his big, dark head and thumped his tail happily against the damp soil in greeting.
“You’ve got quite a rapt audience,” she told Cain.
“He’s just keepin’ an eye on me.” Cain wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his wrist and reached for his black T-shirt. “That for me?” he asked, indicating the lemonade.
She pushed away from the door and started toward him. “I thought you might be thirsty.”
He tugged his T-shirt on, then took the glass from her and guzzled down the contents in four serious gulps. Maggie stared, unable to take her eyes off him, or off the stray rivulet of moisture trickling down his chin.
He gave a sigh of satisfaction and dragged a forearm slowly across his mouth, all the while watching her. “Thanks.”
She swallowed hard. Lord, what was wrong with