Page 13 of The Cowboy's Redemption
The inside of the enormous horse barn was clean and unoccupied. She’d heard that one of the Endeavour’s owners raised Tennessee Walkers, but according to Levi, his horses were pastured outside, so Lady would have the barn to herself for the night.
“Sorry about that,” Levi said.
Male aggression was nothing new in her world. She dismissed it with an airy flick of her hand. “You and Colin handled it well.”
Levi unlatched a stall lined with a thick bedding of clean shavings. Dana coaxed Lady inside while he grabbed a bale of alfalfa hay, broke it apart, and dumped thick flakes of the hay into a feed trough. She found an empty bucket next to the stall and filled it with water from a tap partway down the barn aisle.
“Here, let me get that for you.” Levi reached past her to scoop up the bucket’s wire bail from her hand. Her shoulder bumped against his chest. The bucket was full, and water sloshed over its rim, narrowly missing the toe of her boot, leaving dark, wet patches spreading outward on the smooth concrete floor.
“Whoops.” Dana zigged to the right.
Levi swung left. More water splashed. He set the bucket down.
“Would you care to dance?” he gravely inquired, laughter filling his eyes.
He lifted her off her feet. His thumbs pressed into the flesh beneath her breasts. Strong fingers caged her ribs. A small gasp of surprise flew out of her lungs, and she seized hold of his shoulders. Her heart did a quivering mambo.
Yes. Yes, she would care to dance. Among other things.
Because sexual awareness was far more compelling when exchanged with a mature, handsome man than a sixteen-year-old boy—or a boy of any age, for that matter—and her curiosity as to what he’d be like in bed flared again. It curled around her breasts and slithered into her stomach, sinking low in her belly and caressing the insides of her thighs. Familiar scents of horse and leather, mingled with warm, well-laundered cotton, hit her like a drug and she breathed deeply.
He set her firmly to one side and out of his way. The pads of his thumbs scored the soft undersides of her breasts. The soles of her boots connected with concrete. Her knees shook beneath the abrupt return of her weight, pitching her forward into the solid wall of his chest.
She tipped her head back to examine his face. Common sense lost out to longing. Her palms slid from his shoulders, then hung in the air, undecided, before her fingertips arrowed upward to sweep the width of his cheeks.
The amusement in his eyes shifted to something far more intense and her fingertips staggered. Common sense raised a yellow flag, forcing her brain to engage. This was Levi.Levi.Her head spun in a thousand directions.
He dropped his eyes and his hands and got back to business as if nothing had just passed between them. He reached for the discarded bucket. “There’s grain in one of those bins if you want to give some to Lady.”
Keeping busy with a task she could manage without thinking until her head pulled itself together was an excellent idea right now.
Levi slung the bucket onto its eyehook in Lady’s stall. Dana added a few scoops of grain to the feed bucket that hung in the opposite corner. Lady made herself at home, more interested in the bucket and the bedding than the humans, so they left her alone.
Levi flicked the lights off on their way out, plunging the barn into darkness behind them, and he drew the doors closed. Outside, in the barnyard, the boys and their counselor were nowhere to be seen, leaving Levi and Dana surrounded by nothing but buildings and pastures and night. They were alone, too.
“We can hook up your trailer to the water supply or you can sleep in one of the guest cabins. Your choice,” Levi said.
“Cabin.”
That way, her trailer would be ready to go at first light. All she’d have to do was load Lady. There was the matter of the group home, as well. The boys were young offenders. She’d feel a great deal more comfortable with a solid door to lock behind her when she went to bed.
Except she wasn’t ready for sleep, and the trailer walls were too thin.
It was almost as if he was reading her mind. Pieces of it, at least. “Those two bunkhouses down that path belong to the group home,” he said, pointing. “There’s no need to worry, in case you have any concerns. The ranch has surveillance cameras installed, and the boys are closely monitored by the counselors. They’re here because they show potential, not because they aren’t problems. They have to be in their own bunkhouses by ten and then it’s lights-out at midnight. Morning chores start in shifts at six a.m. The ranch hands oversee those. The boys are never alone. Ryan’s orders.”
She gathered her courage. There was no time like the present to find out if they’d just had a moment. If there was a connection, no matter how slight.
“Where do you sleep?” she asked, her crazy heart pounding.
She wasn’t interested in a commitment. She simply missed a man’s touch—ofbeingwith one—and Levi was the first in a very long time to remind her of why. It would be for one night, and no one ever needed to know.
She didn’t need to spend the whole night in his bunkhouse. Just a few hours.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Blond eyebrows rose, synchronized with an uptick of his lips. A flush of dull red crept out of his collar, proving his thoughts hadn’t followed the same line as hers and she’d misread him. She wished she could take back the question, but she could have sworn the attraction between them was mutual.
It only took a few seconds for the charming smile to reappear. “I share a bunkhouse with three of the hands. It makes sleepovers awkward,” he said.
She flushed hot, then cold. She’d been rejected. All she could do now was save face and try to act as if propositioning men was an everyday occurrence for her. “I imagine it would.”
