Page 23 of Our Sweet Destiny
Chapter Fourteen
STALLIONS WERE TEMPERAMENTAL, moody, and far too strong for most people to ride. Jade was not most people. She’d loved Flame from the moment her father had brought him home a handful of years before. He’d had such a sweet disposition and a stellar pedigree that it seemed wrong to keep the boy isolated, and she’d insisted on his socialization. She was glad she had. Flame was a happy, well-adjusted stallion who had a remarkable ability to stay on the calm side of his raging hormones.
The other horses whinnied as Jade knelt on the stiff hay and checked Flame’s leg. She stroked his ribs and ran her hand slowly down his strong muscles and along his sleek bones. The strength of horses had always captivated Jade. They’d towered over her as a child, all muscle and vigor, and when they ran through the fields with their manes flying out behind them, they took her breath away. From mucking the stalls to grooming their matted, sometimes muddy, manes, the gentle giants had always beguiled her.
Jade gave Flame a kiss on his jaw and put him back in his stall. It had been a week since she first encountered Rex down at the ravine, and when she’d woken up before dawn that morning, she’d lain in bed thinking about him and wondering if he was out riding Hope. She’d stared at her ceiling until she remembered every detail of his face, from the sliver of a line that ran from the left side of his mouth to a dimple beside his chin that appeared only when he smiled in a certain way, to the way he narrowed his eyes right before he kissed her. For a flash of a breath just before their lips met, they’d open wider, then close upon the warmth of their coming together.
Flame nudged her with his nose, pulling her from her fantasy.I have to stop doing that.She couldn’t keep thinking about him. He had done nothing to dissuade her from the just-friends suggestion. She’d thought, for a second, that she’d seen hurt or disappointment in his eyes, but in the next moment it was gone, and then he’d made that stupid remark about horses and depression. She’d just have to force herself to stop thinking about him altogether. Whatever sparks had flown between them had to be extinguished.
As she headed toward the tack room, she tucked her hands into the pockets of her jeans and shivered with the brisk morning chill. She pulled one of the barn doors closed, and when she reached for the other, she heard a rustling in the woods. She followed the sound with her eyes and saw a silhouette. She started, her hand flying to her chest. The figure behind the leaves of the trees came into focus.Rex.
“Geez, you scared me,” she said as she moved toward him. “What are you doing? Spying on me?”
Hope came through the woods to the edge of the grass, then stopped. Rex held her reins loosely in his right hand. With his left, he removed his Stetson and pressed it to his chest.
“It wasn’t my intention to spy on you, but I think that’s what ended up happening,” he admitted.
She smiled and bit her lower lip, trying to quell the excited girl in her who was jumping up and down and squealing,He likes me! He likes me!
“Well, at least you’re not trying to blame Hope.”
Rex leaned forward and patted Hope’s neck. “How could I blame her for knowing just where I needed to be?”
“Rex Braden, you confuse the heck out of me.” She took a few steps closer to him and petted Hope’s cheek.
“I confuse the heck out of me, too,” he said with a shake of his head and a smile.
Her heart swelled when that adorable dimple made a momentary appearance.
“So, is this afriendlyvisit?”Or can I jump up there and make out with you?
He narrowed his eyes as they took a slow stroll down her body. She quivered under his evocative gaze.
He put his hat back on that sexy head of his. Now that Jade knew what it felt like to have his mouth on hers, her hands tangled in his hair, it was just about all she could think of as he nodded.Please tell me you want more, too.
“Friends, just as you said,” he answered.
Friends? Friends!Her blood simmered. “Friends don’t ogle friends like that.” She spun on her heel and went into the barn, slamming the enormous door behind her.
