Page 4 of Frosty in Flannel
And that made him more dangerous than anything else could have.
I carried my suitcase inside and dropped it on the bed, then walked to the back window and stared out at the mountains. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose, and somewhere in the distance I heard the lonely call of a hawk.
This place wasn’t just a fresh start.
It was a reckoning.
Because I wasn’t just here for the untamable horse.
I was here because I’d burned my last job to the ground trying to save an animal no one else thought was worth saving. I’d gone over my boss’s head, called in favors I didn’t have, made enemies of people who mattered.
They said I was too emotional. Too impulsive. That I couldn’t separate my heart from my head.
Maybe they were right.
But I’d rather lose everything than stand by and watch something suffer when I could help.
And now, here I was. In the middle of nowhere, hired to work with a traumatized mustang and a man who looked at the world like it had already taken everything worth having.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes.
I came here to heal horses,I repeated to myself again.Not to fall for broken men.
Chapter Two
Beckett
I hadn’t slept.
Hadn’t really expected to, but I’d hoped the exhaustion would drag me under eventually. It didn’t. Instead, I’d laid there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind move through the pines and trying not to think about the woman sleeping fifty yards away.
Libby James.
Even her name sounded soft. Pretty. The kind of name that belonged to someone who smiled easy and believed the world was fixable if you just tried hard enough.
I’d known her for all of three hours, and she was already under my skin.
That was a problem.
I rolled out of bed before dawn, pulled on jeans and boots, and headed to the barn. Work was the answer. It always was. Keep moving. Keep busy. Eventually the noise in your head quieted down to something manageable.
The barn was dark and silent when I let myself in, just the soft sounds of horses shifting in their stalls and the creak of old wood settling. I flipped on the lights in the feed room and started measuring out grain, going through the motions I’d done a thousand times before.
But my mind wasn’t on the work.
It was on her.
The way she’d leaned against that stall gate yesterday, arms folded, watching me with those blue eyes that saw too damn much. The way she’d stepped back when I told her the horse didn’t need more voices—not offended, just... understanding.
And that moment when our fingers brushed. Half a second of contact that I’d felt everywhere.
When the hell was the last time I’d been so affected by a woman?
The fucking answer was never.
Oh, I’d had my share of women before the accident. Even a few afterwards.
But her. My body—hell, everything inside me—had never reacted that instantly.
