Pamela Britton - Cowboy Lessons

“Can you move your legs and arms?”

“Do you have puppet strings ’cause I think that’s the only way they’ll work.”

She immediately looked concerned again.

“Kidding. Kidding,” he gasped, gasped because he tried to sit up to show her that he was a real man who could shake off a fall from a horse, and that he had faith in her if she thought he looked okay enough to move.

“Here.” She offered her hand again.

He took it this time, everything within him stilling as his own large hand encased her slender fingers. He’d never thought of himself as having particularly large hands before, but he felt downright cavemanish as he clasped hers.

“You okay?” she asked, spoiling the fantasy he’d had of dragging her off by the hair and out behind the barn, which only proved that he must have crowned himself harder than he thought, because he never had caveman thoughts about women he’d only just met.

He managed to sit up, put on his best game face, and say “I’m fine.”

She tugged on his hand again, urging him to stand, which he did, reluctantly, the brand-new jeans and red-and-white-checkered shirt he wore coated in dirt.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

He kind of liked her concern for his well-being. Frankly, it made him understand why cowboys did such stupid things like strap themselves to bulls and jump off horses mid-gallop. The sympathy factor obviously really worked. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She studied him a second longer, her wide mouth pressing into a thin line, her blue eyes narrowing just a tad before she said, “Good, then leave.”

He thought he’d misheard her, even shook his head a bit to dispel the arena dust that must have plugged his ear canal. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said leave the ranch, Mr. Beringer.”

The horse had stopped near the opposite end of the arena, Scott noticed, the man who’d mounted him on the beast—the former owner of the ranch—having caught the bronc. Obviously, the person who’d been standing next to him earlier had been her. Terrific. She’d seen his cannonball.

The woman with angry eyes crossed her arms. Scott was aware for the first time that she was tall. She had to be if she was shoulder level to his six-foot-three frame. “Leave,” she repeated. “You low-down, dirty thief.”

Thief? Uh-oh. Obviously she’d heard about the change of ownership of the ranch. “I didn’t steal it.”

“Not technically, but close enough.”

“Buying property by paying the delinquent back taxes is perfectly legal.”

“Legal, yes. Ethical, no. In my mind it’s like fore-closing on a mortgage.”

Well, put that way he could kind of see her point. Kind of.

“You stole my father’s land,” she said, lifting her hand and pushing her index finger into his chest. She looked momentarily startled to find that it wasn’t soft flesh. Hah. Gym. Four days a week.

“And I aim to get it back,” she finished, flexing the finger she’d poked him with as if she’d hurt it.

Her father? “Look, it’s not like I’m going to force him from his house. As I told him earlier, I want him to stay on.”

She snorted, crossing her arms in front of her, that pretty hair of hers flicked over one shoulder angrily. “You couldn’t force him out if you wanted to.”

He almost pointed out to her that he really could, if he wanted to. But the fact of the matter was, he didn’t. He’d acquired their ranch because of the investment value, but as he stared around him, he realized he truly liked the place. The two-story farmhouse looked charming with its wraparound porch. An ancient-looking barn, turned a dusky gray, stood not far from the arena, and multiple cross-fenced pastures stretched out behind it. It was hard to believe they were less than an hour from the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, and San Francisco’s East Bay was right over the hill.

“Another thing,” she added, as if the laundry list she’d pronounced wasn’t enough. “You have no business riding a horse that isn’t yours.”

“But it is mine.”

“You lying—” She struggled not to cuss. He could see that. “That horse belongs to my father.”

“And I bought it from him.”

“You what?”

For just a second Scott found himself studying her face. Anger set her whole cheeks aglow. Her ears were tipped in red. A spot on her brow, right above her nose wrinkled, delightfully. Even her small nose looked adorably red.

“Your dad sold it to me.”

“My dad—” She looked momentarily speechless. “My dad sold you Rocket?”

Now it was Scott’s turn to be surprised. “Is that his name?”

She nodded.

A new respect for the grizzled old cowboy who’d suckered him for two thousand dollars filled Scott. “He told me it was Buttercup.”

She snorted again.

And then a new thought penetrated Scott’s mind. “I could have been killed.”

She gave him a look of mock sympathy. “I doubt you’d have been mourned for too long.”

“Thanks,” he said. Well, he supposed he couldn’t blame her for being snippy. But still…He really had saved her father from being evicted, because he knew for a fact someone else had been right behind him ready to pay the tax bill. Literally. The guy had been at the window with him. But he decided not to argue the point.

“I really don’t intend to turn your father out.”

She didn’t look in the least bit grateful for his intervention. As a matter of fact, she looked like that model he’d dated, right after he’d told her he thought she looked cute now that she’d gained some weight.

“You don’t intend to turn him out,” she said, shifting her weight onto one foot in a hip-jutting motion that Scott couldn’t help but notice was really sexy. “Well, gee, Mr. Beringer, thanks ever so much. Considering this ranch has been in my family for three generations, that’s very kind of you.”

“Kindness is my middle name.”

He’d been trying to make a joke. She didn’t take it that way.

“Get out,” she grated through teeth clenched like Thurston Howell’s from Gilligan’s Island. “Forget about the horse. I’ll have my father mail you your money back.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s kind of hard to be a cowboy without a horse.”

AMANDA THOUGHT SHE’D misheard him. Frankly, she must have had the same expression on her face as he’d had when she’d told him to get off her father’s land.

No, his land.

She fought back a hiss of anger. Why the heck her father had waited until today to tell her about the tax lien, she had no idea, but it was hard to say who she was more angry with: her father for not sharing the trouble the ranch was in, or Mr. Scott Beringer, Silicon Valley billionaire.

Oh, yeah, she knew who he was. She’d recognized him the moment she’d seen him at her feet. Her father’s robber baron was none other than the reclusive boy wonder of the software industry.

“What do you mean, ‘be a cowboy’?”

He smiled in a friendly sort of way, not that she had any intention of being that. “I want to learn to be a cowboy. Well, a rancher, really.”

She digested the words for a second while she tried to come to grips with the fact that he really must be the nutcase the press made him out to be. A formidable nutcase, she reminded herself. Someone who did whatever it took to get what he wanted, at least if the newspapers were to be believed. But it was obviously true, because look how he’d acquired their land.

“Mr. Beringer, I think you’ve been inhaling too many silicon fumes.”

He shrugged. Puffs of dust rose from his dirty red-and-white-checkered shirt. He looked ridiculous. Like a cross between Gene Autry and Buddy Holly with those thick-framed black glasses and wide green eyes. And yet…cute.