Brenda Harlen - Six Weeks To Catch A Cowboy

He didn’t have a trailer hitch on his truck and, truthfully, he hadn’t felt up to wrestling with a thousand-pound animal on the eight-hundred-mile journey, so he’d arranged to have the mare delivered. He’d received confirmation that she’d arrived that morning, and he was eager to ensure that she’d suffered no ill effects from the journey, which was why he’d headed to the ranch as soon as he’d completed his first therapy session with Kenzie.

He was on his way to the barn when he spotted her grazing in the nearest corral. The sun shone on her chestnut coat so that she gleamed as bright as her name, and her tail flicked leisurely back and forth. If she was at all distressed by the recent travel or the change in her environment, she gave no evidence of being anything but perfectly content.

“She’s a beauty,” Gramps remarked, joining him by the fence.

Spencer nodded his agreement. It had been the mare that caught his eye first, five years earlier at a barrel racing event in Cherokee, Iowa, before he’d noticed the pretty girl hunkered low over her back. As horse and rider raced the familiar cloverleaf pattern, he’d been impressed by their form and their speed. Afterward, the girl who’d introduced herself as Emily had proven that she was just as fast outside of the ring.

“Where’d you pick her up?”

He was taken aback by the question, until he realized that Gramps was asking about the horse.

“Denver,” Spencer told him.

“Any particular reason you decided to buy a horse?”

“I didn’t buy her,” he said. “She was a gift.”

His grandfather’s pale gaze shifted to the horse again. “Heckuva gift,” he remarked.

“Yeah. And that’s not the half of it.”

The old man’s bushy white brows lifted. “I didn’t figure you came home just to deliver the horse.”

“I’m also rehabbing my shoulder, hoping to be ready for the National Finals.”

“It’s a good thing you can usually manage to stay on the back of a bull for eight seconds, because you’d never make any money at the card tables in Vegas,” Gramps noted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you can’t bluff worth the stuff that comes out of the back end of those beasts you ride.”

Spencer felt a smile tug at his lips. Though Gramps had never been one to mince words, his wife had disapproved of coarse language. Widowed now for more than three years, the old man still lived by her strict rules.

“We both know you could rehab that injury anywhere,” Gramps said, calling his bluff.

“Maybe I wanted to do it at home.”

“And maybe those cows out there are gonna sprout wings and fly away.”

Spencer shifted his gaze to the far pasture, dotted with the thick bodies of his grandfather’s cattle—no wings in sight.

“I decided to take some time to reevaluate my life and my priorities.”

Gramps shifted the toothpick he held clenched in his jaw from one side to the other. “You knock up some girl?”

Though he was often amused by his grandfather’s characteristic bluntness, this time, Spencer couldn’t even fake a laugh.

His body was hurting, his mind was spinning and nothing about his current situation was the least bit amusing.

Chapter Three

Seven years was more than enough time for a girl to get over a silly crush. And when Kenzie had been at lunch with Megan earlier that day, she’d been confident that any feelings she’d had for Spencer Channing had been trampled into dust a long time ago. Of course, that was before she’d walked into her treatment room and found him waiting for her.

Well, not waiting for her . Waiting for a therapist to work on his injured shoulder, and she just happened to be that therapist. She’d studied hard and trained carefully so that she knew how all the muscles in the body worked, how they were affected by various types of injuries and how she could manipulate the tissue to release tension and ease pain.

She’d treated the same kind of shoulder trauma in other patients, but when Spencer had removed his shirt, all that experience had faded from her mind. She’d been mesmerized by the taut bronzed skin molded to hard, sinewy muscle. She’d wanted to press her lips to his shoulder, drop kisses across that broad, powerful chest, then slowly lick her way down those washboard abs.

She didn’t entirely trust herself to continue to touch his body and maintain a professional distance, which meant that she should ask one of her coworkers to take over Spencer’s treatments. Therapists traded patients all the time and for various reasons, but she had no intention of admitting that being near Spencer, touching the exquisitely sculpted body that her hormonally-driven teenage-self had lusted for with every fiber of her being, had reawakened long dormant feelings inside her and started the playback of memories in her mind.

She’d always liked hanging out at Crooked Creek Ranch, and she never missed an opportunity to go down to the barn and visit with the horses that were stabled there. Brielle’s grandfather had taught her to ride, and she remembered how hard her heart had knocked against her ribs the first time she’d sat in the saddle astride the black gelding with white markings for which he’d been named Domino. She’d been equal parts excited and terrified, and she’d felt the same way waiting for Spencer to show up.

He’d been dating Ashleigh Singer for the past few weeks. Of course, he’d dated a lot of girls—and gone “all the way” with more than one, if the rumors were to be believed. According to the conversation Kenzie had overheard, Ashleigh was going to give Spencer a going-away present that just might change his mind about going away.

Kenzie hadn’t been sure what that meant, so she was glad when Rebecca asked for an explanation—and heartsick when Ashleigh told of her plan to meet Spencer at nine o’clock in the barn at the Crooked Creek Ranch and “knock boots” in the hayloft.

So Kenzie got to the barn first, and when Ashleigh showed up, she told the other girl that Spencer had asked her to meet him there. Ashleigh, furious at the thought of her boyfriend two-timing her with one of his little sister’s friends, stormed off. And when Spencer showed up to meet with Ashleigh, he found Kenzie there instead.

“Where’s Ashleigh?” He asked the question gruffly, without even saying hello.

Her heart was racing, her throat was dry, and she was grateful to be sitting on the edge of a hay bale, because her knees felt so wobbly she was certain they wouldn’t hold her up. “She, uh, had to go.”

“Where?” he demanded.

She shrugged, because she really didn’t know, didn’t care. All that mattered was that Spencer was here— with her .

“But I waited for you,” she pointed out to him.

He looked wary. “Why?”

“Because Brie told me that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Did she tell you to meet me here, too?”

Kenzie felt her cheeks flush. “Of course not. She has no idea that I’m here.”

And she’d probably be horrified if she knew what her friend had planned. But Kenzie wasn’t worried that Brielle would find out, because Spencer’s sister had snuck away from the house to meet someone, too.

“And I’m still waiting for you to tell me why you’re here,” Spencer said impatiently.

“I just wanted to, uh, say goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” He turned away.

“Wait!” She leaped up.

He sighed and turned back. “What do you want, Kenzie?”

“Are you, uh, ever gonna come back?”