Kate Bridges - The Proposition

Her lips puckered. “But—”

“No sidesaddle!”

They glared at each other. He didn’t have time for this. Sidesaddle was how Caroline had fallen to her death.

“Must you always shriek?” She hurled her hands to wide hips and anger found her tongue. “Have you ever thought of having your head examined?”

He leaned toward her, tightening every muscle, but she didn’t back off. “Just once when I agreed to taking you on this trip.”

“Do you have to be so domineering?”

“Yes. I’m the sergeant major, remember?”

“Roughrider. Grand. Just grand,” she whispered. Digging into her discard pile, she yanked out the ivory pants. “Wait here while I slip behind that tree. God sakes,” she muttered, stalking away, hemline flinging through the air. “If the man follows me, he’s liable to accuse me of wearing too many underthings and must I bring these stockings? And am I aware of the weight of my lacy bloomers?”

Lacy bloomers. For a moment, he fumbled at the saddle.

With exasperation, he shook his head. He’d lay ten bucks that they were made of boring linen.

At least she’d surprised him by dodging behind the tree to change. He thought she’d make a fuss and insist he find a private room inside the fort.

She came out from behind the tree while he was tightening the lines on another broodmare.

Glancing over the saddle, he froze. Whoa.

Ignore her, he commanded himself. He forced his gaze down to the saddle, but it crept back to her. The brim of his hat shadowed his eyes.

She bent over her pack and began stuffing the discarded items into her original bag, which they’d leave behind with the guard. Travis had already arranged to have them sent back to her home. Contrary to looking less feminine in pants and work shirt, she looked more. Gone was the flowing fabric that concealed her body. Ivory pants clung to well-shaped thighs. Rounded hips swelled to form an hourglass figure. Fabric clung to her smooth behind, and when she walked, the black belt cinched at her waist accentuated her bounce. A simple white blouse, oversize, folded into her waistline. The shadow of her corset hinted at what lay beneath, while the top two buttons of her collar remained open, revealing light and gold shadows illuminating a slender throat.

He’d always remembered her as a spoiled adolescent, but she’d finally grown into a woman. Still spoiled, but an inexperienced, virginal woman.

Frivolous and boring is how he’d describe her, he reminded himself.

Peering at what she gripped in her hand, he gulped. Rolled into a ball, her bloomers were flaming red. Not boring linen.

“What do you want now, Roughrider?” she snarled. “What are you staring at?”

“Red becomes you.”

With a click of her tongue, she threw them over his head.

Jessica noticed things about him that a conservative woman should not. The way he yanked at his gloves when he was mad—which was almost all the time; the way he instinctively reached for his guns at an unexpected sound; how rough his knuckles were as he tugged the reins; and how forlorn and desolate he looked when he thought no one was watching.

Travis was the type of man that all good mothers in Calgary warned their daughters against. Temperamental, moody, and thought the world spun around him.

The man was trouble. Still, Jessica needed him and the thought was daunting.

For now, she considered herself fortunate that he took the lead on the trail, which allowed her and Mr. Merriweather the opportunity to fall behind, single file, and gain their bearings.

“We’ll be following the Glacier River most of the way,” Travis shouted two hours later from fifty feet ahead, speaking above the thundering of the water. Turning his huge body around in the saddle to talk, he ducked beneath pine boughs and aspen leaves. The wind lifted the needles, filling her nostrils with cool forest scents.

“Lead the way, sir,” Mr. Merriweather shouted back. “The foothills are a sight to behold.”

Jessica nodded, trying to unwind her stiffened shoulders and mask her apprehension of riding so high off the ground. It scared her to be responsible for the broodmare she was leading, with a rope tied around its neck and ponied to her mount. Travis had steered away from taking any stallions on the trip, he’d explained, for stallions too close together often fought. Travis rode a gelding but she and Mr. Merriweather each rode mares. They led compact quarter horses—or running horses or whatever name they went by—to be sold when they reached Devil’s Gorge, but Travis led a massive Clydesdale broodmare. Whenever the Clydesdale snorted, the other animals waited for its lead. She was the dominant one.

“The horses are shod only on their front feet,” Travis hollered. “That’s where they take most of the weight and strain. In case any of them kick in such close proximity, their back hooves were left unshod for minimal damage.”

Jessica didn’t like the sound of that. If the information was supposed to comfort her, it only served to glue her gaze to the back of Mr. Merriweather’s broodmare. It was the striking bay she’d noticed in the stables yesterday. Whenever the broodmare adjusted its footing on the rocky path, Jessica jerked back, thinking the horse was about to kick.

“Relax,” Travis told her around noon, leading them into a small clearing.

“Right,” she said, trying not to look too grateful to Travis for finally stopping so she could rest.

He swung off his horse, surveyed the area, declared it was time for lunch, then walked the horses two at a time to the river’s edge to drink before she and Mr. Merriweather had even removed their gloves.

Travis returned to the shady knoll. “You’re a pretty good rider, Merriweather.”

“I spent a lot of time in foxhunts with my father.” The older man clutched at his back, then limped away toward the river, leading two horses. “I’ll water these two.”

Grass swished beneath Travis’s big boots as he approached her. He didn’t look directly at Jessica, but took the reins of her horse. Still, she felt the sting of embarrassment at his soft words. She watched the tiny creases at his eyes move while he spoke. They gave him distinction, a weathered, attractive look of matured experience.

“Don’t fight her so much. She doesn’t like when you sit rigid. If you spread your arms to your sides, you can lean in tighter and she’ll adjust to your weight. Pat her neck once in a while. Maintain the contact. She’s going to be your friend for seven days.”

Then his gaze was direct and she felt her head swim.

Squinting up at him in the patch of sunlight, Jessica nodded and slid her cowboy hat to her back. Her temples were drenched with perspiration, and her legs felt like rubber trying to hold her upright.

“Let your body flow with the rhythm of the mare.”

Jessica lowered her lashes. “I’ll try.”

“We’ll rest here for two hours. Soon as the heat of the day subsides, we’ll head out again.”

He took care of the horses first, removing saddles and hitching the animals to a lush grassy spot where they could graze. Then he tended to her and her butler. Jessica felt awkward, more of an observer than assistant, knowing she was making Travis work harder on account of her and Mr. Merriweather’s presence.

Finally, as Travis was preparing the horses to leave, she jumped up from her spot by the boulders where they’d eaten their smoked beef and coffee, and met him on the other side of his beautiful bay. The horse he’d avoided looking at yesterday.

“What’s her name?” she asked.

Jessica’s voice startled him. He’d been deep in concentration, sliding on his work gloves. He stared at the mare for a length of time before tackling its gear. The other horses were ready; he’d left this one for last.