Chapter 8

8

D espite specifying that she wasn't interested in being Logan's babysitter, Tabby was delighted to find that one of the horse-crazy teenagers she taught, Letisha, was willing to watch a four-year-old girl on the weekend in exchange for extra lessons, which would free Tabby up to train with Logan and put him in nearby shows.

Everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place and Tabby wished she had supernatural instinct to tell her if it really was working out, or if she was just being her usual optimistic self, oblivious to the fact that she was walking straight into another disaster.

You're too impulsive , her mother would say. It's not that trouble finds you, it's that you go find it.

Certainly it had been impulsive of her to offer Logan a place to stay. But he was clearly trying very hard to be a good dad, and the place he was living was no kind of space for a four-year-old girl who could change into a horse.

And it had been impulsive of her to go see him in the first place .

Tabby hadn't been able to shake off the memory of that brilliant, beautiful horse, and she'd hoped that she would be able to get more out of Logan about his cousin in person that she could over the phone; he was clearly the kind to disappear at the drop of a hat.

It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that he was magical on top of mysterious.

Which begged the question: was it unethical to ride a human-shifting horse in a competition? Was it any different than buying a horse that had already been trained and riding it in shows to demonstrate her own skill? Tabby was confident that she was a good trainer and rider, and she loathed taking shortcuts, but she didn't have money to buy a new horse and use it to prove herself, having lost it all on Logan. Her finances were more dire than she'd implied to Logan, and she dreaded losing the ranch altogether.

She didn't have time to second-guess any of her decisions. It was a gorgeous spring morning, and there was rain coming. If she didn't get her starts into the garden after her morning barn rounds, she'd miss her opportunity to do that without getting soaked.

She checked her watch when she heard the truck pull up at the gate several hours later. She'd forgotten to wear a hat and probably should have put sunscreen on a while ago; she could feel the heat of the spring sun on her bare arms and the nape of her neck. The base of her back burned from bending over for so long.

Tabby had left the gate unlocked because she was expecting the company and when she walked to the curve in the driveway to meet him, Logan had already pulled through and was shutting it behind him. Not all visitors were so courteous.

Tabby made herself not stare as Logan got out of the truck in front of her house. His pants were tighter than strictly required, she thought, and his T-shirt left little to the imagination. His boots were work-worn, not fashionably new. She brushed the dirt off of her hands on her jeans self-consciously. A hat would have saved her from sunburn and covered the messy mop of her hair, but it was too late to scurry inside and put it on now without looking like she was trying to impress him.

Which she certainly wasn't.

He tipped his own hat to her and went around to open his passenger door and lift Franzi out of her car seat.

He tossed the little girl up in the air with ease and she giggled and clutched at Logan before he settled her against his hip with an arm around her. Her long legs dangled on either side of him and she looked perfectly comfortable being held as she stared around at the ranch in interest.

Tabby told her uterus to stop squealing and went to greet them briskly. "Let me show you the place you'll be staying," she said without preamble. "For now. "

She marched them over to the barn and up the outside steps. Franzi insisted on climbing them herself and Logan hovered behind her, clearly trying not to micromanage her efforts. Tabby watched them from the landing above and had more stern words for her libido. She was absolutely not going to take Logan's alternate services offer just because he was heart-meltingly smitten with his niece and a hundred times sexier because of it.

"It's not a lot," she said, unlocking the door for them. "I've been planning to set it up as an Airbnb, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet. You'll be responsible for any damages, of course."

It was a tiny apartment with two tiny bedrooms, but it had airy windows with blue checked curtains and a view of the mountains. "It's got furniture, but I don't have sheets or towels. The place doesn't come with maid service. There's laundry in the house, but ask before you use it because the septic system is pretty old and it can't handle that many loads in one day. The well water is fine to drink, but has a slight mineral flavor. If you don't like it, you can buy bottled on your own dime."

Tabby led them through the space, opening cabinets to show the storage space. Franzi didn't offer to touch anything, looking around with big eyes.

"This will be your room, kitten," Logan said of the slightly larger room. They each had double beds with just enough room to walk around three sides, a narrow dresser, and a bedside table.

"My room?" Franzi said hopefully. She had a finger in her mouth, so it came out woom . "All mine?"

Tabby met Logan's eyes over her curly head and they shared a little heart-shredded moment at her uncertainty.

"All yours," Logan assured her. "Let's go get your suitcases."

Despite her insistence that she wasn't a mother, housekeeper, or babysitter, Tabby also couldn't let Logan carry all of their things up the stairs without helping. "Do you have another truck load to get?" she asked. The bed of the truck was full of boxes—mostly liquor boxes—and the motorcycle that had fallen over in his living room.

"This is it," Logan said. "I move pretty regularly and don't have a lot of stuff."

"Plus, you probably don't need much as a horse," Tabby observed. She tried not to peer too curiously into the boxes where their flaps were loose. "You have a good stock of Sunshine Wine, I see," she teased, picking one up from the bed of the truck.

Logan flushed. "Liquor boxes are made to carry heavy things, so they make great moving boxes, and they give them away free."

"I have a suitcase," Franzi said proudly, trying in vain to lift it.

Logan found a pillow for her to carry up the stairs, while he somehow managed a heavy box and both her suitcases.

They had to go at Franzi's stair speed, which was agonizingly slow, one hand reaching up to the rail, the other dragging her pillow.

"Have you lived here long?" Logan asked, pausing to admire the view out over the ranch while he took each step a minute apart.

Tabby, on the steps behind him with entirely too good a view of his ass, wished she had taken a shower before they got here. She was hot and sweaty from working all morning, and her muscles already ached before she tried to show off by carrying two heavy stacked boxes. "I've been here five years, but it's only been mine for a year."

"Whose was it before that?"

Tabby considered her words carefully. "My husband and I bought it together the year that we got married." She wished that Franzi would go faster; she was sweating and the boxes were digging into her arms. "When we divorced, I kept the ranch and the debt and he got the horses, all our clients, and his hot secretary."

"That doesn't sound like a fair split."

"He had a realtor friend, Veronica Chase, who got a shady appraisal that jacked up the value of the ranch when I insisted on keeping it in the settlement. Later, she tried to offer me way too little for it, and when I told her to get off my land, she warned me she'd get it for a song when I lost it to foreclosure."

Logan glanced back at her and Tabby flushed because she was still staring at his butt. "Sorry," he said gruffly. "I'm glad you kept it. Your ex sounds like a jerk."

Tabby shrugged. "He got what he deserved. He was married to his secretary for six months before he cheated on her. She was smart enough to get a really good lawyer, so he got taken to the cleaners."

"Good."

Tabby told herself that she didn't need Logan's approval and that it shouldn't feel so nice. "There's a secondhand store in Nickel City if you need anything else," she said, finally reaching the landing and squeezing inside to drop her boxes on the kitchen counter. She rubbed at the red marks across her forearms.

"I've got a coffee pot and a toaster," Logan said. "Don't need much more."

He took the suitcases to Franzi's new room. "You want to unpack while we get the rest?" he asked her.

Franzi nodded eagerly, and Logan unlatched the suitcases for her before clattering quickly down the stairs with Tabby, both of them relieved to have more speed than a snail. "It's supposed to rain this afternoon," Tabby warned him. "Do you want to put the motorcycle in the stable?"

"That would be great," Logan said, and Tabby took another two boxes and didn't wait for him to go first.

She paused at the landing as he came up, easily carrying four stacked boxes. They must be light, Tabby decided. He wasn't straining in the least. Or maybe it was a shifter thing.

Franzi was lining up a half dozen well-worn stuffed animals on her bare mattress. All of the drawers were pulled out of the dresser and the suitcases were empty. "My room!" she said happily, and she slammed the door when she went to close it. "Sorry! "

The door opened and shut several more times while Tabby and Logan brought up the last load.

There was a rumble of distant thunder and a rush of cool, damp air through the open windows as Tabby put her box on the couch—there weren't that many boxes, but the kitchen counter was very small. "We'd better get the motorcycle into the barn if we're going to," she cautioned. "And I want to check on the horses. Trudy gets twitchy with loud noises."

"You okay here for a few minutes?" Logan asked through Franzi's closed door.

"I'm okay!" Franzi sang. "I'm in my room!"

Tabby smiled foolishly all the way down the stairs and went to open up the big double doors as Logan brought the truck around.

He backed up tight to the doors and three curious heads turned their way.

"You've got a few horses already," Logan observed as he slid a battered aluminum ramp from the side of the truck bed.

"Those are my boarders," Tabby explained fondly. "The pinto is Oreo, and Angus is the shaggy brute of a pony. His owner gets a break on board to let me do lessons on him. Truly Spoiled might give you a run for your money for worst name on papers, but her barn name is Trudy and she's a sweet old lady enjoying her retirement."

Logan groaned. "Please give me a better name than Better Behave," he begged, vaulting up into the truck instead of using the ramp. Tabby told herself that he probably wasn't doing it to show off.

"No promises," she said.

He didn't start the motorcycle, only put it in neutral and pushed it down the ramp. Tabby opened a stall for him and stood aside. "I'll charge you extra rent if I start running out of stall space," she warned. "But it will probably be a while before I get to that point."

It started to rain just as they closed the door, and Tabby found herself lamenting her sweaty, disheveled state again because she was standing very close to Logan looking out at it. "I'm glad I got the starts in the garden," she said inanely. "This way I won't have to water them."

"Have you got a honey-do list for me to start in on this week?" Logan asked.

"I'm calling it my horsey-do list," Tabby said with a sideways look. "It's getting pretty long. And I'm not adding anything hinky," she reminded him, because she was terribly aware of how close he was standing and what that was doing to her.

"Purely platonic," Logan agreed, but he said it with a sly grin that suggested he knew exactly how he affected her.

"This was supposed to be a dude ranch," Tabby explained, trying to convince her cheeks not to flush. "Sort of a country escape for city folk who wanted to be around horses and mountains. But the bunkhouses were never finished and I couldn't do that on my own or afford to hire a contractor. If I can fix up some of them up well enough, I can list them as short term rentals and supplement my horse boarding business. I thought I'd include a free lesson with each 3-day stay, and offer trail rides. People might even bring their own horses. It's such a gorgeous place and the trails are amazing. There are miles of them. And there's space for a big garden, and pasture for the horses." She recognized that she was babbling and made herself stop talking. "It's...just got a long ways to go," she said haltingly.

"I can see it," Logan said softly.

For a moment, Tabby couldn't, because her eyes had welled with tears. "Sorry," she mumbled, ashamed .

"For having a dream?" Logan asked. He looked like he wanted to touch her and Tabby longed for it at the same time that she was glad he was respecting her space.

"You probably don't want to leave Franzi alone too long," she reminded him after a space of silence. "The rain has let up a little; we should probably make a dash for it."

They both made a show of bracing for the run and Tabby was still laughing when she got to her porch, damp and feeling dangerously giddy.

She was going to have to be careful with her heart, Tabby realized as she stomped off her boots on the mat and sobered. It would be really easy to fall for a funny guy who could be a horse and had a sense of humor and honor. But he'd already taken her for a ride once, and she wasn't going to be fooled twice. No matter how handsome he was, or how magical.