Chapter 5

"This is not what I had in mind when I thought about spending the day with you."

Lea grabbed the reins of the horse Westin had just lifted her onto and sighed, trying to remember the last time she'd been on a horse. She wasn't exactly a city girl, not as thoroughly as Westin probably thought she was, but it had been years since she'd visited her grandfather's farm. Even longer since she'd sat on a horse. She wasn't sure her thighs could take this.

"Could be worse. You could be helping the boys feed the cattle."

"That almost sounds interesting."

Westin chuckled, but he didn't seem to have a lot of sympathy for her. He swung up onto his own horse, his movements so smooth that it was obvious this was just another part of his everyday life. He looked good on a horse. Those thighs looked like they were made to straddle… Well, they looked good with that thick leather saddle horn between them.

He directed his horse out of the barn, and Lea's followed without any prodding from her. She made a little noise, having forgotten what it felt like to have such a powerful beast between her legs. The saddle squeaked and rocked beneath her, and the horse blew air from its nose as they moved out of the heated confines of the barn. The morning—if you could call it that, seeing as how the sun wasn't even up yet!—was crisp, their breath coming out in visible puffs of smoke. It couldn't have been above freezing, maybe even colder than that. Lea was suddenly grateful for Clint's faithless wife and her heavy down jacket.

It had seemed like she'd just fallen asleep when Westin was suddenly there, shaking her bare shoulder in an attempt to pull her out of her dreams. If only he'd been able to see what was going on in her subconscious, he might not have bothered her. He might have wanted to join her!

She'd been dressed in nothing but her panties when he came into the room, too. She wasn't so lost in her dreams that she didn't see the gleam that came into his eyes when the blankets shifted and exposed one full breast. Not only was there a gleam in his eyes, but his hand curled into a fist after he reached out to touch her and thought better of it. She could see by the movement exactly what he had intended to do, and she rolled onto her back to give him a good look. She was more than open to that touch, and she'd made it clear to him twice now. Unfortunately, this cowboy had a code and he was sticking to it no matter how many times she exposed herself to him. He'd moved away, mumbling something about waiting for her in the hall before he slammed through the door.

He was unbelievably frustrating at the same time he was so endearing it only made her want him that much more. It'd been a long time since she'd known a man with strong morals.

"Where are we going?" she called out to him as his horse picked up speed and hers moved into a nice trot to follow.

"Check the fences."

"Check the fences? For what?"

He glanced back at her, a wry smile turning his handsome face into something even more intriguing. "Breaks, honey. Anything that might allow one of our cows out, or something else in."

"Oh."

He slowed his horse, waiting for her to catch up. After a minute, their horses moved into a nice gait next to each other. "This is a working ranch. We still have to do our work even while we're protecting you."

"I've heard that a time or two in the past twelve hours."

"I'm sure you have."

"Your Miss Dulcie thinks very highly of you."

Westin's expression surprised her a little. He didn't smile that cocky smile, nor did he seem at all pleased with her comment. He adopted more of a grave expression, his blue eyes as dark as a stormy sea.

"She talked about all five of you like you were her children or something."

"Miss Dulcie is too good to be real sometimes."

Lea tilted her head slightly. "Why do you say that?"

He shrugged. "She deserves more, that's all."

It was an odd comment. He didn't seem willing to elaborate on it, either. He patted his horse's neck and gave it a slight kick, picking up the pace just a little. Her horse did the same, keeping right up with him like it knew somehow that they were supposed to stay close to each other. Horses were amazing animals. Lea remembered there was once a time when she wanted to grow up to be a big-animal vet. She'd had it all planned out—how she would open her practice down the road from her grandfather's house, how she'd buy herself a truck and go to all the farms and ranches in the area, how she'd be best friends with all the horses in the area. It was a childish dream that evaporated the day her father died and her mother packed her away, taking her as far from the memories as she could get.

As an adult, Lea could hardly blame her mother for her reaction. As a child… she spent a long time being very angry with her mother.

She wondered what her life would be like now if she had followed her dream despite everything. Where would she be? What kind of life would she have now? But the thing was, she had a feeling she would have ended up right where she was, somehow. On a ranch, riding a beautiful horse with a handsome cowboy. So, really, she couldn't complain.

"Did you know Miss Dulcie's husband? Asa?"

Westin nodded, glancing over at Lea from under the brim of his cowboy hat. "I did. He was the one who hired me."

"What was he like? To hear her tell it, he was a saint."

Westin laughed. "No, Asa was no saint. He'd be horrified if he even heard someone make that comparison."

"Why?"

"Because Asa was a man's man. He liked to drink and gamble and spit and cuss…" He laughed again. "He was a charmer, a businessman, a good boss. But at the end of the day, the label that made him happiest, that defined him the best, was cowboy ."

"I believe it."

Westin reached up and pushed his hat back a little so he could scratch his hairline. "Asa taught me more in just a month on this ranch than I would have learned in a year under anyone else. He was the kind of guy who'd just throw you into the ring and expect you to figure out how to fight your way out. He expected me to earn my wage from the word go, and if I hadn't, he would have cut me loose without thinking twice about it."

"Sounds tough."

"Sometimes that's the only way to teach someone."

"I had a boss like that once," Lea agreed. "Put me in a bad situation in order to prove a point. I think he's serving burgers at McDonald's now."

Westin looked hard at her like he didn't believe her, but then he nodded, scratching his forehead again. "That's the difference between—"

"Men and women?"

"I was going to say city folk and cowboys, but I suppose that works, too."

She grunted. "You really think you have it all figured out, don't you?"

"No. No, I don't, and I hope I never do. But there are a few things I understand, and ranching is one of those things."

They rode on in silence for a while, only the sound of the leather creaking and the horses breathing to fill the space around them. The sun was just beginning to peek through the high, winter clouds. They had to pause at a closed gate that Westin leaned down to release, gesturing for her to lead her horse through ahead of him. As she tugged on the horse's reins to stop her before she got too far ahead of Westin and his horse, a few snowflakes fell and brushed against her nose. She tilted her head back and watched as a shower of big, lazy snowflakes began to fall around her. Their touch was like a lover's caress on the bare inches of her flesh exposed below her hat and above the scarf Westin had given her. She was overwhelmed for a moment by how beautiful and graceful nature could truly be.

"Sometimes I allow myself to get so caught up in the darkness in this world, I forget there's some good out there, too."

Westin moved up beside her, his horse brushing at her leg as he came to a stop. "I guess cooking up drugs and being dragged out of cars by ex-lovers will do that."

"I never said Fang was my lover," she corrected him quickly, the idea of that man touching her sending a shiver of revulsion down her spine.

"You said he was your ex. The lover thing was just an assumption."

"An incorrect assumption. We only knew each other a few months."

"In my experience, that doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to becoming lovers."

"Oh? Are you insinuating that I'm some sort of slut?"

Westin studied her, his eyes moving quickly over the length of her. "That's not the word I would use."

"Then what word would you use?"

"Impatient? Maybe eager?"

Lea sniffed. "I love the double standard men have when it comes to women. You meet a woman in a bar, and you screw her brains out in the front seat of your truck, and it's a normal Saturday night. I meet a guy, talk him into a little slap and tickle in the bathroom, and suddenly I'm a slut."

"In that scenario, we'd both be sluts."

He was so earnest about it that she had to laugh. "Is that right, cowboy? Are you just as much a slut as I am?"

"I've had my moments." He shrugged. "Sex is a physical need that all human beings must satisfy in their own way, in their own style. Some are strong enough to control the impulse until they find the right person. Some aren't. And some can remain monogamous, and some can't. But there's no shame in it as long as everyone goes into it responsibly. It's the ones who aren't responsible who should be ashamed of themselves."

"You mean people like Clint's wife?"

Westin gave his horse a kick, starting them on their path again. Lea's horse kept right up, sauntering along like this walk was one she took every day. Westin glanced over at Lea, his eyebrow cocked.

"How do you know about Melanie?"

"He told me last night. I think he just desperately needed to say the words out loud."

He nodded. "He's taking it hard. And I don't blame him, what with their daughter and everything."

"He told me about her, too. He's afraid his wife will take her to Denver and not allow him to see her again."

That was clearly news to Westin, judging by the look on his face. He shook his head, turning his attention to the land before them and the slowly falling snow.

"What about you?" she asked after a few minutes of silence. "Why do you have that little rule about the condoms? Someone try to saddle you with a kid once?"

His eyes were hard when he glanced at her. "Does it matter? It's just a rule I have. I'm not going to father a kid until I'm ready. Period."

"It's a good rule."

He rolled his shoulders. He seemed determined to allow the silence to fall between them, but Lea liked the sound of his voice, liked provoking him, even when it didn't really work the way she thought it would. And she liked when he looked at her with those dark-blue eyes.

"I'd bet Miss Dulcie was one woman who didn't have to worry about where her man was burying his stick, if you know what I mean. She talked about him with such warmth and love that I could only hope to find someone like that someday."

Westin snorted.

"What? What does that mean?"

"You don't know how to read people, do you?" He glanced at me. "Miss Dulcie talks about Asa that way because he's not around to contradict her."

"You mean their marriage wasn't as perfect as she makes people think?"

"Far from it."

"How?"

Westin pulled himself up in the saddle, sitting a little straighter as they continued to move at a slow pace through the early-morning sunlight under a sky determined to powder them with a good layer of fresh snow. He cleared his throat, then sighed.

"Asa was a man's man, Lea, which means that he did what those kinds of men do."

"You mean he cheated on her? That sweet woman?"

"That sweet woman was his mistress for nearly ten years before his second wife died and opened the door for him to make her his wife."

"No kidding!" Lea knew there was a terrible amount of awe in her voice, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't imagine Miss Dulcie as anything less than the pious rancher's wife whom she had appeared to be. She couldn't picture that sweet woman as someone's lover, especially not for that long.

"She worked here as a maid in the main house. The story I heard was that her mother was the cook and she practically grew up here. They started their affair when she was in her early twenties. When the second Mrs. Howard was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, it was Miss Dulcie who nursed her until her last days."

"Wow! Talk about keeping things close to your vest!"

"They were married less than a month after the funeral because by that time Miss Dulcie was pregnant."

"Did the wife know?"

Westin rolled his shoulders. "If she did, no one ever said." He glanced at Lea. "And the second Miss Dulcie was his legal wife, Asa lost all interest in her. Clint told me he had a new lover before the baby was born, some girl in town he'd go see twice a week. Rumor had it that he had quite a few girls around town the last couple of years of his life. I even met one once, about a month before he got sick and died. Some redhead who worked for the vet. She'd come out here on some pretense of checking the animals and they'd hook up in one of the stalls."

Lea just shook her head, lost for anything to say. She'd thought things were dark in the city, but it seemed they were just as dark in the country, but in different ways.

"There's nothing to do out here," Westin said in confirmation of her thoughts. "Sex and drugs. That's the only recreation people have, and they indulge every chance they get."

"What do you do for recreation?"

Westin didn't respond right away. He patted his horse's neck again and adjusted his hat on his head, pulling it down a little more as the wind picked up and began blowing snow into their faces. Finally, he glanced at her, those eyes like stormy seas.

"I don't think I'd even thought about it until I set eyes on you."

Lea smiled, taking that as confirmation of all the things she'd already surmised about him and his attraction toward her. She'd get him in bed before this weekend was over; she had no doubt about that.

***

Westin swung his hammer, watching the nail go through the wood and just pop out again when he pulled on the post. The wood was too far gone to hold anything. He'd have to replace it if he had any hope of this section of fence holding anything. He cursed softly under his breath, deciding a little bailing wire was the only thing that was going to solve this issue for the moment. He could feel her watching him as he pulled out a length of the wire and began twisting it around the post and the rail that was refusing to remain attached to it.

"Want to help?"

"Not really. I'm just enjoying the view."

He glanced at her, catching his finger in a loop of the wire when he saw the appreciative look in her eye, and it led to him wondering what she'd look like in the throes of pleasure. He cursed, jerking off his glove to make sure he hadn't just cut off the tip of his index finger.

"You okay?"

He cursed some more before sliding the glove back over his relatively unharmed finger and began tugging the wire back into place. He grunted as he pulled the wire tight, stepping back a few inches to make sure it was tight enough before he took his pliers from his back pocket and gave it one last twist before snipping the ends off.

"You need to stop distracting me," he announced as he turned back to the horse, sliding the tools into the saddlebag. "One of us is going to get hurt."

"Didn't realize I was ."

"We still have several miles of fence line to check, so…"

"It wasn't my idea to be out here. But it is nice that my mere presence is a distraction to you."

"I'm glad you're happy with that."

He gestured for her to come to the horses, intending to help her back up into her saddle. Instead, she managed to move between him and the mare he'd chosen for her to ride, pressing her body as close to his as she could get without actually invading the length of his body. She smiled, those amber eyes threatening to steal his breath even as they danced with laughter.

"Why are we playing games, Westin?" she asked, brushing her gloved fingers against his jaw. "We both know why I'm such a distraction to you. Why don't we do something about it so that it doesn't continue?"

"What would you suggest we do?"

She licked her bottom lip in a very suggestive way, that little pink tip moving so slowly he could almost feel it on certain parts of his body. He grunted as his nether regions began to respond, coming to life with a jolt that was almost painful.

"This is not something I need right now." His words were a warning, a determination he clearly didn't feel, because he took ahold of her chin and pushed her back, shoving her against the massive side of the mare. "I can't do this." And then he kissed her.

Her lips were cold and her breath hot, the combination messing with his head a little. That first touch was almost electric, the feel of her shooting him into the stars in that instant, transforming a simple kiss into something bigger. Something he could never—nor would he ever want to—explain to himself or anyone else. It was sweet and exciting all in one package.

And it scared the hell out of him.

Westin pulled away, turning her with a quick hand on her hip and lifting her onto the horse. She grabbed the saddle horn, looking down at him with surprise and something else written all over her pretty face. She didn't say anything, but he could read the questions in her eyes. He could guess she'd never met a man who resisted her quite the way he was doing. Must have been a shock to her.

He climbed onto his own horse and gave him a little nudge, forcing his mind back to the task at hand. The fence needed to be secure, a job that was constant and year-round. He'd been doing this since he started working for the Howards, knew the fence line like the back of his hand. He could spot a break at half a mile in good weather. Just slightly less in bad weather. But, somehow, he nearly missed a large gap that popped up just two hundred yards further up the pasture.

He cursed softly to himself, needing this woman to get out of his head. He pulled the horse's reins harder than he needed to, causing her to rear up just slightly, which spooked Lea's horse. The mare backed up, then reared itself, lifting its front legs high into the air. Lea cried out, but somehow managed to hang on. Westin jumped down from his gelding and grabbed the mare's halter, jerking her around so that her wild eyes could see him, so that she could feel the pressure of his hold and know there was nothing to be frightened of. She fought him for a second, stomping her feet even as Westin spoke to her, whispering her name—Gray Lady—until she slowly calmed, still pawing at the ground, but still enough that he felt safe letting go of her.

"You okay?"

Lea had slipped from the saddle and was bent double a few yards away, catching her breath. "Fine."

He touched her shoulder and she jerked away, pulling herself to her full height again, her gloved hands rubbing her already red cheeks. "Please, just leave me alone for a second."

"You handled that well," he complimented her. "I guess you weren't lying when you said you'd been on a horse before."

"Yeah, well, the horses I rode were old. They didn't do shit like that!"

"Sorry. It was my fault. I startled Jack."

"Jack." She shook her head. "What kind of name is that for a cowboy's horse?"

"I have no idea. Asa named him."

Westin walked off, securing both horses to an unbroken section of fence before grabbing some tools from the saddlebag. He went over to take a look at the damage on the fence, his thoughts on a million things all at once. It only took him a second to discover that this was going to be an easy fix, but a troubling one. This part of the fence had clearly been damaged by a person, not the weather, or wear, or some animal that had pushed a little too hard against it. This had clear marks from some sort of tool, a crowbar or something that had pried the nails loose from the wood.

Why would someone do that? It wasn't like the fence was eight feet tall and required a break to walk through it. The thing was four feet tall, easy to jump over. Why cut it?

Westin took a couple of pictures and texted them to Clint before nailing fresh nails into the wood, putting the fence back to the way it had been before it was damaged. When he was finished, he returned to the horses, dropping his tools back into the saddlebag. Lea was gone, and it took him a second to spot her some eighty yards off to the north of him, standing alone in the falling snow, her heavy jacket no longer a bright, almost painful purple, but now more muted as the early-morning cold and snow surrounded her in a white halo.

She was a firecracker, this woman. She'd handled that little blip with Gray Lady with the grace of a well-practiced horsewoman, yet it had clearly shaken her, for reasons he couldn't begin to understand. He didn't know enough about her. He didn't know where she'd learned to ride, why she was so comfortable out here on the ranch, why she'd been so determined to get them to protect her in the first place. Who was this woman, and why had her kiss sent him tumbling down a rabbit hole he didn't want to go down?

"You're going to freeze to death just standing there like that."

She didn't acknowledge him as he approached her. She was studying something on the ground, something he couldn't see until he was right up behind her. It was a box, kind of like a shoebox, but slightly bigger. It had some sort of writing on the top, but if it was in English, it was a coded English he couldn't understand. It was half-buried like someone had been in the middle of the task of putting it in the ground but was interrupted.

"What the hell?" he asked, dropping to a knee to get a better look. Lea put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

"Don't touch it."

"What is it?"

She bit her lip, wheels apparently turning in her head. She was struggling to find an excuse to make. At least, that's what it felt like to him. He stood back up and took her shoulders, pushing her back just slightly so that he could stand before her without stepping on the box.

"Who are you? What have you brought to our ranch?"

She shook her head, her eyes falling to the object again. "This doesn't have anything to do with me."

"But you know what it is."

She didn't respond right away, just kept staring down at the box. Westin shook her, forced her to look up at him.

"What do you know about this?"

"That you'd better leave it alone for right now. And when we get back to the main house, you should probably call your local sheriff."

"Why? What is it?"

She tilted her head just slightly, her eyes moving over his face as he could see those wheels beginning to turn again. He let her go with a little shove, turning to snatch the box up out of the ground. She grabbed his arm, pulled him back.

"Please, Westin, if you don't believe anything I've told you since the second we met, believe this: you really don't want to touch that thing. Just leave it there!"

"How can I believe anything you've said when I can clearly see you're lying to us? You've spent every second of the time we've spent together trying to distract me so that I wouldn't ask too many questions, but the things you do say all contradict each other."

"Westin, I—"

"You're a liar, and I'm not going to allow you to bring something onto this ranch that could hurt Miss Dulcie, or anyone else. Do you understand?"

"Then listen to me. If you touch that, you could open a whole bag of worms. Just leave it there. Hell, my best advice would be to leave it and just pretend you never saw it. I will guarantee it will be gone in a matter of days."

"How do you know that? How do you know what's in that box?"

A wariness burned through her amber eyes, making the gold sparkle like it was a real bar of the precious metal. It was obvious there was something she really didn't want to tell him. Instead, she moved up against him, pressing the full length of her body against his, resting a hand on his chest right over his heart.

"My intentions are honest here, Westin. I really like you and Clint, and the others. I don't want to bring anything bad down on you or this ranch. That's why it would be best if you stop asking me questions and forget about that box. Please."

"I can't do that."

He pulled away from her, but did think twice about picking the box up. Instead, he took a couple of pictures of it with his phone and texted those to Clint as well. Then he turned to her and gestured for her to head back to the horses. "We still have a lot of fence to check," he reminded her. There was obvious relief in her eyes when he did, when he didn't touch the box. She happily headed back to the horses, but stopped every few feet to make sure he was behind her. She wasn't letting him out of her sight.

Who the hell was this woman? And what the hell was going on here?

Westin didn't like games. He'd been burned one too many times by liars. Maybe that was part of the reason he was living on this damn ranch, why he was pursuing a scheme that had very little chance of working. But at least he was doing what he was for good reason. This woman… what good reason could she have for lying to them, for hiding the truth about whoever or whatever she was? Nothing good could possibly come from whatever it was she was up to. The sooner she was off the ranch, the better.

He chose to ignore that part of him that ached at the sight of her, the part that would forever remember what it'd been like to kiss her. The part he knew would seek another kiss from her at some point; the part that couldn't resist the game she was playing, the flirtation she perpetuated. The part of him that wished she'd come into his life sooner, or perhaps later, at a time that was not so complicated by Rena and Rocking D Ranch.