“Long enough to hear you admit you’ve been overdoing it. I needed to savor the moment.” She strolled up to me, her eyes on my chest like she had her X-ray vision turned up high. “Are you in worse pain?”
“It’s fine.”
She pursed her lips at me.
“You need to get that tattooed across your chest.” She left me to pull on a pair of my rubber work boots, grab her gloves, the tools, and the wheelbarrow, and moved down to the first stall. “Hi, Aaron.”
“Good evening, Miss June.” He tipped his hat to her like a genuine cowboy.
“What do you think you're doing?” I asked her.
“I’m cleaning the stalls,” she said without breaking her rhythm.
Lord help me with this stubborn woman. “The bet’s over. You won, and you already got your reward.”
“Part of my reward,” she corrected. “There’s still the little matter of the public declaration of my competence with a pitchfork.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Aaron asked under his breath.
I shot the kid a look of fire that sent him back to the tack wall.
“Anyway,” June continued, thankfully ignorant of Aaron’s comment, “the work needs to be done, doesn't it?”
“I do pay Aaron.”
She stopped to level a curious look at him. “How many stalls have you cleaned today?”
His hands paused in doing their nothing over the tack. He glanced from her to me like he didn’t want to answer. “About thirty.”
“You’ve earned a break, then.”
“You can’t just dismiss my hand, June,” I said.
She gasped in mock surprise. “Look at me. I just did.”
Aaron ran a hand over his mouth to cover a laugh. I cut him a sharp look, but it didn’t sober him much.
“I don’t really want to be in the middle of this,” he said. “I think I’d better get going. See you tomorrow.” He bobbed his eyebrows at me as he sidled past and out the barn door.
After laying out new straw in the stall she’d just cleaned, June moved on to the next.
“You’re never allowed to call me stubborn again. Are you like this with everybody, or is it just me?”
She stopped and glanced over at me as she considered. A smile tugged at her lips, her contentiousness gone. “I think it’s just you.”
That answer cozied up inside me like a kitten getting comfortable by a fire. What was it about her that made me want to contradict her and then pull her in close for a kiss? She’d busted her ass working at my ranch for weeks, and here she was back for more. She wasn’t doing it to antagonize me—although it did do that—but because her heart was too big for her own good.
My heart tugged and ached as I watched her muck out my horse stalls, unasked, with nothing to gain but the satisfaction of helping me. For years, I’d been sure I had to do everything on my own, ignoring just how much I wanted someone out here with me. I wanted someone else to be as invested in my ranch as I was. Someone to work beside me. Someone to share my life.
All the tender feelings for June I’d tried to hide away from the first day I met her had only grown stronger. I was in a real bad way to lose myself entirely to this woman who had swept in and made a home in my heart. Even if every last owner came to haul their horse away tomorrow, with her beside me, I would be the happiest man in Texas.
June glanced up as she moved on to the next stall and stopped short. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Smiling.” She smirked and disappeared in the stall.
I ran a hand over my face. Well, damn. Iwassmiling.
