License to Love Read Free Page A

his voice neutral because he actually
wanted to hear her answer.
    “I’ll pull my weight, don’t worry. And I’m sticking around,
so get used to me.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” He turned the truck off his gravel road, onto
the highway, and sped up. He could handle quiet if she didn’t feel like
talking. It wasn’t like they were friends.
    “It’s just being in Ben’s house...” She looked down at her
lap.
    Her quiet voice made his heart sink. Maybe he shouldn’t have
left her there alone. Too late now… Or could he fix it? “I wasn’t thinking. You
can move over to my place if you need to.” What in hell was he thinking now? Her in his house?
    “It's all right. Being there just made me think about him
more, wonder about him.”
    Another ping of guilt hit him. “I meant to clean the cabin
out at some point. I had no idea you’d be moving in…” Ben had been horribly
messy so the cabin was full of not only Ben’s things, but papers and weird odds
and ends that had stacked up.
    She shrugged and turned to her window, and a minute later,
added, “The cloudy sky looks pearlescent, like the inside of those seashells in
the shops here.”
    “The abalone shells?” At her soft comment, he glanced over.
She was too pretty to be sitting in his dusty truck. Something stirred in him
at the sight of her hair, her hands resting one on top of the other in her lap.
Casual beauty, he thought.
    Darn it, her looks weren’t his business.
    After a few days of hard ranch work, she’d hit the road for
home. Just like Kathryn had two years ago.
    “We need more hay for the horses,” he said. Since she still
gazed out the side window, he let himself stare for a quick minute. Nice
profile. Nice mouth, too. A man could go crazy thinking about kissing her. But
back to ranch business...  “There’s two other guys working the ranch with me,
Dale and Ivan. You’ll run across them.”
    “They live on the property?” she asked, and the hint of
panic in her voice surprised him. So far, she acted as if nothing could run her
off.
    He shouldn’t ask about it. Besides, she seemed to be trying
to cover for it now. “Dale does, in a small house closer to the main road. You
probably didn’t see it through the forest over there.”
    In his side vision, he saw her flick a look over at him.
She’d trailed her gaze over him a few times the day before, but he couldn’t
tell if she liked what she saw or not. It didn’t matter, but he liked to think
she did.
    “Have you always been around horses?”
    “My dad made his living from horses, and I always have,
too.” He felt his shoulders relax, though he hadn’t realized before how stiff
he’d been. Maybe they could manage this. “When we finish today, you might want
to go check out some books on horses. I’ll go over everything with you, but
it’d help if you can tell a bridle from a stirrup.”
    “I’m not that slow.”
    “I’m just saying, I’d like you to know what everything is.
Horse breeds, grasses, a little about horse care. Check into trail horses,
since that’s what we have here.” He glanced over. “That is, if you’re serious
about this.”
    “I am.” Her voice wasn’t haughty like before, but heavy.
Maybe she did see what she was getting into.
    “This is Jack’s farm coming up.” He pulled down a long
gravel drive. Ready for them, Jack waved and swung open the barn door, but he
scratched his thick, gray beard as he looked at Missy. Hopping out, Brent told
him, “Jack Wilson, this is Ben’s sister, Missy Nelson.”
    “Ben had a sister?”
    At Jack’s words, Brent gave her a look. She narrowed her
eyes as she stepped back.
    He knew that she wouldn’t be much help with this. Her petite
frame couldn’t be more than five feet five, and the bales were stinking heavy.
Still, she needed to see what they did.
    Jack jumped up into the truck bed and stacked the bales as
Brent loaded them. He paused after a minute to toss her a pair of gloves.
    “I noticed you