License to Love Read Free Page B

don’t have a pair.” He waited while she
slipped them on. “Want to help out?”
    He threw another bale into the bed to demonstrate and stepped
back to let her try.
    Bending, she grabbed the strings and pulled. “Holy crap!”
    He couldn’t stop the laugh, but he managed to keep it
silent. Too bad she caught him shaking when she stood up.
    “Would you like to keep the steering wheel warm?” He grinned
with the comment so she’d know it was in fun.
    “You jerk!” She glared. “There are other ways I can help out
on the ranch.”
    He sobered because her eyes grew smoldering with anger. They
looked amber, and entrancing. He felt his breathing quicken.
    Turning, she walked to the front of the truck and got back
in the passenger seat. He went back to work, shrugging at Jack’s puzzled look.
They both looked in the back window at her stiff shoulders and knew to keep
silent as they worked.
    “That about does it,” Jack said when he stacked the last
one.
    “See you, Jack,” Brent waved and joined Missy in the cab to
head back. With her arms folded, she turned her body away and didn’t speak the
entire trip home.
    This wasn’t so bad, he thought with a glance her way. If
they could stay angry at each other, he wouldn’t have to wonder about her. He
wouldn’t have to care why she was so willing to pick up and move here to help
with the ranch. Now if could just push it all out of his mind…
    When they reached the stables, he backed his truck up to
unload the hay, but he didn’t get out when he turned off the engine. “Listen,
I’ll find you something else to do.”
    She nodded.
    Trying not to grin again, he asked, “It was funny, wasn’t
it?”
    Her head turned. When her gaze locked with his, the truck cab
grew suddenly smaller. He saw her Nez Perce heritage in her high, proud
cheekbones and skin the color of red baked clay. She had a face someone could
stare at for hours.
    But not him. Right?
    Brent knew she had her own agenda—not a relationship—on her
mind. Well, she wasn’t the only one.
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    “So this is the reality behind the mystery,” she said as she
threw another shovel of dirty hay, and then watched her breath puff away in the
frigid evening air. Smelly cold air, since it carried the smell of the horse’s
waste.
    “What’s that?” Brent’s face came into view over the wall
that separated the stalls they worked in. “What mystery?”
    “I’ve just never seen cowboys in movies doing this stuff.”
Although, she didn’t remember watching too many westerns.
    “Mucking stalls is mysterious? So, what do you know about
horse breeding?” He went back to work, but she saw his smile before his face
disappeared.
    “Stop right there. I’ll stick to this for now.” She liked
his smile. That friendly smile had shocked her when he grinned yesterday,
even if he was laughing at her over lifting the stupid hay bales. He had a
cleft chin, something she liked in men, back when she was interested in them.
The only thing she wanted with Brent was a working partnership… and maybe
friendship.
    Working was the operative word in working partnership.
They’d been busy all day. Here it was evening already, and they were still
cleaning horse stalls. He’d told her they wouldn’t normally do this so late,
but he’d spent the day showing her around.
    At least they’d formed an unspoken truce and found a way to
work together. His remarks weren’t as cutting as when they’d first met.
    She rested her shovel on the ground for a minute to rub the
small of her back. All this work had almost been worth the view of him on a
horse yesterday: tall and long and wearing his cowboy hat. She’d gawked at him
from around a corner, amazed by his control and grace as he moved around the
corral. She liked how he held his back straight when he rode.
    He carried on an easy conversation with the two men who
worked at Ocean View too. She found herself almost wanting to talk and