Sometimes When We Kiss. Linda Goodnight
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Shannon went down on her knees beside the animal. “Hand me that brush on the wall behind you. I’ll stroke his withers and sides while you handle his head.”
Petting, rubbing and brushing, Shannon and Jackson worked to imprint the colt so that he would not be afraid of humans. Shannon was acutely aware of the movement of Jackson’s muscular shoulders as he caressed the animal’s ears and face. Longing, totally unwanted, shimmied through her.
More than once in their month of working side by side, awareness had simmered between them. This morning was no different.
“How you doing with Domino?” he asked, voice quiet in the dark, musty-scented barn.
“He’s coming along,” she hedged. What a lie. Domino was not cooperating. After more than a month, he could be ridden, but he had no manners and wasn’t safe for most people to ride.
“Need any help?” Stroke, rub. Touch. Caress.
The shiver went over Shannon again. She had to stop looking at his hands. Still rotating the brush over the brown hide, she looked up at his face instead. Big mistake. Eyes like fudge sauce studied her. Little sparks of lightning shot off beneath her skin.
“No, I do not need help.” To cover her other, less certain feelings, she chose to feign annoyance. “I’ve told you before. I know how to train a horse better than any horse whisperer. Domino has to learn who is boss and I can teach him that.”
“I’d sure like to get my hands on him.”
Pure stubborn pride made her say, “Forget it. You have plenty of other horses to train.”
She probably could use some help from Jackson. He was good, excellent even. And she had grown to depend on him. She looked forward to his arrival each morning and enjoyed working with him all day. And if she felt an extra burst of energy in his presence or if she noticed how clean and masculine he smelled, well, so what. She was a woman. He was definitely a man. And her grandfather was putting irrational thoughts in her head on a daily basis.
Jackson, seeing the futility of arguing with her, changed the subject. “So how’s Gus this morning?”
“He says he’s all right.”
Jackson looked up. “But you don’t buy that.”
“He had to take the nitro pills during the night. I heard him get up and went to check on him.”
“Made him mad, too, didn’t you?”
The man read her granddad well, and Granddad grew more lavish in his praise of the hired hand all the time. They’d traded war stories and Jackson often asked for Granddad’s advice, making the invalid feel needed.
“Let’s say he wasn’t too pleased. He’s been trying to hide the episodes from me, but I counted the pills.”
“What do you suppose is causing them?”
“Me.”
“You?” Jackson smoothed his hands over the horse’s ears and down the side of the long, arched neck. “How so?”
She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Don’t laugh now, but Granddad has this obsession. He thinks I need to get married, and until I do he won’t stop fretting. He bugs me about “finding the right man” day and night, nagging that he’s going to die and I’ll be left all alone.”
“Do you really think his condition is that bad?”
She shrugged, her hands stilling on the colt’s warm back. “I hope not, but how can we really know for sure? As long as he stresses and frets over me, his blood pressure won’t go down, and he’ll keep having these episodes of chest pain.”
“Scares you, doesn’t it?”
They were inches apart, across the body of the small colt, one on each side, directly facing one another. Shannon saw the compassion in Jackson’s eyes and found comfort in the kindness.
“If his health didn’t scare me, I might see the humor in the whole idea of him trying to fob me off on some poor unsuspecting man. He actually thinks that’s the best thing for me.”
“Guess you’ll have to get married then.”
Shannon jerked her head up, saw he was joking and laughed. But the humor was fleeting.
“I feel so guilty knowing I’m the cause of his illness. If he should…” She couldn’t bring herself to address the idea that her grandfather could actually die. “If something should happen to him I don’t think I could stand it.”
“Maybe you should date more. That might appease him for a while.”
“Yeah,” she said, voice tinged with sarcasm. “Like you see men lined up at the gate waiting to take me out.”
“A woman like you can’t have trouble getting a date.”
“Jackson, I’ve dated, been engaged to and run off every decent man I know. Either they’ve given up, or I’ve lost my charm.”
Did that sound as pathetic as she imagined? Sheesh. She hoped not. The one thing she didn’t want was pity from Jackson.
“Sounds like you’ve been dating boys instead of men.”
“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
“It means if a man wants a woman bad enough, she can’t run him off.”
Ouch. That hurt. She’d run off all of her former loves, including Jackson.
“Which doesn’t say much for my appeal then, does it, considering no one has stuck around to fight for me.”
“Which proves they were a bunch of snot-nose boys, because there’s definitely nothing wrong with your—” his gaze drifted up and over her “—appeal.”
A skitter of excitement danced in the air between them. Shannon swallowed hard, and Jackson followed the movement, his eyes on her throat and then on her face. Heat, having nothing to do with embarrassment or the weather, flushed her skin.
She patted awkwardly at her chest. “My, it’s getting hot in here.”
Dumb, Shannon. Dumb.
His nostrils flared. “Sure is.”
He let the colt’s head ease gently to the ground. Then he stood and came around to where Shannon knelt, reached down a hand and pulled her up. Mischief in his eyes sent out a warning flare.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was raspy.
He backed her away from the horses, toward the stall door. “Demonstrating.”
“But the colt,” she protested, not sure she wanted to go wherever Jackson was leading.
“We’ll work him again later.” Jackson kept his gaze on her face, studying her as if the instructions for his puzzling behavior were written in secret code on her skin.
One minute she was backing toward the door and the next she was pressed against the hard wood with Jackson’s powerful body holding her there. He slid a hand up over her throat, pressed two fingers into that spot above her collarbone where her pulse rattled like marbles in a tin can.
He was impossibly, wonderfully near, and every cell in her body remembered him. The heat and scent of him mixed with the barn scents of horse flesh and hay.
“Jacks—”
“Sshh.” He laid a finger across her lips as his face came ever nearer. “Hush. Just hush.”
Okay, so he was going to kiss her. And she thought she’d die of suspense waiting for him to get on with it. Instead, he stood there and stared at her, so close they were joined everywhere but the lips. She was vanilla ice cream to his hot fudge, ready to melt and mingle into a sweet, delicious pile.
He moved his