The Black Sheep and the Hidden Beauty. Donna Kauffman
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inclined to take her at face value. But there were too many unanswered questions as yet.
“No,” he said, with all honesty. “No, you haven’t. I just wondered where the cynicism came from.”
“Maybe you’re more optimistic than I am,” she said. “But then, that’s why you’re in the business of helping people, I suppose, while I stay in the barn with the four-legged beasts.”
“You’re giving me far too much credit there.”
“Only an optimist believes he can make the world a better place.”
“He can. And I think I do. But I’m not as altruistic as all that.”
She paused in adjusting Petunia’s harness. “What are you saying? That you’re in it for the money? I know you said Trinity wasn’t a charity, but I guess I thought it was because from what I hear, you and your partners don’t take money from your clients.”
“We don’t.”
“Sounds pretty altruistic and charitable to me.”
“I make an income, a good one—I’m a salaried employee of the company. But you’re right, what I do or don’t do doesn’t change my bottom line in terms of income.”
“So what motivates you, if not money, or making the world a better place?”
“Revenge.”
Her eyes widened.
Good—for the first time, he had her off balance. He didn’t realize how badly he’d lost command of the situation until he regained a piece of it.
“Revenge? I’m afraid I don’t understand. I thought the point of Trinity was to help people in need.”
“It is. We do.”
“What does that have to do with revenge?”
“It’s…complicated. Our company name, Trinity? Short for Unholy Trinity.”
“So I heard,” she said, with a hint of a dry smile. “Something to do with your partners and the exploits of your youth, right?”
He nodded. So she had been checking up on him. Either that or the barn help had nothing better to do than gossip about him, Mac, and Finn, which he found hard to believe. “Well,” he said, smiling, “let’s just say some things never change.”
“You grew up together?”
“We’ve been friends most of our lives.” And how in the hell had she gotten him talking about himself again? “As for the rest, let’s just say I take greater pleasure in righting wrongs to make a point than I do in the more altruistic sense of making the world a better place by doing so. Although, as a byproduct, it’s certainly not a bad one. But we’re not exactly missionaries here.” He smiled at her mildly disapproving expression. “Does that make me a coldhearted bastard?”
“I don’t know you well enough to say.”
As a dodge, it was a good one. He began to wonder who was the one gathering intel here, him or her?
Petunia grumbled and shuffled her feet, clearly affected by not being the center of everyone’s attention.
“Everyone has motivations for doing what they do,” she went on to say. “As long as no one is getting hurt, who am I to say which ones are appropriate and which ones aren’t?” She glanced up at him. “No one gets hurt, right?”
She didn’t look remotely vulnerable. Quite the opposite. So why was it he felt like she was asking him if he was going to hurt her? “Only the bad guys,” he said, curling his fingers into his palm to keep from reaching up and tucking that stray strand of hair presently clinging to her cheek.
Her mouth quirked at his response, but her gaze seemed to continue to seek something out in his own. Just as he was about to break the silence…or reach for her, after all, she broke the silence. “Keep hold of the rope, with slack, but not too much,” she instructed, shifting smoothly back, once again, into instructor mode. As if their little moment hadn’t even happened.
But it had happened, and he wasn’t being quite as successful shaking off its effects as she apparently was.
She stepped behind him and opened the door. “You want to walk her to the center of the building and over to the other aisle. Stay just to the front of her forelegs, but to the side of her head.”
“Not out in front?”
“You can direct her with the rope, but I want you to stay where you can see if she’s reacting negatively to anything. You don’t want to be five feet ahead of her and have her spook and rear and yank you on your ass, or worse.”
“Got it.” He looked at Petunia. “No ass-yanking.”
Elena laughed. And he knew he was in deep, deep trouble.
Because making her laugh was not his objective. And yet, he found himself wondering how to make her do it again.
Chapter 6
Elena was still grinning as she stood behind the open stall door and watched Rafe lead Petunia out. She had no worries about the horse misbehaving. Barring Rafe doing something totally bizarre, Petunia would go through the motions on autopilot, as she’d done a million times before.
The one she needed to worry about misbehaving was herself. In any near vicinity, Rafe was potent enough. Up close in any personal proximity, he was downright intoxicating. He was intensity and charm, humor and the kind of focus that made her want to smooth her hair back and moisten her lips. Hell, if she were honest, he made her want to do a whole lot more than that. There had been a few moments where she could have sworn he was thinking the same thing—then the mood would shift, or Petunia would interrupt. For which she should be eternally grateful.
Even if Rafe wasn’t the enemy she’d feared—and she wasn’t certain about that yet—he wasn’t an ally, either. Of any sort. Couldn’t be, not in her current circumstances. She just hadn’t counted on that bothering her so much.
She closed the stall door as soon as the horse was out, then walked on ahead of them, toward the crossover to the other aisle.
“What if she doesn’t go?”
Elena paused and turned, only to find them still standing just outside the stall.
Rafe looked from Petunia to her. “I’m guessing giddyap is just something they say in movies?”
She laughed. He was so dry, and, up until today, had struck her as somewhat of a hard-ass. A really suave-looking hard-ass, but a hard-ass all the same. And, in some ways, he was. That unholy part wasn’t so hard to believe. His ready humor had been unexpected—it was that part of him, far more than his smooth good looks, that was working on her. “Well, it works when it’s accompanied by a swift nudge with your heels or a squeeze of the knees. But you have to be mounted for that to happen.”
Even fifteen yards away, she saw the quick flash of teeth, and that awareness in his dark eyes. And mentally kicked herself for the double entendre. She hadn’t meant it. She didn’t flirt. Not normally, anyway. In her world, a woman had to all but bind her breasts, chop off her hair, and lower her voice two octaves to get taken seriously. One bat of an eyelash and she’d be seen as nothing but a saddle tramp.
But she wasn’t in that world any longer. And men like Raphael Santiago didn’t stroll across her path very often. She had no experience with someone like him. He didn’t fit into any mold she was used to. And seeing as she still didn’t know if he had ulterior motives, she couldn’t afford to make any rookie mistakes. If she was going to even think about flirting, or what that might lead to, she’d be better off starting with someone a hell of a lot simpler than this man.
And since she had no business flirting with any man at the moment, that took care of that.
“I would love to be mounted,” he