Duane turned as he and Leigh approached.“She’s doin’ okay,” he said, reaching for his can of tobacco in his hip pocket.
Freddy pushed herself to her feet and turned, her eyes widening slightly when she saw Ry.“I think she’ll be fine now.”She picked up her kit of medical supplies and handed it across the fence to Curtis.Then she walked over to lean against the gate to the corral.“Did you call Gonzales?”she asked Leigh.
She looked tired, Ry thought with a pang of guilt.
“Yep,” Leigh replied.“He was upset, but I told him we weren’t holding him responsible.And I warned him to check with anybody else who bought some of that grain.”
Freddy nodded.“Good.”Her gaze traveled to Ry and she smiled gently.
The smile made him dizzy.He longed to whisk her off to some private spot and soothe away the lines of fatigue shadowing those sage-colored eyes.
“Then I guess we’d all better get back to work,” Duane said, slipping a plug of tobacco under his lip.
Curtis glanced at Duane’s tobacco can as he shoved it back into his hip pocket, where a permanent faded circle had been formed by the pressure of the can.“Did I ever tell you folks about the New York City gal who wanted to go to bed with a cowboy?”Curtis started to laugh at his own joke and pointed to the impression of the tobacco can in Duane’s pocket.“When she saw the size of their condoms, she plum chickened out!”Curtis slapped his thigh and chortled.
Ry’s shoulders shook with laughter.One glance into Freddy’s eyes, brimming with helpless merriment, and he looked away, across the corrals.If he shared this joke too intimately with her, the whole crowd would know what Leigh knew, and he wasn’t ready to go that public yet.
“Thank you, Curtis,” Freddy said, opening the corral gate and walking out to join them.“I don’t know how we’d make it around here without a few of your jokes to keep us going.”
“Nothin’ to it,” Curtis said over his shoulder as he headed for the tack shed.
“Well, I’m due to take some German folks out for a trail ride in a half hour,” Leigh said.“Freddy, I assume you can give Ry a lift back to the house?”
Freddy looked at Ry.“You didn’t come down here to ride Red Devil?”
“I came down here to see you.”
“Oh.”She lowered her eyes and a faint dusting of pink tinged her cheeks.
“Come on, Duane,” Leigh said, grabbing the grizzled cowboy’s arm as he stood gaping at Freddy and Ry.“You and I have horses to saddle and dudes to entertain.”
“Shore, Leigh.”Duane followed Leigh, but he stopped several times to glance over his shoulder.
Freddy gazed up at Ry with a captivating shyness lurking in her eyes.“Nothing stays private long at the True Love, I’m afraid.”
“That’s okay.”He traced the line of her jaw with one finger.“I got up this morning and expected the news to be written across my forehead.Which reminds me, why did you leave without waking me up?”
“You looked so peaceful, and I knew there was nothing you absolutely had to do, so I let you sleep.”
“While you had to get up and work.I feel like a selfish jerk.”
“Don’t.”She laid a hand on his arm, then abruptly took it away, as if the contact had burned her fingers.
“Be careful,” he teased.“I’m barely in control of myself as it is.”
The shyness had left her eyes.“Me too, cowboy,” she murmured in the sexiest voice he’d ever heard.
The sensual impact of the stoked fire in her gaze took his breath away.He struggled to remember why he’d needed to see her.Nothing seemed as important as what he was contemplating right now, and that involved naked bodies and soft sheets.
“Shall we go back to the house, then?”she asked.“I have a call I need to return.”
Of course.The phone call.“That’s what I came to talk to you about.Ballesteros called me after he tried to talk to you.He wants to know what you can tell him about old petroleum drums buried on the property.”
She frowned.“There aren’t any.Dad had them all dug up and hauled away when the gas station was built in La Osa.”
“Then why the hell is Eb Whitlock telling the environmental engineer they’re still down there?”
Freddy looked startled.“He did?”
