“They’re beautiful,” Allie said. Then, a couple minutes of chat later, all with Brandon staring holes into Zoey, Allie excused herself to finish baking loaves of bread for some town festival that Zoey thought sounded fun.
She led the three horses to the barn, sighing in relief that her brother didn’t follow, but knowing that she couldn’t avoid his questions for long. She passed the shoer’s truck, parked out front of the barn, and led her horses to the back.
At the gate that separated the horse stalls from the rest of the barn, Zoey slowed as she spotted a man bent over a horse’s hoof, putting on new shoes. He wore cowboy-cut jeans that did nothing to hide just how toned he was, a gray T-shirt with sleeves that were a little tight around his large biceps, and a lightweight straw hat with a leather hat band hanging low over his face. She quirked a brow and grinned. Ooh la la. There weren’t any men like this around her farm—the man they paid to shoe her horses was in his sixties and a little pudgy around the middle.
Hearing her coming up behind him, the man glanced her way between the brim of his hat and his shoulder from where he was crouched. Even though she still couldn’t see him, she could tell he was a young man, and for some reason, her breath hitched.
“Ma’am,” he said, and she could hear a little drawl in there as he stood to his full height, back still to her. He was taller than her too—that didn’t happen very often.
She shook herself out of her gawking and led the horses the rest of the way in. The man turned, and she came to an abrupt halt.
It washim! The man she’d danced with at Brandon’s wedding, the one who’d held her tight in his strong embrace as he’d two-stepped her around the dance floor like a pro, the man whose hands at her waist for the slow song that had followed had made her knees feel weak.
The man who’d only danced with her because Brandon asked him to.
Heat rushed through her, and for the first time ever, she wasn’t sure if it was from fury or something else heaps more exciting. It was probably both. But oh, how she wished it was only the first.
Zoey was no stranger to the flirtatious advances of men, but she’d never felt any real interest until she’d met this quiet stranger, looked into his blue-gray eyes, and felt like he saw her as something not just special, but precious. Turned out she’d just been a favor.
His jaw dropped. “What are you doing here?”
She squared her shoulders. “This ismybrother’s house. What are you doing here?”
He gave a crooked smirk and motioned to the leather farrier’s apron draped over his jeans and the box of tools at his feet.
She huffed.
He cocked a saucy grin. “I thought I scared you off for good at the wedding.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She turned to her horses and fiddled with their harnesses for something to do. “It was one dance.”
“Two.”
Something in the way he said that made her blood boil, made heat rise up in her stomach and coil low. She cleared her throat and looked at him. “Actually, I’m glad to see you.”
“Yeah?” His face brightened.
She didn’t take time to think about why or what that could mean as she led each horse to an empty stall. The thoughts would come later, when she wasn’t trying to hear past her pounding heartbeat. “Yeah. My horses need shoeing. Can you take care of it?”
The brightness dimmed. “N-now?”
She nodded. “I want to put them all through a workout this afternoon, get them used to their new home.”
“Well—I—”
She couldn't stand here with him anymore. The memory of his arms around her and the sweetness that it had brought into her life—and then yanked out again—was too much. “Thanks!”
She spun on her heel and flounced—to her utter horror, sheflounced—out of the barn. But heaven help her if she couldn’t feel his gaze on her all the way.
