Page 13 of Her Guarded Hero

“It’s killing me when you make me think that someone is taking shots at me. Maybe it was just someone who wanted to scare me or something. I mean they didn’t actually hit me.”

“They hit your horse. You could have died.” He still pictured her flying through the air. She could have hit her head on a rock. “Is your headache killing you?” he asked.

“Not really, it’s fine. It’s manageable.”

“I think you’re really in pain,” he disagreed.

“I’m fine to walk the rest of the way up the hill.” Her brown eyes flashed up at him. God she was stubborn.

“Aurora, you don’t have anything to prove to me. I would tell most of my teammates to sit their asses down and wait.”

“There is quite the dichotomy to your personality, isn’t there?”

“You’re not the first one to mention that.” Dalton watched as she determinedly strode up the hill, then kicked himself as he noticed the flex of her ass. Yep, here he was supposed to be worried about her wellbeing and instead he was admiring how her jeans molded to her butt.

3

“You scared me girl,” she whispered softly.

Aurora stroked the mare’s neck and fought back tears for the third time.

Siren’s breath wafted out and blew strands of Aurora’s hair into her eyes. She wiped both hair and tears away, then sighed. Siren knickered softly in response.

Slowly, she smoothed her hand along Siren’s coat, until she came to her flank, where Doc Barnes had given her sutures. Aurora winced at the discolored and swollen flesh. The vet had assured them that Siren would be back to a hundred percent in a couple of weeks. Aurora knew deep in her heart that there was no way anybody could have purposefully shot at Siren. Nobody could be that cruel.

Yeah sure. She could see Dalton’s face in her head. He wasn’t letting her get away from living in a fantasy. But seriously, who would want to shoot at her?

“Aurora!”

She grinned. Even at seventy-six, her grandfather could still make himself heard from almost a quarter of a mile away.

She gave Siren one last look, then closed the mare’s stall. Even though Gunnar Olsen was bellowing, she wasn’t going to rush away from her charges, not when some of them were still shaken from Siren’s sudden appearance earlier this evening. She stopped at various stalls, giving pats, rubs and treats where needed as she walked towards the barn door.

“Aurora, you have a visitor!” Gunnar bellowed again.

She reached in her back pocket to pull out her phone to find out what time it was, and then remembered that she’d lost hers, when it had fallen out of Siren’s saddlebag. Still, it had to be around nine o’clock. Who would be dropping by now?

When she realized it could be one of the deputies, she picked up speed.

She stopped short when she saw an old beat-up, rusted, baby-blue pick-up truck in the driveway.

What the hell?

Then she spotted the tall, lean man talking to her grandfather. Even though she’d only spent three hours with him, Aurora was sure that she would be able to recognize Dalton Sullivan out of any crowd, and it wasn’t just his height or his raven black hair. There was something underneath his calm assurance, he was like one her stallions at rest. There was a great deal of deadly power waiting to be unleashed. Dalton’s low-key demeanor would never fool her, she would always see the man that he really was.

Aurora stopped short. What was she thinking? This was a fluke that she was seeing Dalton again, why was she considering that she would see him in the future?

“There you are! It’s about time you left your babies! Get on over here, Darlin’.” Gunnar Olsen waved his arm broadly. Aurora grinned. Even in the dusk she could see his white shirt and suspenders. The big Norwegian fisherman had started wearing suspenders when he turned seventy, he said it was the thing to do, even though there still wasn’t a bit of gray in his blonde hair.

“Hustle up. You’re not even wearing a jacket.”

Aurora rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter if she was twelve, twenty-six or eighty, this man would always be worried about her. As she got closer she could see Dalton’s eyes watching her carefully.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” he asked as she joined the two men on the porch.

Was he for real? She looked at him closely and saw both concern and frustration on his face. “I took a nap earlier, before Siren came home,” she said soothingly.

“Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?” This time his question came out a little rough. What was his deal? He’d been at the hospital with her when the doctor had checked her out and said that she only had a mild concussion.