Page 26 of Her Guarded Hero

He squeezed her ass. She had a great ass.

The car door slammed. He heard two men talking. Had to be the vet.

“I’m going to grab a shovel and make myself useful. I’ll come introduce myself in a few minutes.” Aurora’s gaze dropped down to the front of his jeans. She gave a slow satisfied smile.

“You’re not helping, young lady.”

“Oh, I think I helped just fine,” she smirked.

He liked her. Dalton admired her sway as she made her way to the front of the barn. He grabbed a shovel and went to one of the stalls and got busy.

5

“I’ve got to see a man about a horse.”

“Oh Lord, not that tired old line again,” Aurora moaned. It was the second dinner they’d shared with Dalton and it seemed like her Grandfather was bound and determined to pull out all of his zingers. Aurora gave Dalton a surreptitious glance, it was only the forty-third in the last half hour. She needed to stop it. She would too, except she had noticed that three times she’d caught him looking her way when Gunnar was at the stove. Those three times when their eyes met were enough to keep her mind and her eyes on him.

“I can’t believe that Johnny is finally thinking about selling, can you?”

In a heartbeat all her focus lasered in on her grandfather. “John Dunlap is thinking of selling Vertigo?”

“Yep,” Gunnar grinned.

She pushed away her dinner plate and curled her foot up under leg on the seat of the kitchen chair, then rested her elbow on the table. Leaning in she gave Gunnar a long look. “We’ve been saving a long time for this. But are you really ready to pull the trigger?” She studied his weathered face and saw nothing but excitement.

“Girly, this is it. Mae and I wanted Vertigo’s sire. He was special, but Dunlap wasn’t selling. After Heathen died I didn’t think that any of offspring would be worth a damn, but Vertigo is the spitting image of Heathen.” Her grandfather was practically rubbing his hands together.

Aurora bit her lip, she didn’t want to ask her next question, but she had to.

“Why is Mr. Dunlap thinking of selling Vertigo to you, and not keeping him in the family?”

“Johnny thinks his brother’s two boys are worthless. There’s not a chance in hell he wants Vertigo to go be passed down to them.”

Aurora sat up straighter. “Is something wrong with Mr. Dunlap?”

“Cancer,” her grandfather said succinctly. “Stage four liver cancer. I’m going to drive up to his ranch and stay a few days with him. We’re going to talk over some old times, and then I’ll load up Vertigo and head home. Your Uncle Tate will be by each day riding fence while I’m gone. He was planning to start today, but one of their boys at the Dressler Ranch broke his arm and Tate had to take him into town to the hospital.”

“There’s nothing wrong with our fence,” Aurora sighed in resignation.

“Fine, then Tate can cook for you and Dalton while I’m gone.”

“What if I were to say that Dalton and I can cook for ourselves?”

“I’d say good, because Tate hates to cook.” Gunnar glowered at her from underneath his bushy white eyebrows. “Live with the fact that he’s going to be out in the field while you’re riding around. You got a problem with that?”

Aurora whipped her head around to glare at Dalton. “Just how many people do you think is warranted for the ‘Protect Aurora’ project?”

Dalton forked carrots into his mouth and chewed, his blue eyes weren’t flirting now, instead she could tell he was considering how to answer her.

“I want the truth.”

Dalton swallowed and took a sip of his iced tea. “More than I did yesterday.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because I found two sets of hoofprints next to the orchard that looked a lot like the ones next to those shell casings. We need another set of eyes here at the ranch. Your grandfather has been keeping watch here at the house, but with him leaving we especially need someone new.”

“I still don’t have the slightest idea why I would be the target of anything.”