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His next statement made it clear. “Didn’t I assign you a job this morning?”
“Yeah.” He tugged the brim of his hat lower. The gesture was becoming a habit fast considering he hadn’t been here all that long.
“So what are you standing around watching Meadow training horses for?” He cocked a brow at Colton. “Or do I have to ask?”
“You’d know why, wouldn’t you? Didn’t I see you watching her half an hour ago?”
Even from several yards away, Colton read Webb’s glare loud and clear. But he wasn’t going to let the jerk challenge him, not when Webb was even guiltier of having a fixation on Meadow. Everyone around here knew it too.
They continued to stare each other down, neither willing to look away first.
Finally, Dude buzzed up on an ATV, cutting off their view of each other so neither had to wimp out and break the glare first.
Colton continued on to the paddock, where he chose his usual horse. When he picked it out of the herd that day he went looking for the missing cow, he hadn’t given much thought to the mount being an integral part of a cowboy’s arsenal. How the same way that weapons and body armor were part of a SEAL’s supplies, a horse could keep a cowboy alive too.
When he and Meadow returned to the ranch, looking like two mountain hermits who hadn’t emerged for years, the first thing Meadow did was spring to action caring for the horses.
He took charge of the heifer and led her to the brooding shed where she could wait out the rest of her pregnancy, safe from swamps and dangerous lightning storms. With the heifer tucked up with some fresh bedding and a full feed trough, he’d returned to the yard to find Meadow rubbing down the horses.
He stroked his hand over the black gelding’s coat. Meadow had brushed him to a gleam and checked his hooves before shutting him up in the barn with fresh hay to doze for the rest of the day.
The differences between him and Meadow were broad. But were they? He’d grown up practically alone. Instead of having his father discipline him, he had a military school sergeant. The only motherly love he experienced in his entire adolescence was the occasional visit to the nurse. While she bandaged up whatever wound he went to see her for, she spoke kindly and always pointed out the jar of treats on her desk before he left.
But Meadow had lost her mother young. Her father, from what he’d heard from Forest and seen with his own eyes, was absent.
Colton had slipped and gone too far with her, but who could blame him? He was mortal, a flesh and blood man, with a naked woman in his lap. One who wanted him and made no bones about it.
He saddled the horse. Hell, he didn’t even know if it had a name, but he’d find out. A fellow warrior deserved that much consideration.
After he rode out, he lifted his head and sniffed the air. He was starting to recognize the different smells around him. If the breeze was carried down from the mountains, it brought a piney, cutting chill that burned in his nostrils. When it crossed the fields, it came with an undercurrent of grass and loam.
For the first time in a long, long time—maybe longer than he could remember—he was content.
Happy wasn’t a word he often used in conjunction with himself, but this was as close as he’d come. With the sun on his shoulders, and the powerful horse carrying him out to the fence line he was supposed to inspect for damage after the harsh storm, he felt good.
At ease.
This was what Forest had talked about in those long hours of darkness as they kept watch while the rest of the squadron slept. The peace of the land.
Colton wouldn’t exactly call the working conditions on the Gracey peaceful, though. Not with Webb breathing down his neck every time he turned around. Then there was Meadow, tormenting him even in his dreams.
This morning, he woke from a dream about her. She was stripped naked, her curves glistening with droplets of water and her eyes blazing in a come-hither look as she slowly approached him.
He’d woken with his cock throbbing hard and his balls aching for the release he refused to let himself have. He’d given that woman enough energy in his thoughts. The only way to shake her was to ignore her.
Fat chance of that. She wasn’t going to let him ever forget what he’d done on that mountain.
Hell, neither was his mind. It was locked in a vault with a big screen playing the memory on loop—always there in the background of his thoughts.
After her father returned, Colton planned to tell him about his decision to leave the ranch. He figured he’d already fulfilled his promise to Forest. He never told his friend how long he’d stick around—only that he’d come if he ever died and that he’d look after Meadow.
Never during those conversations did Forest set a timeframe of how long to stay or watch over Meadow.
Funny how he wasn’t as worried about their youngest sister Ivy, although she was out on her own somewhere in Europe. While she might be traveling with a friend the way Forest told it, a single woman in foreign cities seemed a lot more perilous than Meadow sitting in the middle of Nowhere, Montana.
Even going to Badlands, everyone knew Meadow. The ranch hands—namely Webb—made sure she was never there alone.
Colton could see how she got herself in trouble, though. Everything that woman did spelled trouble.
