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“W-W-What’s wrong with the bow of my lips?”
“It’s uneven.” The pad of his finger touched the corner of her mouth and lightly traced its way up her top lip. “Yep.” This time, his voice was low and breathy. “Definitely uneven.” His finger didn’t stop. When it reached the opposite corner, it turned and slowly swept over her bottom lip, pressing just enough that it entered her mouth and brushed the edge of her lower teeth.
Her heart seemed to stop as her breath sucked in.
They stood like that for what felt like forever. His cherry/elderberry breath warming her face. His cobalt-blue eyes taking up her entire view. And his pressing finger touching more than just her lip.
Then suddenly as if a switch had been flipped, Corbin’s hand dropped and he stepped away. “We better get back inside.”
She wasn’t ready to go back inside . . . especially when she felt like a puddle of melted butter. But she wasn’t about to say that when Corbin looked so unaffected. As she moved toward the back door, she realized Corbin had succeeded in one thing.
He’d taken her mind off Liberty getting married.
Chapter Five
“I didn’t ask for a horse.” Corbin stared at the horse Jesse had just backed out of the trailer. The beast was huge, solid black, and scary looking as hell.
Jesse grinned from ear to ear. “If you’re going to be a rancher, Whitty, you’re going to need to learn how to ride. In order to ride, you need to have a horse.” He stroked the horse’s forehead and the animal jerked his head away. “This here is Damian.”
“As in the satanic kid in that horror movie?”
Jesse’s brow knitted. “Hmm? I don’t believe I saw that one. But if you don’t like his name you can change it. How about Homer?”
“That horse looks like a Homer as much as Satan looks like an angel.”
“I believe Satan was an angel,” Sunny piped up. “Just a fallen one.” She stood with the horse Jesse had brought her, stroking its shiny brown coat and looking like she was about to bust from happiness. Corbin should have bought her a horse—one much smaller than the one she was fawning over—and he was a little miffed that he hadn’t thought of it. “How about Oreo?” she said.
“I’m not riding a horse named Oreo.”
“Then Homer it is.” Jesse grinned brightly. “Now let’s get him saddled up so we can start your first lesson, Whitty.”
Corbin stared at the horse that was snorting and pulling at the reins Jesse held. “Today?”
“Don’t tell me you have other plans. Mimi told Liberty when she called this morning that you were cussing up a storm because you can’t get anyone out to fix the Wi-Fi. Without Wi-Fi, you can’t get much work done.”
“I have plenty of work that doesn’t need Wi-Fi. And I was not cussing up a storm.” He’d only gotten out a few choice words before Mimi had scolded him for using bad language. She’d also scolded him for not pulling out Sunny’s chair at breakfast and for carrying Tay around too much and not giving her enough space to be a cat.
Which was why Tay wasn’t in his arms where she belonged. He wasn’t happy about it. Not happy at all. If Mimi wasn’t bossing him around, Hank was trying to teach him how to fix a chicken coop or replace shingles on the roof or muck out a stall. He hadn’t realized how many jobs there were to do on a ranch that had nothing to do with being a cool cowboy.
Clint Eastwood wouldn’t be caught dead shoveling horse poop.
“Come on, Whitty,” Jesse said. “Riding isn’t that bad. As an ex-rodeo roper, I know my way around horses. I promise I won’t let you get hurt . . . too much. Falling off is just part of riding.”
The memory of Belle flying off the back of the horse had Corbin’s stomach knotting. But he couldn’t back down. Not when owning a ranch had been all his idea.
It had been a bad one.
He figured that out after he settled into Homer’s saddle and realized how far it was from the ground.
“Now see. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jesse stood in front of the horse, holding the reins. “We’re going to start out with a nice easy walk around the paddock.”
Start out? As far as Corbin was concerned, a nice easy walk around the paddock was all he planned to do today. Sunny had other plans. While he was getting the hang of walking the horse around the paddock—with Jesse right beside him on the big bay horse that had been in the barn—Sunny was practicing riding her horse in the field behind the barn.
It looked like she didn’t need practice. She had gotten much more accomplished since the horseback riding excursion she and Corbin had gone on when she was in college. Watching her gallop across a field that was no doubt filled with potholes and gopher holes, at a neck-breaking pace, scared the hell out of him.
“Go stop her, Jesse,” he said. “Now.”
“She’s fine, Whitty. It looks like she got the family knack with horses.” Jesse lifted an eyebrow. “Some of the family.”
