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She crossed her arms and waited with a smug smile as the new arrivals approached the fence. The barrier was more of a formality between the two ranches. As good neighbors for three generations—her family were the newcomers, the Raffertys had been here seemingly forever—the occasional trespass of livestock was expected. That contraption of his didn’t get that exemption, not in her book.
Cody, on the other hand… She tried to be honest with herself, so she couldn’t deny that if they were talking livestock, he’d be a prime specimen. Anyone who knew what he did but hadn’t seen him would probably have certain expectations about how he would look. And they’d likely be wrong. He was tall, built, and obviously fit. He didn’t look like the stereotypical computer nerd in any way, shape, or form. As Angie Roth had once quipped, Cody Rafferty could give nerds a good name. Which earned her a sour look from her daughter.
No, he looked, especially at this moment, like the Texas cowboy he’d grown up as. Even bareback, he sat the big bay easily. And he dismounted before Trey had even come to a full stop, with all the grace and coordination his big brother Keller, the calf roper, showed when heading for the critter he’d just caught.
But then the real Cody appeared. He spotted the wreckage of his flying pet, and headed toward it, completely forgetting to ground tie the big bay. Trey shook his head and snorted, loudly. Cody stopped mid-stride. Looked back. Grimaced, but walked back and pulled the reins over the horse’s head and dropped them.
Britt was inwardly laughing, but outwardly shaking her head in an intentional show of exaggerated disgust as he turned again and headed back toward the pipe-rail fence that ran along this section. And toward her.
But then he put a hand on the upright post of the fence and vaulted it in one easy, powerful move. And as she barely managed not to gape, she abruptly remembered he’d also been a promising gymnast in high school, before he’d been bitten by the tech bug. He came to a halt in front of her, and as usual she hated that she had to look up at him.
He glared at her as he covered the last feet between them in long strides, his light green eyes narrowed. “What the hell, Roth?”
She didn’t move. “Warned you,” she pointed out.
“Alpha wasn’t even close to you.”
She blinked. “You name those pests?”
“Of course. Everything else is numbered, it would get too confusing.” She’d forgotten the Rafferty habit of numbering things, be it animal names or the stalls they lived in. “And they’re not pests, they’re tools.”
“The only tool I see here is you. I told you what would happen if you buzzed me with one of those again.”
“And I just told you it wasn’t even close!”
“Thanks,” she said blithely.
He frowned. “Thanks?”
“For the compliment on my shooting.”
He rolled his eyes. They were pretty eyes, to go with the pretty rest of him. Which was highly annoying.
“We’ll see how you feel when you get the bill,” he ground out as he crouched down and gathered the pieces of his mechanical pet into a small pile.
“Ha! You were the one trespassing, even if it was by proxy.”
He stood up, still frowning. “It’s not trespassing if you have permission.”
She laughed. “Permission? To spy? What, you think you’re some government agent now or something?”
He stared at her. “No, just somebody doing what they were hired to do.”
Her laugh faded away. “What are you talking about?”
She didn’t like the way he was suddenly the one laughing. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”
She bristled at the thought that he meant that in more ways than just about his silly drone. “You can just take that thing and—”
“You’d better go home and talk to your folks, sweetheart,” he said, and there was nothing but sarcasm in the faux endearment. He was talking to her in that infuriating way tech people sometimes did to those who didn’t get their world. Worse, he was talking to her as if she were a child and he the adult, despite the fact that they were the same age almost down to the minute.
And then he did the worst thing of all. He yanked off his shirt.
For an instant she could only stand and stare. Damn, he was built. And that was so unfair she felt like yelling “Foul!”
He didn’t even look at her. He knelt back down, spread the shirt out on the ground and put the pieces of his precious machine on it. Then he gathered it up into a makeshift bag and stood up again. She found herself staring at him, at the way he moved, at the ripple of muscle, the size of his arms, the broadness of his chest and the flat belly. And the sleek skin over it all.
She yanked her gaze away before she could focus on the narrow band of hair that arrowed down to the waistband of his jeans.
