Josie’s heart was pounding fast and hard by the time Declan finally pulled up on Midnight’s reins and brought the horse to a full halt.
Even at Marigold’s fastest speed, Josie found herself trailing a few steps behind Declan and totally exhausted. She was more than ready for the ride—or race as it had turned into—to come to a stop.
Managing to bring her horse almost right beside Declan’s stallion, Josie was desperately trying to catch her breath.
Even so, it took her more than a few moments to be able to say anything mildly coherent. Her breathing was still coming in snatches.
The first thing Declan noticed when he looked at her was that the woman’s complexion was glowing.
In his opinion, his student looked rather alluring. Her hair had come partially undone from the bun she had initially fashioned. There were tendrils all around her face.
He caught himself thinking that Josie looked positively radiant and sexy.
The silence, coupled with her heavy breathing, made Declan feel a little awkward. Normally, silence didn’t bother him. He actually invited it. But for some reason, it bothered him this time.
He needed to say something, Declan thought. “I was afraid I was going to lose you,” he finally told her as he dismounted. It wasn’t exactly a scintillating revelation, but at least he had managed to banish the silence.
Josie remained exactly where she was. Truthfully, she was afraid to make a move. At the moment, her back and legs felt much too stiff, thanks to being jostled. She felt that dismounting gracefully right now might prove to be way too much of a challenge.
“No such luck,” she replied, trying her best to speak in a natural cadence.
Declan made his way over to his student and her mount.
“Are you planning on getting off sometime soon?” he asked. “Or do you just enjoy looking down at me?”
“I’m going to get off,” she told him. About to make an attempt to do so, she felt a cramp suddenly dance down her leg. “Soon,” she added after a moment.
He caught the hesitation in her voice. “Something wrong?” Declan wanted to know, studying her.
“No, of course not,” Josie denied a little too quickly.
“All right, then let’s see you come down,” he told her.
It was more of a challenge than a simple instruction. He was beginning to think that for some reason, Josie couldn’t dismount. If there was some sort of a problem, he wanted to know, although for the life of him, he couldn’t guess what it was.
“All right,” she answered.
Josie didn’t make the attempt to dismount immediately. Still, she knew she couldn’t remain just sitting on her mare like this. She certainly didn’t want to explain to Declan that her legs felt incredibly wobbly, even more than they had the first time she had ridden on the horse. Most likely he would just think that she was making up excuses.
Maybe her legs weren’t as bad as she thought, Josie told herself. Maybe this was all in her head.
“Josie?” he questioned.
Declan had no idea what to make of the woman’s inertia. According to his niece, who seemed to actually be sharing things with him lately, Josie never stopped moving. Yet here the woman was, all but frozen in place. Was there really something wrong, or had she just decided that she had had enough of riding and didn’t know how to tell him because of the bargain they had struck regarding more lessons in exchange for her working with Shannon? He readily admitted that he wasn’t exactly the easiest man to talk to.
“I’m getting off,” Josie told him, anticipating Declan’s next question. “I was just noticing how beautiful everything looks from up here.”
It was the only thing she could think of to try to distract him and get his mind off her inability to dismount.
“The scenery is just as beautiful from the ground,” he told her.
What did she expect him to say? “You’re absolutely right,” she agreed.
Holding on to the saddle horn, Josie bit down on her lower lip and swung her leg up over the horse’s rump. Her leg felt as if it weighed at least twenty pounds heavier. Maneuvering it was far from easy, but she refused to look helpless in front of Declan. Being helpless went against everything she believed in.
As she brought down her other leg, Josie could feel both legs weakening. She was sinking for just a split second. And then she felt Declan’s arms tightening around her.
Rather than setting her on the ground the way she expected, Declan continued holding her against him.
“I’m beginning to think that you’ve come up with your own rather unique way of dismounting,” he told her, a hint of amusement curving his mouth.
“I guess maybe I did ride Marigold a little too hard,” she admitted.
He looked the horse over from his vantage point. “Well, Marigold doesn’t seem to be any the worse for it,” he commented.
“Why should she be? Marigold outweighs me,” Josie told him.
“I didn’t take you for the type who would be making excuses,” Declan told her.
“I’m not making excuses,” Josie protested. “I’m just making observations.”
Declan nodded. The rare, elusive smile on his lips intensifying just a shade.
“Speaking of observations...” he said. “You were fairly flying on Marigold. Lucky for both of us that she didn’t come to an unexpected, sudden stop. She’s been known to do that on occasion when she’s been ridden harder than she’s accustomed to,” Declan told her. Not that he had thought that would be a problem when it came to Josie, since he’d assumed she’d take it slow. He supposed that he had misjudged the woman. “I wouldn’t want to see you landing on your head.”
Josie laughed. “Good thing you didn’t have to come to my rescue,” she quipped.
“Yeah, good thing,” he echoed, very aware that his arms were still around Josie, holding her fairly close to him.
The warm breeze was wrapping itself around both of them. Declan had to admit that he felt this strong, overwhelming desire just to tilt Josie’s head back and bring his lips down on hers.
His reaction wasn’t because of anything that she had done, he realized. It was just her. He was attracted to her. There was something about her, a can-do spirit that spoke to him, that just pulled him in.
And, if he were being honest about this, Josie was being almost annoyingly distant around him. Even though they had just been literally thrown together—and not for the first time—Josie had made absolutely no attempt to move in on him.
She hadn’t even flirted with him.
If anything, she was treating him as if he was her younger brother. He definitely wasn’t accustomed to being discounted in this manner. On the contrary, every one of the women who approached him for riding lessons would, at some point or other, make advances, attempting to stir him up in some fashion.
Some had even flirted with him outrageously.
He had always taken it as a challenge not to react in any way to any of those women. The reason for that was because he didn’t want the lines between his riding student and him to blur.
For the very first time in his life, Declan found that he was willing to allow those lines to get blurry. To his surprise, it was Josie who seemed determined that they each stay in their separate lanes and not mix pleasure with business.
“Um, I think you can let go of me now,” Josie prompted.
Declan looked rather skeptically into her eyes. “Are you sure you’re not going to fall down if I do?” he wanted to know.
No, she wasn’t sure, but she was determined to remain upright. “I’m sure,” she answered firmly.
He nodded, but rather than remove his arms, Declan only loosened his hold on her.
“I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if you just sat for a little bit,” he told her. Seeing the hesitancy in her face, Declan added, “Tell you what, I’ll even join you.”
Holding Josie’s hand, Declan lowered himself to the ground. He carefully drew her down beside him.
“I really am okay,” Josie assured her riding instructor. The last thing she wanted was for Declan to think of her as some sort of fragile, hothouse flower.
“It still wouldn’t hurt for you to sit,” he said, looking at her.
Her heart was beginning to settle down, the effects of her exhilarating ride fading until they were totally manageable.
Sitting next to him, Josie found herself extremely aware of Declan. There was no denying that the man was more than just attractive—very attractive, she amended—but she couldn’t allow herself to respond to him in any way.
There were reasons for that.
She felt she was just too old for him. Shannon had mentioned that he was thirty-eight, which meant there were six years between them. She had been married and had her family. Granted that family only included her daughter, a daughter who was now fully grown and in college, but she had had more of a family life in that respect than Declan had.
Taking care of his mother and providing temporary shelter for his niece wasn’t the same thing as being a husband and a father, two things that Declan had never been.
In her opinion, he needed to live that life, experience those things. And that wouldn’t happen with her. If she responded to him in any manner, chances were that she could be depriving him of enjoying that.
Damn, the more he looked at her, the more he found himself wanting to kiss her, Declan thought. There was something very heady—and now that he thought about it, stirring—about this woman. And it did bother him that she didn’t seem to be responding to him in that way. After all, he wasn’t exactly off-putting—if the way other women responded to him was any indication.
Just as Declan was about to give in to the very strong urge to kiss her, Midnight whinnied. The sound managed to break the spell weaving itself around him.
“I guess we’d better get back to the riding lesson,” he told her.
Josie flashed a smile at him that he couldn’t quite understand.
“I guess so,” Josie agreed, relieved and yet somehow a tad disappointed as well.
On his feet, Declan extended a hand toward her, silently offering her help to get up.
She placed her hand in his and he closed his fingers around it. A very sharp tingle went through her, one she struggled to ignore. Josie let out a breath, not even realizing that she had been holding it until this second.
Taking a step back and putting a little distance between them, she felt steadier.
“We’d better get going,” she said. “I know you have work to get to and I was hoping to get a few more pointers from you before I have to be getting back myself.”
He nodded, taking Marigold’s reins and holding the mare steady so that Josie could get on her.
It occurred to her that Declan was acting kinder toward her than he had the first time he had taken her for a riding lesson.
Maybe he was reacting to the fact that she had taken his niece off his hands a number of times already and he was being grateful for that.
Since silence was threatening to engulf them again, Declan made reference to his niece. “Shannon mentioned that in addition to working part-time at the animal shelter, you also help your brother and sister-in-law take care of their newborn twins.”
“They’re not exactly newborns anymore,” Josie told him as they began the slow ride back. “They are going on seven months soon, but there’s no arguing with the fact that they’re certainly a handful.” She smiled, thinking about her brother and his wife. “Of course, they had a rough start. They had to stay in the NICU for the first few months, which was very stressful on everyone. I just wanted to be able to be there—for the babies and for their parents,” she told him.
“So you dropped everything and just came out to stay with them?” Declan questioned, filling in what he thought were things she had left out.
“There wasn’t all that much to drop,” Josie told her instructor. She didn’t want him making a big deal out of what she was doing. “Like I mentioned the other day, my daughter is in college trying to do four years in three, so that keeps her very busy. I wouldn’t be able to see her much, if at all.
“And I had my own catering business, so basically I was my own boss. I’ve been busy all my life and I like being useful, so coming out here to help my brother and his wife with their new family is as much for my sake as it is for theirs.”
Declan shook his head. “I’m not all that sure I could do that in your place,” he admitted.
“Sure you could. You are,” she pointed out. “There are all sorts of ways of helping, you know.” She could see that he looked unconvinced. “You took in your mother and your niece because they needed you.”
Declan frowned, a furrow appearing between his brows. How had the conversation turned around like this? He wasn’t looking for any sort of praise.
He shrugged. “Well, as for my mother,” he told Josie, “I couldn’t exactly turn my back on her.”
“You’d be surprised how many sons and daughters could very easily do just that. And even if you took in your mother, that didn’t mean you had to automatically take in your niece. I’m sure it probably wasn’t exactly a package deal,” she reminded him.
Recalling the situation, Declan laughed under his breath. “Maybe not, but you don’t know my mother. She wouldn’t have given it a rest until I promised to take Shannon in. My mother used to do that when my father was alive, keep after him until he surrendered. And besides,” he told her, “I’m not doing this alone. You’re helping me with her,” he reminded her.
“You couldn’t have known that I’d offer to bring her to the animal shelter with me when you took the girl in. By the way,” she added, “beneath that initial attitude, your niece is a really great kid.”
He thought of his last confrontation with Shannon...but then thought about how things had been overall for the past week, with Shannon doing her chores, making conversation, showing real enthusiasm for the shelter. Things weren’t perfect, but they sure were a lot better. “Well, the jury is still out on that,” Declan told her.
She wasn’t buying into his denial, but for now, she let him have it. “Take my word for it. She is.”
He took a calculated guess what would make her say that. “Because she reminds you of your daughter?” Declan asked.
“No, because I’ve been watching her work with the animals,” Josie contradicted. “Shannon’s really great with them. She’s got some pretty keen instincts when it comes to working with the new puppies.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing, Shannon has been socializing some of the puppies that were recently brought to the shelter.” Turning toward Declan, she beamed, thinking of his niece. “She does amazing work with them.
“One of the puppies wouldn’t even come out from under this table where he had been hiding. When Shannon first started working with him, the poor thing was just whimpering and crying. Now he’s playing with not just her but some of the other puppies as well. You should be very proud of Shannon,” she told him. “Maybe you could come out sometime to observe her,” she suggested suddenly.
Declan laughed shortly. “I really doubt she’d want me showing up at the shelter, looking over her shoulder and watching her.”
She disagreed. “I think that you’re wrong, Declan,” she told him. “Every kid wants praise from the adult in their life.”
He shrugged. “I figure you probably take care of that.”
“If you mean praising her, I do,” she willingly admitted. “But it’s not the same thing. I’m not her uncle.”
His brow wrinkled. “You’re telling me she wants my approval?”
The man caught on quickly, she thought. “That’s what I’m saying.”
He easily dismissed that. “Well, I think you’re wrong.”
“Only one way to find out,” she told him. “If I’m wrong, you’ve lost nothing. But if I’m right...” Her voice trailed off, allowing him to fill in the important part.
Declan shrugged, not about to commit himself. “We’ll see,” was all he told her.
The smile on her face was nothing short of encouraging. “I certainly hope so.”
He felt as if he had just been given notice and pinned to the wall.