Page 69 of His Eighth Ride

“Holy smokes,” he said as he got to the edge of the garden closest to her. Max and Boots had stopped there as well. “I—I don’t even know what to do.” He grinned at her, but Opal didn’t feel like smiling.

“I was just doing some garden prep,” she said as calmly as she could.

Tag tipped his head back and laughed, and Opal supposed she deserved that.

“Come help me, cowboy.” She made a noise of dissatisfaction, and Tag sobered.

“You look like you’ve been sucked into the ground.” He looked down at his boots, his jeans, his jacket. He hadn’t changed after work, because he had mud streaked along his thighs too.

“You haven’t showered yet,” she said. “I just need a hand. It’s so slippery out here.”

“All right,” he said dubiously. He stepped out into the mud, and it wasn’t as deep or as wet on the edges. He took four strides to reach her, and he planted his feet side-by-side and reached for her. “Up you go.”

She put her disgustingly dirty hands in his, mud squishing out between her fingers as she gripped his. “Okay,” she said, but she felt powerless to get her feet under her.

Tag lifted her by his sheer strength, which sent streams of embarrassment through Opal as she rose from the muck with horribly humiliating squelching sounds filling the air. Oh, and his grunting as he bore her full weight. Yeah, that wasn’t embarrassing or anything.

She got one foot on the ground, and she threw her arms around Tag as she struggled to get the other one under her. “Okay,” she said, but Tag started to topple.

“Okay?” he asked, his voice strained.

“Okay,” she said, moving further into his chest. His left foot moved out, and Opal’s went between his, making her now unsteady again.

“Not okay,” he said as he wrapped both of his arms around her.

“I’m sliding,” she said with plenty of panic in her voice.

“Join the club.” Tag dropped to one knee, and that meant Opal couldn’t stay standing either. She couldn’t pull Tag down with her, so she released him and started to fall backward. But he had ahold of her, and that only brought him forward over her.

She landed hard on her backside, another cry flying from her mouth, Tag’s eyes met hers for the briefest of moments before he finally got the memo and let go of her. His hands landed in the mud at her sides as his right leg finally yielded and bent at the knee.

Both of them breathed in and out, in and out, hard. He looked at her, an indecipherable look on his face. “This mud is cold,” he said.

For some reason, Opal found that funny, and she started to laugh. “Yeah, it’s no picnic,” she said through her giggles. Her lower jaw shuddered, and she hadn’t realized how chilled she’d become.

“The sun’s down,” she said.

“And we can’t stay out here much longer,” Tag said. “Or we’ll be stumbling back to the farmhouse in the pitch dark.”

Opal grinned at him. “You’ve got a little mud here.” She reached up and wiped her messy hands along his cheekbone and down into his beard.

Pure shock entered his expression. “You have got to be kidding me.”

She laughed, then shrieked when Tag lifted his completely muddy hand too. “Taggart Crow, don’t you dare.”

“Don’t I dare?” He grinned wickedly at her, his hand still raised. But instead of him smearing the muck through her hair, he leaned forward and kissed her. Opal got a little grit on her lips, along with the taste of earth, but she didn’t mind so much. Not when it was Tag doing the kissing.

He pulled away with a laugh bubbling out of his mouth. “We really can’t stay out here like this.” He put one hand on her shoulder to steady himself. Behind him, Max barked. Tag looked at the dog and back to Opal. “Maybe we should just scoot to the edge. It’s drier over there.”

“I am not mud-scooting in front of you.”

His eyes danced with delight. “Embarrassed?”

“Thoroughly.”

“Oh, come on, Opal,” he said good-naturedly. “You’ve got to have something you don’t excel at.”

“Prepping vegetable garden plots,” Opal said. “Check.”

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