Page 50 of The Guy Who Stole My Ranch

Someone had left the door ajar, so I used a foot to yank it open far enough to get the box through.

The familiar, but slightly sour, scent of horses and everything that went along with them filled my nostrils. It was like smelling cookies that had burned a little on the bottom. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right. I always chalked it up to this place being so old that no one could possibly know what was growing in the shadows.

Stalls lined both sides of the wide hallway, totaling sixteen. Light leaked through the ceiling in a few places, and a broken pitchfork lay on the ground nearby.

“You’re late,” Rick said from somewhere within the building.

“I have stuff in my truck.” I moved to the storage room, which was also open, and put the medicine on an empty spot on the shelf. Good thing I’d bought two boxes. When I walked back into the hallway, I found Elizabeth?Beth?Owen, the woman who ran the rescue.

She was my exact opposite. Tall to my short, slender to my curves, and blond to my brunette. I swear a pair of size three jeans would fall off of her, and I had often wondered if she bought shirts from the children’s section of the store. Her tanned skin glowed, and her bright green eyes always danced.

Beth gave me a wide smile and engulfed me in a hug with her bony, but muscular, arms. “How are you?”

While the two of us weren’t terribly close, we had developed a working relationship over the past five years. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she knew about my dad selling the ranch.

I hugged her back and said, “I’m okay.”

Beth put me at arm’s length and looked into my eyes. “You sure?”

I shrugged.

Rick stuck his head out of a nearby stall and said, “She’s trying to kill the buyer.”

I shot my brother a look of death, which he’d learned to ignore as a teenager.

Beth raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t you have boxes to bring in?” I asked Rick. Then I turned my attention back to Beth. “The buyer wanted me to show him the ropes.”

Beth’s lips stretched into a grin. “I can only imagine where you started.”

I smiled. “He told me not to hold back. I made him work with the sheep on day one.”

“That’s cruel.”

“I know.”

Beth laughed and waved me past Rick to the far end of the building. “I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got a new resident, and he pretty much hates everyone and everything.”

A few of the other horses stuck their heads out of their stalls. One whinnied a greeting at me. I stopped to stroke his nose. “Where did the new guy come from?”

Beth sighed. “He started on the racing circuit, but he was injured in his second year, so the owner basically used him as a punching bag after that.”

My fingers curled into a fist. The thought of anyone hurting an animal made my blood boil.

“He’s five years old, and he’d just as soon kick you as look at you.” Beth glanced down at me. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. Rick wants to get in there and look him over, but we have to put a hood on him, and we should probably sedate him, so he won’t hurt anyone, but you know how I feel about that.”

“I do.”

We stopped at the last stall, and I heard an angry huff come from inside.

Beth stepped up to the door, the top of which came to her chest, and said, “Mornin’, Snowstorm.”

The horse snorted again.

I moved next to Beth and smiled when I saw the animal. He was tall, lithe, and strong. He was also pure white. Not albino, but much closer to white than gray.

“He’s a beauty,” I said.

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