Page 5 of Boston
The horse did not slow down, as horses were prey animals and their fight or flight instinct almost always defaulted to flight. Cora’s teeth rattled in her head as they knocked together, and she had no idea how to slow this runaway train.
She heard another voice yelling, “Whoa, whoa, whoa there,” but she didn’t dare look left or right.
Marigold’s hair whipped back into her face, and Cora actually closed her eyes and gripped the saddle horn tighter.
“Hey-o, whoa,” the man yelled again, and something whizzed past Cora’s head, and then miracle of miracles, Marigold started to slow. In fact, the cowboy brought her to a complete halt, her sides heaving, and him pressing in tight to her neck. “Hey, Goldie, you’re okay. You’re okay,” he said in a calm, soothing tenor that worked as well on females as it did on equines.
Cora could not get a breath, though her nostrils flared.
“You okay?” the man asked, his voice guarded but kind.
Cora opened her eyes and looked into the gorgeous brown eyes of a simply stunning cowboy. He wore a frown, and he blinked at her. “What’s your name? Are you with me?” He held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Cora straightened, and her lungs finally expanded with a breath of air. She exhaled it all out shakily, her anxiety and panic striking together, like a snake—fast and deadly. She slid from the saddle and shook her hands as she paced away, tears dripping down her face.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” The cowboy’s boots hit the ground and came toward her. He seemed to sense that Cora didn’t want to be touched, and he let her pace away from him and then come back, all the nervous energy and the fear of being tossed like a sack ofpotatoes and hitting the ground and breaking every bone in her body flowing through her.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I saw her start, and I came right after you. It’s okay. You’re all right.” He touched an open palm to his chest. “My name is Boston Simpson. I work here at the lodge. Are you a guest? I can get you back where you belong. No problem.”
He took a step closer to her and held out his hand, almost as if she were a dog, and he wanted her to sniff him and deem him safe.
“Not a guest,” she managed to say, and Boston’s expression didn’t change.
He simply blinked again. “Okay,” he said. “I can still get you back where you should be. Why don’t you tell me your name?”
Cora shook her head, because she was this man’sboss, and she had no idea what he did here at the lodge. For all she knew, he worked raking bark or carrying luggage, and she would have four or five managers between him and her. She’d never have to speak to him again.
More importantly, he would never speak of this event again.
She catapulted herself onto Goldie’s back, reached down and pulled the rope he’d used to calm her and stop her, and flung it away. Then she clicked her tongue and got the heck out of there.
“Wait,” Boston called after her. “Do you even know your way back?”
At that very moment, no, Cora did not. But if she knew one thing about horses, it was that they always knew the way home, and Goldie would get her “back where she belonged.”
CHAPTER
THREE
Boston stepped out of the shower at the same time his phone rang. He had three ringtones assigned to various people on his phone—Cash, his daddy, and his boss—and everyone else got the same boring chime.
But the song currently blaring through his small studio apartment was a Country Quad song, and that meant his father waited for Boston to pick up. He grabbed a towel, and dripping wet, reached for his phone on the edge of the bathroom counter.
He lived alone, so he could walk around naked all he wanted, but he toed the door closed even more as he left a wet streak on his screen to slide on the call. He tapped the speaker, but it didn’t work, and he heard his daddy say, “Hello?” from far away.
“Just a sec,” he yelled. “I just got out of the shower.” He dried his hands on the towel and tapped the screen again. This time the speaker button did work, and he said, “Okay, you’ve got me.”
“You’re just getting out of the shower?”
“It’s been an afternoon,” Boston said, his stomach bubbling nervously over tomorrow’s Gold Status Group ride. He thought of the dark-haired beauty he’d rescued earlier, and something about her wouldn’t leave him alone. “So yes, I just got out of the shower.”
“That explains why you’re not at Uncle Morris’s for the Northern Lights fest…thing.”
Boston rolled his neck and started to scrub the towel through his hair. “I forgot about it.”
“Has he eaten dinner?” His mother’s voice on the other end of the line made Boston smile. She never thought he ate enough, and yet, somehow, he hadn’t died from starvation yet.
“It’s okay if you can’t come,” Daddy said. “You just told me you were, and I hadn’t seen you yet.” That was Dad-code forI was worried.
