LITMIR.BIZ

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of ornery horses a nice change of pace after mucking out stalls and shoveling dog poop.”

      Her brows lifted skeptically. “You want to train them—just for fun?”

      “Sure.” He turned and eased a little closer to her. Close enough to make her just a bit uncomfortable, close enough to see the slight, involuntary flare of her nostrils, as though she were catching his scent. “Of course, I might have some other sort of motives mixed in there, like hoping to make you feel real grateful to me. But you’re too bright to fall for something like that, aren’t you? So I guess I’ll have to settle for what I said. A change of pace. A bit of a challenge.”

      Beneath the frown that lingered on her face lay a sort of puzzled awareness. Her eyes were just a hint wider. A hint uncertain. “I guess if you worked Horatio, you could take a percentage. When I sell him. That would be fair, wouldn’t it?”

      “Fair?” He did what he’d been wanting to do all morning, and ran his fingers down one long strand of hair, playing with it. “Doesn’t seem like it would be all that fair to you.” He rubbed the hair between his fingers, savoring the smooth, silky feel of it.

      “Don’t.” Her voice was steady enough, but her eyes gave her away. He saw anger there. Confusion. Arousal. The confusion excited him as much as the arousal, and he didn’t like that. Only innocents were confused by their physical needs, and Chase wasn’t a man who looked for trophies outside of the arena. He liked his women easy and experienced. Easy meant no one got hurt, no one got burned when it was time to move on down the road.

      But he wanted this woman. He wanted to seduce this woman.

      His gaze slipped from her face to her throat, where he could see the rapid flutter of her pulse. Lower, to where her hardened nipple was puckered beneath the soft flannel of her shirt...on one side. On the other side was her sling.

      He really shouldn’t be doing this.

      The sound of a motor filtered through his lust-induced haze. Summer heard it, too. Her eyes widened. She stepped back. He let his hand fall. She frowned, looked over his shoulder and frowned harder. “Well, shi—shoot.”

      It amused him that she’d edited out the cussword almost as much as it pained him to be interrupted. He turned.

      A tall man was climbing out of a low-slung foreign car next to the smaller gate. Although the man wore boots and a black cowboy hat with his suit, Chase would be willing to bet he’d never sat on a horse. Even from here Chase could see that his face had the smooth, indoor look of a businessman.

      “It never rains but it pours,” Summer muttered.

      “So who is he?”

      “Ray Fletcher.”

      The minute the smooth-faced Ray Fletcher stepped through the gate, the belly-deep belling of a bloodhound erupted from the back porch of the house. Hannah heaved to her feet and bayed again, and a cacophony of barks, yips, yaps and woofs broke out at the kennel.

      “Ray,” Summer said in a conversational tone that he barely heard over the din, “has never been introduced to Hannah.”

      Chase grinned. Apparently Hannah was a little more alert than she looked, and she set the other dogs off. You couldn’t beat a dozen yapping dogs as an alarm system.

      Ray Fletcher closed the gate and started across the thirty or forty yards from the front gate to the paddock. Chase noticed that Summer didn’t take one step toward the man. Fletcher had crossed half the distance before she made some kind of signal to Hannah, at which the old dog heaved a sigh and plopped back down. The rest of the canine clamor was dying down by the time Ray Fletcher reached them.

      He was an indoor sort of man, all right, a little soft through the middle and under his smooth-shaven chin. Not bad looking. Not especially good-looking, either. There wasn’t much memorable about him, Chase decided, except the expensive clothes he wore...and his eyes.

      Ray Fletcher’s eyes weren’t soft when his gaze flicked over Chase as quickly as a lizard’s tongue tasting the air, summing him up and dismissing him. Chase didn’t much care for the dismissal, but it did intrigue him. Offhand, he could only think of a few men who’d discounted him that quickly. A couple of them were fools. One was as ruthless and cunning as Chase had ever come across.

      “Summer,” Fletcher said in a pleasant tenor voice, “as soon as I heard about your accident I came to see if there’s any way I could help. I know how proud you are, but perhaps you’d consider a loan.”

      “Really? And here I thought you’d probably come out here to see if my getting crippled up meant I’d have to sell you my land.”

      He looked pained. “I know you’ve never acquitted me of having ulterior motives for dating you, though I’d think you’d only have to look in the mirror to realize the truth. But mixing business with pleasure is never a good idea. I should have known better.”

      “Well, if you’re really concerned, Ray, let me reassure you. This is Chase McGuire. He’s going to work for me while I’m unable to take care of things myself, so you see, I really don’t have any problems for you to concern yourself with. Chase, this is Ray Fletcher, a land shark from San Antonio.”

      “For heaven’s sake, Summer,” Fletcher said, exasperated, then turned his quick brown eyes on Chase. “Mrs. Callaway does like to give me a hard time, Mr. McGuire. I’m a real estate developer, and—” he smiled and shook his head ruefully “—I made the mistake of trying to persuade Summer to sell her land. Now I’m one of the bad guys, as far as she’s concerned.”

      “Is that so?” Chase stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and looked Fletcher up and down, his expression easy and pleasant. “You saying you aren’t a bad guy? Sure looks to me like a black hat you’re wearing.”

      Fletcher couldn’t decide if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so he ignored it. “Summer,” he began, “about that loan. I’ve got the money to spare, you know that. Just say the word.”

      “Now why would you think money was tight for me, unless you knew how much my property taxes had jumped this year? They doubled, Ray. And you know what’s odd? It was right after I turned down your offer that the appraiser showed up to reappraise my land. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

      He frowned. “You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with that.”

      “You know how us women are, Ray.” Her voice turned low and cold. “We get these notions. I’m getting another one right now. I’m thinking you’d love to make me a loan so that you could somehow get me to default on it. That would simplify things for you, wouldn’t it? You and your plans for your fancy housing development?”

      “Oh, enough.” Fletcher made a chopping gesture. “I put my foot wrong with you months ago, but this is getting ridiculous. You can’t blame me for every little thing that goes wrong.” He started to turn, then paused. “Look,” he said, “I really would like to persuade you of my good intentions. If you’re ever ready to give me a chance, just call.”

      I’ll give you a chance, Ray. Just withdraw your offer for my land. Formally, in writing. And throw in something about how you won’t ever make another offer.”

      He blinked before replying, a second too late, “When you get over your paranoia, call me.” He turned and walked off.

      “That got rid of him,” Chase said when Ray Fletcher was out of earshot.

      “Did you hear him?” Summer stared at Fletcher’s retreating back. “He offered me a loan. A loan,” she repeated, astounded at the insult. “I can’t believe it. He honestly thinks I turned down his offer to buy my land out of some stupid feminine pique. He thinks he can go right on pretending to be interested in me. Like that would make any difference about whether I’d sell the land or not.”

      “How much land do you have?” Chase didn’t think a developer would be interested in the little bit of land that the stable, kennel and

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