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early,” he noted. “Whatever time I walk into the stable, you’ve already been there.”

      “It’s my stable,” she pointed out.

      “No one’s disputing that.” He nudged her aside with his hip so he could move around to the other side of the dishwasher.

      The brief contact shot arrows of awareness zinging through her system.

      She stepped back quickly and braced her hands on the counter behind her. As she did so, her elbow bumped a water goblet on the counter and sent it crashing to the floor. The glass shattered, jagged shards flying.

      Silently cursing her clumsiness, she started toward the closet for the broom.

      “Watch,” Mac said.

      “I am,” she snapped irritably, then swore when she stepped down on a piece of glass.

      She lifted her foot, saw the blood was already dripping.

      Before she could say anything, he scooped her up off her feet and lifted her onto the counter. Her breath whooshed out of her, though she wasn’t sure if that was because of the unexpected jolt when he plunked her down or the surprising thrill of being held by a strong man.

      He took a step back and picked up her foot. His hand was warm, his touch firm but gentle, and somehow incredibly sensual.

      “Mac—”

      He snagged a paper towel from the roll. “Just let me take a look.”

      She didn’t see as she had much choice in the matter. And when his thumb slid over her instep, she didn’t protest because she was incapable of speaking.

      He dabbed gently at the blood. “You up-to-date on your tetanus shots?”

      “I had one a couple of years ago,” she said.

      “It doesn’t look like it needs a stitch, but it definitely needs some antiseptic cream and a bandage.”

      “There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom. If you let me get down, I’ll—”

      “You stay put,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

      “You give orders better than you take them, Mac,” she noted when he returned with the box of medical supplies.

      He shrugged. “I didn’t figure you wanted to get blood all over the floor by hobbling around before that cut was tended to.”

      She didn’t, of course, but that wasn’t the point. “I would have managed just fine if you weren’t here.”

      In fact, she probably wouldn’t have knocked the glass off the counter if he hadn’t been there to distract her—not that she was going to admit as much to him.

      She sucked in a breath when he wiped an antiseptic pad over the bottom of her foot.

      “You’re being ungrateful again,” he told her.

      She frowned at that. “I’m used to doing things on my own.”

      “Then it’s not just me,” he noted, dabbing some cream onto the pad of a Band-Aid before affixing it to her wound.

      “No.”

      His fingers smoothed down the edges of the dressing, and caused those tingles to dance and swirl through her system again.

      “Maybe,” she muttered under her breath.

      Not quietly enough, obviously, because he looked up at her and grinned.

      “That should take care of it,” he said, finally releasing her foot.

      But he didn’t move away, and she was suddenly aware of the intimacy of their positions—of the cupboards behind her back, and the man standing between her thighs.

      “I need to, uh, get that glass swept up.”

      He stayed where he was, his hands on the counter, bracketing her knees. “Are you always this skittish when anyone gets too close?”

      She laid her hands on his chest and tried not to think about the solid muscles beneath her palms, the strong beat of his heart, or the heat of his skin as she pushed him back a few inches.

      The intensity in his gaze made everything inside her quiver, but she managed to keep her eyes level with his and her voice steady when she responded. “I have this thing about personal space—as in, I don’t like people in mine.”

      Before he could say anything else, a flash of headlights warned of a vehicle coming up the driveway.

      “That will be Crystal dropping Bonnie off,” she told him, torn between relief and disappointment that their time alone together was about to be interrupted. Because as much as she did tend to veer away from intimacy, she occasionally experienced pangs of loneliness, moments when she was sometimes even tempted to open up her heart again. Usually those moments were quick to pass and her life would go back to normal.

      But Mac Delgado had shaken up the status quo the minute he walked into the Halfway Café, and Jewel didn’t know what—if anything—she was going to do about him.

      Mac’s knowing expression suggested that he’d picked up on her mixed emotions, that he knew how confused she was and how tempted she didn’t want to be. She found it strange that a man she’d met only a week earlier should be able to see through all the layers she’d worked so hard to build up over the years and recognize the longing that was buried deep in her heart.

      And she knew that if she wasn’t careful, he might find a way to tunnel through those layers.

      As Mac found the broom and quickly swept up and disposed of the broken glass, Jewel promised herself that she would be careful. Very careful.

      Jewel was making some adjustments to the yearling training schedule on her computer when Caleb Bryant came into her office. He’d started as an exercise boy for her father when Jewel was still riding ponies and they’d grown up and into the business together. Now he wasn’t just an Eclipse-winning trainer but a good friend.

      The ready smile faded when she saw the concern etched between his dark brows.

      “Gabe Anderson was here,” he told her.

      It was all he said, and yet those few words said so much. Gabe Anderson had been a client of Callahan for a long time, and he’d never made any secret of the fact that he had doubts about JC’s ability to run the facility as her father had done. Jewel would have liked to be able to tell him to take his horses elsewhere, but the fact was, he had a fair amount of clout in the racing world and a lot of horseflesh in her stables. So she gritted her teeth and tried to accommodate his needs and wishes whenever possible, but something in Caleb’s eyes warned it wouldn’t be so easy this time.

      “Is there a problem?”

      “After Midnight came ninth in a field of fourteen at Belmont on the weekend.”

      She rubbed at the throb in her temple. The headache had been hovering there for a couple of hours, but she’d managed to stave it off with a handful of aspirin and focused determination. Until now.

      “Should he have done better?”

      Caleb only shrugged. “He’s a young colt with a lot of potential, but right now, he has more enthusiasm than focus.”

      And that was the reason, she suspected, that Caleb had recommended not racing the colt so early in the season. The two-year-old had been a late season foal and would have benefited from a few more months training before being loaded into a starting gate. But he was also a foal with impressive bloodlines and a price tag to match, and she knew that Anderson was focused so intently on seeing a return for his investment that he couldn’t see anything else.

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