Her laugh was guttural and sexy. “Goddamn right, I do. The best and most profitable one in the state. Anyway, I see I took good care of you the other night.” She’d been massaging him through his jeans, with no results.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Smiling, the madam dropped her hand and moved toward the door. She addressed him over her shoulder. “What was the urgency? I don’t recall seeing you in such a dither since you heard about a certain soldier boy in El Paso, name of Gaither.”
Reede’s eyes turned a darker, more menacing green. “No urgency. Just horny.”
She smiled her knowing smile and patted his stubbled cheek. “You’ll have to lie better than that, Reede, honey, to put one over on me. I’ve known you too long and too well.” Her voice drifted back to him as she stepped into the darkness beyond his door. “Don’t be a stranger, sugar, you hear?”
Chapter 16
It was no longer sleeting, but it was still very cold. Patches of thin ice crunched beneath Alex’s boots as she carefully made her way from her parked car toward the practice track. The brilliant sunshine, which had not deigned to appear for the last several days, now blinded her. The sky was a vivid blue. Jets, looking no larger than pinpoints, trailed puffy lines that sometimes crisscrossed, matching the miles of white fencing on the Minton ranch that divided the compound into separate pens and paddocks.
The ground between the gravel road and the practice track was uneven. Tire tracks had worn permanent ruts in it over the years. It was muddy in spots where ice had already surrendered to the sun’s rays.
Alex had dressed appropriately in old boots and jeans. Even though her hands were gloved in kid leather, she raised her fists to her mouth and blew on them for additional warmth. She took a pair of sunglasses out of her coat pocket and slid them on to combat the sunlight. From behind their tinted lenses, she watched Reede. He was standing at the rail clocking the horses between the timing poles placed every sixteenth of a mile.
She held back a moment to study him unobserved. Instead of the leather bomber jacket, he had on a long, light-colored duster. One boot was propped on the lowest rail of the fence, a stance that drew attention to his narrow buttocks and long thighs.
The boot she could see was scuffed and well worn. His jeans were clean, but the hems were frayed, their denim threads bleached white. It occurred to her that the flies of all his jeans were similarly worn, and she was shocked to realize that she knew that.
His wrists were propped on the top fence rail, his hands dangling over the other side. He was wearing leather gloves, the same ones he’d had on when he’d pulled her against him the other night and held her while she cried. It was odd, and deliciously disturbing, to reflect on how his hands had moved over her back with nothing except a terry-cloth robe separating them from her nakedness. A stopwatch lay in the palm of the hand that had cupped her head and pressed it against his chest.
He had on the cowboy hat she’d first seen him in, pulled down low over his brows. Dark blond hair brushed the collar of his coat. When he turned his head, she noticed that the angles of his profile were sharp and clear. There were no indecisive shapes, no subtle contours. When he breathed, a vapor formed around the lips that had kissed her damp hair after he’d told her about Celina’s body.
“Let ’em go,” he shouted to the practice riders. His voice was as masculine as all his features. Whether he was shouting orders or making innuendos, it never failed to elicit a response low in her body.
As the horses came around—four, in all—their hooves pounded and raised clumps of turf that a track conditioner had loosened earlier that morning. Flaring nostrils sent up billows of steam.
When the riders slowed them to a walk, they were directed back toward the stables. Reede called out to one. “Ginger, how’s he doing?”
“I’ve been holding him back. He’s bouncy.”
“Give him his head. He wants to run. Walk him around once, then let him go again.”
“Okay.”
The diminutive rider, who Alex hadn’t initially realized was a young woman, tipped the bill of her cap with her quirt and nudged her splendid mount back onto the track.
“What’s his name?”
Reede’s head came around. He speared Alex with eyes shaded against the sun only by the brim of his hat and a natural squint that had left him with appealing crow’s-feet at the outer corners of his eyes. “She’s a girl.”
“The horse?”
“Oh. The horse’s name is Double Time.”
Alex moved up beside him at the rail and rested her forearms on it. “Is he yours?”
“Yes.”
“A winner?”
“He keeps me in pocket change.”
Alex watched the rider crouched over the saddle. “She seems to know just what to do,” she remarked. “That’s a lot of horse for such a tiny person to handle.”
“Ginger’s one of the Mintons’ best gallop boys—that’s what they’re called.” He returned his attention to the horse and rider as they came around the track at a full-out gallop. “Atta boy, atta boy,” he whispered. “Comin’ through like a pro.” He whooped when Double Time streaked past them, a blur of well-coordinated muscle, agility, and immense strength.