2
Spur Chappell hated sheep with everything in him. They had a special talent for getting out of their fences, though they literally had the smallest brains of all farm animals.
He hated that they even had sheep at Bluegrass Ranch, but his youngest brother had insisted he get them. Spur had wanted to keep Duke on at the ranch, and he’d given in.
He wished now that he’d listened to his intuition, which had told him these sheep would be more trouble than they were worth. Not only that, but that Duke would not be around to tend to them properly.
He was off in Alabama this week, looking at two new mares he wanted to bring to the ranch, and that meant Spur was the one in the saddle with all the cattle dogs, trying to round up the naughty sheep.
Things happened swiftly from time to time, and he hadn’t had a spare second to call or text Olivia Hudson, his next-door neighbor, and warn her about the sheep. There were only five dozen or so, but sheep could cause some damage if they were left unchecked.
Of course, they’d headed straight for her place the moment he’d swung into the saddle. Double of course, she’d been standing outside, waiting to be trampled.
He knew they wouldn’t do that, but he’d still put himself and his dogs between the herd and the woman, because the last thing he and Bluegrass Ranch needed was a lawsuit.
Twenty minutes later, he had all the sheep back in their corral, where Blaine had fixed the fences they’d broken through. He touched his hand to his hat for his brother and called, “I have to go talk to Olli. They gave her a fright.”
Blaine waved to indicate he’d heard Spur, and Spur set his sights on his one and only neighbor out here in the hills beyond Lexington. He loved the land out here, which always seemed to be made of emerald green grass and bright white fences. He loved the sky when it was pure blue, and when it had puffy clouds in it, and when the wind blew in a storm.
He loved the smell of fresh water in the stream on his land, and the scent of sawdust in the air from the new bridges he’d just put in.
His horse breathed rapidly, and Spur leaned down to pat All Out’s neck. “Good boy,” he said to the horse, the way one would to a dog. “We got ‘em, thanks to you.”
It was the dogs who’d really done most of the herding work, but Spur never told the horses that. His horses all believed they were kings and queens, because he raised them to be. They had championship blood in their veins, and he expected them to train and run like it.
That was how he made his money, after all. If he had a horse who wasn’t a diva and couldn’t run, he couldn’t do anything with that horse. His family ranch depended on breeding and selling top-quality horses that would run until the day they dropped dead.
Not that Spur ever pushed them that far. But he had seen over a dozen of the horses he’d bred and sold win the Belmont, the Kentucky Derby, or the Preakness. Two of his horses had won all three in the same year, taking that Triple Crown.
Every time one of his horses won, any horse in that bloodline got more valuable. Spur kept immaculate records of the horse races around the world, and when he walked into an auction, everyone took note.
The woman next door didn’t care about any of that, though, and Spur brought his ego back down to Earth as he went up the road to her house. He found her outside still, down on her hands and knees as she ripped up the flowers his sheep had trampled.
She heard him coming, and she got to her feet and wiped her sunkissed hair off her forehead. She cocked one hip while he brought All Out to a stop and swung out of the saddle.
“Hey, Olli,” he said, walking toward her so he could see the damage in her flower garden.
“Spur,” she said, clearly not happy with him.
“Sorry about the sheep.” They’d done a number on whatever she’d had growing there. “Tell me how much to fix that.”
“You can’t fix that,” she said. “Those were my gardenias and a new crop of four o’clocks. I use that gardenia for my Down Home South candle.” She glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “Animals are unpredictable.”
She took a step toward him, and he wouldn’t have predicted she’d do that. His heartbeat skipped over itself for a moment, and he wasn’t even sure why. He’d talked to Olli lots of times; she was pretty in a Southern belle kind of way, though he’d never let himself think about her for too long.
He hadn’t let himself entertain thoughts about a woman for years now, though if he had, he could easily see himself fantasizing about the curvy, gorgeous Olivia Hudson.
She was still prowling toward him, something sparking in her eyes that interested him. Maybe he had thought a lot about Olli and had just never admitted it to himself. He pushed against the idea now too.
“I can pay for the damage,” he said, clearing his throat as her perfume hit his nose. She smelled amazing, like lemons and vanilla and cookies. He wanted a taste of her right then, and he couldn’t believe himself.
“I can have one of my men come replant the flowers,” he said, sticking to facts to keep his brain in control of this situation. “I know they won’t be good enough or ready when you need them, but I’m not sure what else to do to make it right.”
Olli stopped a couple of feet from him and looked him up and down. Spur suddenly wished he wasn’t sweaty and dusty from rounding up the sheep. He held his ground, glad when her eyes finally returned to his.
“Sorry, Olli,” he said again, wishing she’d name her price so he could go.