“Stop that.” Meadow laughed, fending her off. “How about a treat, Snow?”
She went to get one from the cupboard.
“Hey, Jeff,” Dal greeted the other man, shaking hands as Jeff got to his feet.
“How’s it going?” Jeff asked Dal.
“Slow,” came the reply. “We’re renovating the calving sheds. It’s slow work in this weather.”
“Tell me about it,” Jeff said. “We had two fences go down. Cows broke through and started down the highway.”
“Maybe there was a dress sale,” Dal said, tongue-in-cheek as he watched a flustered Meadow give a chewy treat to her dog.
“I’d love to see a cow wearing a dress,” she muttered.
“Would you?” Dal replied. “One of your men thinks that’s your ultimate aim, to put cows in school and teach them to read.”
“Which man?” she asked, her eyes flashing fire at him.
“Oh, no, I’m not telling,” Dal returned. “You get on some boots and jeans and go find out for yourself. If you can ride a horse, that is.”
That brought back another sad memory. She’d gone riding on one of her father’s feistier horses, confident that she could control it. She was in her second year of college, bristling with confidence as she breezed through her core curriculum.
She thought she could handle the horse. But it sensed her fear of heights and speed and took her on a racing tour up the side of a small mountain and down again so quickly that Meadow lost her balance and ended up face first in a snowbank.
To add to her humiliation—because the stupid horse went running back to the barn, probably laughing all the way—Dal Blake was helping move cattle on his own ranch, and he saw the whole thing.
He came trotting up just as she was wiping the last of the snow from her face and parka. “You know, Spirit isn’t a great choice of horses for an inexperienced rider.”
“My father told me that,” she muttered.
“Pity you didn’t listen. And lucky that you ended up in a snowbank instead of down a ravine,” he said solemnly. “If you can’t control a horse, don’t ride him.”
“Thanks for the helpful advice,” she returned icily.
“City tenderfoot,” he mused. “I’m amazed that you haven’t killed yourself already. I hear your father had to put a rail on the back steps after you fell down them.”
She flushed. “I tripped over his cat.”
“You could benefit from some martial arts training.”
“I’ve already had that,” she said. “I work for my local police department.”
“As what?” he asked politely.
“As a patrol officer!” she shot back.
“Well,” he remarked, turning his horse, “if you drive a car like you ride a horse, you’re going to end badly one day.”
“I can drive!” she shot after him. “I drive all the time!”
“God help other motorists.”
“You . . . you . . . you . . . !” She gathered steam with each repetition of the word until she was almost screaming, and still she couldn’t think of an insult bad enough to throw at him. It wouldn’t have done any good. He kept riding. He didn’t even look back.
* * *
She snapped back to the present. “Yes, I can ride a horse!” she shot at Dal Blake. “Just because I fell off once . . .”