Free Defending Hearts by Shannon Stacey Page B

away.
    “Maybe she’s bored,” Gram suggested.
    “I don’t know. I follow Beverly’s instructions on exercising them and stuff. Maybe she misses them and wants to go for a ride.”
    “Do you two ladies ride?” Alex asked.
    “Not me,” Gram said. “I got thrown as a kid and after I hit the ground, the damn beast kicked me in the shoulder. I’m not a fan of horses.”
    “I ride well enough to take them for short trips out, but Beverly prefers they not become too accustomed to anybody else’s riding style.” She shrugged. “She’s got some hang-ups when it comes to her horses, but she pays us well to take care of them, so I just do what the lady says.”
    “You want some help? Checking out her stall, I mean.”
    No, she didn’t really want to be alone in the barn with him. Feeling too comfortable with him was a bad idea, because then she might be tempted to do something really stupid, like touch him. “No thanks. It won’t take me long.”
    He looked at her for a few seemingly endless seconds, until she had to fight to keep from squirming. It was asthough he knew what she was thinking, and wanted to call her on it. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”
    Gretchen nodded and went to shove her feet into her boots. She didn’t have time to wonder what Alex Murphy was thinking about. She had to get the horses taken care of and the bookkeeping done if she was going to reward herself with watching her movie.
    —
    A lex deleted the last three sentences he’d written and then stared at the blinking cursor. He was a storyteller at heart. It just happened that telling those stories through photographs came more naturally to him than telling them with words. He could usually put together a compelling piece, though, and frustration made him tap his fingers next to the touch pad.
    Rather than keep trying to force general background information on Stewart Mills into interesting and cohesive paragraphs, he saved the file and closed the laptop. He should probably take another look at the photos he’d been snapping. At the end of each day, he did a quick run-through, discarding the hundreds that weren’t quite right. But then—after a cooling-off period—he’d do another pass, magnifying each photo to analyze the detail and composition. Then he’d sort them between two folders—one for possible inclusion, depending on how long the project turned out to be, and one for shots that spoke to him on an emotional level and would almost certainly be used.
    Tonight, though, he was restless. Tired of being in his room—even though it had been only a couple of hours—andtired of being wrapped up in his own head, he stood and put the computer on top of the dresser. Then he stretched his arms up over his head, twisting at the waist one way and then the other to ease the kink in his back.
    Since he hadn’t heard the floor creak or the click of Cocoa’s nails, he knew Ida hadn’t gone to bed yet. He’d go downstairs and visit for a while, he decided, and maybe grab himself a snack.
    Gretchen had been working at the computer when he went upstairs, and he could tell by her posture she didn’t enjoy whatever she was doing. She’d been hunched over the keyboard, her shoulders tense as she stared at the screen and occasionally poked at it.
    She wasn’t at the desk when he came downstairs, though. Instead, she was on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table and Cocoa’s head on her lap. Gretchen was idly scratching the dog’s belly while Ida sat in her rocker, knitting and watching the television.
    “Bourne, huh?” he asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and all three of them turned to look at him.
    “Gretchen knows every line of this movie by heart,” Ida said, shaking her head. “Heck, I think even Cocoa knows every line of this movie.”
    “I like a woman who likes Jason Bourne.” He said it playfully, but he didn’t miss the way Gretchen’s cheeks flushed as she yanked her gaze back to