Free The Ranch Hand by Hannah Skye

calf. He wanted her to be happy. Hell, he wanted to be happy, and this was a fine day for it. Bright and cold, but without a cutting wind. He could even smell the cold. The scent of evergreens. The earth. His horse and the leather, and from time to time, a hint of Carol’s perfume.
    They continued in easy silence for the first half of the circuit around the ranch’s fence line, and he managed to focus on the task at hand. Fortunately, the storm damage had been minimal. When he spotted a place where the fence had been damaged—by yesterday’s wind or fallen branches overloaded with snow—he would climb out of the saddle and tie a bright red piece of plastic strip to the post. The red plastic marked the place for easy finding when he returned to repair it with tools and supplies in either the truck or the ranch’s ATV. It was good work though. Work he enjoyed. Outside. Working with his hands. Surrounded by all of this…the words majestic beauty might sound like overkill to someone not standing in the shadow of the Rockies, but he thought they applied well enough.
    He allowed himself a wry smile at his thoughts. Look at him now, a little taste of sweetness between the sheets yesterday and pretty soon he’d be spraying poetry like water from a dog-chewed garden hose.
    Carol reined in. She sat very still in the saddle, back straight, staring off at Snowbrook Ranch in the distance, below them as the land gently sloped away from the foothills. “I’ll miss this place.”
    Those words made him tense up again, shattering any hope of the peace from his worries he’d been hunting for. Pike sensed his tension and tossed her mane and snorted. He felt the scowl gathering on his face and forced it away, shifting into an easy smile. Despite the power of their lovemaking yesterday and the intense connection they’d shared, this remained treacherous ground. He didn’t want to misstep and break an ankle. Or worse.
    “You talk as if you’ll never be back,” he replied, keeping his tone nonchalant.
    “It’ll never be mine again.” She shrugged. “It always felt like my place. An entire world, just for me to explore. I loved growing up here. So many good memories.”
    “So you make new memories. At your new place.” All the same, thinking of her gone made him cold. He’d been weak yesterday. He’d been unable to watch her walk away. She’d been right after all. He was a selfish bastard. He’d been keeping himself in check for so long that when he’d lost control, he’d been willing to do anything to have a few more minutes with her. Worse, he didn’t regret an instant of it.
    “You’re right,” she said. “Of course you’re right. But it seems so unreal to me right now. My ranch.” She grabbed the sides of her head. “All the things I still have to do. Oh my God, you have no idea—”
    “I think I have some bit of an idea,” he said, drawling out the words with a wry smirk.
    She glanced at him and a hint of a blush reddened her cheeks. “Of course you do. Not many other people would understand though.” She readjusted her cowgirl hat, knocked askew when she’d grabbed her head. “And…us. Together. I think that might seem the most unreal.”
    “It felt real.”
    “It did…and it didn’t. Am I making any sense?”
    “No more than usual,” he quipped with a grin, but he still felt colder than snow inside, the feeling sinking through him from his chest to his guts.
    She didn’t grin back, though. “Things feel too good to be true.”
    “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
    “Maybe that feeling is a bad thing. I feel like my life has been so charmed that someday the universe will realize how good I have it and snatch it all away. Because I don’t think I deserve it sometimes…”
    He nudged his horse closer to her, reached out and took her hand in his, the coldness inside him fading as concern for her replaced it. Their gloves kept them from skin to skin contact, but he gave a squeeze