Free Six White Horses by Janet Dailey Page A

strident demands were ignored, her face flaming with the combination of blood and furious embarrassment because of the loud laughter from their audience.
    His long strides began eating up the distance to the stable area; he was carrying her effortlessly. Patty tried pushing herself upright, but the grip on her thighs merely tightened.
    "Put me down!" she echoed her previous demand, this time in a lower voice.
    "You'd better shut up," Morgan replied with biting softness. "You're in an excellent position to be spanked, and I can't say that the thought doesn't appeal to me."  
    "You're an insufferable, arrogant cad!" Patty muttered, but her struggles to be free subsided at his threat. "If that blonde Carla Nicholson knew what you were really like, she wouldn't think you were nearly so attractive."
    "She doesn't act like an irresponsible child either." There was an underlying thread of dry amusement in his voice.
    Meaning I do, Patty thought angrily.
    "What in the world—!" came her grandfather's exclamation.
    Her somewhat limited view, restricted mainly to the ground beneath Morgan's feet, unless she turned her head to the side, had not told Patty how near they were to the stables where her horses were quartered.
    Gasping in outrage, she found herself being unceremoniously dumped onto a bale of hay.
    "Here's your granddaughter, Everett," Morgan stated, hands on his hips as he surveyed her attempts to maneuver into a less ignominious position. "Maybe you can attempt to talk some sense into her."
    Her grandfather's mouth opened, the question silently written in his curious and confused eyes about to be spoken, but Morgan had abruptly turned and walked away, leaving Patty to supply the answer.
    "What was all that about?" Everett King inquired with a confused laugh.
    "Oh, Morgan was being his usual obnoxious self, throwing his weight around—or my weight, in this case," Patty answered grimly, brushing the hay stalks from her jeans.
    "What set him off this time?"
    She let her gaze bounce to her grandfather's face and ricochet back to her clothes. "I told that reporter that I'd thought about riding a bucking horse. I never said I planned to do it—I only thought about it. But he had to play the dictator and tell me I couldn't do it."
    "I certainly hope you don't." Everett King shook his head at the dubious wisdom of the thought.
    "Don't you start in on me, grandpa!" she warned, and started toward the tack room to soap down the leather.  
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    THE BLACK REIN was not lying very smoothly on Loyalty's neck. Patty slid from his back to adjust it, her trembling fingers nearly competing with her quaking knees. They had given two performances at this particular rodeo and neither had been up to her usual standards of near-flawless execution.
    A pair of hands closed over her shoulders and she jumped in surprise. "Hello, Princess, I'm back," Jack Evans greeted her in a soft voice.
    The kiss he attempted to brush along her neck was eluded as Patty turned around to face him, striving for a nonchalance that her stomach was far from feeling. Her glance took in the calf roper still working in the arena, the last event before her performance.
    "Hi, Jack. How did you do tonight?" she asked, trying to sound lighthearted.
    "I'm going to be taking the average," he winked with a boastful gleam in his eyes. "And all because of my good-luck princess. We'll have to go out tonight to celebrate."
    "I don't know, Jack," Patty hedged, liking this cocky cowboy without really trusting him.
    "Sure you do." He curled a finger under her chin. "We're a team. I'll meet you at the stables when the rodeo is over. In the meantime, let me give you back some of the luck you've given me."
    The warmness of his lips was comforting, almost reassuring, and Patty responded in gratitude. She refused consciously to admit it, but there was an inner feeling that she would need all the luck she could get before the night was over.
    "Say," Jack sighed, raising