As if in agreement, Indie kept her stalwart pace but made a wide circle that pointed them toward the barn.
Kenzie wasn’t ready to return, but she didn’t fight the horse’s instinct when it came to the weather. Or anything else, really. She just hated the idea of facing the Covingtons right now, having to load Indie and all their gear and start the arduous journey home. And through miserable weather, no less. Just...ugh. But staying here wouldn’t be an option. Not after today’s confrontation with Ty.
She hadn’t meant for it to get out of hand, but the opportunity to save face, to make the alleged partnership legitimate instead of a lie, had been too tempting. That whole “resistance is futile” thing proved true. Hurting Ty hadn’t been anywhere on her impromptu agenda, but despite her good intentions, it had happened. The trust between them now fractured, she had no idea how to move forward. There would be no sidestepping the truth—that she’d tried to force his hand where it came to securing Gizmo’s stud rights for the Malones’ Quarter horse breeding program.
But he’d hurt her, too, when he’d said he’d sell off some of his stock. He would do it, violate that almost sacrosanct rule of keeping your best blood at all costs, simply to ensure he would be done with her. And that was what this was mostly about. The undisguised anger in his gaze had said he wanted her and her horse gone yesterday. After all, Indie was a mare. If he wasn’t diligent in protecting Gizmo’s honor, Indie may seduce him, get pregnant and demand child support.
“Such an idiot.” Kenzie huffed out a breath, watching it condense on the air into a thick, white cloud. “We’re not seducing his horse.”
Really, though, did he hate her so much, think so little of her and her breeding program, that he’d go so far as to cull his own herd to satisfy the debt between them? She thought she’d been clear that simply allowing her to introduce Gizmo’s genetics into her line would render the debt paid in full.
Ty’s selling off a handful of horses he’d worked so hard to develop simply wouldn’t do. There had to be another solution, one where they could both get what they wanted.
Drumming her fingers against one thigh, she didn’t realize the wind had shifted directions and now blew straight out of the north. Since she was headed south, that put the thirty-mile-per-hour “breeze” at her back...and carried away any sound coming at her with an into-the-wind approach. Including that of the oncoming horse and rider. Kenzie had no forewarning other than Indie’s sudden halt.
The mare raised her head, ears trained toward the stranger and unknown horse.
Scrambling to sit up with as much grace as she could muster, Kenzie reached out to grab the reins. She curled her fingers around the thin leather strips but couldn’t stop herself from sucking in a sharp breath.
Her lungs promptly froze.
She’d been preoccupied, but not so much she hadn’t realized the cold had been leaching into her and stealing what mediocre warmth she had left as the wind hammered her. The problem? She hadn’t realized justhowcold she’d become. And cold killed.
Eli reined in beside her, his mount a good deal taller than Indie. The man’s furious stare pierced Kenzie with unabashed animosity. “What the blue blazes were you thinking, charging off into an unknown ranch like that with weather threatening to thrash us within the hour?”
That he thought to ride out here to make sure she was okay? She could almost call the action chivalrous. Almost. That hewas railing at her the way a concerned parent would a small child? She couldn’t, in good conscience, call that anything but overbearing. How typical.
Ignoring Eli, she nudged Indie into a swift walk.
Eli wordlessly wheeled his mount in beside her and kept the same pace.
“If there’s something in particular you want, spill it,” she called out over the now-howling wind. “Silent lawyers make me nervous.”
“They should.” He glanced at her before settling his Stetson lower over his brow to block the wind. “What’s going on between you and Ty?”
There it was—the question she didn’t want to answer, mostly because she didn’t know how. She could offer a thousand speculative responses, but there was only one answer she had that would be accurate, though not terribly revealing. “Nothing.”Not at the moment anyway.
“You claimed him as yours in the arena,” Eli countered. “That doesn’t say ‘nothing’ to me.”
Damn. He had to have an elephant’s memory, didn’t he?She was so tired of dancing around the truth, trying to make sure she kept her stories straight, that she gave up and blurted out the truth. “We were friends and, until the accident, occasional lovers. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Eli nodded, not sparing her a glance but rather seeming to file her answer away for future retrieval. They rode in silence. The first snowflakes began to fall as he spoke again. “Where does the partnership regarding Gizmo come into play, then?”
She swallowed so hard she nearly choked. There was no answer she could offer that wouldn’t expose her as a liar, nothing she could say that would absolve her of the fact that she’d manipulated everyone in order to do what Ty had asked of her, even if he didn’t remember asking. Painted into anuncomfortable corner, Kenzie chose to say nothing. It was her best—only—defense.
Eli kept shooting short glares her way, waiting on her answer. He finally snapped. “Look. I know you and Ty are at odds. I get that. I’m not asking you to spell out specifics, but I have to understand what you mean—or meant—to him.”
She twisted to face the man at her side. “What are you talking about?”
“You raced by the house earlier.”
“So?”
“That action got him out of his chair.” Eli reined his horse in front of Indie and stopped Kenzie and her mare. “On his own. He got up and stepped to the window on his own.”
Torn between cheering at Ty’s initiative and wanting to rage at the fact that he wouldn’t do more for himself, she again defaulted to remaining silent. It was safer that way.
Eli glared at her.