The Taming of Tyler Kincaid

“Kincaid.” Was that breathless little voice really hers? Caitlin cleared her throat. “Kincaid, take your hands off me.”

“I would,” he said lazily. “But that’s not what you really want, is it?”

“Listen, you—you arrogant, egotistical—”

“Kincaid? Kincaid, where in hell are you?”

Abel’s voice, and the echo of his footsteps on the cement floor, cut through the building tension. Tyler let his hands fall from Caitlin’s shoulders. He stepped aside and she slipped past him, just as the foreman stepped into the stable.

The old man looked from her to Tyler. “Is there a problem, Ms. Caitlin?”

“Yes.” Caitlin shot Tyler an angry look. “Yes, there is. I want you to tell this man…to tell him…” She looked at Tyler, whose gaze had not left her, and her throat tightened. “Starting tomorrow, let him work with the horses. With the new mare that’s afraid of her own shadow. You hear me, Abel?”

Abel’s bushy brows shot up, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”

* * *

Caitlin stood leaning against the railing of the small corral, watching Tyler and the horse and wishing she’d followed her instincts and fired him. But she’d called Jonas in New York, and Jonas had told her to let him stay on.

“Man’s up to somethin’, Catie,” Jonas had said. “You keep him there till I get back. Just you watch yourself, you hear? Don’t turn your back.”

She’d been careful not to do that. In fact, she’d made it a point to keep an eye on Kincaid. Just now, others were doing the same thing, including Abel, leaning on the rail beside her.

“Man’s got good hands,” he said, and spat into the dust.

“Yes,” she said, with an indifferent shrug. She didn’t want to think about those hands, about how they’d felt on her. “He seems to.” She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you had any ideas about putting Lancelot to stud.”

“Did you ask him what he’s doin’ here? Man like that ain’t no drifter.”

“He’s here to talk with Jonas.”

“And to shovel manure?” Abel snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, Abel, Tyler Kincaid isn’t our problem. He wanted a job, we gave him a job, and he’s doing it, isn’t he?”

“Suppose he is. But he asks a lot of questions.”

“Questions?” Caitlin looked at the foreman. “About what?”

Abel lifted his shoulders. “This, that. Everythin’. Asked Carmen to tell him about herself, her kids. Asked a couple of the older men if they’d been workin’ here long, what they knew of the old days, how it was on Espada then.”

Caitlin smiled despite herself. “Dangerous questions, huh? I mean, a man’s definitely up to no good if he wants to talk about the old days, or if he takes the time to ask Carmen about her son and daughter.”

“Just figured I’d let you know what’s going’ on, Ms. Caitlin. Everythin’ ain’t always what it seems.”

“I appreciate that,” she said gently. She looked at Tyler, watched the mare come forward daintily to sniff at the hand he held out to her. “He’s probably just a cowboy that’s got some get-rich-quick scheme he’s dying to tell Jonas about.” She smiled. “And we both know how Jonas will deal with that.”

The foreman chuckled. “Yes, ma’am. Tyler Kincaid’ll be out of here so fast it’ll make his head spin.”

Caitlin turned back to the corral as Abel sauntered away. She stepped up on the bottom rail and watched Tyler’s performance.

That was what it was, all right. A performance, but she had to admit, it was enjoyable. Tyler had a gentle touch, strong hands and a sense of authority. The mare was responding to all of it.

Just as she had.

The thought made her uneasy, and she forced it from her head.

The sun had climbed higher; it was a blazing fist of yellow, punching through the blue sky. Tyler had left his shirt on and it was soaked through. Caitlin could see the muscles move and bunch beneath the wet fabric. Her face heated; she looked sideways at the men lining the fence but all their attention was on the man and the horse. Some of the men called out good-natured words of advice.

Tyler looked at them, smiled, even grinned—but he never once looked at her.

It annoyed her, though she knew it was silly. Why should he look at her? Still, it ticked her off. A while ago, she’d accused him of being arrogant because of the way he’d spoken to her. Now, she was thinking of him as arrogant because he refused to acknowledge her presence. She was being an idiot…except, dammit, he was being arrogant. She knew it. Did he think it was a turn-on? Caitlin thumbed her hair behind her ears. Not for her, it wasn’t. She’d grown up watching her mother succumb to a seemingly endless succession of men whose egos were bigger than their IQs. Even Jonas, who was as smart as a whip, thought he could strut through life with only his arrogance to guide him.

If Tyler Kincaid thought the same thing, he was in for a nasty surprise.

Eventually the mare was trembling with exhaustion. Tyler rubbed her ears, whispered to her, then jerked his head toward Manuel, who was watching with the others.

“She’s had enough for today,” he told the boy. “Take her inside. Give her a good rubdown and some of those special oats she’s so fond of.”

Caitlin waited for Manuel to point out that Tyler could take the mare inside himself, that he was nobody to give orders, but the boy nodded and did as he’d been told. The same thing had happened when Tyler began working with the mare. One of the older men had been standing around, smoking. Tyler had asked him to get the mare’s tack and Pete hadn’t hesitated, even though he was as independent in spirit as most cowboys.

There was an art to giving men like this orders, and some basic rules.

Rule number one was that one ranch hand didn’t give an order to another but the men seemed to have forgotten that. Tyler asked a man to do something, the man did it. It was as simple as that.

And it annoyed the hell out of her. Was she supposed to stand by and let a stranger order her men around? Jonas had told her to keep Kincaid on until he got back but that didn’t mean she had to let him march all over her.

It was time to push things and find out who Kincaid really was, and what he wanted.

The men drifted away. Kincaid strolled toward her. He had the lazy walk of a man who spent lots of time in the saddle but it was tempered with a masculine grace and innate authority she’d never seen in anyone but Jonas Baron and her stepbrothers. Strange, that she should think of Jonas’s sons just now, and yet—and yet, there was something so familiar in that walk. In the set of those shoulders…

“Show’s over,” Tyler said. “You can leave now.”

Color flooded her face. She took her arms from the top rail and stepped back. “What did you say?”

That smile she’d seen before—insolent, all-knowing, dangerously sexy—curved across his mouth. He opened the gate and stepped out of the corral.

“You heard me. I said the show was over.”

Caitlin could feel herself tremble with anger. She watched as he drew his shirt over his head and used it to mop his torso. Sun glinted on his chest, touched the powerful muscles of his biceps, the ridged abdominal wall with gold.

Her mouth thinned. “Must you flaunt yourself?”

“It’s hot. I’ve been working my tail off. If that means I’m flaunting myself, so be it.”

“You’re out of line, Kincaid.”

“I’m honest, Ms. McCord.”

“You’re insolent, and you’re so full of yourself it’s a miracle you don’t explode.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’ll just bet you have.” Caitlin blew a strand of hair from her forehead and bunched her fists on her hips. “Just what are you doing here, Kincaid?”

“Hell, Ms. McCord, we’ve been over this ground already.”

“Yes, and you told me it was none of my affair but I think it is. I want some answers, and I want them no

w.”

“I told you, I have business with Jonas Baron.” Tyler hung the shirt over his shoulder, hooked it on his thumb and started toward the bunkhouse. Caitlin fell in beside him.

“What kind of business?” Her legs were long, but his were longer. She was almost running to keep up with him, and she didn’t like it. “Dammit,” she said, dancing out in front of him, “stand still when I’m talking to you!”

Tyler’s eyes narrowed. “Do you use that tone of voice with all your hands?”

“Just answer the question, Kincaid. What are you doing at Espada?”

Tyler looked down into Caitlin’s face. It was flushed and her hazel eyes glittered with anger—and he was pretty sure he knew what that anger was all about. She’d been watching him work the mare. Hell, she’d been watching him ever since yesterday. After three days of never so much as glimpsing her, he saw her everywhere. And each time he did, he could feel her eyes on him. Not that he could ever catch her looking. The second he turned toward her, Caitlin McCord swung away like a nervous filly.

A muscle danced in his jaw.

And he knew the reason.

Something had ignited between them, hot and electric, primitive, almost pagan. What he wanted, what she wanted, was to feel him deep inside her. He knew it. She knew it—and she didn’t like it.

She was too good for him. She thought so, anyway. He’d been watching her as she went about her business and yeah, she knew her way around the ranch. She wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty or her boots soiled, and there was muscle tucked away beneath that soft, golden skin, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a lady.

And ladies didn’t stoop to play bedroom games with the likes of the man she thought he was, the man he would have been, if he were still John Smith.