“Be careful, Cheyenne.”
“Have a good opening tonight,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cheyenne
I watched Colt pull away and head off to work before I headed back in the house. The fact that he made me promise and was insistent about the gun was enough to chill me to the bone. If things were getting bad enough around here that a man like Colt was that worried while he was apart from me, then I really needed to make sure I knew where the gun was before I did anything else.
I walked back inside to the wonderful smell of coffee and thought another cup wouldn’t hurt before I went looking for it.
I needed to check on the progress of my own place and was excited about that, but a part of me was sad that I would be leaving here before too long. It had been a very long time since I’d felt at home like this anywhere, much less in my own home. My house had plenty of furniture for example, but there was no one to sit in it, and it just reminded me of bad memories and how lonely it really was out here sometimes.
I stood and took in the view of the barn while I drank my coffee and thought back to the passion Colt and I had shared. It still heated me to my core to think about it, and it had been hard to look at him ever since. I couldn’t even glance at him without remembering what it felt like to have his fingertips flutter down my skin. I couldn’t think about kissing him without remembering the trouble those lips got me into whenever they latched onto my neck that night.
It didn’t help that the kiss this morning was not only passionate, but secretly desired.
I had sworn completely off men after Dexter. He had chased me out of town, everyone I thought I loved had sided with him in the entire debacle, and I ran away for a fresh start. Honestly, had it not been for Colt talking me out of it, I probably would have taken off and run to somewhere else after my barn had initially burned down.
I had him to thank for a lot of things, even though I may not have wanted to admit it.
Colt was mesmerizing, honestly. I’d never been as physically weak to a man as I was to him. Not even Dexter. Dexter expected sex at every turn for everything he did, and it only served to make our sex less special and passionate. It seemed to be more about a treat he deserved rather than an experience we shared between the two of us.
In stark contrast, my experience with Colt a few nights ago was very different. It was warm and passionate and felt like something to be cherished. It was definitely a shared experience between the two of us, instead of an obligatory reward given as a pat on the back.
The experience with Colt was very different than what I was used to, and I found that I really enjoyed it.
Which put me in a much tougher position than I had anticipated.
I couldn’t afford to let a man skew my end goal. I had to get my sanctuary back up and running. Part of that was convincing my grant holders that we were back in action, and I had to keep the fact that I was residing at and accepting help from another ranch to myself. I also had to make sure I could resu
me life as normal without someone trying to burn down everything I’d worked so hard for. Having a man like Colt distracting me could be detrimental to that goal.
But oh, how his muscles felt against my skin.
When I finished my cup of coffee, I went in search of the gun. It wasn’t too hard to find, though I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. I decided to try holding it up just in case I needed it. I moved it around and made sure it wasn’t too heavy, even trying to aim it a few times. I figured if I really needed, it my instincts would kick into gear, but honestly, I knew I would probably be better at wielding a cast iron frying pan or a shovel than a gun.
I knew Colt was worried and had grown protective of me, given everything that had happened over the past couple of weeks, but I also knew how to take care of myself. I’d never owned a gun before, and I wasn’t going to need one now. Honestly? It frightened me that I might actually have to use it, so I put it away quickly and went upstairs to clean up. The horses needed their morning feed, and Tiffany was still laid up with her leg, so I needed to get busy. I didn’t want the horses getting restless and causing a scene or any trouble. It felt like my presence here had been one episode after another.
I went out to feed the horses and found they were more than ready for their morning meal, banging in their stalls as I suspected they would be. It felt good to be in the barn and among my horses, keeping some semblance of a normal routine, but that routine was quickly broken when a sound rang out from one of the stalls.
No, not rang. Rattled.
Something rattled out from one of the stalls.
“What the hell?”
I slowly approached the stall, thankful there wasn’t a horse in it, and when I rounded the corner, I saw just what I expected to see. A massive rattlesnake with its tail going and its fangs flared stopped me in my tracks. It was way too cold for them to be roaming around outside, and I had absolutely no idea how or why it would have gotten into the barn.
I tried to take a small step back, but it slithered closer to me. I looked around to see if there was anything I could reach for, like a shovel to beat its head in, a rake to ward it off, or a bucket to feed it into. But, there was nothing within my reach without moving, and I knew that snake was capable of moving far faster than I could.
I would be bit before my hand could grab the shovel in the stall next to me.
When my hands began to shake, I drew in a deep, cleansing breath. There were horses in every single stall except this one, and I knew if I startled it, I was putting all of them at risk. I wasn’t willing to lose another horse to something else in this damn town, and I felt my blood boiling with anger. As it was, the horses were already nervous and creating more of a ruckus.
I still couldn’t believe there was a rattlesnake in here.
“Hey, Cheyenne! You in—”