Chapter 6

1 years ago

Mg13

@Mg13

GEET HANDA staggered out on to the porch the next morning, rubbing her eyes. She did not normally require more than a few hours sleep, but her machinery wasn't working well this morning.

She stretched, seeming to reach higher than she ever had before in all her life.There was an itch right in the small of her back. She tried vainly to scratch it away against the porch post, with no success.

'If you was to scratch it there any more you'd get splinters.' She whirled around. Maan Singh Khurana looked bigger and better and more—dangerous—than he had onthe previous day. And he proved the point by reaching around behind her and scratching at almost the perfect place.

'A little lower,' Geet murmured, and wiggled slightly to match the occasion. He complied. She groaned with a sort of ecstasy. Naturally, with the two of them facing each other, and his hand around behind her, pushing against her, they could not help but move close together.

And,Geet realized, I haven't dressed and this nightgown is too-But it felt so damnably comfortable that she took one more tiny quarter-step in his direction.

Life was measured in millimeters, not centimeters. Nothing else would have happened except that she felt a sudden shuddering sensation run up and down her spinal*Her breasts swelled, her nipples stiffened, and the millimeter that separated them was gone.

'Oh,God,' Geet muttered.

He made some comment, but its meaning passed completely over her head. Her nerves tingled from scalp to toe nail. He swayed slightly from side to side, adding massage to contact. 'Lightning,' she muttered, convinced that a storm had struck.

'What?'His hands landed on her shoulders, trying to move her another millimeter forward. But this time the contact was too much. Or too soon, she told herself as she backed away.

'No more itch?' She looked up at him. That silly grin was on his face as he looked down at her.

'I—no,'she said. 'No more itch. I—thank you for your help.'

'No trouble at all,' he said, chuckling. 'Anything you need, you just call on me.Anything. I thought I'd go look over the stables. Like to come along?'

Her heart said yes', but her mind knew better. 'No, I mean to get breakfast and get    dressed. Why don't you go ahead? I might join you after a while. We could go for a ride—you do ride?'

'Anything with four feet,' he replied. 'Born and raised in a saddle, I was.'

'That must have been some feat,' she murmured sarcastically. 'Your mother must have had considerable discomfort. Excuse me, Mr—er—Maan.'

He tipped a salute with two fingers and grinned again as she whirled away from him and disappeared behind the screen door.

Yes, Maan, he chided himself. Do excuse me. 'The lady doth protest too much'?He shrugged his shoulders and started towards the barn.

Inside, Geet watched him through the interstices of the muslin curtains. Big, powerful,assured. His walk told it all. Ordinarily she wouldn't have a man of his type within five miles of her. Here at the center of her dream, the ranch house was almost a cloister.

Herself,Mrs manchanda, and the ranch-hands. And now this man? What was it bout him that had caused Sue to nominate him? He hardly matched any two of the ten requirements she had laid down. And so? Declare him unusable and send him packing? Or give him a long trial—if that can be done without burning my fingers. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and memory crowded her. 'I vote to keep him,' she said, chuckling, as she sat down to a bigger breakfast than normal.

'You've got a couple of fine quarter-horses in this pair,' Maan told her as he led the mare out of her stall and walked her in a circle. 'Good form, nice fetlocks her left shoe's a mite worn on one side. Want me to saddle up for you?'

Geet Handa had had enough time to restore her perpetual grouch. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans, the legs tucked into her boots, and a loose red blouse,open at the neck, but contained by a blue and red bandana. And a white ten-gallon hat, covering all her magnificent curls. Besides, he was so damnably big.

Lord knew what he might do if angered. 'Oh, so now you're a blacksmith too?' He grinned at her, that amiable grin that irritated her even more than normal.

'Like to keep my hand in most anything,' he said, and then he had the colossal nerve to look her up and down as if she were a prime heifer. 'Saddle up?'

Geet would have loved to reject his offer. Unfortunately, her working Western saddle was heavy. There was always a borderline between getting revenge and getting a hernia, she told herself. One of her dad's old sayings. God, how I worshiped that man, and for what?

'Saddle up,' she mumbled, and turned away so that he could not read her face.

He was a quick worker. He hummed as he worked. One good item, one bad. Having no ear for music herself, she hated to hear other people enjoying themselves with song. She tucked up her hair under her riding-cap, brushed by him, and mounted,all with an economy of motion that he could not help but admire. 'Well, don't just stand there, cowboy.'

He grinned up at her again, and swung into his own saddle as gracefully as anyone might. Another tip to the brim of his hat. 'Yes, ma'am.'

'I told you not to call me ma'am,' she snapped at him as she turned her mare out into the farmyard.

'Yes,ma'am,' he acknowledged. Fuming, Geet admitted her defeat by refusing to repeat herself. Instead she clapped her heels against her mount's sides, and went cantering off up the hill south of the house.

The area around the house was hard-packed dirt, as with most ranch houses. But just a few yards away from that empty area, they were riding stirrup-deep in the yellow and green and red flowers that constituted true prairie grass. 'Never seen anything like this back in Texas,' he admitted.

He pulled his high-stepping gelding to a halt and pushed his hat to the back of his head. 'Oooee. Ain't that something?' She nodded in agreement. From horizon to horizon the land sparkled with color, and she loved it. And if this simple soul feels the same, we have something in common, she decided.