Bliss turned toward the car.

The driver gunned the engine. Gravel sprayed. Mason leaped away from the fender as the car took off at breakneck speed down the lane.

Swearing under his breath, Mason swung his fist in the air in frustration. “Damn, fool—” He caught his tongue and threw his hat on the ground. Then, turning on a worn heel, he caught Bliss’s eye. Rather than be the target of his wrath, she ducked around the corner of the stables and snagged a lead rope coiled around a peg near one of the doors. The last person she wanted to catch in a bad mood was Mason Lafferty. No way. No how. The man was enough trouble when things were going right.

Squinting against a lowering sun, she eyed the horses grazing quietly in the shade of a stand of oak. She wasn’t interested in the docile palomino mare or lazy roan gelding her father had pointed out to her, and smiled when she spied the animal who had unintentionally captured her heart—a feisty pinto three-year-old. His eyes were an unusual pale blue—the only blue-eyed horse she’d ever seen—and he was a show-off in front of the mares, always hoisting his tail high, tossing his head and snorting as he galloped from one end of the field to the other.

“Okay, Lucifer, I think it’s time you and I got to know each other,” she said as he snorted and pawed the dry earth. “Come on,” she cooed, uncoiling the vinyl rope. “That’s a boy.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes suspiciously. He was wearing a leather halter. All she had to do was get close enough to snap the tether to the ring under his chin.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. She was only three feet away. One more step and—

He bolted. With a high-pitched squeal and a toss of his brown-and-white head, he galloped from one end of the pasture to the other, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake. His odd eyes sparkled in the sunlight, as if he knew he was taunting her.

“Don’t make me chase you,” she warned.

“Why not? He loves a good fight. Especially with a female.”

She stiffened at the sound of Mason’s voice. Glancing over her shoulder, she ignored the sudden jump in her pulse and shot him a glance guaranteed to be as cold as ice. “Seems like you should know,” she said.

“Can’t argue with that,” he admitted, though his jaw was hard as granite.

When he didn’t stroll off, she asked, “Was there something you wanted?”

He was leaning against the gate, his arms crossed, elbows resting on the worn top board, eyes still shaded by aviator glasses. His hat was resting on a post and his hair, sun-streaked and ragged, brushed his eyebrows and the tops of his ears. “Just watching you.”

She lied and told herself that the absolute last person on earth she wanted observing her was this sarcastic cowboy.

“Don’t you have something more important to do? You know, like work? Isn’t there a cow to be branded, a horse to be shod or something?”