“Not just now. Besides, I wouldn’t want the boss’s daughter to get herself into some kind of trouble.”

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Don’t worry about it.”

He didn’t bother to respond. Nor did he move. Bliss gritted her back teeth together and inched her chin upward in pride. She’d die before she’d let him witness her humiliation from this headstrong piece of horseflesh.

“Want me to help?”

“No!” Damn the man, he was enjoying this and making her so nervous she was beginning to sweat. “Give me strength,” she muttered under her breath as she approached Lucifer again. In a louder voice she said gently, “Come on boy. That’s a good—”

In another whirlwind of dust the colt again thundered away, bucking and showing off as if he and Mason were privately conspiring against her.

“Son of a—” she bit back a curse and stomped a foot, sending up her own pitiful puff of dirt and Mason, damn his soul, laughed outright. “I suppose you could do better,” she challenged, then cringed as the words escaped her lips.

“Yep.” In one lithe movement he vaulted the fence and gave a sharp, terse whistle.

Lucifer stopped short.

Another commanding blast from Mason’s lips and the colt, ears flicking nervously, reluctantly turned. He hesitated, his nostrils flared, and Mason whistled a third time.

To Bliss’s complete mortification, the colt trotted docilely to Mason, pressed his nose against the man’s chest and was rewarded with a piece of apple.

“Isn’t that cheating?” she asked as Mason grabbed Lucifer’s halter and with his free hand, slowly motioned for Bliss to approach with the lead rope.

“Everything’s fair in love and war and taming horses.” He glanced at her from behind his tinted glasses. He was so close she could smell his aftershave as well as the dust and odors of horse and leather that seemed to cling to him. His jaw was gilded with a day’s growth of beard and his sleeves were shoved above his elbows to show off tanned forearms where veins and hard muscles stretched beneath his skin.

Swallowing against a suddenly arid throat, she turned her eyes back to the horse.

“You have heard the expression before, right?”

“It was a little different.” She snapped the lead onto the metal ring on the colt’s halter.

Mason lifted one dark eyebrow. “Well, around here we make expressions fit the situation.”

“So I see.”

“Be careful with Lucifer.”

“I can handle him.”

“I hate to give you advice, but if you call what you just did ‘handling him,’ you’re in for a couple more lessons from this guy.”

“Am I?” She tossed her hair over one shoulder.

Mason patted the pinto on the shoulder. “You want me to saddle and bridle him for you?”

Her smile was cool, though her hands were sweating on the tether and her heart was beginning to pound erratically. “I’ll be fine,” she said, clucking to the colt and heading to the stables where she’d already picked out a saddle, blanket and bridle. She didn’t need any more help from the sexiest ranch hand on the place. All she wanted to do was ride to the river that cut through the north end of her father’s property where she planned to take a long, leisurely swim. Nothing more . . .