“Glad to see you two are enjoying yourselves.” Margo stepped into the doorway and scowled. “One of you was supposed to relieve me, remember? I, unlike my feckless partners, haven’t had a break in four hours.”

“Sorry.” Laura dropped her arms. “I’ll go.”

“No, I’ll go.” Kate hopped off the stool. “It’ll give you a chance to fill Margo in.”

“Fill me in on what?”

“Michael screwed Laura’s brains out last night in a horse stall.”

Gracefully, Margo fluffed her hair while Laura flushed. “Really?”

“Ripped her clothes off,” Kate added as she headed out the door. “I’ll leave Laura to fill in the details.”

On a long hum, Margo settled herself on one of the padded ice cream chairs, crossed her long, shapely legs. “Pour me some tea, would you, Laura? I’m whipped.”

Automatically Laura poured a cup, brought it to the table. “Want a cookie?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Margo debated them, selected, nibbled. “Now, sit your butt down and start filling in those details. And don’t worry about being too specific.”

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Whistling between his teeth, Michael sent Zip into a raging gallop, bursting out of the woods into the sun like a flaming fire. The little demon could run, Michael thought. He’d be sorry to lose him, but the offer that had come in that morning closed the deal.

In a matter of hours, the speedy little colt would be on his way to Utah.

“Going to have some fun with the fillies up there, kid. And breed some champs.”

And the asking price meant that Michael could close the deal he’d been negotiating for a particularly fine-looking Palomino mare and her doe-eyed foal.

The mare was ornery, he mused, had twice tried to kick him and her handler during the inspection. Michael liked her the better for it, and for the fact that she’d bred such a tough little foal. A foal he was already planning to raise for stud.

Couple more years, Michael thought, the new colt would cover twenty mares, and at four his full complement of sixty.

They’d do fine together, he decided. That snippy Palomino mare and the energetic little buckskin she’d birthed would help him start a new phase of his business.

Within two years, he projected, Fury Ranch was going to mean something—something more than livelihood and survival. It was going to mean quality. And that, Michael thought as Zip tore around the stables, was something he’d lived most of his life without.

It would have been impossible and, worse, embarrassing, for him to explain to anyone that he had always wanted quality. Not just for what he had, or what he built, but for what he was. He’d always wanted to come from something. To be something.