He stepped forward, the colt danced back. Michael’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Hold!”

Vibrating, the colt did so, pawing the ground in challenge as Michael approached.

“You and me,” Michael said, gripping the bridle as the colt began to swing around to get a good shot with his back leg, “we’re going to go a round.”

“Don’t you dare strike that animal.”

Both Michael and the colt looked up in annoyance at the sharp order and saw the trim form swinging through the paddock gate.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Fired up, Susan grabbed the colt’s bridle and stepped between the horse and the bat. “I don’t care if he belongs to you or not. I won’t have an animal mistreated on my property.”

As if realizing that sympathy was on his side, the colt lowered his head and nuzzled Susan’s shoulder.

“Suck up,” Michael muttered. “Look, Mrs. Templeton, I—”

“Is this the way you treat your horses? Clubbing them when they don’t behave as you’d like? You brute.” Color flashed into her cheeks, reminding Michael of Laura. “If you dare to raise a hand to one of these animals while I’m around, I’ll personally kick your butt off Templeton property and halfway to hell.”

Yes, he could see now where Laura got those licks of temper he’d caught a few glimpses of. And he could have sworn the colt was smirking at him. “Mrs. Templeton—”

“Then I’ll have you arrested,” she barreled on. “There are laws against cruelty to animals. Laws created to deal with insensitive brutes like you. And if you ever dare to mistreat this sweet horse—”

“There’s not a sweet bone in his body,” Michael interrupted, resisting the urge to rub the thigh that still sang from its rude encounter with a hoof. “And I wasn’t going to use this to beat sense into his hard head, though it’s tempting.”

She’d seen the look in his eye, and the bat in his hand. Threw up her chin. “I suppose you were going to play baseball with him.”

“No, ma’am.” It might be funny, years later, when he didn’t ache everywhere. “We’re not playing at anything here. And if you want to take a good look, you’ll see the only one with bruises on him in this paddock is me.”

She did look, noted that although the coat was gleaming with a healthy layer of sweat, the horse was unharmed. In fact, he was magnificent. And the look in his eye wasn’t fear, she realized. It was, if such a thing were possible, humor.

Michael, on the other hand, was filthy, and there was the telltale outline of a hoofprint on the leg of his jeans.

“If you threaten him with a bat, his only recourse is to strike out. I would think you’d—”