To Love an Outlaw (Into the West #1) (A Wattpad Reading List Choice)

Chapter 6

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The clip-clop of horse’s hooves far down the lane brought Callie’s head up from where she stood in the shadows of the barn currying Second Chance. With one shrewd glance from under her floppy hat, the young widow identified who was approaching. That and the familiar tightening of her stomach forewarned her.

 It was the gunfighter, come for his daily training session with Second Chance. And one more day that Callie fought the idea that she just might be attracted to the man, attracted in a way she’d never thought would happen. The way she couldn’t let happen. That way only led to pain and suffering.

Second Chance shivered his skin, reminding his owner that the massage wasn’t over yet, drawing a smile to Callie’s face at the horse’s personality as she resumed his comb out. He really had become a character, head-butting people relentlessly when he’d felt he’d earned a carrot, and neighing at her or McQuade whenever he heard their voices. He’d become part of the odd family out here on the homestead.

As had the gunfighter.

Clucking to the stallion soothingly, Callie watched the man approach over the back of Second Chance, thinking again about how closely they worked together daily, how his low voice simultaneously calmed the animal yet agitated her in ways she didn’t understand.

After all, she hadn’t married Obadiah West for love or physical attraction. She’d married him for stability, for money, and maybe, if Callie was honest with herself, for possibly the father figure she’d lost so abruptly. How wrong she had been! How terribly, terribly wrong. And now that fateful decision colored the present in ways she was still discovering.

Second Chance raised his head, nostrils flaring as the scent of McQuade’s mount reached his nose. He shook his head, causing Callie to raise her hands momentarily so as not to snarl his mane.

“Easy, boy,” she crooned, patting his gleaming neck and stepping away from the animal, realizing his grooming session had ended.

By this time the gunfighter had reached the barnyard. Effortlessly swinging off his horse, McQuade looped the reins over the corral’s split rails before pivoting and approaching Callie with that slow, loose-hipped amble, countenance shadowed by the black hat he wore.

“Mornin’, Ma’am,” the gunslinger greeted her, thumbing his hat brim and piercing her with his silver-blue eyes.

Callie glanced about, her trademark reticence rearing its head in her stammered reply.

“G-Good morning, Mr. McQuade. Chance will be ready in just a moment.”

His eyes held hers in their beam, searching her face with liquid intensity. Callie shivered within from the connection much like her horse had under her hands…

“Before we get started, Miz West, I have a favor to ask you—“

Still captured in his gaze, Callie gave a lukewarm nod for him to continue, feeling once more like an animal trapped by a snake’s hypnotic stare.

“I was thinking on the way over here this morning,” McQuade began, shifting his weight onto his back heel and sliding his palms into the rear pockets of the denims he wore, “that it would save me a lot of time and money if I just bunked here in your bunkhouse with the Lawson boy. The O’Malley place is fine, but it’s a little more fancy than an outlaw like me is used to. All I need is regular meals and a place to lay my head.

“An’ since I’m not acceptin’ any pay for my training, it might make you feel a bit better by letting me stay here.”

The man gazed at the widow guilelessly. Little did she know he’d already given up his room!