Calamity Gene

Chapter 5

Trace checked his watch for the fifth time.

Where the hell was Gene?

An hour shy of dinner, every other dude was on the veranda for pre-dinner drinks as usual, but she was missing in action.

After four days on the ranch with Gene, Trace knew that if she was out of sight, trouble was brewing somewhere.

Seriously, he'd had just about enough of Gene St John's relentless assault on Three Range. And it was a fucking assault. It was time someone set her straight on her complete unsuitability to be anywhere near a ranch. If Buck wasn't going to do it, then—

Stop.Right. There. Buck's ranch, not Trace's. Buck's business, not Trace's.

But something was going to have to give because she was doing his head in. Every jarring bounce of her butt in the saddle made his jaw ache—she simply could not get the hang of relaxing into it when her horse was jogging. It was just as torturous to watch when her horse was loping, because she always looked like she was about to fly over Calamity's head. Trace thanked God every minute of every ride that he'd chosen that horse for her; with any other horse she'd have been thrown a dozen times by now. She was useless with the cattle, too: had not managed to head off even one recalcitrant steer, and she'd fallen into the creek when Cheyenne had asked her to help get a rope around a calf that was stuck in the muddy shallows.

What's more, she was a Grade A klutz. She'd been so startled when Buck's collie Lucy had made a friendly run at her, she'd backed into a row of fishing rods and ended up with a hook in her scalp. When he'd had the group ride the fence and do some basic repair work, she'd gotten coiled in the fence wire and it had taken half an hour to free her. In an afternoon game of horseshoes, she'd flung her horseshoe into her own shin—he still couldn't figure out how she'd managed that. Yep, she was a klutz all right, a bona fide nightmare, but she didn't seem to understand that or surely she wouldn't always, always, be laughing when she stuffed something up.

Problem was, the other dudes didn't seem to understand it either. Everyone except the insufferable Jim V wanted to ride with her, despite the fact she couldn't ride worth a damn. And every last one of them—including Jim—was in on the Instagram joke, obligingly snapping off shots for her every time she got herself into a ridiculous situation.

Well, not Trace. He was too busy being on tenterhooks around her to be amused by her. So conscious something was going to go wrong that by the end of day two he'd ditched his plan to stay the hell away from her in favor of being close enough to save her from herself. She hadn't managed one decent mount or dismount—not one! It had gotten to the point that whenever she was about to get on or off the damn horse, he positioned himself ready to put a hand on her to steady her before she ended up in the dirt. Which meant his hand was on her all the damn time. And every single time, she looked at him in that wide-eyed way she had, and her mouth formed that 'O', and he wanted to grab her and shove his tongue inside that 'O' and taste her—right before slamming her onto the nearest flat surface, ripping off her clothes and shoving his tongue into a few more places.

Not. Good.

He did not understand what it was about her that got to him. It wasn't as though she was overflowing with...well, assets. That first day, when he'd been lying on top of her, he'd been excruciatingly aware of her breasts. A plump handful. But she'd been steadily deflating ever since, which had to mean she'd been wearing a padded bra that first day. He should not—not—want to get his hands on breasts that were non-existent! And yet, dammit, he did want to.

It was all he could think about.

She was all he could think about.

The way she looked. The way she laughed. Her upbeat attitude to every damn thing. Even her never-ending stream of references to western movies—Rio Grande, My Darling Clementine, Rawhide, Giant, blah, blah, blah, blah. He hated westerns, but he was starting to think he could write a thesis on them! Bad, bad, freaking bad.