Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

54 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT
tor—which, as you said, too bad for me I’m not—I
would advise you to leave it off for the rest of the day.”
“I can’t ride a horse without it.”
Exasperation flickered in his blue eyes. “I can give
you a ride back to the ranch. We can walk the horse
behind my Durango.”
She hated herself for the little flickers of temptation
inside her urging her to accept his offer. The pain—or
more accurately, the powerful need to find something
to ease it—sometimes overwhelmed every ounce of
common sense inside her.
She wanted so much to accept his offer of a ride
rather than face that torturous horseback ride back to the
ranch, but the very strength of her desire was also the
reason she had to refuse.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll just wear it back to the house
and then rest for a while after that.”
He studied her for a moment, then shook his head.
“You could teach stubborn to a whole herd of mules,
Lieutenant Cruz. Will you at least let me help you
mount?”
She had no choice, really. At the barn she had used
Viviana’s mounting block to climb into the saddle.
Even with the block, mounting had been a challenge,
accomplished best in the privacy of her own
barnyard where she didn’t have an audience to watch
her clumsy efforts.
Here, she had nothing to help her—unless she could
convince the horse to come to this fallen log and stand
still out of the goodness of her heart while Maggie maneuvered
into the saddle.