Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [57]
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re a saint.”
“Enough!”
He chuckled. “Whatever you say.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of grimy, nearly threadbare jeans. “You’re the boss.”
Her head snapped up, and she started to argue. “I’m nothing of the sort—” But she stopped short when she noticed the twitch of his lip, the crinkling of the corners of his eyes. What was it today? Something in the air that convinced people to pick a fight with her? “You ready?”
“Always.” His voice had lowered a bit, and she felt a prickle of anticipation run across her skin, like the breath of the wind touching her intimately, but there wasn’t the slightest breeze moving the leaves of the trees.
Thane’s gaze shifted just as she heard the crunch of sandals on gravel. His eyebrows lifted a fraction as he stared over Maggie’s shoulder and his interest shifted from her. She felt it. As she had a hundred times before. She didn’t have to turn around to sense that Mary Theresa was approaching. “Thought you might need this,” she said, as Maggie looked over her shoulder.
Swinging saucily down the hill, she held out Maggie’s oversized suede bag, the one with long fringe and a shoulder strap.
“Thanks.” Maggie swiped it from her sister’s outstretched hand.
Mary Theresa smiled as she looked past Maggie to Thane. “Hi, I’m Maggie’s sister, Mary Theresa.”
“Thane Walker.”
“The horse trainer?” she asked as if she’d listened raptly to everything about him.
“Sometimes.”
She laughed gaily. “And other times?”
“I do a little of everything.” He lifted a broad shoulder and Maggie wished for once that he didn’t look so damned sexy, that his tanned arms weren’t visible, that his eyes weren’t such an intense shade of gray blue, that he didn’t appear so raw and masculine and…interested in her sister. Maggie felt, as she had all of her life, as if she had suddenly disappeared.
“So you’re giving Maggie a lesson today?”
One of Thane’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s the plan.”
“Think you could teach me how to ride?”
Maggie nearly fainted. Mary Theresa wanted to ride a horse, the same animal that she had called “stinky, obnoxious, and just plain boring?”
“You wanna learn?”
“I might.” A dimple creased Mary Theresa’s cheek.
“Then I ‘might’ be able to teach you.”
“Good.”
“Set it up with Flora.” Thane’s interested gaze swung back to Maggie. “Right now, I think you and I should get to it.”
“Right,” she said dully.
“Bye!” Mary Theresa lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers, then turned and swung up the hill. Thane glanced briefly at her, then back to Maggie.
“You didn’t tell me you had a twin.”
“Didn’t see a reason to.”
“She’s pretty.”
Maggie’s heart sank, and she wondered what she was doing here.
“Almost as pretty as you.”
Her head snapped up. “Sure,” she said automatically before she saw that he was being serious, no smile curved his lips, no flicker of amusement danced in his eyes.
“You don’t think so.”
“I don’t worry about it one way or the other,” she lied, though she felt a warm glow inside that she would, under no circumstances, let him see. She’d gotten compliments before, plenty of them, but this was different; she sensed Thane Walker didn’t hand them out casually. He didn’t seem the kind of man to say a kind word just to see her reaction or because he wanted something more from her.
“Just thought you should know.”
“Why?” She couldn’t help asking.
Appearing skeptical, he hitched his chin toward the parking lot, where Mary Theresa was climbing behind the wheel of the BMW. She tore out of the lot. “Because I get the feeling that she might run roughshod over you.”
“No way,” Maggie said, the backs of her ears burning.
He didn’t say anything else, just got down to the business of teaching her how to command the horse. Riding bareback, she tried to listen to his instructions as he explained about holding the reins in gentle hands that not only told the horse what she expected but also felt her mount’s hesitation or determination. She went through the motions of turning Ink Spot in several different gaits, but her