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him.
    ‘There’s a fat woman running round your garden!’ Bianca exclaimed in disbelief.
    Fat?
Rafael would have laughed out loud had he not at that moment registered that the stallion was frantically rolling its eyes in fear and panic. In that state of terror the horse was as much a danger to himself as to the foolish woman chasing him. Without hesitation, Rafael raced for the stairs.
    ‘Pluto…shush, there’s a nice boy,’ Harriet wheezed, struggling to make her voice calm and comforting, but so out of breath that her lungs felt strangled.
    Showing the whites of his eyes, Pluto careered round like a crazy mechanical bucking horse, and then he started coming right at her and she froze. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of sudden movement, but that was the only warning she got before she was snatched off her feet and pinned face down to the damp ground, her ribcage momentarily squashed flat beneath a powerful masculine body. The thunder of hooves passing too close to her ears for comfort made her appreciate that she had very nearly been trampled.
    ‘Stay here,’ an accented male voice growled, and the weight on her back lifted again as he tugged Pluto’s head collar from her loosened grasp.
    Harriet flipped over and watched him approach the sweating, snorting stallion. He was very tall and his movements were incredibly quiet, assured and graceful. His black hair was cropped short, his feet bare in the dew-wet grass. His blue shirt fluttered back in the morning breeze from the soft, well-worn denims that hugged his narrow hips and long powerful thighs to reveal a hair-roughened bronze torso that was as sleek and hard with muscle as the proverbial six-pack. She flushed at her straying attention and then noted that he was talking softly to Pluto. He knew his way around horses all right. The huge stallion trembled. The man reached up and, still talking with soothing cool, slowly and deftly slipped on Pluto’s head collar. In silence she watched as the stallion calmed down beneath much firmer handling than she would have dared to attempt.
    Prior to this point she had only seen her rescuer’s bronzed profile, and now she saw him face-on. Her blue eyes widened and her heart began a slow, heavy beat that echoed her growing tension. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and for an instant she thought there was something eerily familiar about that stunning bone structure of his. Frowning, she discarded thatunlikely notion, but still she stared at him, drinking in every vibrant aspect of him with a hunger that was startlingly new to her. His high cheekbones framed brilliant, dark golden eyes, divided by a strong masculine nose and completed by an aggressive jawline.
    ‘Thank you,’ Harriet said unevenly.
    ‘So you’re the lady who is planning to get back to nature and raise organic vegetables on my doorstep,’ he husked. ‘I’m Rafael Flynn.’
    ‘Harriet Carmichael.’ Only when she encountered that mocking scrutiny did she finally recall that she was wearing her comfy floral pyjamas, which could not be said to flatter the fuller figure. Her face coloured up and burned with embarrassment. She was furious with herself for blushing. After all, only a bikini would have shown more flesh. ‘Sorry about all the fuss. I don’t know how Pluto got out—’
    ‘If your horse had strayed onto the road he would be dead,’ Rafael Flynn slotted in smoothly.
    Feeling that it was grossly insensitive to point out the obvious, Harriet stiffened defensively and resisted the urge to inform him that Pluto did not belong to her. Technically the stallion had been in her charge, and she was not one to duck responsibility. ‘But fortunately he didn’t,’ she countered tightly, while also trying not to wonder how long Pluto would have had to hang around the very quiet road to get run over by passing traffic.
    A weather-beaten older man in a dark suit hurried round the side of the house towards them and came forward to take charge of