appeared robust. She came from a line that seemed prone to multiple births. She’d keep an eye on the calves just to be sure, but if Syd was a betting woman she’d bet good money they’d be fine.
Syd headed back to the tack room. Without thinking she reached for her saddle, but at the last minute she hesitated. She realized she shouldn’t lift it, not at this stage in her pregnancy. There wasn’t anyone around to help her.
Well crap, where had she stashed that lightweight training saddle?
Syd searched the room, deliberately ignoring the gold barbed wire Cass had stuck in the back. She’d probably buried the training saddle somewhere, hopefully not beneath one of the heavier saddles. After ten minutes of searching, she gave up. It wasn’t worth it. She’d ride Delia bare back.
Maybe she’d run into someone, someone like Lucas. Syd didn’t feel like being alone, not today of all days. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember he was the baby’s father, she wanted to share the news with him anyway.
Who else was she going to share with?
What the hell?
Lucas pressed his lips together to keep from shouting and spooking her horse. He’d never known such a stubborn pig-headed woman. She was a doctor for Christ’s sake. She knew better than to get on a horse when she was four months pregnant. And she was riding bareback.
He shook his head, astounded. Didn’t she have any regard for her safety and the health of her baby?
At least she had the sense to keep the mare to a walk. He slid his rope back and forth between his fingers, tempted to lasso her and tie her to the bed for the next five months.
A corner of his mouth turned up at the thought of Sydney tied to a bed. Images filled his brain in rapid fire fashion, every single one of them incendiary.
He almost laughed out loud at the notion of tying her down. A woman like Syd wanted to be on top. She didn’t give up control easily. Riding out on a horse while pregnant cinched it for him. Sydney Blake did what Sydney Blake wanted to do.
She hadn’t seen him yet and he hoped to keep it that way. He didn’t want her loping off down the hill to get away from him.
Lucas sat back in the saddle and watched her thread her way through the herd.
She was a beautiful woman, but then he’d been aware of that fact since his very first day on the ranch when he’d found her soaked from head to toe, suffering from hypothermia. Her naked body wasn’t something a man forgot, at least not this man. The pads of his fingers burned with memories as they roved up and down the stiff rope. And he hadn’t even touched her like that, though he’d wanted to. Lord knows he’d wanted to.
He’d gotten her out of her clothes, dried her off; built a fire in the stove. Made her pancakes with maple syrup, fried her up some bacon, for crying out loud. He’d warmed her, fed her, when all he really wanted to do was take her to bed and fuck her six ways from Sunday.
Lucas was of two minds. He had never wanted a woman so bad in his entire life. But he’d never fought so hard to resist the demands of his pecker.
Syd was trouble precisely because she tempted him so. She wasn’t a one-night stand or a summer fling; she was the kind of woman a man kept by his side forever.
So why in the hell did the other Wolf, his mysterious doppelganger, leave her? He’d heard the two ranch hands discussing him late one night. Chuck said the other Wolf was dead, but Ryan said he’d just regained his memory and gone home.
Lucas didn’t know what the hell to believe and he sure as shit didn’t want to ask too many questions. The answers might not sit well with him. But that woman, she didn’t sit well with him either. Just look at her, riding bareback with ease and grace, like she was born on a horse.
His heart lurched in his chest when he saw her squeeze the mare’s flanks with her thighs. The horse transitioned directly from a walk to a gentle, rocking lope.
Sydney had seen him. She was
The Broken Wheel (v3.1)[htm]