He leaned close once again and began to read. Although her eyes were closed as she rested against the mattress, she could picture him squinting, trying to read the tiny print the tattoo artist had actually done a fair job of squeezing into the small space.

  “If you can read this,” he began slowly, reading off one word at a time. “There’d better be a ring on my finger.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Most everything you hear about cowboys is true. But the important thing is—they take care of the cows.

  Ryder laughed. A big, gut-deep hoot, totally out of place in the subdued, sexually charged atmosphere surrounding them. Monica lifted her head and shot him a dirty look, which only made him laugh harder.

  “You really were drunk when you had this done, weren’t you?” he asked between chuckles.

  She scowled at him over the inviting curves of her nudity. “My best friend and I had discussed the idea at length,” she explained. “So even though I was intoxicated at the time, she was there to vouch for my wishes. And I was only drunk because I’d heard it helped to dull the pain.”

  He didn’t see a hint of betrayal in her eyes, but he knew she was trying to feed him soup in stew’s clothing. “Liar.”

  At that, she pushed up on her elbows, brows knit in affront. “I am not lying.”

  “The first time you mentioned your tattoo, you were asking me if you’d gotten another one because that’s what you’d done the last time you got drunk.”

  She looked thoroughly chastised. “Okay, so I was already drunk. But Brooke and I had discussed the idea beforehand. I just don’t think I’d have gone through with such a…comprehensive design if I’d been sober.”

  Ryder chuckled at her choice of words. Comprehensive was right. He didn’t know how the tattoo artist had managed to get so much in such a small space, but he guessed Monica was lucky she hadn’t gone in asking for something like the Emancipation Proclamation. She’d have probably gotten it.

  “So what gave you the idea to post a warning here?” He pressed his palm to her bikini line.

  “You’re a guy,” she said simply, shrugging a bare shoulder as best she could with both elbows flat on the mattress. “You know what your gender will do to get into a woman’s pants.”

  “So you figured posting your land—so to speak—would cut down on the number of poachers?”

  Her lips pinched together. “Something like that.”

  “I hate to break it to you, darlin’,” he said, still smiling, “but once one of my gender gets to this point, they’re not much in the mood for reading material—or following instructions.” The smile that had turned up his lips since he first read her tattoo slipped a bit. “You haven’t had much luck with men, have you?” he asked bluntly.

  She shot him a withering glare. “Not much, no.”

  “So did you have this little caution sign before you started dating Matt?”

  She nodded, still propped on her arms and craning her neck to meet his eyes. “He wasn’t amused.”

  No, he didn’t suppose Matt would be. He, however, got a mule-sized kick out of it. And he didn’t want to think any more about Matt and Monica’s sex life, so he refused to voice the other questions popping into his head about if and how often Matt had trespassed on her property.

  Monica sat up then, apparently tired of arching her back to maintain eye contact. She draped her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through the hair at his nape. He moaned low in his throat at her light, erotic touch.

  “Are you going to give me the third degree about my tattoo all night, or are you going to kiss me?” She closed her eyes and lifted her mouth to his, stopping only a fraction of an inch from his lips.

  He smiled and wished she could see the wicked glint in his eyes. With the thoughts he was thinking, wickedness had to be shooting out of his every pore. “Oh, I’m going to kiss you, all right.”

  And then he broke her hold on his neck, pushed her down to the mattress, and threw her legs over his shoulders. She gave a squeal of surprise at his abrupt movements and her eyes shot open.

  Now she could see the wickedness. And he didn’t apologize for it. He merely smiled and lowered his head.

  His mouth was a fraction of an inch from heaven when the phone rang, tearing through the hazy sexiness that had enveloped them from the moment they’d entered the house together.

  “Son of a bitch!” he swore, and had never meant it more in his life. “I hate that damn phone. Don’t move,” he ordered brusquely as he slid her legs from his neck and moved to the nightstand.

  “What?” he barked, not the least bit concerned about who was on the other line. God help the man, woman, or child who called at two in the morning, when he was just about to make his wife scream in octaves even dogs wouldn’t hear.

  As soon as the person on the other end of the line began to speak, he knew exactly who it was and why they were phoning so late.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, the last of his words cut off as he hung up. “That was Ned,” he told Monica, barely sparing her a glance as he moved across the room. “Chynna’s in labor.”

  Monica sat up, dazed, confused, and more than a little offended by the fact her husband’s attention had been so easily sidetracked. It was one thing for a phone call to distract him while they were eating dinner; another thing entirely for him to be distracted during…what he was about to do.

  And he just left her there. She could hear his footsteps moving down the hall toward the front door, and she was still lying naked in the middle of the bed.

  A man and his horse.

  Of course, she couldn’t blame him. Chynna was obviously one of his favorites, and he’d been awaiting this moment for months. Rolling off the mattress, she began grabbing up her discarded clothes.

  She yelped and nearly had a heart attack when Ryder poked his head back into the room. “If you’re coming out, wear your boots and those new jeans I got you today. This’ll be messy.” And then his heels clicked their way back out of the house.

  “Messy” didn’t sound terribly inviting, but she did want to see this. She’d been absolutely enamored of the mare and her baby ever since she’d felt the foal moving around inside Chynna’s belly.

  Rushing around the room, she found the jeans and boots Ryder had bought for her and shrugged into the first shirt she found, which just happened to be the Meat Is Murder one she’d threatened Ryder with.

  She felt like Annie Oakley, but ignored the awkwardness of the new boots (without socks) as she raced out of the house and into the horse stables. Ned was standing outside Chynna’s stall, leaning on the door. As she approached, she saw that Ryder was inside, one hand on the horse’s halter, another running over and under her belly.

  “How’s she doing?” Monica asked.

  “Real good,” Ned answered. “She just started, but Ryder likes to be with the mares the whole time.”

  That sounded like Ryder.

  “What are you doing here, by the way?” she asked the young man, leaning against the swinging door and mimicking his stance.

  “I stay in the back room whenever a mare’s time is coming up.” He shrugged. “I just live with my brother, anyway, and the back room is at least as nice as his trailer. Besides, if I didn’t volunteer to do it, Ryder would be out here every night, probably sleeping in the straw next to the horses.”

  Watching Ryder, she believed that, too.

  “I’d keep the rest of my opinions to myself, if I were you,” Ryder warned Ned, never taking his eyes or hands off of the horse in front of him. “Otherwise, you might find yourself out riding fence for the next month.”

  Ned frowned at Ryder’s back, then tilted his head and made a comical face at Monica.

  She smiled. “He is a tad overprotective,” she defended on Ned’s behalf.

  This time, Ryder did look at them—just long enough to scowl at her.

  “You, too, Mrs. Nash,” he warned. “I can come up with a much better punishment for your disloyalty.” Then he winked and turned his attention back to Chynna.

  They spent the next few hours in and out of the mare’s stall. Ryder would leave the horse alone and stand with Ned and Monica, occasionally going back in to check her progress. He kept up his end of the conversation, but was obviously distracted, and Monica was simply entranced.

  She’d never experienced anything like this before. Her heart was beating so fast, she felt like her system was overloaded with caffeine. At one point, she raced into the house for her camera and began snapping pictures. Of Chynna, of Chynna and Ryder, of Ned (who was fooling around just to keep the mood light and to get Monica to focus her lens on him).

  Monica was about to snap a picture of Ned walking on his hands down the middle of the stable’s runway when Ryder came out of Chynna’s stall and moved intently toward the back room. She peeked over the edge of the stall door and saw the mare lying on her side on the straw-covered floor. Alarm shot through Monica.

  “Is she all right?” she asked Ryder as he returned, drying his freshly washed hands on a clean towel.

  “She’s fine,” he answered briefly. “The foal’s coming.”

  “Now?” Monica asked, her eyes widening partly in excitement, partly in trepidation as she leaned over the stall door to get a better look.

  Ryder knelt on the ground behind Chynna and pushed the long strands of her tail out of the way.

  Monica made a face. That wasn’t exactly anywhere she’d be wanting to touch with her bare hands. Of course, Ryder didn’t even blink as he set to looking and feeling around the area.

  “Want to help?” he asked, shooting her a quick glance.

  “Really?” she asked, already opening the door and stepping inside. At the last minute, she remembered the camera around her neck and turned to hand it to Ned, who was behind her on the other side of the wooden partition. “Here.”

  He lifted it to his eye and looked through the lens, his finger moving toward the button that triggered the shutter. She thought of warning him not to mess around with such an expensive piece of equipment, and then realized that for the first time in her life, she didn’t care if a stranger was feeling up her best Nikon D5. She even hoped he got some nice shots of her and Ryder helping to birth a foal.

  She turned to Ryder. “What should I do?”

  “Just kneel by her head and talk to her. It’ll keep her calm.”

  Monica shot him a disappointed look.

  “Trust me, darlin’,” he said with a slight tip of his lips. “You don’t want to be on this end.”

  Watching where his hands were going, she decided to take his word for it. She went to her knees beside Chynna’s head and whispered soft reassurances in the mare’s ear while stroking her neck and face. Most of what she said didn’t make much sense, but then, she didn’t think Chynna would notice. Neither would Ryder, as focused as he was on his end of the situation.

  Chynna’s abdomen was contracting, visibly working to bring her foal into the world, and her body was twitching, though she didn’t kick or twist hard enough to hurt anyone. Ryder kept flicking her tail out of the way as the baby began to appear; even Monica could see something emerging from her position at Chynna’s head.

  “That’s it, baby. That’s it, girl.” Ryder was muttering nonsense words the same as she was, and little by little, the foal appeared. Although they were hard to make out, Monica thought she saw a hoof and then a tiny nose as Ryder pulled the sack away from the animal’s face.

  When the baby had been pushed out to its belly, Ryder got to his feet and hunkered down, wrapping his hands around the softball-size hooves.

  “Stand back,” he said, and Monica hurried out of the way, waiting and watching from the far wall of the stall. With a grunt, Ryder pulled the baby free.

  And it was a good thing Monica had moved, because only moments later, Chynna rolled to her feet and turned to examine her new baby, sniffing and licking the wet bundle still huddled in the straw.

  Ryder checked the foal’s nose and mouth one last time, then moved to the doorway. Ned handed him the same towel he’d dried his clean hands with earlier, and he began wiping away the blood and fluids that reached to his elbows.

  “Oh my gosh,” Monica sighed. “That was amazing.” She threw both hands over her heart and absolutely melted at the sight of mama and baby. “He is so adorable!” she gushed. “Slimy, but adorable.”

  Ryder chuckled, and she finally raised her head to look at him. She was crying and she didn’t care.

  “Give them a couple minutes and you can pet him if she’ll let you.”

  “Is it really a him?” she asked. “Or is it a her?”

  “It’s a colt.” And then, probably thinking she might not recognize the term, he added, “A boy.”

  Monica bounced on the balls of her feet, overrun with excitement. She moved toward Ryder, wrapping her arms around his waist.

  He raised his arms high and took a step back, away from her. “You don’t want to do that, sweetheart. I’m a mess.”

  “I don’t care,” she said emphatically and took the last step necessary to press herself to his solid form. She rested her head on his chest and when Ryder refused to lower his arm, she reached up to do it for him, draping it over her shoulder.

  Everything they were wearing could be washed. She didn’t care if their clothes had to be burned, she wasn’t going to let a single thing ruin this moment. This was even worth putting a halt to what they’d been doing in the bedroom.

  When Ryder pressed a kiss to the top of her head, she started crying even harder. Thankfully, they stood there long enough, gazes riveted on the newest addition to Ryder’s stable, that her tears dried before he could see them.

  Almost immediately, the foal started to get up, rocking back and forth, trying to get to his feet. It looked so sweet, Monica grabbed her camera back from Ned and began clicking shots left and right. She had plenty of extra memory cards stuffed in the tiny Velcro pockets on the camera strap, too, so she could keep at this all night.

  Once mama had licked the baby clean and he’d gained his footing, he began to feed. Ryder moved slowly toward Chynna’s head and let her nuzzle at his shirt before trying to pet her. She didn’t seem at all inclined to snap, so he motioned for Monica to come closer. They didn’t make a move toward the baby, but continued to stroke Chynna’s neck and face.

  “What are you going to name him?” Monica asked, watching in complete fascination as the colt suckled.

  “I don’t have a clue. What do you want to call him?”

  She turned to him, surprised. “Me?”

  “Yeah.” He gave her a lopsided grin, then turned back to face the horse whose muzzle he was stroking. “You’ve been here all night, I figure you have as much stake in his name as anyone. What do you want to call him?”

  “I have no idea,” she muttered. Then she shot him her most brazen smile. “But you know I’ll think of something fabulous!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Once her broken heart mends, a woman usually feels like a brand new man.

  From that moment on, Monica spent all of her spare time in the barn, playing with Chynna and the colt, and taking pictures of everything in sight. She kept a slip of paper and the stub of an old pencil in her pocket to keep track of any horse baby names she thought of. The small dappled gray foal was two days old now, and she had yet to settle on a name for him. Ryder teased her about how seriously she was taking this endeavor, but Monica knew that the perfect name would come to her eventually. And she wasn’t about to settle for less than the best for her baby.

  Chynna may be his birth mother, and Ryder may have done more than she had to bring him into the world, but this little guy was the first thing she’d ever seen born, and she was staking her claim. And if her newest plan worked out, Ryder would be more than happy about her possessiveness. He’d probably wrap the colt in a big red ribbon and give him to her as an early Christmas present. Monica was almost giddy at the prospect.

  Being with the animals so much, watching Ryder and his hands at work, she had begun to think of what a great backdrop the ranch would be for a photo shoot. She’d already used several memory cards and downloaded thousands of pictures for herself, but she could easily see Calvin Kline, Tommy Hilfiger, or a magazine like Mademoiselle or Glamour—even GQ—sending models out and setting up an extensive layout.

  She planned to call Brooke during her friend’s lunch hour and see if she could get the ball rolling, toss the idea out to a few of her contacts. With Monica already here and offering to work the shoot gratis, at least one designer or magazine ought to jump at the concept.

  “Thought of a name yet, Rumpelstiltskin?” Ryder came in the side door of the stable, marching toward her purposefully, and smiling.

  She rolled her eyes at him and lowered the camera. “Rumpelstiltskin was the one demanding the queen come up with his name; he didn’t actually have to think of any himself.”

  Ryder’s hand settled on her hip. “Whoops. Guess I mixed my fairy tales again,” he said before swooping in for a kiss. A long, hot, wet kiss that left her clutching the front of his shirt.

  He was apparently making up for lost time. They hadn’t made love since the night of little Nameless’s birth, but not for lack of trying. Monica just hadn’t been able to concentrate. They could be in the middle of some very pleasurable foreplay and all of a sudden her mind would flash to the colt, and she’d begin asking Ryder all kinds of questions. What breed is he? Who’s the father? Where’s the father? How did he get up and start walking so quickly? Why did you pull him the rest of the way out, was Chynna having trouble? Are any of your other horses expecting? When? Can I watch?

  Finally, Ryder had simply given up on her and any hope of ever again getting lucky. He’d heaved a great sigh of resignation, rolled away, and snuggled up to his pillow instead. And Monica had curled herself around his back, falling asleep with images of her new foal in her head. Evidently, Ryder now thought that if he could just get her to settle on a name, she’d be less preoccupied in the bedroom.