Great hairy balls, it was early. Jenner had knocked on her door at five in the morning and whispered for her to get ready. He was all ready to go, from his newly-shaven jaw to his forest green thermal sweater that clung to his sexy torso like a plastic bag with all the air sucked out. He had a backpack thrown over his shoulder and smelled of mint toothpaste.
She, on the other hand, took one look at herself in the mirror and laughed. How had he kept a straight face while he talked to her at the door? Her hair was naturally curly and had dried like she’d stuck a fork in a socket. In her haste to answer the door, she hadn’t put her bra on, and both nipples were drawn up like beads against her sleep shirt. Fantastic.
She dressed quickly, brushed her teeth, and tamed her beastly hair with a curling iron, then pulled it back into a ponytail. Then she shouldered her heavy pack and made her way quietly through the dim lodge to the kitchen where Jenner was currently working on something over the countertop. Buttered biscuits from the smell, and when she sidled around the kitchen island, she could make out the grape jelly he was smearing onto seven or eight of them in a row.
“Breakfast for days?” she joked, fully aware of his appetite. When she picked up a half and bit into it, he gave a teasing growl.
“Woman, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but these are all for me. Get your own.”
“No,” she said around the bite. “Lennard said my trail guide is in charge of all my meals.”
“On the trail.”
She picked up the other half and licked it before he could stop her, and now he was stifling that sexy smile. With a wicked grin, she set her pack down and hopped up on the counter beside where he was sweetening his plethora of carbohydrates.
He didn’t move over as she’d expected him to when she sat close enough that his arm bumped her leg as he worked. Instead, Jenner seemed content to stay right where he was, watching her occasionally with an odd look in his dancing eyes as she ate his biscuit.
“You have ridden horses before, right?” he asked.
“Oh, millions of them.”
“Be serious, woman. Your life depends on it.”
She licked a smear of jelly off her thumb and offered him a pointed look. “I used to take lessons.”
“Western or English.”
Sarcastically, she answered, “Sidesaddle, like dainty ladies did in the olden days.”
Jenner growled a low, humming sound, but he didn’t look mad. “Okay, I get it. You can ride a horse. Dalton just got me thinking last night.”
“That I was more helpless than I actually am?”
“I know you aren’t helpless.”
“How do you know, stranger?”
He made a ticking noise behind his teeth and twitched his head. “You don’t seem the type. You remind me of my sister-in-law. Brave as shit but headstrong, so I just want to make sure you can handle the horse I give you.”
“Gunner and I will be the best of friends.”
“Mmm,” he grunted noncommittally.
Dawn had brightened the horizon by the time Jenner carried her pack out toward the corral with her following directly. Even though it was July, nights were nippy, so she zipped her jacket up to her chin and jogged to catch up to Jenner’s ridiculously long strides, holding her camera that hung from her neck steady as she went. He nearly had her camera equipment tied to a bored-looking bay packhorse by the time she made it to where the lead horses were secured to a fence.
Gunner, as it turned out, was a dark chocolate-colored horse with no white markings at all, and a long, wavy mane the same color as the rest of his body. He was also a head-tosser as Jenner checked his saddle bags.
“What the hell is this?” Lena asked as she jammed her finger at a rifle secured against the saddle.
“Protection.”
“But I said—”
Jenner rounded on her. “There’s no room for that hippy dippy shit out here, Lena. We aren’t hunting bears. The rifles are for protection, and that’s all, but if you go out there without a defensive strategy, you’re as good as dead. It’s my job to protect you, and I’m not taking you out there unarmed. This,” he said, slapping the leather rifle sheath, “is non-negotiable. Please tell me you know how to fire one.”
Lena gritted her teeth and crossed her arms over her chest in rebellion.
“Answer me now, woman, or I swear we’ll put off your pictures another day to target practice and learn this weapon.”
With a pissed-off sigh, she said, “The gun is a thirty aught six and yes, I can handle the recoil.”
“Good. Safety?”
“It’s the small button on top of the rifle, over the trigger.”
“Stance?”
She lifted her hands as if she cradled an imaginary rifle and splayed her legs to the side, still glaring at him.
“Okay.” Jenner turned toward his own horse, a dapple gray whose attention was already on the woods, and who was currently stomping impatiently. Jenner spun around just before he hoisted himself into the saddle. “One last question. Where did you learn to shoot?”
“My dad.” She hadn’t meant for the words to sound like heartbreak on her lips, but there it was.