“I have not.”
“Not even in the movies?” When Beth turned away to retrieve her discarded clothes, the world spun crazily. “Whoa.” Throwing out one arm, she fell sideways into the leader.
“Careful,” he murmured as he wrapped strong arms around her and held her upright.
“Sorry. I just…” Beth blinked hard until everything swam into focus and stopped moving. “I got a little dizzy there for a minute.” Straightening, she clutched a handful of the soft tunic that covered his chain mail, took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Much better. Thank you.” She gave his chest a pat, then retrieved her clothes.
It only took her a minute to don her vest and refasten the Velcro tape on each side. She added the shoulder holster next, then her dirty jacket. While she no longer seemed to need protection from mosquitoes, she found she could use the added warmth. A freak cold front must have swept through or something, because the temperature had definitely dropped.
“What is that?” Michael asked, motioning to the words on the back of her jacket.
Blood must have obscured the words, making them difficult to read. “It says Bail Enforcement Agent. Josh and I are bounty hunters.” She pointed in the direction from which she had come. “I think my backpack is that way.” When she looked around, everyone was staring at her shirt. She glanced down and saw nothing amiss. “What?”
“Your clothing is passing strange,” Michael commented, his tone bewildered.
“What’s so strange about it? It’s jeans, a bulletproof vest, and a jacket.”
“Why do you wear breeches?” one of the others—Stephen?—asked with something akin to disapproval. “You are a woman.”
“Last time I checked I was,” she drawled. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“And the fastenings,” the fourth one added. “How did you refasten your vest without needle and thread?”
“Ever heard of Velcro?”
“Nay,” Stephen and Michael answered with every appearance of honesty.
These guys just didn’t give up, did they? “Whatever. Let’s just get going.”
The leader motioned to his men, who moved to mount their horses. “You shall ride with me,” he informed her.
Beth took one look at the mammoth-sized, stomping, snorting stallion he led toward her and abruptly turned coward. “Um, you know what? I think I’m going to walk.”
He frowned. He did that quite often, she noted, and wasn’t sure if it was because he disagreed with her words or simply couldn’t understand some of them. “’Twill be faster if you ride.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll walk.” She scuttled backward as the horse drew near.
The others all mounted their horses and sat, looking down at her as if she were certifiable.
Or perhaps just being difficult.
But she wasn’t being difficult. She was being a wuss.
“Why?” the leader asked.
“Because I, um….” Ah, hell. How was she supposed to come up with a good excuse when that huge thing was peeling its lips back from its teeth and stretching its neck out as if it wanted to take a nice big bite out of her?
“You shall ride with me,” he commanded again.
“No. I mean, nay.”
Great. If the tightening of his lips and the muscle jumping in his cheek were any indication, she had offended him.
Beth sighed. “All right. Here’s the thing,” she confessed in a low voice the others leaned forward and strained to overhear.
The leader obligingly ducked his head to better catch her words.
“I have never been this close to a horse before,” she told him softly. “And, as embarrassing as this is for me to admit, I just realized that I’m apparently afraid of them.”
He blinked. “You have never been nigh a horse?”
Resentment bubbled up inside her, heightened by her embarrassment. “Look, not everyone in Texas owns a ranch, you know,” she blurted defensively. “We aren’t all cowboys. We don’t all own horses and wear boots and fringed shirts and big belt buckles and cowboy hats and listen to country western music. That’s such a stereotype! I grew up in the suburbs of one of the largest cities in the country, for crying out loud! The only time I ever even saw a horse was when my parents took me to the rodeo when I was a kid. And the horses there didn’t look nearly as huge from my seat way up high in the nosebleed section as yours does now.”
“Cowboys?” he queried, seemingly confused.
“Nosebleed section?” This from Stephen.
“Suburbs?” Michael parroted.
“Yes!” Her temper erupted in a growl of frustration. “I mean, aye!”
The leader held his hand out to her. “Berserker will not harm you.”
“Berserker is your horse’s name?”
“Aye.”
“And that’s supposed to reassure me?”
He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Not that anything he said would erase her qualms.
“I will not let you fall, Mistress Bethany. You have my word that you will come to no harm if you ride with me.”