Silver James

Hump Day. Again. And that means more Wednesday Words. Today’s #1lineWed theme is one near and dear to my heart. I’ve loved horses since I could toddle out the door to confront anyone riding one down the street we lived on. Seriously. Small-town Oklahoma? Lots of people kept horses and other critters in their backyards. We had a donkey. Long Ears was NOT my friend. But horses? Oh, yeah. Anyway, because I’ll inspiration where I can get it, I wrote this scene for RDR#9 (Cooper’s story) which may or may not make the final cut. It was a fun scene to write regardless. There’s no set up because it’s totally random, but it is during the period Cooper is courting Britt in hopes of seducing her into marriage. 😉
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Britt settled on the bale of hay. She wasn’t much of a country girl but hey, hay was hay, right? Horse and cow food and a place to sit while she watched Cooper brush the big gray horse. Yes, that summed up hay nicely. And was about as deep as her thoughts could get at the moment. Cooper wore a heather gray T-shirt that molded to his body. Faded jeans hugged his butt and every time he bent over, she had to swallow the saliva pooling in her mouth. Why was he so sexy? And such a nice guy. She really needed him to be a big ol’ jerk because her heart was at stake, which it shouldn’t be.

Granted, they’d had a series of one night stands, and in one case, a one morning stand. They had nothing in common. He was rich. Really rich. He belonged to a powerful family. He looked as good in old jeans and a T-shirt as he did in a designer suit and that, she decided, was a tough at to follow. He was handsome, in a rugged, outdoorsy way that tripped her feminine switches. He always had. She’d all but thrown herself—okay, she had thrown herself at him like five minutes after she first saw him.

Jerk, she reminded herself. He should be a jerk. But he wasn’t. She watched the muscles of his arm bunch and relax as he brushed the horse, concentrating on that rather than his broad back. Little shivers teased through her body. Why did he turn out to be a really good guy? The good ones were supposed to be as rare as unicorns.

“What’s her name?” Britt had to focus on something besides the man.

“His. This is Tramp. He’s a gelding.”

“Okay…”

Cooper glanced over at her. “Three kinds of horse, Girl Wonder.” He held up an index finger.

“Mares. Those are the female horses.”

“I knew that,” she muttered.

“Stalliions,” he said, holding up a second finger.

“Know that, too.”

“And geldings. Who used to be stallions.”

“That’s weird. When dogs are neutered, they’re still just dogs.”

“It’s the same with cattle. A bull that’s been cut is a steer.”

“Cut?”

“That’s the cowboy term for neutering a horse or cow.”

Britt opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. “I thought a cow was female. So you spade cows?”

“Cow is the singular term for any bovine. It is also a female cow, as opposed to a bull or steer.”

“Stop. You’re going to make my head explode.”

He moved around the horse to brush the other side, watching her over the big animals back.
“Okay. I won’t explain about calves and heifers then.”

She glowered and moved her curled hands up to both sides of her head and expanded them with sound effects to indicate that her head had, indeed, exploded, at least figuratively.

“And then there’s all the classifications for horses—”

“Shut up, Coop. Just…shut it.”

The grin he flashed was full of wicked intent. “Make me.”
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Writers, do you have any horse sense, horse of a different color, horsing around, horse power, or a dark horse in your WIP? Feel free to share!