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“It’s both,” he said, stowing the bucket under a workbench. “But Carolina is due any day now.”

“Oh that’s exciting.”

He grunted, reached for a shovel and handed it to her. “You said you’re okay to muck stalls?”

With a grin she couldn’t wipe off her face even if she tried, she accepted the shovel. “I will gladly shovel shit if it means I get to hang out here longer.” Then, ignoring his bewildered expression, she went back to Macklin and kissed his cheek. “Especially with this handsome fella.”

Chapter Five

Who was this woman?

First of all, she didn’t know how to shut the fuck up, but second of all, she liked shoveling shit?

Asher had had a few women in his life since he and Nate bought the ranch, but not one of those women had been keen to muck stalls.

Of course, they did it, but they complained about it the entire fucking time.

It was only the ranch hands or those who boarded their horses at the ranch that did it without complaint. A few well-off families in the area who bought their kids a horse, but didn’t have a place to keep it, rented stall space from Asher and his brother and boarded their horse here. It was extra cash in their pocket and wasn’t that much more work. A lot of those kids—mostly teenage girls—offered to help out more, as well, and for a reduced rate on boarding, Asher and his brother got cheap labor.

But Triss mucked stalls and shoveled shit almost with gusto.

Asher led each horse out of the stall and into the covered and heated corral so that Triss could clean the stall. He only had four horses out at a time, since not all his tenants got along.

The Mustang at the end—Mercy—was a bit of a dick, so they saved him for last and gave him the corral to himself. Which Mercy loved because he got to run around like an asshole.

“He’s beautiful,” Triss mused as they stood there and watched Mercy prance and run around the corral.

“Yeah, he’s also worth almost half a million dollars. But he’s a dick.”

Her soft brown eyes with the gold flecks nearly popped clean out of her head. “Half a million dollars for a horse?”

Asher snorted. “A lot of stallions are worth over a million if they’re from good breeding.”

“And he is?”

“He’s getting to be. Lineage isn’t long enough yet to command that kind of money, but his foals foals will. He’s just such a jerk, though. Nips at some of the other horses. Hard as fuck to collect from him. Seems to hate me in particular.”

“Collect wha—” He lifted his eyebrow at her and that cut her off. “Oh! You do that?”

“We do. And he’s way too fucking rough to put him with a mare and try it the natural way. He could kill her.”

“Jeez. So the reason he’s not worth a million is that you can’t get him to procreate because he’s such—”

“An asshole, yeah. Nate’s the horse whisperer, not me. If anybody can get that horse to heel, it’d be my brother.”

“And he hasn’t been able to?”

Asher shook his head. “Haven’t had Mercy long enough for Nate to work his magic. Horse only arrived a couple of weeks ago. Then Nate had to go down to Texas to deliver that yearling.”

Fuck, now he was as bad as Triss with the chit-chat.

But she just kept asking questions and as much as he hated talking, it was easiest when he was out here in the barn and with the horses. And as long as she kept her questions about the horses, then he had no real issues answering them. Besides, he liked her company. The horses took to her right away, particularly Macklin, though, he wasn’t picky about where he got his affections. But she gave them all attention and the smile on her face as she spoke to them was real and had him smiling, too.

“So if you can’t … jack off the horse for lack of a better term, what will you guys do with him?”

“Sell him, I guess. But we wouldn’t get what we paid for him. Not with that temperament.”

She nibbled on her lip and a warm, fuzzy feeling spread in his lower belly. “Hmm,” she hummed, her gaze tracking Mercy in the ring. “He’s just so pretty. He needs to have babies. Who would you breed him with?”