Page 46 of His True Mate

“This one’s half insane if she thinks that. Where’d you find her?” he asked.

“She’s my mate. Winnie, this is Dalton Draper, he runs the stables here.”

“Need any help? I’d be happy to train him,” she surprised us both by saying.

“Do you just like horses or do you have any actual training with them?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’ve tamed a horse or two in my day.”

He scoffed. “In your day. Youngin, you don’t even know what that means.”

She glared at him. “I was riding before I could walk.”

“That horse is no good. He can’t be tamed.”

“He can, and he will,” Winnie assured him.

“Winnie, that’s probably not safe.”

I knew the mistake of my words the second they left my mouth. All she did was take them as a challenge.

“This is what I do, Clay. It’s a great opportunity. What else am I going to do around here? I’m a hard worker. Sunrise to sunset and sometimes even beyond that. You can’t expect me to just sit around this place and do nothing.”

“You wanted to run and be free, not saddled to an ornery horse.”

“He’s more than ornery. The fire of Satan in that one, I tell you,” Dalton insisted.

“So we heard,” Winnie said still taking it as a challenge.

I shook my head. “No. I can’t allow this.”

“Last time I checked, it wasn’t your permission I was seeking.”

“Winnie, please. I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to you.”

“Then have a little faith in me, Clay. This is what I do,” she reminded me again.

“I could certainly use the help around the stables,” Dalton said.

“What about him?” Winnie asked.

“Might as well set him free. He wasn’t hurting anything out there on his own.”

She shook her head. “Give me one month with him. If he’s still wild, I won’t complain when you cut him free.”

“One month? But you also work here in the stables during that time? That demon won’t be on the clock,” Dalton insisted as I stood by and listened in shock trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

“Deal.”

She held out her hand.

Dalton looked at it and smiled. “I like you, girlie. You have yourself a job.”

They shook on it.

“What just happened?”

“Think of it this way,” Winnie said with a triumphant grin. “You’re stuck with me for at least the next month.”