Wanted: Sharpshooter

CHAPTER 8

  Even though Max had had no sleep at all and I'd not had a lot, morning was approaching and the time for slumber was past. We shifted, moved, took deep breaths and generally started the process of waking up. Mostly we talked, only Max's past as a subject of interest was momentarily used up so our conversation moved on to other topics, our words drifting on the pre-dawn air.

  We found things to talk about. We discussed horses, which Max knew little about, and guns, about which he knew everything, until finally there was nothing else to talk about so we came back to cougars. "Pumas, if you live in the Southwest. That's why Carlos calls them Pumas. He's from New Mexico."

  My words were clipped and precise while Max's were slow and soft, blending into the creeping dawn. The tendril of safety that had entered me that evening, and then disappeared, now returned full force and became slow spiral through my body. I wondered idly as I leaned against the stable wall and waited for morning just how long it would take for that feeling of security to envelop my whole self, even as I knew the feeling was completely irrational given the threat to the stable. I hoped it would take hours… days… to fill me to the brim because it was such a good feeling and so unexpected given the situation, that I wanted to savor it.

  But, shoving aside my feelings and facing reality, I admitted that the cougar was my problem, not Max's, and the stable was my responsibility, not his and I shouldn't continue leaning on him. I should take charge. I thought how to do so. By learning everything I could about Maxwell Abrams. "You came here to figure out the rest of your life."

  I examined the stable walls, now a lighter shade of gray than minutes earlier. Dawn was coming. "Not much time for that with a cougar outside." I added in what I hoped was a normal, uncaring voice, "I won't blame you if you take off first thing in the morning. You've already helped more than anyone could expect."

  In reply Max tipped his head back and spread his arms wide, taking in the whole of the dawning forest, and I felt more than heard his low chuckle. "What? Leave all this? A stable full of expensive horses in the middle of nowhere with a hungry cougar just outside? And you?" He must have sensed the way I sat up straight, unsure what he meant. "A female boss." His hands twisted upwards towards the dawning sky. "What could be better than all of this?" He looked like he could hold that sky in his arms until they dropped dramatically. "Sitting beside a female boss and waiting to kill a rogue cougar."

  "What's wrong with a female boss?" My voice squeaked.

  "Nothing. It's just that I never had a lady boss before." He'd been so majestic moments before. Now he sagged along the hay bale like a sack of potatoes. "I can't imagine what it'll be like."

  He sounded so dejected that I wanted to giggle but I managed to swallow it. "That makes us even." I didn't plan on saying what I said next. It wasn't the kind of thing a boss would admit and I'd not have said it if I'd thought first. "I've never had an employee before."

  "No kidding." He thought a moment. "What about Carlos?"

  "He's part of Green Forest Stables. He was here before I came. He's a real live horse whisperer."

  "He's not an employee then?"

  "Not really. You're the first." The first that stayed long enough for me to fill out a W2 form, which I would do as soon as I found one. There was one somewhere in the office, I just wasn’t sure where.

  His head tilted as he rolled that thought around for a moment. "So what we have here is a female boss who's never been a boss before and her first employee who's never worked for a woman until now. Sounds like we're both in uncharted territory."

  His voice was so droll that my suppressed giggle erupted into laughter that I couldn't suppress. The night had been so tense that I needed a break in the tension but I suspected that wasn't the only reason I laughed. I laughed because…. I didn't know why, I just knew that it felt right and soon Max joined in until we were whooping. Finally he gulped, "Are we really that funny?"

  "Probably not." And we laughed some more.

  Then, for reasons I couldn't explain, I stopped laughing because, in some way I couldn't put my finger on, in that very moment, as the first fingers of dawn broke behind the trees, everything changed. The scratchy straw covered by a wool blanket morphed into black velvet washed in a pink and yellow dawn filled with promise instead of the fear that had become a part of me.

  Max moved. Slid to an upright position. Tipped his head. I knew what he was going to do and knew it wasn't appropriate between an employer and employee, and I didn't care. Maybe he did it because I'd not laid down the rules for employer-employee relations. Or didn't know them myself. Or perhaps it was just that dawn was approaching without the cougar attacking. Whatever the reason, I could have stopped it easily. I didn't. Instead I looked out the open stable door and said, "It's a shame to waste such a beautiful dawn."

  "You're right about that." There was a question in his voice.

  My silence was all the answer he needed. In that silent way he had of moving and without me knowing how it happened, instead of being on another bale of hay he was blocking those fingers of dawn, touching my face, the side of my neck, the area behind my ear until I shivered, but I was also reaching for him, putting my arms around his neck until our lips were barely touching in a kiss that wasn't important at all, that blew all employer-employee rules to smithereens, that had no need or urgency behind it and that was somehow precisely right.

  As our lips touched, it occurred to me that it was about as far from a passionate kiss as it's possible to have, more a thing of the gorgeous dawn and lack of sleep and the fact that the stable was safe than of two people wanting to physically connect. More than a peck on the cheek but not even close to lust. Nothing spectacular at all. A good morning kiss, and I knew that's what it was meant to be.

  And yet… and yet… during the millisecond before contact was broken, the world stopped. Tipped. And started again, smooth and efficient as ever, but on a different axis entirely. And I knew that my relationship with this particular employee was about to become complicated and, more important than not knowing how to be a good boss, I now had no idea at all how to handle this new complication.

  At that precise moment, the cougar screamed.