“It’s poetry,” Mik said.

“Poetry isn’t visual,” Alex argued.

“Then art,” Mik said.

“Huh uh.” Teddy shook her head. “Foreplay.”

The three of them sat on the fence rail. Mik leaned forward to look around Alex who sat between her and Teddy. “Foreplay?”

“Well, yeah,” Teddy said without taking her eyes off the men approaching on horseback. “I mean just look at them. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see any of them on a horse?”

“Sex,” Mik said with a grin. “Definitely sex.”

“Yes,” Teddy agreed dreamily. “Hot, sweaty, back-scratching, heel-drumming, scream your throat raw sex.”

“For God’s sake!” Alex slid off the fence and turned her back on the sight of the riders. “Is that all you two can think about?”

Mik chuckled and hopped off the fence. “You’d be singing a different tune if you’d had some of what men like that have to offer.”

Alex rolled her eyes then her mouth formed into an “o” and her attention turned to Teddy. “Theodora Morgan! Have you had sex with Jake?”

Teddy grinned and climbed off the fence. “No. But I’ve been giving it some serious thought.”

“You two are hopeless,” Alex complained.

“You’re just jealous,” Mik said, her eyes still on the riders.

“Am not.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

“Did you wake up a ten-year-old?”

Mik grinned at her sister. “You can’t tell me you can look at Jesse and not want to jump him. Hell, I’d like to jump him.”

“I’m sure Jed would be happy to hear that.”

“You know what I mean. Jesse’s five kinds of fine.”

“They all are,” Teddy commented.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Mik responded with a chuckle as the three riders reined their mounts to a halt in front of the women.

“Well?” Mik asked, looking up at Jed.

“So far no more signs that any of the remaining cattle are infected.”

“What a relief!”

They’d had more than their share of trouble lately on the Rocky River Ranch. From poisoned water supplies to a sudden infestation of mad cow disease. It was threatening to not only put them out of business but also cost them the ranch.

Jed dismounted and pulled Mik against his side. “Something I need to talk to you about. Walk with me to the stable?”

“You got it. Alex? Teddy? You gonna hang around?”

“Since we haven’t gotten around to discussing your wedding plans—which is what you asked us here for, I might add—I guess so,” Alex answered, pointedly ignoring Jesse as he reined to a halt beside her. “How long are you going to be?”

Mik cut her eyes up at Jed and he shrugged. “An hour?”

Alex blew out her breath. “Fine. I’ll wait on you at the house. Maybe I can talk Miss Ellen out of a piece of that pound cake she was baking this morning.”

Jed and Mik headed in the direction of the stable. Jesse dismounted, cut a look at Alex’s back as she marched away and then handed the reins to Jake. “I need to get to work. You mind?”

“No problem.” Jake looked at Teddy. “Want to hang out while I cool these fellas down and get them settled?”

“Sure.” She accepted the reins to Jesse’s horse, Whitefoot, and fell into step beside Jake as Jesse headed for the house.

“Everything okay?” She could feel worry rolling off Jake in waves.

“You doing that witchy thing and reading my mind?”

Teddy bumped her shoulder against him and responded to his tease. “Something like that. So what’s bothering you?”

Jake slowed his pace. “Jed got a letter yesterday. He just told us this morning. Apparently, someone dug up an old deed from the early 1900s when our great, great—don’t know how many greats—grandfather borrowed money against the ranch. The person he owed died before the note was paid and Dalton Manning found it and bought the note from the man’s ancestors. He called in the note and it’s gonna take everything Mik and Jesse have won and more to pay him off.”

“Which means nothing left to keep things running or settle up with the people who were boarding horses here and lost them when the water was poisoned.”

The look Jake gave her tugged way too hard at her heart. He might make light of things at times, but the ranch was his life. If they couldn’t get it back up and running they’d go down and that would break all the Nash men, including Jake.

“There has to be something we can do.”

Jake stopped at the door of the barn. “Like what? We’re down to fifty head of cattle we can’t sell thanks to that damn sickness, all but five of our boarders have moved their horses somewhere else and all we have left is our mounts and the three horses Mik and I are training and they’re nowhere near ready.”

“Well…well maybe Jesse and Mik can win at these next three rodeos, and they’ll make nationals and win, and…and everything will be okay.”

“That’s a whole lotta maybes,” Jake replied as he turned to lead the way into the barn. “And anything can happen that’ll knock one of them out of the running.”

Teddy fell into step behind him. She wished she knew something to say to comfort him or had an answer to the financial woes, but the truth was she was barely making ends meet.

Her shop had not exactly taken off. It had become clear that Monroe was not a city particularly open to the type of things her shop carried. In fact, most of the people who’d come in had commented on being surprised to find a “new age” or even worse a “witch” shop opening up.

Teddy had been lucky to make the rent on the shop and her house last month. Were it not for Mik and Alex, she’d have gone hungry. There just wasn’t enough coming in.

Maybe it had been a mistake for her to open the shop.

“Teddy?”

She jerked to attention, unaware Jake had been speaking to her. “I said you want me to take care of Whitefoot?”

“Oh, no, no, I can do it.”

“You okay?”

Embarrassed to have been caught up in her own woes when there was so much going on in Jake’s life, she quickly shook her head and led Whitefoot into a stall. “Fine. Just worried about all that’s going on.”

“You sure that’s all?” He asked a bit louder from the next stall.

“Yeah. Positive.”

There was no more conversation after that as they went about the task of tending to the horses. Jake finished before she did and walked to the door of Whitefoot’s stall.

“What?” she asked as she noticed him watching.

“Just appreciating the view.”

Teddy laughed and passed it off. “Yeah, right.”

“Yeah right,” he said and stepped inside the stall with her. “First time I saw you all I could think was fairy princess, all delicate and graceful and too damn beautiful to be real. Never for a second imagined you as a woman to do this.”

“I did grow up on a farm, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. You just don’t look like a farm girl.”

Teddy smiled. “Well what exactly does a farm girl look like?”

Jake’s eyes squinted and his lips pursed up a little. “Well…like Mik.”

Teddy couldn’t help but laugh. “Honey, that’s wardrobe, not looks. Mik could look like something out of a glamour magazine if she chose. She’s just not a girlie girl.”

“Like you?” He sidled over to her and ran one hand over her mane of blond tumbling curls.

“Oh no, you did not just say that to me,” she teased in mock anger.

Jake’s eyes registered a moment of concern before he realized she was kidding. “Well, you are…kinda. I mean, you always got on those flimsy, wafty skirts and these tops that have all the little beads and wispy things…” His hand moved from her hair to the neckline of her blouse where tiny tendrils of fabric formed a fall of color and movement over her breasts.

Teddy didn’t need to be empathic to know he was becoming aroused. She could see it on his face and hear it in his voice. She not only recognized it, but she also felt it. His touch had the power to excite her like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

“Don’t use that on me,” she warned, uncomfortable at the level of arousal she was feeling.

“Use what, honey?”

“That—that whisperer thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Mik told me. All of you have it—you can…you can project.”

“Project?”

“Yes. Make people feel what you want them to feel. Like desire.”

Jake’s eyes registered surprise and because of her empathic skills she realized that the surprise was not that she knew but that what he was capable of was more than mere charm and good luck.

“Jake Nash, you didn’t know? How could you not know?”

“I…I…Teddy, this is weird. Look, I know I’ve got a way with women. We all do. It just comes naturally. And yeah, we got that thing with animals. Jed the most, but I and Jesse got our fair share. But I swear to god, I’ve never—projected? I’ve never projected something onto a woman.”

“Oh but you have.”

“No. I swear to you—”

“Jake, I’m not criticizing. Just stating a fact. Let me ask you something. Just now. What were you thinking when you touched me?”

It took a moment for him to respond and when he did, she knew he was being honest. “I was thinking how damn beautiful you are and how much I want you and wishing you wanted me just as much.”

Teddy nodded. “I do Jake. I do. But every time you feel that or as you say wish it, it ramps up energy inside you and seeps out—into me or whoever your attention is focused on.”

“So what you’re saying is when you want me, it’s not really you?”

Teddy knew a split second before the words spilled from his lips that she’d stepped into a big pile. He was angry because now, he thought that she didn’t really want him at all, and he wanted her to want him all on her own.

“No, that’s not what I meant at all Jake. It’s just that—”

“No, no, that’s fine; you don’t have to say any more. I get it and I promise I won’t be projecting on you. And I got things to do so…”

With that he turned on his heel and walked away.

Smooth move, Teddy. She grimaced and started after him but stopped. Right now he was angry and until he cooled off nothing she said would get through to him. It was best to just give him some time. Besides, there were other things to consider other than her increasingly demanding libido when Jake was anywhere around.

She refilled Whitefoot’s water bucket then closed the stall and headed for the house. The closer she got the more it felt like wading through air that was thick and pressurized. It actually felt like a physical weight on her body. Teddy knew what she was feeling—the worry and anxiety of the people inside the house.

Perhaps she should work harder at keeping up her mental shields so she didn’t have to feel it. It was depressing. People worrying about what they were going to do to save the ranch, how in the world they were supposed to hold a wedding with all the worry that was piling in on them, whether Mik and Jesse could keep their winning streaks going. Worry after worry, the feelings bombarded her.

Teddy stopped dead in her tracks staring at the house. What in the world was she doing? Nothing about her so-called new life was going as planned. She was way too involved with a man who’d never had a serious relationship and trying to run a business that was analogous to a sinking ship.

In short, she was failing and at what cost? Mik had sold the farm, taking nothing for herself so that Teddy and Alex could pursue their dreams. And what was Teddy making of those dreams?

Not much, it seemed. It was time for her to take a hard look at her life and decide what it was she really wanted, and what mattered the most. Maybe then she could get her life on track.