Asha King Read Online Free

her.
    “Not broken,” he repeated as he set her foot down again. “You’ll be fine, princess.”
    She glanced away and brushed her dusty forearm over her sweat-damp forehead. In addition to proper cowboy boots—with steel toes—she was going to need a hat in this sun.
    Cooper noticed, plucked the Stetson from his head, and dropped it on hers. “I should’ve shown you how to walk a horse first. I’m sorry.”
    The Stetson was a bit too big and fell over her eyes. She pushed it up to frown at him. “Well, yeah , you should’ve. You knew the horse would do that!”
    “I did not.” He leaned back on his heels, glaring at her.
    “You knew it would do something to probably injure me.”
    “I figured she’d stand there and be useless. You’re the one who claimed to have done riding lessons.”
    She threw her hands up. “Like a million years ago!”
    His lips pulled into a tight line and he took a deep breath. “Come sit off to the side, and I’ll give you a quick lesson for dealing with horses tomorrow. Okay?”
    She bit her lip. Nodded. Damn it, he made her feel like a child and she wanted to smack him with the boot again, but maybe she did sort of, kinda, walk into this one by acting like a know-it-all. She grasped the boot but didn’t bother to put it back on and struggled to rise.
    Cooper grasped her elbow, surprisingly gentle, and helped her onto her feet—or foot , that is. She hobbled along without putting much weight on the right, Cooper’s grip never leaving her arm until he had her settled half sitting on the edge of the hay trough and half leaning against the fence.
    Patches stood three feet away, still chewing whatever Cooper had given her, and eyed Danyiah. Dani made a face and the horse tipped its head back, exposing its teeth in a laugh.
    “Real charming,” Dani muttered under her breath and turned her attention to Cooper for his lesson.

NEW POST: Draft Mode
    So I was nearly trampled by a horse today. And then stepped on by one.
    Of course, there is no video or photos—I was otherwise engaged. See the part about horses on my feet.
    BUT I will thrill you now with a video re-enacting both my “I’m about to be trampled by a horse” face and my “I’ve been stepped on by a horse” face.
    Here we go.
     

Chapter Four
    She was going to kill him.
    Sure, it might get her kicked off the farm. And arrested. But in prison, her stalker couldn’t get her and she could probably increase her blog hits exponentially by posting about the experience.
    It was a plan.
    Adam taught riding lessons to a handful of people from town on Tuesday morning and had tasked her with retrieving some of the horses needed from the field. Seemed simple enough except that the field stretched on for what felt like miles and the horses, of course, insisted on standing at the very end of it.
    Damn him. And damn the horses . Honestly, it was like they all conspired together to make her insane.
    She trudged up a hill through tall, weedy grass in patches that touched her knees, her borrowed cowboy boots pinching painfully as she walked. The sky was an almost inhuman bright blue, crisp and cloudless. It would be a good day to lounge around the pool, but thus far she’d only been able to gaze longingly at it by the house before being sent off to do another of Cooper’s tasks.
    She had a baseball hat on since she hadn’t been shopping yet, and that along with shades managed to keep the bright, late morning sun from her eyes. Though she’d lathered up with sun screen, her bare shoulders and the back of her neck felt like they were burning.
    Dani officially hated the ranch.
    Two of the required horses previously went easy enough, but a pair of roan quarter horses stood near the far fence, staring at her as she approached with two leads. She hadn’t been stepped on again. Yet. But then the day was still young.
    Dani clucked her tongue at the horses, hoping they might start following without her having to put the leads on and