Summer at Mustang Ridge Read Online Free

business.
    Up close, Krista was a thoroughly natural beauty, from the tips of her boots to her casual ponytail and makeup-free face. Shelby—a brunette whose lighter-toned eyebrows and lashes disappeared if left to their own devices—envied her the ability to pull it off.
    With a Gwyneth Paltrow smile that lit her whole face, Krista looked down. “And this must be Miss Lizzie! Are you ready for an adventure?”
    “She already had one,” Shelby said drily, figuring it’d be better to fess up now than have it get back to the boss later.
    “Uh-oh. That sounds ominous.”
    “Lizzie here snuck out of orientation and headed for the barn, where she spooked one of the horses and nearly got trampled.”
    “
What?
”
    “She’s fine,” Shelby said quickly, “and so is the horse. Lucky for her, one of your men was there to do damage control.” At Krista’s raised eyebrow, she elaborated, “Jeans, T-shirt, black hat, and a scowl?”
    “That’s our trail boss, Foster.” She grinned. “Did he give you the old ‘barn’s closed, get out of my space, it’s my day off’ routine?”
    “That was the vibe, though he was pretty decent given that he’d just had to pull my kid out from underneath one of his horses.” Even saying it brought a shudder.
    “Don’t let him fool you. He keeps to himself, but he’s a total sweetie once you get to know him.”
    Shelby wasn’t sure that would ever be a word she’d use to describe the cowboy. The lines in his face had been set in a frown, his eyes cool. And there had been something about him. “I think I’ll go with ‘no comment’ on that one.”
    “I knew I was going to like you. Come on. Let’s go get you two settled into your cabin.”
    “I don’t want to interrupt—”
    “Please, interrupt. I’m begging you.”
    Shelby glanced back at the party. “Well, if you put it that way.”
    “Don’t get me wrong—I love meeting all the new people on changeover day and making sure we get off to a great start. But this is different. You guys are here for the whole summer! I’m so happy to have you here. I’m a twin, did I tell you that? My sister, Jenny, is a videographer, and she’s always off on all these cool assignments, which means I never get to see her anymore, not really.” She slid Shelby a sidelong look. “No pressure intended.”
    “None taken.” And no promises, either. But although Krista was proving to be something of a whirlwind, she was a happy one, bright and bubbling, like a soda fountain rather than a geyser.
    “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked as she bopped them out the door and down a wide gravel path.
    “A sister,” Shelby said. “We don’t speak anymore.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    I’m not
. But in a way she was. Not that she and Mercy had stopped even pretending to have anything to say to each other, but that Lizzie had wound up with such a crappy extended family. “Life happens.”
    “That it does, leaving us to make the best of it.” Krista linked an arm through hers, and tugged. “Speaking of which, let’s check out your new digs!” She led the way along a gravel path that wound around the other side of the dining hall.
    Now that she wasn’t rushing to make it in time for orientation, Shelby could look around the ranch a little. She decided quickly that she liked what she saw, though she couldn’t deny the sense of “we’re not in Boston anymore, Toto.”
    The main house was a sprawling gray two-story structure with breezeways connecting it to the dining hall and another large wing, making it look like it had outgrown itself and octopused to the other spaces. Beyond it, the huge barn and several smaller shelters were all interconnected with a network of pipe corrals and split-rail fencing, where plump horses and pointy-hipped cattle munched from round bales and dozed in the sun. It would’ve looked like something out of
Blazing Saddles
, except that glossed atop the Old West was a newer, resort-type layer in