Project Enterprise by Pauline Baird Jones Page A

look.
    â€œAnalisse.” She hid shy in a very female sniff, her cute little nose lifting a bit, but not so much she lost sight of him. “I suppose you don’t use your real name because you’re wanted by the law.”
    Didn’t sound like it bothered her. He grinned again. A new record. “Not by the law—” In this time, anyway. “Just…private.”
    â€œPa says the same thing—after he shares our life story with everyone who comes by.” Her tone hovered between rueful and annoyed.
    â€œAnalisse. I like it.” It suited who she should be.
    â€œMy Ma used to call me Ani.” She eased it out like it was information, not an offer, though she might be persuaded otherwise.
    â€œAni.” He’d never been one for a lot of persuading, continued before she could pretend to object, “If you could go anywhere you wanted, where would it be?” Maybe he assumed facts not in evidence. Maybe she liked the life, liked being a boy. He could adapt to a lot of things, but wasn’t sure about a traveling medicine show, though—she shifted giving him a glimpse of her shape as the round circle of the moon backlit her—there’d be compensations.
    â€œAnywhere?” Her gaze turned dreamy in the moonlight. “I’d probably go home. Put on a dress, see if I could stand it.”
    Her smile was unexpected, mischievous and loaded with charm. Animated her face from fine to beautiful. Had she been given the chance, she’d have had no trouble snaring a husband.
    The wind went from merely persistent to a hearty gust. Delphine whinnied a bit and tried to turn off the trail toward what looked like a tumble of rocks.
    Ani held her mount in, though she didn’t turn her back to the trail. “Probably a tinaja close by. We can water the horses there.”
    It was a chance to talk, to find out what she wanted from life. He felt his horse shift under him, trying to turn, too. He let the animal have his head, pondered doing the same for himself. Do no harm. What if he could do some good for both of them?

    M oonlight bathed the rocky enclosure , deepening the shadows, though the tinaja gleamed where it formed a rock pool. She started to dismount, not averse to taking a drink, too, but Chance was there next to her, his big hands circling her waist and lifting her clear of Delphine like she was a baby or something.
    A brief sense of soaring through the cool air didn’t end when she landed at his feet. With the horse at her back, the big man fencing her in, she should have felt worried, scared even. They were so close she almost brushed against him when she breathed. Not that she could breathe. All of her felt caught, not just by the hands at her waist, but by emotion welling up from a place so deep inside, she hadn’t known it was there. Was this how her Ma felt about her Pa? This wild, reckless yearning that dried her throat and sent her heart a racing? She should have been terrified. An odd time to realize this was the safest she’d felt since Ma passed.
    His hand, his big man hand, drifted up to brush against her cheek, his touch light—though the skin had been roughened by work—and mighty gentle. Was this what it meant, to take the rough with the smooth?
    â€œHave you ever been kissed, Ani?”
    She shook her head. No reason to lie. He had to know she hadn’t. His hand slid across her face, across skin that heated at the touch, and around the back of her head, pushing her cap off on the way, then it found purchase on the back of her neck, his fingers threading into her hair, turning her soft like mush. She’d have dropped at his feet, but the hand at her waist kept her up. Gentle pressure changed the angle of her head, perhaps as a prelude to a kiss, because a man didn’t ask unless he meant to do, did he?
    She should stop him. She may not know much, but she knew that. Only…she was twenty-eight years old. A