Something Wild by Patti Berg

thrust a red-and-orange knit stocking cap with a fat tassel at the end into her hands.
    “You might want to try that on for size, too.”
    She stared at the ridiculous garment. “This isn’t yours, is it?”
    “One of my parishioners gave it to me for Christmas.”
    “And you wear it?”
    One side of his mouth tipped upward. “What do you think?”
    “That you accepted it graciously and hid it away because no sensible—or fashionable—person would be caught dead in it.”
    He shrugged. “Possibly.”
    “So why should I wear it?”
    “Because frostbitten ears are uglier than that cap. Even worse is a pretty woman who’s had her ears amputated.”
    He had a point, she thought, as she pulled the cap over her head. But she didn’t see the point of the gooey white paste he was squeezing onto his fingertip.
    “What are you going to do with that?”
    “I’ll show you.” He curled his hand around the back of her head and held it steady while he applied the zinc oxide to the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her face as he worked, could almost feel the softness of his freshly shaved cheeks. Why, oh why, did her knees have to feel like jelly?
    “That oughta keep your skin from burning.”
    “It should scare away coyotes and mountain lions, too.”
    His fingers slid from the back of her head and brushed over her jaw. His thumb whispered across her lips. “I can’t imagine you scaring anything or anyone away. Not mountain lions, not coyotes, not—” he dropped his hand as if her lips had suddenly ignited—“not anything.”
    He tossed the tube of zinc oxide on the table and grabbed his coat from a rack by the door. “Why don’t you get your jacket and gloves and we’ll get going.”
    “What about
your
knit cap and zinc oxide? Are you immune to the sun and frostbite?”
    “I’m pretty much immune to everything.”
    Everything but her, she imagined. But she was trouble, she was a showgirl, and he kept backing away.
    And she tried convincing herself it was all for the best.
    She grabbed her coat and gloves from the living room while Mike shoved the sandwiches and thermos of coffee into a saddlebag.
    “So, Pastor Mike,” she said as he pulled on his jacket, “is this trip going to be as long and hard as you told me, or were you just trying to scare me off?”
    He frowned at her from beneath the black Stetson he’d tilted low on his brow. “Something tells me this is going to be the longest and hardest journey I’ve ever taken.”
     
Chapter 6
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    Mike and Buck ambled alongside Charity and Jezebel as the morning sun crested the eastern bluffs and shone down on the prairie. He tried to concentrate on their surroundings, knowing he should keep his eyes peeled for the black-and-white spotted mares, for Satan’s harem, and mainly for the dappled gray renegade, but his focus was centered on Charity.
    She’d called him pastor, a term reserved for his parishioners, for minor acquaintances. Charity wasn’t either. She was something more, although he hadn’t quite pegged what.
    Whatever she was, he didn’t want her calling him pastor. He didn’t want to be her minister, didn’t want to hear her confessions, or counsel her. What he wanted to do was kiss the slender curve of her neck, her temples, her brow. And, oh yeah, he wanted to kiss her lips. Wanted to kiss them till they were hot and swollen and she begged him for more.
    He’d come close to kissing her when he’d put the zinc oxide on her nose and cheeks. His mouth had been only a fraction of an inch from her lips, so close that he could feel the heat of her body, could almost hear her heartbeat, so close that her exotic perfume intoxicated him and sent his mind wandering to places it shouldn’t go.
    What a fool he was. A mixed up fool who didn’t know whether he should push her away or clasp her against his chest.
    The only things he did seem to know was that she