Return of the Cowgirl

by Eve Gaddy

  “She’s seeing four of you now,” Dylan said.

  “Oh, you’re funny,” Sam told him, but it was obvious she was teasing. “I mean a doctor about your memory loss.”

  “Mitch said he’d ask his brother to see me.”

  “Austin Hardeman is a neurologist at the Marietta hospital. He’s the one who recommended Mitch,” Dylan told Glory, who’d been sitting very quietly taking in the conversation.

  “Is Glenna safe here?” Glory asked. “What if this Villareal person comes looking for her here?”

  Exactly what had Mitch worried. “It will be obvious pretty quickly if he does come to Marietta. I’d like to think the Argentine cops will bust their operation, but my friend Felix, the Chilean cop we gave the bills to, didn’t have anything to tie those fake bills to the Villareals except our say-so.” He shrugged. “They’re just as likely to ignore us as to raid the Villareal ranch.”

  “So there’s no other evidence about this counterfeiting operation?” Jack asked.

  “We don’t know. If there is, it’s locked up tight in Glenna’s mind until her memory returns.” His phone rang. Checking the Caller ID, he saw it was Austin. “I need to take this.” As he answered, he walked out of the room into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Mitch. When did you get in?”

  “A few hours ago. Are you off work?”

  “I am. Come over when you’re finished there and we’ll have a beer.”

  “Sounds good. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  “Are you going to stay with me?”

  Mitch laughed. “And sleep on your couch? I’ll pass. I’ll get a room at the Graff.” He looked up to see Glenna in the kitchen doorway.

  “I’ll see you soon, then.”

  “Yeah. Later.” He hung up and looked at Glenna.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, walking up to him.

  “You didn’t. I’m about to leave, anyway.”

  “You’re going to a hotel? Are you sure you won’t stay here?”

  “If I stay here you know what’s going to happen.”

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You think if you go to a hotel nothing’s going to happen between us?”

  “There’s a lot better chance if I’m not here seeing you all day every day.”

  “Are you going to stay in Marietta a while, then?”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen my brother in quite a while.”

  “Is your brother the only reason you’re staying?”

  “You know damn good and well it’s not.”

  “Do I?”

  Mitch put his arms around her. He’d never held a woman in his arms before and felt so sure that she belonged there. “Yes,” he said, and kissed her. He forced himself to end the kiss and let her go long before he wanted to.

  “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” He should try to put some distance between them, but he couldn’t talk himself into it. He told her family goodbye and that he was staying at the Graff and would be in town for a while. Then he left before he changed his mind and took Glenna with him.

  Mitch hadn’t seen Austin in several months. His brother pretty much never came back to Texas and unless Mitch had no jobs in the offing, he didn’t often get to Marietta. But he was here now and really glad to see his big brother. Austin was the only person in the world who Mitch trusted completely. Their parents had died in a private plane crash when Mitch was twenty and Austin twenty-two. Both of them had suddenly become multi-millionaires, heirs to the Hardeman Hardware empire.

  Austin, possibly because he was just starting his medical residency and knew what he wanted to do with his life, had handled his sudden wealth a hell of a lot better than Mitch had.

  But he wasn’t here to think about the past. He needed to figure out the present. And what he was going to do about Glenna Gallagher. One thing was certain: he couldn’t forget her.

  “It’s about damn time you came to see me,” Austin said, after they’d hugged and pounded each other on the back.

  “Says he who can’t ever get his ass to Texas.”

  “I have patients.”

  “I have a job.”

  They both laughed. This exchange took place each time they saw each other after some time had passed. “Sit down and I’ll get us a beer.”

  “Sounds good.” He sat on the couch.

  Austin came back in the room and handed him a beer, then popped the top on his and sat in the recliner. “Tell me about this job. I’ve told my office staff to work Glenna Gallagher in as soon as she calls.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. I don’t know whether you can help her, but I trust you to either help her or find someone who can.”

  Austin rubbed his chin. “You realize three of her brothers are doctors, right? As well as Sam, her soon-to-be sister-in-law. They might want her to see someone else.”

  “Is there another neurologist here?”

  “Yes, one other. And I think another one is coming.”

  “I don’t know those other people. I do know you, and you know the Gallaghers. I don’t see that it’s a problem.”

  Glenna wasn’t a job anymore. Not at all. He gave Austin a brief account of what had happened in South America, but as soon as he finished that, he stopped. What could he say?

  “What’s bothering you, Mitch?”

  “Who’s bothering me.” Mitch got up and paced around. Shoved his hand through his hair and turned to look at his brother. “It’s Glenna. She’s not just a job.”

  “I kind of gathered that,” his brother said dryly.

  “Glenna is...different. From the moment I met her she hasn’t been what I expected. For the first time since Eliana suckered me, I found a woman who is totally guileless.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. You know my track record with women.”

  “Are you talking about when you were young, stupid and thinking with your dick? Or are you talking about all the women since? Every one of them young, pretty, and mostly brainless.”

  “Either. Both. I don’t know.”

  “What does she look like?”

  He took out the picture he’d carried around when he was looking for her and gave it to Austin. He studied it for a bit. “She’s pretty.” He handed the picture back to Mitch.

  “No, she’s beautiful. In this picture—” he waved it around “—she’s pretty. In real life she’s drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “Have you slept with her?”

  Mitch stopped pacing long enough to glare at his brother. “Have you not been listening to me? The woman has amnesia. She doesn’t know anything about herself. Hell, she didn’t know her real name until I told her and convinced her. Which wasn’t easy, by the way. I’m not some perv taking advantage of her.”

  Austin laughed. “You’re a lot of things, Mitch. But a perv, you are not. It’s obvious you’re hot for her. Does she feel the same?”

  He shrugged. “She thinks she does. But shit, she doesn’t know if she’s married or involved or in love with this Rolando asshole or if she’s scared to death and running from him. She doesn’t know if he’s a criminal or simply caught up in something against his will.” He thought about that a minute. “My money’s on him being central to this scheme.”

  “So you don’t plan to sleep with Glenna until that’s all straightened out? Until she gets her memory back or you find out if she’s married and exactly what these people want from her?”

  Mitch shot him an annoyed glance. “I have no idea what I’m going to do. I know what I should do, at least until we know more.”

  “Leave her alone?” Austin asked.

  Mitch nodded. “Yeah. I should walk away. For now, anyway.”

  “Let me know how well that works out.”

  Probably not at all, he admitted to himself. “Glenna’s—She doesn’t know enough about herself to lie. I’m not sure she would even if she did have her memory.”

&n
bsp; “Whoa, Mitch Hardeman admitting there might be a woman in the world who’s not after his money? Must be love.”

  He knew Austin was expecting him to deny it. Vehemently. But he couldn’t. “She doesn’t know a damn thing about my money.” Thankfully, Eliana hadn’t gotten everything because some of it had been in trust. So he had a lean few years before the trust dissolved. He got up and paced. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “I’m not. I think I’m in love with her. I haven’t even known her for a week. How can I be in love with her? That’s crazy.” It was about sex. Forced proximity. That’s all.

  Austin raised his eyebrows. “How does she feel about you?”

  “She wants to see where it goes. But how can I do that when she’s got goddamn amnesia? I’m the only person she knows. The only person she trusts.”

  “That’s a heavy responsibility.”

  “Yeah, but that isn’t what I’m afraid of. What if I let her down? What if she figures out she’s still in love with her baby daddy?”

  “What if she’s not? What if she’s falling for you and would have no matter whether she has her memory or not? She sounds like she’s a decisive woman normally.”

  “She is. And resourceful. She managed to elude me and Villareal’s flunkies for weeks. That’s not easy to do.” He finished his beer and thought briefly about having another. He didn’t though. The lesson he’d learned years ago had stayed with him. “What are you smiling about?” he asked Austin.

  “Just thinking that you’re toast.”

  Damn it, he couldn’t even deny it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Glenna woke early the next day and went down to the kitchen. Glory stood at the kitchen island, making breakfast, and Dylan and Sam sat at the big table with coffee and their tablets. Both of them were dressed. Dylan in jeans and a T-shirt, Sam in light blue scrubs.

  Dylan’s fiancée was a very pretty blonde. Since she was a trauma surgeon Glenna had thought she would be intimidating, but she wasn’t. She was warm and friendly and easy to talk to. Still, Glenna had heard her talking to someone at the hospital the night before and she had no doubt that Sam was a strong, confident woman who didn’t take shit from anyone. She wasn’t sure why she knew that. Sam hadn’t sounded rude or angry, but there was a core of steel in her voice when talking medicine. Which was a good thing in a trauma surgeon, Glenna thought.

  “Hey. Did you have a good night?” Dylan asked, looking up.

  “I did. Thanks.”

  “Coffee’s over there,” Sam said, motioning in Glory’s general direction. “I’ve got to get going,” she added as she got up and kissed Dylan goodbye.

  “You take a breakfast bar with you,” Glory said.

  Sam laughed. “You don’t have to tell me twice. Those things are great.” To Glenna she said, “Have fun today. I’ll see you later.”

  “Everything is on the stove,” Glory announced. “Except the muffins and they’re on the counter.” She left the kitchen, headed for the laundry room, if Glenna remembered correctly from the quick tour she’d had the day before.

  “Did you have plans for today?” Dylan asked Glenna.

  “I was planning on calling the neurologist for an appointment, but other than that, no. Why?”

  “I could use some help with the horses.”

  “I don’t—” She started to say she didn’t know anything about horses, but according to everything she’d heard, she did know horses. “All right.”

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “No. I’m sor—”

  “I told you not to apologize,” Dylan interrupted. “Sam put some clothes and boots in your room that she thinks will fit you. After we eat we can go see the horses.” He paused and added, “The stalls need to be mucked out. That was always one of your favorite jobs.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I think you’re the one shoveling shit. I can’t believe I liked mucking out stalls.”

  Dylan laughed and went to get his breakfast. “Hey, I figured it was worth a try.”

  “I have amnesia,” she said, following suit. “I’m not stupid.”

  “How was I to know you remembered what mucking out stalls means?”

  She tilted her head, considering him. “Were you always this way?”

  “What way?” he asked innocently.

  “A pain in the ass.”

  He laughed again. “It’s one of my most endearing qualities.”

  “That’s not how I’d describe it,” she said dryly.

  After they finished eating, Glenna went up to change. Sam and Glenna were about the same height and size, so Sam’s clothes fit her well. The boots were a little big, but not enough that she couldn’t wear them. She made a mental note to thank Sam.

  She’d told Dylan she’d meet him at the stables. About halfway there, the dogs came out to greet her. She counted eight and wondered if there were more. Apparently, Dylan liked dogs as well as horses.

  At the round pen she stopped to watch Dylan with a beautiful stallion. He was a buckskin with dark stockings and a long, flowing black and white mane. “What’s his name?” she called out.

  “Trouble. He’s my new stud.”

  A stud. Volcán. A magnificent Criollo stallion, coal black with white socks and a white stripe on his nose. Beautiful. Wild. Hers to tame.

  She shook off the memory, if you could call something that fleeting a memory. “He’s gorgeous,” she told Dylan. “What type of horse is he?”

  “Norwegian Fjord. I’ve been raising them for a while now.”

  “Do they all have manes like his?”

  “They’re all black and white, but the others are short. I’ll show you when we go down to the pasture. I’m about to put Trouble out.”

  “Why is he named Trouble?”

  “That was his name when I got him. He’d been abused and he was hell to get to trust us. Although he fell for Sam right away.”

  “Did you?” she asked curiously.

  His smile was pure happiness. “Yep. Took one look at her and I was a goner.”

  She smiled too, thinking how both his voice and his expression had changed when he talked about his fiancée.

  “And so did Trouble,” Dylan continued. “Pretty well everyone falls for Sam. Come on, we’ll go down to the pasture and I’ll tell you about the horses.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Dylan opened the gate to the round pen and led the stallion out. “Want to pet him? He doesn’t bite...anymore.”

  Glenna gave him a dirty look but went ahead and patted Trouble. Luckily, he was perfectly well behaved. Something about the horse and the smells associated with the round pen and drifting over from the barn seemed familiar. “Do you have any horses who were here when I lived here?”

  “A few. Mercy’s been around a long time. I’ll call her over when we get to the pasture.”

  Mercy was an older mare, a quarter horse, Dylan said. She came to Dylan immediately when he called her. The mare was buttermilk buckskin with a black star on her forehead, black stockings, and a black mane and tail. How had she known what to call that color? She’d remembered. Maybe having her memory return wasn’t hopeless after all.

  “She’s so sweet,” Glenna said, petting her. “Aren’t you a love?” she crooned to the mare.

  “Do you want to ride? Mercy’s not fast anymore but she’s a sweetheart. She might be just what you need. But I’m betting riding comes back to you, even if the people and horses don’t yet.”

  “I hope so.” But she wasn’t at all sure it would, despite her memory of the Criollo stallion and just now about the buttermilk buckskin. Yet when she went with Dylan to get the tack, she reached for the correct bridle, and when she helped him saddle the horses, she knew instinctively what to do. Watching him saddle his own horse after that, a gelding he called Hawkeye, seemed like a familiar task, too. She didn’t want to place too much importance on what had taken place, but she couldn’t help bein
g encouraged.

  They didn’t ride for long, just long enough to get some fresh air and see a bit of the ranch. Dylan took her to a stream he called Lover’s Creek and they followed it along for a while. “Why is it called Lover’s Creek?” she asked.

  “The story goes that our great-grandfather proposed to our great-grandmother there. At least that’s one version.”

  “What’s the other one?”

  “Our grandmother swore our father was conceived somewhere along the creek.”

  Glenna laughed. “She sounds colorful.”

  “Oh, she was. She was a no-nonsense rancher’s wife who worked hard her whole life. But she had a wicked sense of humor. She especially enjoyed telling that story around some of the stuffier ‘town folk’ as she called them.”

  It seemed like as good a time as any to ask about other family members. “Speaking of our father, tell me about him. Do you know why I left the ranch so young?”

  “Not really.” He shrugged. “We always suspected it had something to do with his hardheaded attitude about women doing ‘men’s work’.” He made air quotes. “You wouldn’t put up with that and you set about proving you could do anything the rest of us could do.”

  “Could I?”

  He grinned. “Yeah. With the exception of a few things I don’t think you wanted to do anyway.”

  “What were those?” she asked curiously.

  He turned Hawkeye back toward the barn. “Bull riding, steer wrestling, and steer roping. And you hid when we gelded anything. You didn’t even like to take the dogs and cats to get them neutered or spayed, even though you knew it was necessary.”

  “What happened to our mother? No one ever talks about her.”

  “She died when you and I were little. I was six. You were seven. She had cancer. I don’t remember a lot, but her death hit everyone hard.” He glanced at her and smiled. “You decided I needed a mother, so you tried to fulfill that role.”

  “Did you mind?” It was hard to visualize the confident adult he was now as a little boy of six who’d lost his mother.

  “Not most of the time. Sometimes you annoyed the crap out of me, though.”

  Glenna laughed. “Well, that’s good to know. I’m sure you deserved it.”