by Shirley Jump
Cody swore again.
The pain won out for a moment and his mind drifted. At the corners of his consciousness, he knew he needed to move, stop the bleeding, try not to freeze, but he’d become an expert at drifting that night on the border. Even when a rifle had poked into his chest as one of the drug runners tested to see if he was alive, Cody hadn’t reacted.
If he had, another bullet would have gone into his body, which was already riddled with lead.
Cody recited the words he’d once had to scrub off the walls in grade school. Mrs. Presley had kept repeating as he worked, Cody Winslow, you’ll die cussing if you don’t learn better.
Turned out she might be right. Even with his eyes almost closed, the stars grew brighter and circled around him like drunken fireflies. If this was death’s door, he planned to go through yelling.
The stars drew closer. Their light bounced off the black canyon walls as if they were sparks of echoes.
He stopped swearing as the lights began to talk.
“He’s dead,” one high, bossy voice said. “Look how shiny the blood is.”
Tiny beams of light found his face, blinding him to all else.
A squeaky sound added, “I’m going to throw up. I can’t look at blood.”
“No, he’s not dead,” another argued. “His hand is twitching and if you throw up, Marjorie Martin, I’ll tell Miss Adams.”
All at once the lights were bouncing around him, high voices talking over each other.
“Yes, he is dead.”
“Stop saying that.”
“You stop saying anything.”
“I’m going to throw up.”
Cody opened his eyes. The lights were circling around him like a war party.
“See, I told you so.”
One beam of light came closer, blinding him for a moment, and he blinked.
“He’s hurt. I can see blood bubbling out of him in several spots.” The bossy voice added, “Don’t touch it, Marjorie. People bleeding have germs.”
The gang of lights streamed along his body as if trying to torture him or drive him mad as the world kept changing from black to bright. It occurred to him that maybe he was being abducted by aliens, but he doubted the beings coming to conquer the world would land here in West Texas or that they’d sound like little girls.
“Hell,” he said and to his surprise the shadows all jumped back.
After a few seconds he made out the outline of what might be a little girl, or maybe ET.
“You shouldn’t cuss, mister. We heard you way back in the canyon yelling out words I’ve seen written but never knew how to pronounce.”
“Glad I could help with your education, kid. Any chance you have a cell phone or a leader?”
“We’re not allowed to carry cell phones. It interferes with our communicating with nature.” She shined her flashlight in his eyes. “Don’t call me kid. Miss Adams says you should address people by their names. It’s more polite. My name is Melanie Miller and I could read before I started kindergarten.”
Cody mumbled a few words, deciding he was in hell already and, who knew, all the helpers’ names started with M.
All at once the lights went jittery again and every one of the six little girls seemed to be talking at the same time.
One thought he was too bloody to live. One suggested they should cover him with their coats; another voted for undressing him. Two said they would never touch blood. One wanted to put a tourniquet around his neck.
Cody was starting to hope death might come faster when another shadow carrying a lantern moved into the mix. “Move back, girls. This man is hurt.”
He couldn’t see more than an outline but the new arrival was definitely not a little girl. Tall, nicely shaped, hiking boots, a backpack on her back.
Closing his eyes and ignoring the little girls’ constant questions, he listened as a calm voice used her cell to call for help. She had the location down to latitude and longitude and described a van parked in an open field about a hundred yards from her location where they could land a helicopter. When she hung up, she knelt at his side and shifted the backpack off her shoulder.
As she began to check his injuries, her voice calmly gave instructions. “Go back to the van, girls. Two at a time, take turns flashing your lights at the sky toward the North Star. The rest of you get under the blankets and stay warm. When you hear the chopper arrive, you can watch from the windows, but stay in the van.
“McKenna, you’re in charge. I’ll be back as soon as they come.”
Another M, Cody thought, but didn’t bother to ask.
To his surprise the gang of ponytails marched off like tiny little soldiers.
“How’d you find me?” Cody asked the first of a dozen questions bouncing around in his aching head as the woman laid out supplies from her pack.
“Your cussing echoed off the canyon wall for twenty miles.” Her hands moved along his body, not in a caress, but to a man who hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in years, it wasn’t far from it.
“Want to give me your name? Know what day it is? What year? Where you are?”
“I don’t have brain damage,” he snapped, then regretted moving his head. “My name’s Winslow. I don’t care what day it is or what year for that matter.” He couldn’t make out her face. “I’m on my own land. Or at least I was when my horse threw me.”
She might have been pretty if she wasn’t glaring at him. The lantern light offered that flashlight-to-the-chin kind of glow.
“Where does it hurt?” She kept her voice low, but she didn’t sound friendly. “As soon as I pass you to the medics, I’ll start looking for your horse. The animal might be out here, too, hurting or dead. Did he fall with you?”
Great! His Good Samaritan was worried more about the horse than him. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. When I fell off the edge of the canyon, Midnight was still standing, probably laughing at me.” He took a breath as the woman moved to his legs. “I tumbled for what seemed like miles. It hurts all over.”
“How did this happen?”
“The horse got spooked when we hit a patch of ice,” he snapped again, tired of talking, needing all his strength to handle the pain. Cusswords flowed out with each breath. Not at her, but at his bad luck.
She ignored them as she brushed over the left leg of his jeans already stained dark with blood. He tried to keep from screaming. He fought her hand as she searched, examining, and he knew he couldn’t take much more without passing out.
“Easy,” she whispered as her blood-warmed fingers cupped his face. “Easy, cowboy. You’ve got a bad break. I have to do what I can to stabilize you and slow the blood flow. They’ll be here soon. You’ve got to let me wrap a few of these wounds so you don’t bleed out.”
He nodded once, knowing she was right.
In the glow of a lantern she worked, making a tourniquet out of his belt, carefully wrapping his leg, then his head wound.
Her voice finally came low, sexy maybe if it were a different time, a different place. “It looks bad, but I don’t see any chunks of brain poking out anywhere.”
He didn’t know if she was trying to be funny or just stating a fact. He didn’t bother to laugh. She put a bandage on the gash along his throat. It wasn’t deep, but it dripped a steady stream of blood.
As she wrapped the bandage, her breasts brushed against his cheek, distracting him. If this was her idea of doctoring a patient with no painkillers, it was working. For a few seconds there, he almost forgot to hurt.
“I don’t have water to clean the wounds, but the dressing should keep anything else from getting in.”
Cody began to calm. The pain was still there, but the demons in the corners of his mind were silent. Watching her move in the shadows relaxed him.
“Cody,”
he finally said. “My first name is Cody.”
She smiled then for just a second.
“You a nurse?” he asked.
“No. I’m a park ranger. If you’ve no objection I’d like to examine your chest next.”
Cody didn’t move as she unzipped his jacket. “I used to be a Ranger, but I never stepped foot in a park.” He could feel her unbuttoning his shirt. Her hand moved in, gently gliding across his ribs.
When he gasped for air, she hesitated, then whispered, “One broken rib.” A moment later she added, “Two.”
He forced slow, long breaths as he felt the cold night air pressing against his bare chest. Her hand crossed over his bruised skin, stopping at the scars he’d collected that night at the Rio Grande.
She lifted the light. “Bullet wounds?” she questioned more to herself than him. “You’ve been hurt bad before.”
“Yeah,” he said as he took back control of his mind and made light of a gunfight that almost ended his life. “I was fighting outlaws along the Rio Grande. I swear it seemed like that night almost two hundred years ago. Back when Captain Hays ordered his men to cross the river with guns blazing. We went across just like that, only chasing drug runners and not cattle rustlers like they did back then. But we were breaking the law not to cross just the same.”
He closed his eyes and saw his three friends. They’d gone through training together and were as close as brothers. They wanted to fight for right. They thought they were invincible that night on the border, just like Captain Hays’s men must have believed.
Only, those Rangers had won the battle. They’d all returned to Texas. Cody had carried his best friend back across the water that night three years ago but Hobbs hadn’t made it. He’d died in the mud a few feet from Cody. Fletcher took two bullets, but helped Gomez back across. Both men died.
“I’ve heard of that story about the famous Captain Hays.” She brought him back from a battle that had haunted him every night for three years. “Legend is that not one Ranger died that night. They rode across the Rio screaming and firing. The bandits thought there were a hundred of them coming. But, cowboy, if you rode with Hays, that’d make you a ghost tonight and you feel like flesh and blood to me. Today’s Rangers are not allowed to cross.”
Her hand was moving over his chest lightly, caressing now, calming him, letting him know that she was near. He relaxed and wished they were somewhere warm.
“You’re going to make it, Winslow. I have a feeling you’re too tough to die easy.”
Don’t miss WILD HORSE SPRINGS by
New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas, available soon wherever
HQN books and ebooks are sold!
www.Harlequin.com
Copyright © 2017 by Jodi Koumalats
ISBN-13: 9781488013973
Winning the Nanny’s Heart
Copyright © 2016 by Shirley Kawa-Jump, LLC
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, M3B 3K9 Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
