The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom
Page 23
Who was she kidding? She blew out a breath and shoved the antiseptic to the back of the supply cupboard, way back where she couldn’t see it anymore. She wasn’t okay. She was lonely and miserable and missed Colt like crazy.
Nicky missed him, too. Her son asked a hundred times a day when Colt was coming back or when they would be going to the ranch again to see Colt and Star. No matter how many times she tried to explain to him that Colt had been sent to protect them—and that now they were safe, he had other people to protect—Nicky couldn’t understand how his friend would abandon him.
Just the other night he had asked her what was wrong with him that made Colt not like him anymore, just like his father hadn’t liked him. It broke her heart into jagged little pieces, but she had tried her best through the tears to reassure her son that Colt hadn’t left because of anything he had said or done.
The door to the medical trailer suddenly swung open and Peg stuck her bleached-blond frizz inside. “Hey, Maggie, heads up. You got another one comin’ in. A real good-lookin’ son of a gun, too.”
Well, here was one for the record books, Peg hinting that there could be another man on God’s green earth who might interest her besides Colt McKendrick. Her stepmother hadn’t let a day go by in the last two weeks without reminding Maggie she thought she was a dozen kinds of fool for letting him slip away.
She didn’t like that mischievous little smile denting the wrinkles around the older woman’s mouth, though. “What kind of injury?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’m not sure. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she asked, and slipped back out.
The door swung open wider and a tall, dark cowboy filled the space.
There was no mistaking this one. Her heartbeat suddenly sounded unnaturally loud in her ears, and a wild, urgent hope soared through her. She had to sit down. And quickly. She felt behind her for the rolling stool she used for exams and carefully lowered herself onto it. “Colt! I don’t... What are you doing in Missoula?”
He took his hat off so he could duck inside, leaving his hair flattened. It made him seem younger, somehow. Vulnerable. She wanted to reach out and smooth it back, to touch that warm skin so she could assure herself he was really there and not some delusional fantasy.
He stood in the doorway, holding his hat and looking uncomfortable. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d get these stitches out by somebody I could trust.”
“Oh.” His stitches from the stab wound. Of course. That soaring hope plummeted to earth, and she chided herself for letting those foolish dreams get away from her.
“You mind taking a look at it?”
“I... No, of course not. Sit down.” She gestured behind her to the exam table, and after a few awkward beats he went to the table and leaned against it, his long legs out in front of him.
She cleared her suddenly parched throat. “Um, you’ll have to take off your shirt.”
His hands went to the buttons of his shirt and she watched, hypnotized, while he worked them free and pulled the shirt off, baring the hard, smooth expanse of his chest.
She felt hot, suddenly. Feverish. Whatever happened to the damn air-conditioning in here?
Removing his shirt also exposed a white bandage the size of a dollar bill, just under his rib cage, looking stark against the rest of his tanned skin. The sight jerked her attention back to his injuries and to her professional responsibilities, and she flushed.
“I, uh...I’ll need you to he down.”
He complied, swinging his legs to the end of the table and resting back on his elbows so he could see what was going on. Despite her best efforts to control them, her hands trembled as she removed the bandage, revealing ten neat black stitches.
“The wound looks like it’s healed well.” Despite her best attempts at being professional about this, her voice came out thin and scratchy. “How does it feel?”
He shrugged. “Most of the time I forget it’s there ”
“That’s a good sign.” She reached a hand out to probe the wound for any abnormal swelling. His skin was warm—so warm—and she wanted to press against that chest, to have those arms go around her and hold her as tightly as he could.
At the first touch of her hand on his skin, though, his tight stomach muscles contracted, and he hissed in a sharp breath.
She snatched her hand back as if she had touched hot coals and stared at him, stricken. Oh, Lord. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stand here casually and treat him as if he were simply any other patient. Not when she couldn’t think past the emotions churning through her that just being near him again stirred up.
She backed away from the table and turned to gaze out the window at nothing. “I’m sorry, Colt. I—I think maybe you’d better find somebody else to help you.” Just go away. Please, just leave before I break down and make a complete fool of myself.
“Doc.” His voice trailed off. “Doc, I didn’t really come here to have you take my stitches out. Anybody could do that. Hell, I could probably do it myself.”
Her gaze flew to his. He watched her with an unreadable light in those blue eyes. He shrugged into his shirt, then swung his legs over the side of the exam table and put his weight on the floor.
“Why did you come, then?”
He started to button his shirt back up. “To see you,” he said.
“Okay. You’ve seen me. I’m just fine,” she lied. Now go.
“Well, I’m not.”
At his words she looked into his eyes again and something in the intensity there made her heart beat faster and that wild hope return. “Are you...are you sick?”
He picked up his Stetson off the table and twirled it around his fingers. He only did that when he was nervous, she realized. What could he possibly have to be nervous about?
“No,” he answered. “Not sick. Just stupid.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed and scratched at his ear, looking more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him. “Neither do I, Doc. Neither do I. See, I had everything worked out when I left you back there in Utah. I figured it would be best for you if we went our separate ways.”
He concentrated on a spot above her head. “I also knew when I left,” he continued in that strangled voice, “that I didn’t have a single thing to offer you, that I couldn’t be the kind of man you and Nicky needed.”
Did that mean he had wanted to be that man? Why was he here, telling her this, if he didn’t? She thrust her hands into the pockets of her lab coat to still their sudden trembling. “And now?”
“And now I’m willing to try to be any kind of man you want.”
At his low declaration, she gazed at him, her thoughts racing, that stubborn wild hope doing aerial acrobatics. To keep it from spiraling completely out of control, she forced herself to concentrate on the first part of his words.
“Let me get this straight. You walked out of our lives because you made the decision—the completely unilateral decision—that you weren’t the kind of man I needed or wanted. Is that right?”
“Something like that.”
“How do you know what kind of man I need? Or want, for that matter. Maybe,” she added quietly, “what I want and need is an FBI agent who can rope and ride with the best of them.”
He seemed to have become inordinately fascinated with his hat. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do a little searching, then. The only cowboy I know in the Bureau quit this afternoon.”
She stared at him, shocked. “Why?”
“A lot of reasons.” He looked at her again. “I’ve been burned out for a long time. The weeks I spent with you made me realize how much I’d come to hate it.”
He paused and his fingers clenched on the brim of his hat. “No, hate is too strong a word. Somewhere along the line I just stopped feeling. I built this shell around me, so thick and hard that nothing could break through. Then I met you and Nick, and you made me realize how how long it’s been since I really cared about anything.”
> “Oh, Colt.” She felt tears, hot and thick, behind her eyelids One sneaked out before she could stop it, and if she hadn’t been so affected by his words, she would have laughed at the sudden horror that came over Colt’s expression when his eyes focused on its trickling path down her cheek.
“Aw, Maggie. Hell. Don’t cry.”
At last—at long, long last—he stepped forward and gathered her into his arms. She closed her eyes against the torrent of feelings that threatened to overwhelm her as his sage-andleather scent surrounded her, as his strength encircled her.
It felt right here, she thought. Exactly right. Like home.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffled against his shirt “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“I didn’t mean to make you cry, Doc. I’ll just go away again, if that’s what you want ”
“No!” She tilted her head to face him and lost her breath at the fierce emotion blazing from those beautiful blue eyes. “I don’t want you to go away. Never again.”
Those eyes searched her face, and then, with a low groan, he lowered his mouth to hers. It was a gentle kiss, full of gratitude and healing and tenderness, and it moved her as nothing ever had before.
They stayed that way for several moments, his mouth cherishing hers, and then he pulled away. With his hands cupping her face, he met her gaze with fierce intensity. “I love you, Maggie. Lord, I love you.”
Her knees felt weak again, and she was glad for the support of his arms as joy exploded inside her. Her hands wrapped around his neck tightly. “I love you, too,” she murmured against his mouth. “So much. I have for what seems like forever.”
“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me for lying to you? For not telling you I was with the FBI?”
“Oh, Colt. I realized that night in Ogden there was nothing to forgive. Everything you did was to protect us. I can never thank you enough for that.” She pressed her lips to his, trying to show him with her mouth everything she felt, all the love she thought he would ever want.
There was only one other chair in the trailer besides the rolling stool and the exam table, and he guided her over to it, then sat down and tugged her down onto his lap.
“What made you come find me?” she asked, when she was safe and warm in his arms again.
“I’ve been miserable without you. Snarling and snapping and picking fights with everybody. Joe finally told me if I didn’t come after you, he was going to come find you himself and drag you back to the ranch until we worked things out. I realized he was right, that I needed to see you one more time, if only to tell you how I feel. If you shoved me out the door, I would just have to live with it, but at least I would know I tried.”
Her cheek resting against his chest where his heartbeat sounded strong and solid against her ear, she smiled softly. “Remind me to thank him the next time I see him.”
“You’ll have to go over to the Double C to do it. I fired him.”
She stiffened and jerked away. “You didn’t! Colton McKendrick! What kind of thing is that to do to your friend, just because he was looking out for your best interests?”
“Easy, Doc.” He grinned at her. “It’s your fault.”
“My fault? What did I do?”
“Well, I don’t know what you said to Annie Redhawk that day you treated her, but she filed for divorce last week.”
“Good for her!”
“Yeah, it’s about damn time. Her son of a bitch husband disappeared, though, so now she needs a good foreman to help her run the place. Since I plan to be on the Broken Spur full-time now, I figured Annie could use Joe’s help more than I could.”
She studied his features. “Do you think you’ll be able to stay?”
His arms around her tightened. “I’ve had two weeks to think about what you said that night in Ogden, and I realized you were right. I’ll probably never completely forgive myself, but I need to move on. I belong on the ranch. It’s the only place I’ve ever really belonged and maybe I just needed someone to make me see that.”
He took one of her hands and brought it to his mouth, his brushy outlaw’s mustache tickling her skin. “I love you, Maggie Rawlings,” he murmured. “And Nick, too. I want to marry you, to spend the rest of my life showing you just how much. I don’t want to live at the Broken Spur—or anywhere else, for that matter—without you and Nick there, too.”
Nicky! What on earth was he going to say to the idea of having Colt for a father? He would be elated, she realized. And Colt would be a wonderful father to him, caring and involved and committed. Exactly what her son needed. And what she needed.
Another tear slipped down her cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I know the ranch house isn’t what you’re used to,” he went on. “There hasn’t been a woman living there since my mom died years ago. But you could fix it up any way you want. Gut the whole thing if you want and start over.”
Did he really think she cared where she lived? She had spent the last two months living in an eight-by-fourteen-foot aluminum box, for heaven’s sake!
“And I know it wouldn’t be very glamorous or exciting, but the ranching families around the Broken Spur are always needing a good doctor, if you wanted to open a practice.”
Glamorous or exciting? Is that what he thought she wanted? She couldn’t help it. She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You can save your sales pitch, Colt. I’m already convinced.”
Already gearing up for more arguments, he closed his mouth with a snap and searched her features. All he saw was joy and a deep, pure love he thought he would never find “Is that a yes?” he asked in a voice suddenly gruff.
She smiled softly and brought his mouth to hers again. “I can’t think of anything more wonderful than marrying you and living on your ranch with you and Nicky for the rest of my life.”
A vast relief poured through him, and he tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her hard. Finally, when they were both breathless and the need between them had begun to build into something he knew they couldn’t finish here, where any minute they might be interrupted, he dragged his mouth away.
“Are you sure you’re willing to take on a disillusioned ex-FBI agent with more than his share of baggage?” He knew he had to ask, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.
But her lips just twisted into that soft, healing smile. “No,” she answered, and there was a world of promise and hope and love in her voice “But I’m willing to take on you.”
It was all he needed to hear
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5912-6
THE WRANGLER AND THE RUNAWAY MOM
Copyright © 1999 by RaeAnne Thayne
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
“My feelings for you are not in the least brotherly, Maggie.
Letter to Reader
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Copyright