by Renee Rose
While I didn’t have a fancy car with the in-dashboard phone setup, I did have a stand for my cell and the ability to use the speaker. I was thankful for it since I needed both hands on the steering wheel. The two-lane highway cut through the mountains and followed beside the river, and there were more twists and turns than straightaways. “I saw the accident, saw the wound. Hemothorax, possible ruptured spleen, blood loss.”
“I don’t know what half of that means, but it sounds bad,” Marina said. My sister, well, half-sister, was nine years younger and in college in California. She was no dummy, studying structural engineering, but medicine wasn’t her thing.
I frowned, slowed for a curve. “It explains the struggled inhales, the loss of BP. Hmm, maybe it was a spastic diaphragm,” I replied, thinking aloud. They were possibilities, but I’d seen the accident, the aftermath.
“You said he was standing in the hallway when you ran into him, then walked right out. He had to have been less injured than you thought.”
“I saw the accident,” I repeated. I’d tried to touch his injury, but he’d stopped my hand over his belly. I’d felt the heat of his skin, the hard ridges of his abdomen. What I hadn’t felt was a hole in his side. No, I didn’t usually get turned on by sucking chest wounds, but it seemed I clearly got all hot and bothered by feeling up a cocky cowboy’s torso.
It had been two days since the rodeo, and it was finally my day off. I’d thought about him asking me out, to give me a tour of Cooper Valley. I could’ve said yes, but I just didn’t want to tango with a cowboy who was so obviously a player, no matter how hot he was. Although I was sure he’d be well worth the tumble.
Since then, I’d been busy with patients and a whopping five births—and it wasn’t even the full moon—and I’d still thought about Boyd Wolf. I went over every moment of my care for him, from the moment I dropped to my knees in the dirt beside him until I watched his taut ass as he walked out of the hospital. I also thought about the fact that I had actually stared at his taut ass. That I thought his ass was taut.
It was. Same with his belly. How did I turn into a starry eyed thirteen-year-old having her first crush thinking about a guy non-stop? If it weren’t professional, I’d probably have doodled on patient charts little hearts with our names in them.
It was because I was worried about him and because I thought he was hot that I was in my car and driving to Wolf Ranch where he’d told me he would recover. I also may or may not have contacted the rodeo to make sure he hadn’t returned to work. Even if I had overestimated his injuries, he shouldn’t have been able to saunter out of the hospital like nothing hurt. Just to be safe, I’d told rodeo management explicitly that he wasn’t cleared for competition and shouldn’t be allowed to return until he had a full examination.
Preferably by me. Not because I was dying to see those washboard abs in person. Not at all.
“I want to know why you’re so bothered,” she said. “He wasn’t as injured as you thought. This is the first patient…” She cleared her throat. “Man… who you’ve ever thought about going to his house to check on. There’s more here.”
She might be my baby sister, but she wasn’t much of a baby. She knew me well enough to read into my actions. Dammit.
I sped up as the canyon ended and opened up into a wide prairie. I wasn’t more than twenty miles from Cooper Valley, but I’d never been on this side of the mountains before. The pines that dotted the rugged canyon disappeared. The land was almost flat, only slight undulations in the landscape. The river curved in the distance, trees lining the bank in spots making it picturesque. This was the Montana of my fantasies. Open ranges. Big skies. Vast land and no people.
“Audrey.” She prompted me since I’d been quiet as I ogled the view. “Tell me about this hot cowboy.”
“I didn’t say he was hot,” I protested.
She laughed, the sound loud through my cell. “You didn’t have to. Please, I have no boyfriend, and there isn’t a guy in my program who’s even an option. They’re more into math equations than breasts. Let me live vicariously through you. What’s his name?”
“Boyd Wolf.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m doing a search for him because any guy who lights your fire must be… holy shit, woman. No wonder you’re driving to his house. Do you have sexy undies on?”
I gasped, then laughed. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
I did have on my nicest underwear, a bra and panty set that matched and wasn’t made of simple cotton. I also put on makeup, kept my hair down instead of up in a usual sloppy bun and had tried on three different outfits. All for Boyd Wolf. Maybe I really was crazy, putting effort into a guy who was sooooo wrong for me.
“He’s not badly injured, you found that out. He’s hot as hell, and you touched his abs. Don’t you want to touch the rest of him? I’m looking at his pictures online, and I want to lick him from stern to mast.”
I rolled my eyes and couldn’t help but smile. Marina was twenty-one and single. Someone eighty and married would find him hot.
“There’s just something weird about it,” I said. “I know what I saw, what I treated. I can’t explain it.”
It was as if there’d been magic involved. Sleight of hand where you saw a quarter in a hand and the next minute it was in a glass bottle. I saw his wounds. I saw the way he’d been able to hurry out of the hospital a short time later. It made no sense. I couldn’t let it go.
“What I want to know is why you’re thinking so much about this guy when you had Mr. Hot Rancher on the hook last week.”
I frowned. “Who? Jett Markle?”
“From what you told me about him, he’s one tall glass of water.”
“He’s also self-centered, authoritarian and did nothing for me,” I grumbled. Jett was thirty-five, handsome in the clean cut, preppy sort of way. His brown hair was parted, well cut and groomed. His smile was broad, but I wondered if it were as fake as the veneers on his teeth. His clothes fit in with Montana. Jeans, simple button-up shirts, leather boots. He was just… polished. Fake. He was playing at being a cowboy whereas Boyd was all cowboy.
There I went, using Boyd Wolf as husband measuring stick.
“But Boyd Wolf did.”
“Exactly,” I replied before I caught myself.
“Ha! I was right. You never told me what happened with Jett.”
“We went to a fancy steak place. He ordered for me.”
“What?” she practically squawked.
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t even like lamb. And rare, yuck! Then he told me about how he’d retired from a hedge fund company at thirty-five and bought a big piece of land to fulfill the lifelong dream of being a rancher.”
“Hedge fund company?”
“New York City,” I replied.
“Does he actually ranch?”
“I have no idea. I can’t imagine him getting his hands dirty let alone riding a horse or castrating calves. He lives on this side of the mountains.” I put on my blinker and turned when my GPS said. I’d remembered Boyd mentioning the name of his family property, Wolf Ranch. It wasn’t hard to forget when it was his last name. It had been easy to search and plug in for directions. “While most people live in the town, the older homesteads, probably like Wolf Ranch, are over here. Also, the big parcels for the moved-to-Montana folk like Jett.”
“So I guess the date was a one-time thing?” she asked. “If he’s that bad within the first hour, it’s not worth a second go.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, I made it pretty clear I wasn’t interested. Didn’t even let him walk me to my door. But I think he took it as playing hard to get. Maybe even saving myself.” I gave the last mental air quotes. I wasn’t a virgin, and I certainly wasn’t saving myself for marriage, but I was looking for someone to marry. It just wasn’t Jett. I wasn’t that bored with my vibrator to sleep with him.
“Why?”
“Because he keeps calling. Even texted and said he’d pick me up on Friday
after my shift.”
“You told him your work schedule?”
“Hell, no. I have no idea how he got it. Maybe he threw some of his hedge fund money around.” I’d been hopeful before the date, but it had been obvious really fast, right about the time he said I’d be eating lamb for dinner, that it wasn’t going to happen with Jett. I’d made it clear in my lack of interest, but it bothered me that he didn’t grasp the fact that I wasn’t interested. He was rich and attractive. Surely there had to be a whole slew of eager women in town to take him on.
The road had followed a split rail fence for the past mile. I slowed when it was broken by a huge archway. If I had any doubts of where I was, the words Wolf Ranch carved into the wood would have helped. The driveway was dirt. Straight. Long. I couldn’t see any buildings from the road, which meant the ranch was big.
“Ignore him. Go for Boyd Wolf. If you don’t, I will.”
“You will not.” I was surprised by the snap to my voice, even though I knew she was messing with me.
She didn’t argue. Instead, she softened her voice. “You deserve a great guy. A nice guy. A hot guy. You deserve every orgasm he can give you.”
“Marina!”
“What? You do. You might look at vaginas all day, but I bet yours has cobwebs on it.”
I was not answering that one.
“Boyd Wolf is cocky. Sure of himself,” I countered.
“So? That makes him good in bed.”
I sighed, took a deep breath. “He’s definitely a player. Listen, I’m here. I have to go.”
“Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Actually, forget that. Do everything I wouldn’t do and then some.”
She ended the call as I rolled my eyes. I leaned forward and looked up at the arch. Wolf Ranch. I had no idea what I was doing, driving all the way out here. Boyd Wolf was fine. Marina was right. I’d been wrong about how seriously he’d been injured. There was no other explanation. Yet…
Fine, I wanted to see him again, to believe he really was healed. Or not hurt. He couldn’t have healed if he hadn’t really been hurt. Gah!
I dropped my forehead to the top of the steering wheel. I was fooling myself if it was only my need for answers that had me idling in front of his ranch. I was interested in knowing more about Boyd than as a doctor. I wanted to know why his abs were like a washboard. Why his skin was hot and smooth. If the chest hair I’d felt disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.
If his cocky attitude meant he was cocky in bed. If he’d be bossy and stern…
Yeah, I was totally screwed.
5
AUDREY
I’d made it all the way down the long drive and to the main house but hadn’t gotten out of the car. My pep talk had gotten me this far but had fizzled out just shy of the front door. I sat in my idling car when a rap sounded on my window.
I shrieked a little and nearly wrenched my neck looking out at the… wow. Those were some broad shoulders under that cowboy hat. It was another very good-looking cowboy. He didn’t look happy. Where the hell had he come from? I’d been staring at the house—a full on farmhouse of epic proportions—but not too focused to have missed someone of his size approaching.
I quickly shut off the car and opened my door. The man stepped back, still frowning. He resembled Boyd, except a little older, and everywhere Boyd radiated happy go lucky, this guy radiated grumpy. I took a guess at him being an older brother.
“Hi! I’m Dr. Ames.” I reached back into the car, fumbled with my purse and medical kit and pulled them out, spun back around to face the guy, then stuck out my hand. Yeah, I was flustered. “I’m here to check in on Boyd.”
He looked down at his own hands, dusting them on his jeans, then held them up. “I’m not fit to shake,” he said, although I suspected he just didn’t want to touch me. Which was stupid, and I was certainly reading way too much into it. “You’re… what did you say? A doctor? Why would you need to come all the way out here to check on Boyd?”
I didn’t know why, but his skepticism or confusion offended me. I frowned, stared him down, then squared my shoulders. “Yes. I attended Boyd when he was injured at the rodeo the other night. He left the hospital without completing the proper discharge papers.”
Shock and disbelief flickered over the man’s face, then his scowl deepened. “I see. I’m sorry, my little brother does have a habit of operating outside the rules.”
Okay. It seemed there was a little family tension here. I gave a bland shrug to make light of it all. “It’s fine. I just wanted to check on his wound. Is he here?”
I looked away from the gorgeous grumpy guy. The long dirt drive where I’d parked sloped down to a giant barn, a stable and corral. In front of me stood a large ranch house with plenty of windows and a wrap-around porch. A beautiful place to raise a huge family. Lots of rooms, lots of places for kids to run and play while the parents sat in rocking chairs on the front porch and watched. A pang of envy filled me. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a place as idyllic as this, and I was… jealous.
I’d been raised by a single mom with depression. It hadn’t been a Norman Rockwell painting like this place probably was.
To the left, a long two-story building stood with a similar porch on the ground floor and a balcony running all along the top floor. Doors opened to the top balcony, almost like the ranch version of a dorm or apartment building. A bunkhouse, perhaps? How many people lived and worked here? On a piece of land this size, I assumed a fair amount.
“I’m right here, Doc.”
A deep voice had me spinning on my heel in the direction of the road that led to the barn. Boyd came jogging up in a pair of ripped jeans and fitted t-shirt in hunter green, a few flecks of straw on the shoulder. There wasn’t a hint of effort in his gait as if he was injured. The relaxed smile on his face didn’t indicate pain or discomfort. The snug shirt couldn’t hide any kind of bandage.
He tugged off a pair of work gloves as he came up, his smile as wide and charming as I remembered it. For one moment, I forgot everything under the glare of that magnetic white-toothed grin. Heat blossomed between my legs, my nipples tightened in my bra. This feeling was why I was standing here, why I’d driven all this way. I felt like I’d been hit by a charging bull, and I’d never, ever felt like this before.
Not over a man. Not over a man I didn’t even know. Gah.
But then reality came crashing back.
What in the hell was happening? How was it possible?
I’d have sworn on a stack of Bibles this man had been a bloody mess just two days ago. Now it looked like he’d been throwing hay bales out in the barn. No way could a guy with a sucking chest wound be able to twist his body, let alone throw hay.
As if he was suddenly reminded of his injury, he sagged a bit, bracing his ribs with his forearm with one hand, then took off his hat with the other. His light hair was damp with sweat and had a crease from his hat. I wanted to ruffle it with my fingers.
“Awful nice of you to come check up on me.”
Again, that devastating grin.
Again, the ruined panties.
“What the hell happened to you?” Boyd’s brother demanded.
“Doc, this is Rob, my brother.”
I nodded as a way of hello. I couldn’t tell if Rob was bothered by my presence or bothered by Boyd or just all around a cranky person, but I didn’t want to find out.
“You didn’t answer my question. What happened?” Was that a growl in Rob’s voice?
Boyd rolled his eyes. “Nothing.”
Boyd grabbed my wrist and tugged me away from Rob and back in the direction he’d come. I had to practically run to keep up with his long gait. The sun was warm, and my shirt began to cling to me. I glanced back at Rob who stood where we’d left him by my car, watching us.
“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Somewhere alone.” He slowed down and glanced down at me. His gaze held heat. Promise. Need. All of it
was potent and made me catch my breath in a way a dash across the property ever could.
Somewhere alone. My body was thinking that was an incredibly good idea. My mind… not so much.
BOYD
I didn’t shut the barn door behind us, although I wanted to lock it up tight to keep Audrey in… and everyone else out. My wolf howled with enthusiasm that she was here with me. She’d shown up, just as I’d assumed, but it had taken two fucking days. I’d rubbed one out in the shower morning and night, my dick getting hard just thinking about her. The curve of her cheek, the lush swell of her tits, the roundness of her hips, the berry color of her lips. The thought of those lips trying to wrap around every inch of me. I was big, and she was a little thing and would have a hard time. At first.
Fuck, my dick was punching against the zipper of my jeans, and all I wanted to do was push her up against the wall, tug down her pants and drive into her. Or, I could bend her over a saddle stand and take her from behind, spank her ass for making me wait two days to see her again. To breathe in that sweet scent.
That was what had pulled me from my chores. Peaches. I knew she was here the second I breathed her in, even from afar. I’d know her anywhere by that alone. And then she’d been talking to Rob. The fucker had not been happy to see her. Hell, he wasn’t happy to see anyone. As alpha, he was protective of our land, of our way of life. Any outsider, no matter how fucking gorgeous or perfect for my wolf, would get a cold shoulder. Plus, he kept his distance from all females—shifter or human. He wouldn’t say why, but I suspected he might be getting a trace of moon madness. It could overcome male wolves—particularly alphas—when they haven’t mated by a certain age. Turned them wild—feral. If it went on too long, the shifter could lose his humanity altogether.
“Um… what are we doing in here?”
Her voice was soft and gentle, although there was an underlying hint of command to it. It was the same tone she’d used with me at the arena, one that said she wasn’t amused. She might be a foot shorter, but somehow, she seemed to look down her nose at me. If I hadn’t known she was a doctor, I’d think her a stern librarian, with those fuck-me glasses and all.
