The Spy Wore Spurs

by Dana Marton

  And hot. If he wasn’t so damned worried about her, he would have been awash in lust. His emotions were all over the place, and he hated the feeling, so he shook it off and tried to get back to his commando core.

  He waited until she was all the way up and pulled over the edge before he put his own weight on the rope and climbed up after her.

  The first of the ambulances arrived. Ray was fighting off one of the paramedics, Grace trying to escape the other.

  “I’m fine. Worry about the people who are trapped in the tunnel.” But, after some argument, she did let the guy remove Ryder’s shirt and bind her ankle so it wouldn’t pop out again when she tried to walk.

  “We got an opening!” Mo shouted from a hundred yards away.

  The two police officers jumping out of the first cop car on the scene ran right to him. The paramedics gave up on Ray and Grace and rushed over, too, just as a fire truck pulled in.

  “I’m taking you two to the hospital,” Ryder told them.

  “I didn’t break anything.” She rushed forward to help.

  “Like hell,” Ray muttered through clenched teeth, balancing on one foot, holding his other leg out of the way.

  He thought about knocking Ray out and stashing him in the car, then tackling Grace and taking her by force. But he didn’t want to risk injuring her further. And since most of the arriving emergency personnel were greeting her by name and seemed to be friends of hers, he figured they might come to her defense if he started manhandling her.

  He strode forward.

  “You take that guy,” he said to a burly fireman, pointing to Ray, “and get him to the E.R. to have his leg put in a cast, no matter what he says.”

  The man looked at the big chunk of Viking and shook his head. “Me and what army?”

  “Sedate him.”

  “Left my big game dart gun in my other car.”

  Jamie was coming over. “Let me handle this.”

  That taken care of, Ryder ran after Grace and grabbed her by the elbow. “I want you to go with Ray and get checked out.”

  She gave him an impatient shove. “There’s no time for that. I’m okay.”

  Like hell she was. But before he could argue, Mo gave a shout from the head of the line. “I got someone here.”

  And the rescue began in earnest.

  He made sure he stuck close to Grace as people formed a chain and handed football-size stones back, clearing the hole. Once the opening was large enough, they helped people out one after the other, bleeding women and children covered in dust and scrapes.

  Then they brought out a body, Caucasian male, late twenties. He had a pistol tucked behind his oversize belt buckle, and another in his cowboy boots. His face was muddy with blood and rock dust, but Ryder recognized him. “Davey Schnebly. This is the guy who brought Esperanza Molinero over.”

  “He won’t be making any more trips,” Mo said in a grim tone.

  They’d wanted to find the man, but not in this kind of shape. He could have been a useful lead.

  Keith searched the body, found nothing else, so they turned Schnebly over to the sheriff.

  The ambulances were leaving.

  Ryder left the others and strode back to where Grace was leaning against a boulder. She wiped sweat from her forehead, looking pale and shaky.

  “Sit down,” Ryder snapped at her. He still wasn’t over the scare that she could have gotten hurt or worse.

  She did as she was told, sinking to a larger rock. What? No argument?

  He flashed her a narrow-eyed look. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m a little dizzy. I didn’t think I got hurt, but I could be wrong,” she admitted. “I might have a slight concussion.”

  He swore under his breath. Wasn’t there a saying about doctors making the worst patients? He picked her up carefully and strode away from the rest of his team, depositing her onto the front passenger seat of his SUV and ignoring the curious looks the others were giving him.

  “I’m taking her to the hospital,” he told them, then tore out of there as if his life depended on it.

  Because Grace Cordero’s did.

  God knew what injuries she had sustained in that fall, then aggravated during the rescue.

  Her eyes were closed, her head leaning back against the headrest. Definitely pale. He’d been so focused on her ankle, he realized suddenly, that he hadn’t even considered other things. Like internal bleeding.

  * * *

  SHE LAY ON HER COUCH. He sat in the recliner, Twinky on his lap in a surprising show of affection. She barely let Grace touch her, but didn’t hesitate jumping on Ryder. She didn’t blame the cat. Ryder McKay was turning out to be an irresistible force, let’s face it.

  “She could use a bath,” he remarked, but made no effort to remove her.

  “You go right ahead,” Grace told him. She would pay good money to see that. She was sore and annoyed that she’d gotten injured. She didn’t like appearing weak. Especially in front of Ryder, for some reason. She wanted to wrap herself in her afghan and wallow a little over how the day had turned out. Which annoyed her further. She wasn’t a wallower.

  “Go away.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He’d barely let her take a shower, stayed standing in front of the bathroom door the whole time, asking her every five seconds if she was okay.

  She closed her eyes. “Why can’t you just leave me to my misery?”

  “The E.R. doc wanted to keep you for observation. He only let you come home because I promised that I wouldn’t leave you alone tonight.”

  “He won’t know if you go.”

  “But I will.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Live wild. Break a few rules,” she joked, but felt little humor. Her body ached all over.

  He watched her with an unfathomable look on his face. He could be infuriatingly stubborn, she thought, and rolled on her side to turn her back on him, a move she immediately regretted when her bruised ribs protested.

  The brace felt cumbersome on her ankle. The doc had insisted on that to give her stretched-out ligaments a chance to recover. Her banged-up shoulder ached. She allowed the tiniest of sighs but, of course, he heard it.

  “You should take one of the pills they gave you.”

  “You should mind your own business,” she called over her shoulder.

  She’d chucked the pills into a kitchen drawer earlier. And she didn’t plan on filling the additional prescription they’d given her.

  “Ever thought about working on that prickly attitude? Sweeten that act of yours and you might get a boyfriend someday.”

  If getting the rolling pin from the kitchen wouldn’t be so much trouble, she’d do it and beat him over the head. “Maybe I do have a boyfriend. How do you know I don’t?”

  “Not Dylan.”

  “You don’t know that.” She still wouldn’t turn.

  “He looked comfortable in your house the other day, but he walked away and left me here with you,” he said in a thoughtful tone. “Either he’s not your boyfriend, or he’s stupid. He didn’t look stupid.”

  “I could have a very serious relationship back in the city.” She would someday. Maybe. When she got her act together. And whoever she chose was going to be way less irritating than Ryder McKay.

  “I don’t think so. Any decent man would have come here with you to say goodbye to your brother. And you had no emergency number listed on your medical record. I noticed that at the hospital.”

  The man’s ability to be irritating was as vast as the borderlands. “Medical records are private,” she pointed out.

  “I saw them accidentally. It’s not a crime to have good peripheral vision.”

  “I wonder if a person can be accidentally smothered with a throw pillow,” she mused out loud as she turned back onto her back, adjusting said pillow, and settling into the most comfortable position under the circumstances.

  He had the gall to grin.

  Oh,
God, not the dimples. She was in no shape to resist those. She needed to distract herself with something.

  “How is Ray?” The man had been annoyed as hell by his injuries, but unfailingly polite to her.

  “He’s got a cast. Starting tomorrow, he’ll be on permanent office duty.”

  Which seemed to please Ryder. Maybe it meant that he could spend more time in the field now, as opposed to at his office. She just hoped it’d be a field far away from her ranch.

  He looked her over from top to bottom. “You look miserable.”

  “That kind of talk get you a lot of girls?”

  “You’d be surprised.” He flashed a quick, lethal grin. “I think I know what you need.”

  “A meteor to slice through the roof and take out the recliner you’re sitting in?”

  He gently placed the cat on the floor next to him then stood with a chiding expression, but didn’t take the bait. “You need a hug.”

  She scowled. “I’m an army vet, not a teddy bear.”

  “I watch TV. I know these kinds of things. Women always want more hugs and jewelry. Makes them feel better. It’s a genetic defect I’m willing to humor if it puts you to sleep.” He strode toward her.

  For real? She shrank to the back of the couch, which was the size of Texas. Her grandfather hadn’t believed in small things. If only he’d also left an oversize baseball bat behind. Preferably, within reach.

  But since she had no defensive weapons at hand, she steeled herself for the contact.

  Instead of bending for a quick hug, Ryder lay down next to her and took her into his arms.

  She held her body stiff. “That’s a little too much.” The words came out in an embarrassingly weak squeak.

  “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”

  Sure, resort to platitudes. “Sexual harassment,” she grumbled.

  “No offense, but you don’t look very sexy just now. I’m sure it’ll come back. Not to worry,” he added, his tone on the wrong side of patronizing.

  She tried to sock him in the stomach, but he caught her hand.

  “Let go,” she snapped at him. “I’m not going to lie here with you holding hands.”

  “Will you lie here with me peacefully?”

  She glared a couple of death rays at him, but then she rolled her eyes in capitulation. She was so sore all over, she didn’t have the will to fight him.

  “I have no idea who you are for real, you know that, right? Do you know how weird this is?”

  “Feels okay from this end.”

  Was he flirting with her? “Cop a feel and lose the hand,” she warned, just so they were clear.

  “What happened to all that warm Texas hospitality?”

  “What happened to respecting my personal space? Are you always this friendly with complete strangers?”

  “We’re not complete strangers. You saved my life. I saved yours. Unbreakable bonds and all that.”

  She groaned.

  She needed something to distract her from his hard body. She might not have been at her all-time high on the sexy-meter, but he was at the top of the chart any old day. His body spoke to hers, even as bruised as she was, and her body answered.

  She didn’t like the things it was saying.

  “Tell me something about yourself.” Talking had to be better than to be lying there silently and wanting him.

  “I’m third generation military. Grew up all over the world. Parents live in Seattle. Does that make you feel more comfortable with me?”

  If only. While she was feeling all sorts of things, “comfortable” wasn’t on the list.

  “I have three sisters,” he went on after a second. “Twin girls, sixteen, Lisa and Amanda. And Cheryl. She’s twenty. They’re pretty fantastic.”

  She tried to picture him handing out hugs and doing the brotherly thing. The image came pretty easily. He was as tough as they came, but he did have a gentleness at his core.

  She thought of Tommy, glanced up at the urn on the mantel, and decided that her brother would have liked Ryder.

  If only to annoy her.

  That made her smile, and she relaxed enough to patiently wait two whole minutes. “Okay. Hug is over. I’m feeling much better.” She gave him a little shove, which failed to budge him.

  “This is so much more comfortable than the recliner,” he mumbled against her hair, sounding half-asleep, which she was pretty sure he was faking.

  For a second, she considered doing him serious bodily harm. She didn’t. For one, she wasn’t sure she could pull it off in her present condition. Two, being snuggled against him did feel comforting. Not that she would have admitted that even under threat of torture.

  Months had passed since she’d last hugged Tommy. It’d been even longer since she’d had another man this close to her.

  She closed her eyes. Fine. Just this once. “Don’t think we’re going to make a habit of this, city slicker,” she warned him.

  He simply drew her closer without saying anything.

  Chapter Seven

  Ryder woke to an earsplitting scream and Grace on top of him, trying to get him into a choke hold.

  “Grace!” He grabbed her into a tight hug, then saw stars when she slammed her forehead into his nose.

  Her knees were all over the place, too, so he rolled her under him and pinned her down before she could have done either of them serious injury.

  “Grace,” this time he whispered the word close to her ear.

  And she went deadly still.

  Enough moonlight came through the window so he could see her wild, wide-eyed stare as her brain adjusted to reality.

  “I thought…” The words came out in a hoarse voice that gave him a glimpse into her past and broke his heart a little.

  “You’re safe. You’re home.” He loosened his hold on her. “It’s okay.”

  He rolled off her and pushed off the couch. She didn’t need to be crowded just now. But he didn’t go too far. He leaned against the mantel and watched as she sat up, pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

  She looked thoroughly embarrassed. “Did I hurt you?”

  “You don’t need to worry about me.” He ignored his aching nose which felt as if it’d been driven up into his brain. She was a better fighter asleep than half the people he knew were when awake. Something to remember. “Bad dream?”

  “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference,” she admitted after a minute.

  He knew what she meant: the difference between the past and the present. A close friend had come back from Afghanistan with near-debilitating PTSD. It’d been two years and he was still a mess. All considered, Grace was dealing with her problems admirably.

  “How about I bring you a glass of water?” He padded barefoot to the kitchen, around the table where she’d served him breakfast after that first night. She had a good heart. She was selfless, willing to go the extra mile for others. She was a fine woman.

  He wouldn’t have minded if the wife he found, when he found her, was a little like Grace Cordero. Not in everything, obviously. Grace was done with the fighting. She could never make it onto his team, and be his partner that way. Even if she wanted to try, she wouldn’t be given a chance, not with PTSD. And she didn’t want marriage, in any case. She’d been very clear about that.

  But in other ways, she was all right to be around.

  And she was sexy, he thought as he came back with the water and caught her stretching, standing by the couch. Her worn T-shirt stretched over amazing breasts, the hem pulling from her pants and revealing a flat, smooth stomach that sent need spiraling through him.

  She seemed completely unaware of how good she looked, had never once turned flirty with him or with anyone else that he had seen. She seemed too preoccupied with helping others to even be conscious of her body.

  He was aware of it. More than aware. He raised his gaze to her face as he handed her the glass. “Drink.”

  She sat back down and took a long gulp, then anoth
er. Her shoulders relaxed. She breathed more evenly. It was like watching rippling water smooth out on the surface of a pond.

  “Feeling better?”

  She nodded. “Sorry.”

  He shrugged it off. “I’ll be back asleep the second my head hits the pillow.” He eyed the sofa.

  But she rolled her neck as she stood and stepped away. “I’m going up to bed.”

  “I’m supposed to be sticking close to you.”

  “Nice try, city slicker.” She walked to the stairs, looked toward the window. “It’s almost morning. I’m fine.”

  He wanted to argue with that, but she was the medical professional.

  “I could go up with you. Sit in a chair, whatever.”

  “Take the sofa. You need some decent sleep.”

  He would have rather slept next to her. He caught the thought and turned it around in his head a few times while she plodded up the stairs. Liking her company too much would lead to no good. Grace Cordero wasn’t the woman of his plans. Starting something with her would make no sense whatsoever.

  So he simply watched as she climbed the stairs, wincing with pain now and then, and he resisted taking her into his arms and carrying her up there. When she disappeared down the hallway, he lay back on the sofa and closed his eyes.

  And missed her next to him.

  Ryder drew a deep, slow breath. The sooner he found that wife, the better.

  * * *

  SHE WOKE TO KNOCKING on the front door, and stumbled down the stairs half-asleep just in time to see Ryder letting Dylan in. The hard look of hate that crossed Dylan’s face was new. It quickly disappeared once he spotted her.

  “I heard you got hurt yesterday. Just wanted to see if there’s anything I can do to help.” He stepped forward and held out a plate covered in aluminum wrap. “Molly sent some hot breakfast. She’ll be over to check on you later. How is the foot?”

  “Thank you.” She took the plate and limped to the kitchen, wishing she’d gotten up earlier and had at least combed her hair. “Nothing serious. Ankle popped out, got popped back in. Hate the brace.”