Cowboy's Texas Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

  She squirmed a bit trying to find the most comfortable position for her arms and hips, and he gave a little moan.

  “Chelsea, I’m trying to be a gentleman, but all your wiggling up against me is tempting me to—”

  The crash of shattering glass rang through the dark house.

  Chelsea gasped and shot to a seated position, apprehension nipping her spine. “What was that?”

  Jake pushed up onto his elbow. “Sounded like a window breaking.”

  The tinkle of more glass being knocked to the floor followed, and Chelsea’s gut knotted. “It’s Brady! He’s back!”

  Chapter 8

  “Wait here.” Jake rose to his feet, his hand itching for his stolen pistol. Damn Brady for leaving him unarmed. Instead, he took the fire poker from its stand. “I’ll go take a look.”

  Chelsea’s eyes widened, and her apprehension touched something primal inside him, something that fired his protective instincts on a personal level he didn’t stop to analyze.

  “Stay here? Alone?” She scoffed. “Not a chance.” Scurrying to her feet, she crowded close to him. “Until Brady is caught, I’m sticking close to you.”

  “Chelsea—” Jake looked into her frightened green eyes and snapped his mouth closed. She was right. If anything happened, he wanted her close, where he could protect her. “Okay, but stay behind me and stay quiet.”

  She gave a nod and handed him the flashlight. Together they inched toward the back of the house. An icy draft wafted into the hall, confirming Jake’s theory that a window had been broken. The howling of the wind grew louder. Jake opened each door and swept the flashlight beam into each room as they moved deeper into the house. Nothing in the sewing room. Nothing in the bathroom. All still in the guest room. Which left the master bedroom.

  Chelsea grabbed the back of his sleeve, her grip tightening as he peered cautiously around the doorframe into the last room. A dim shadow moved on the opposite wall. Jake tensed, adjusted his grip on the fire poker.

  A scratching noise filtered out of the bedroom, and Jake aimed the flashlight beam toward the eerie sound. The window in the wall to his far left had been shattered, and the skeleton-like branches of a tree limb dangled through the jagged glass. Each gust of icy wind made the creaking branch sway and scrape the wall. But had Brady broken the window with the branch, or had the wind?

  Jake searched the room carefully with the flashlight beam, illuminating every corner and potential hiding place.

  “Well?” Chelsea asked, her question the merest of whispers.

  Satisfied that no threat lurked in the dark bedroom, Jake allowed the coil of tension inside him to ease, and he faced her. In the weak glow that seeped down the hall from the fireplace, Chelsea was little more than a shadowy figure in the dark hall, but her fear was palpable. Jake cupped her chin in his hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “The wind sent a broken tree limb through the window.”

  “Not Brady?”

  “Not Brady.”

  She released a sigh of relief and sagged weakly against him. He hugged her close for a moment, allowing her time to calm her jangled nerves.

  After only a few seconds, she levered away from him, her tone surprisingly steady. “We need to find something to cover that window or the temperature in here is going to plummet.”

  “Roger that.” Her pragmatism surprised him, though maybe it shouldn’t have. She was understandably shaken by the day’s events, yet she’d not complained once. Her concern for her neighbors’ welfare and quick assumption of responsibility for Mr. Noble’s pets and home demonstrated a selflessness and reliability he admired. “Any ideas?”

  “Don’t suppose you noticed any handy-dandy sheets of plywood in the yard when you cased the place earlier, did you?” she asked with a note of wry humor.

  Jake grinned, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “Sorry, no. Maybe we can scout out some heavy plastic or cardboard, though.”

  “Oh!” she said, brightening with an idea. “A pattern cutting board! I think I saw one in the sewing room earlier before the cat scared a year off my life.”

  “A what?”

  She grabbed his hand and towed him toward the sewing room. “Light, please?”

  He handed her the flashlight, and she quickly located the large folded sheet of thick cardboard, printed with a measuring grid. “A pattern cutting board. You use it to protect your table when you lay out a pattern, pin it to the fabric and cut the pieces of a garment that will be sewn together.”

  “Ah, got it.” He pulled the pattern board out from behind the desk where it was propped. “Yeah, this should work, at least temporarily. We’ll need to reinforce it with something waterproof, though, or it’ll fall apart when it gets wet from the snow.”

  She bit her bottom lip and scrunched her nose. “The shower curtain?”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Good thinking. Let’s get them up. It’s already getting cold in here.”

  With a bit more hunting through the house they found a few small nails to tack the cutting board and shower curtain in place over the broken window, and some packaging tape to seal the edges.

  Chelsea scrutinized their handiwork when they were done and frowned. “Not the best long-term fix, but good enough for now I guess.”

  “That’s what matters.” He hitched his head toward the bedroom door. “Let get back to that fire. It’s got to be twenty degrees colder in this room now.”

  “Fine by me.”

  He followed her out to the hall, closing the bedroom door behind them. When they reached the living room, she piled back inside the blankets of the makeshift bed, while Jake stirred the coals in the fireplace and added another log.

  “Now,” he said, settling on the floor beside her, “where were we?”

  She tipped her head. “Pardon?”

  “Before the window broke?” He laid down and curled his body around hers, pulling her close. “I think you were here, like this.” He wrapped his arm around her waist, and his warm breath fanned her neck. “Hmm... That feels about right.”

  Chelsea’s blood whirred past her ears, and tingling heat coalesced low in her belly.

  But soon Jake’s quiet snores joined the night sounds, leaving her hanging.

  All your wiggling up against me is tempting me to—

  To what? If the branch hadn’t broken the window, what would Jake have done?

  * * *

  A metallic clang woke Jake the next morning, and before he could blink his surroundings into focus, he sensed something was different. Something was...missing.

  Chelsea.

  He jackknifed to a seated position, then groaned when his head rebelled with a sharp bolt of pain. Yeah, he probably had a concussion. He battled down the swell of nausea that followed the lightning ache in his head, then glanced about him, assessing. Chelsea was definitely gone.

  “Chels?” he called, his voice craggy with sleep as he tossed aside the blankets and rolled to his knees. Another clang and a loud scraping noise drew his attention to the back window. Someone was outside.

  His pulse kicked up as he moved to his feet to investigate. As he had yesterday, more than once, he instinctively reached for a weapon he no longer had on him, then gritted his teeth in frustration. He felt naked without his gun, especially because he had Chelsea to protect and a known killer on the loose.

  Edging toward the window, he fingered the drape open a crack to peek out. And goggled at the sight that greeted him. Chelsea was in the yard with a shovel, scooping two-foot-deep snow and hefting it onto an ever-growing pile. “What in the world?”

  He jammed his cowboy hat on his head, pulled on the coat he’d borrowed yesterday from the front closet and headed outside.

  She looked up and stretched her back when he opened the door, and Sadie, who’d been sniffing the ground near her feet, pranced over to greet him with a “Ruff!”

  “Oh, good morning. Did I wake you?”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.


  She spread her hands as if the answer was obvious. “Shoveling.”

  “Uh-huh.” He rubbed his chin, which was bristly with two days’ beard, and screwed up his face. “Okay...why?”

  “Um...for Sadie.”

  “Sadie?”

  Chelsea nodded. “She was pawing at the door when I woke up and all but crossing her legs, poor girl. But when I opened the door to let her out, the snow was past her armpits.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “I guess you’d call them armpits. Do dogs have armpits? Legpits doesn’t sound right.” She waved a hand. “You know what I mean. Anyway, I had to clear a potty patch for her.”

  “A potty patch?” Rubbing a hand on his stubble-roughened chin, he glanced down at Sadie, who wagged her tail and blinked dark eyes at him. He’d had dogs when he lived on his parents’ ranch, so he was familiar with the special concessions and arrangements one sometimes made for a pet’s needs. Good thing for Sadie, Chelsea was, as well.

  She bent to heft another scoop of snow for Sadie, and Jake stepped over to her, putting a hand on the shovel handle. “I’ll do that.”

  “No need. I think Sadie’s done, and this is a big enough patch to accommodate her until the snow melts some.”

  When she stretched her back again, he frowned at her. “You should have had me do the shoveling.”

  She tipped her head and gave him a charmingly puzzled look. “Why?”

  “You had hypothermia yesterday.”

  She twisted her lips in an amused grin. “Yeah, yesterday. I’m fine now.” She glanced down at her shoes. “Although my feet are wet and cold now. I didn’t have boots when I trudged out to the toolshed for the

  shovel.”

  His scowl deepened. “Again...should have had me do it.”

  “You were asleep, and after yesterday, carrying me for miles, saving my life, you deserved to sleep. Not to mention you have a concussion.”

  “But I’m—”

  “The man?” she asked, cutting him off and giving him a slitty-eyed warning look. “Don’t tell me you were about to play the Y-chromosome card. I know you’re like...some super-spy-guy soldier and all...and I know I was little help yesterday because of the hypothermia and all...but we’re in this together. I can pull my weight.” She clapped a hand to her chest. “I can shovel snow for a dog that’s gotta pee.”

  Jake couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his cheeks. Not only did Chelsea look cute as hell with her nose red from the cold, her green eyes ablaze and her lips set in a pout of stubborn determination, but her thoughtfulness, her hard work, her moxie also tangled inside him and stirred an odd warmth in the center of his chest.

  He raised his hands. “Uncle. Heaven forbid I play the Y-chromosome card.” He took the shovel from her and propped it against the side of the house. “However, if you don’t want to go another round with hypothermia, you’d better get those wet shoes off and warm up by the fire.”

  She started for the door with an eager nod. “Actually, I’m thinking it’s time for that hot bath I put off yesterday.”

  Tapping his hat back from his face, Jake surveyed the snowy landscape, blanketed in more than two feet of the white stuff with large flakes still fluttering from the clouds. “Might as well. Not sure we’re going anywhere for a while. At least nowhere we can’t walk, but even walking will be tricky in snow this deep. Roads will be closed, power’s still out...”

  Which sucked. Because the more time passed, the more likely Brady might get away. And the more likely Jake wouldn’t make it to Amarillo before his father... Jake sighed. He couldn’t finish that thought.

  Chelsea stomped her feet, knocking off clinging snow from her shoes and pant legs before going back in the house. He started to follow her, then thought of Mr. Noble’s three horses. He should check on them, make sure they had hay, see if the water pipes to their troughs had frozen, muck their stalls. He may have been gone from Texas for several years now, but the lessons he’d learned growing up on the family ranch were ingrained. A cowboy took care of his horse.

  Tugging his hat down against the still-blowing flakes, he trudged to the stable through the snow, slow-going considering its depth, and kicked enough of the snow piles away from the stable door to push it open enough to squeeze inside.

  The three horses, one a dapple gray and two bays, nickered and tossed their manes when he clucked his tongue and whistled softly. “Hey, guys. How are you holding out?”

  As expected, the water in the horses’ trough had a top layer of ice, which Jake broke and threw in a corner of the stable. Below the ice was an ample supply of water for the horses to drink, but Jake checked the water spigot and managed to get a slow trickle to flow out. He left it dripping into the trough, something he wished he’d thought of last night, then got busy mucking the three stalls. When he finished cleaning up, he forked the horses each a fresh flake of hay, gave them a reassuring nose rub and promised them he’d be back that evening to check on them again.

  Because based on the rate the snow kept falling, it could be another day or two before roads were passable. He and Chelsea wouldn’t get farther than a mile or so if they walked—or trudged, if they didn’t have snowshoes for the piled-up snow.

  As Jake made his way back to the house, impatience clawed between his shoulders, along with an aggravating sense of frustration. Jake was used to doing. Delays and futility didn’t rest well with him. Never had. Hell, his need to do something, be something, make a difference were at the root of why he’d left Texas and joined the military all those years ago. Ironic that his first return trip to Texas in a couple years would find him with his hands tied, stranded and champing at the bit.

  Jake dug a couple more logs out of the snow covering the firewood Mr. Noble had stacked near the back door, then whistled for Sadie to follow him back inside. He tried to shake off the suffocating feeling of being trapped and ineffective. He didn’t want Chelsea to read anything into his restless mood. So far, despite their circumstances, she’d been a trouper, keeping her spirits up, not complaining, and contributing her smart thinking and willingness to pitch in.

  He heard water running from the hall bathroom and made his way to the door, which stood cracked open. He knocked softly. “Chels, you okay in there?”

  The water cut off, and when he pictured Chelsea sliding into the steamy bubble bath, his pulse kicked, and his groin tightened.

  “Better than okay. I found candles, bubble bath and clean towels. I’m in heaven, and I’m not coming out until I’m a prune.”

  Jake chuckled. “Okay, enjoy. Call if you need me.”

  “Need you for what? I’m alone in a windowless room. There’s nary an evil rubber ducky in here. Feel free to stand down, Spy Guy. This damsel is in no distress.”

  He pulled a grin. “Not now, maybe, but...what if you need your back washed?”

  “Are you volunteering?” He could imagine her coy, teasing grin, the twinkle of mischief in her green eyes.

  “I go where I’m needed, help where I can....”

  Water sloshed behind the door, and almost of its own volition, Jake’s gaze went to the sliver of mirror he could see through the open crack of the door. He caught a reflection of her bare foot peeking up from a mound of bubbles, saw her toes wiggle, watched her hand running a washcloth over her shapely calf. Yowsa!

  Down, boy! Back away now, cowboy.... He sucked in a breath, and his nose filled with the scent of lavender bubble bath that wafted into the hall.

  “I’ll keep your offer in mind,” she said, “Right now, I’ve got this. But breakfast would good. All that shoveling got me kinda hungry.”

  He straightened away from the door and gritted his teeth as he tamped down the lust surging through him. “I’ll see what I can rustle up.”

  As he strode into the kitchen, he rubbed his hands on the seat of his jeans. Flirting with Chelsea was all in good fun, but he had to make sure playful banter was where it stopped. He was in no position to start a relationship, and he doubted Chelsea was the so
rt of woman who indulged in casual flings. She’d been through enough in recent months—not to mention the trauma Brady had put her through yesterday. She was emotionally exposed, and he could never do anything that would cause her more pain or that would take advantage of her vulnerability.

  * * *

  After a breakfast of toast, eggs and bacon—items that would perish soon in the refrigerator after all—Chelsea was beginning to feel human again. She raised her glass of milk toward Jake in a salute. “Here’s to gas stoves and men who know how to cook on them. The food was great.”

  Jake tipped his hat. “Thanky, ma’am.”

  Nela sauntered in from a back room and sniffed around the plate Chelsea had set aside. Chelsea scratched the cat behind the ears and gave Jake a speculative look. “Want to share what you’re thinking? What’s the plan for getting help, calling the cops and finding Brady?”

  “Well, that old truck out front’s not gonna start in this weather, if at all. So we’re gonna have to hoof it or—” He lifted an eyebrow in query. “We have Mr. Noble’s horses. Can you ride?”

  She sent him a confident grin. “I could ride before I could walk. I barrel race. Remember?”

  He nodded. “That’s right.” He folded his arms across his chest and gave her an intrigued grin, flashing those straight white teeth of his.

  She let her attention drift to his mouth, his lips. He really had the sexiest smile, and that chipped tooth...How would it feel to—

  “I’d love to see that. Are you good?”

  She yanked her stare away from his mouth. “Good?”

  “Barrel racing.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She wiggled her eyebrows and flashed a smug grin. “I’m great. I have the best horse. George. As in George Strait. George loves to compete. He really gets up for tourneys.”

  Jake frowned and rubbed a hand across his mouth.