Brianna's Sinful Cowboys [Casanova Cowboys 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Rhea Regale

  “Here, Sheriff.” One of the ranch hands scrambled over the slippery rock and dead grass, hitting the roof of the car hard. He groaned, handing the collar up to Rylan.

  “Thanks. Don’t do a thing until I get this secured.”

  Ducking back into the car, he readjusted his stance once more to give him the best angle to work the collar around Brianna’s neck. Her eyelids pulled open slightly, squinting at Rylan as he fitted the collar and secured the Velcro straps.

  “Brianna, I’m Sheriff Ryder. You’ve been in a serious car accident. We’re gonna try to get the vehicle upright so we can get you out of here. I ain’t leavin’ you, okay?” Rylan sucked in a deep breath. His hope skyrocketed. Brianna stared at him, her eyes dark, for what seemed to be a short eternity.

  Then her eyelids dropped and her face smoothed. Rylan’s brow pinched. He turned her hand over and searched for her pulse, only to find it disturbingly weak.

  “Shit, no. Brianna, honey, hang on. Don’t you go leavin’ me,” Rylan said.

  “Hailey, baby, no, no. No, you can’t be leavin’ me. Hailey!”

  An invisible knot tightened around his throat. He coughed, swallowed, and forced the fear and anguish that he relived in these crucial moments aside. Hailey was dead. Brianna was not, and she wouldn’t die. Not if he had anything to say about it.

  The sirens came closer and closer, their shrill alarms bouncing off the rocky terrain. Rylan poked his head out the door and caught one of the ranch hand’s eyes. “Boys, I’m gonna get in the backseat. We gotta get this thing upright. Think you can do it?”

  “Yessir!” all four of them said, fixing into positions around the car. Another two men Rylan recognized from town joined the ranch hands.

  “We’ll get this baby on rubber, Sheriff,” one of the men said, flashing him a confident smile.

  “Good ’cause this woman’s life is dependin’ on it,” Rylan said. Red strobe lights reflected over the slick white ice and snow. Time ticked by, far too fast for Brianna, far too slow for him. “Don’t worry about me. Just get this thing turned. Understood?”

  “Aye!”

  Rylan slid through the cramped space between the two front seats and wedged his body directly behind the driver’s seat. He reached forward, the pull of gravity against his body forcing every muscle to strain as he wrapped his arms tightly around Brianna and the seat, one across her shoulder, one across her belly. He could barely see through the shadows below the driver’s console to assess how badly her legs were crushed, if they were at all.

  “Go!” he called out, his arms restraining Brianna as the boys began to work the totaled piece of scrap off its side. Rylan slammed his heel hard into the space adjacent to him, preparing for the rocking thump that would come once the car hit all fours. Metal groaned and creaked, the hissing from the hood turning to a sputter.

  He glanced out the window and watched the boys heave and push. Commands were tossed back and forth, a muffled orchestra of voices, gasps, cusses, and cheers. Turning away, he pressed his forehead to the back of the driver’s seat, increased his grip around Brianna’s body, and whispered, “Hailey, I can’t turn back now. Please, baby, keep her safe.”

  He was Brianna’s only support. He knew his adrenaline, his fear, brought him to make this reckless decision to get the car flipped without Rescue. If she had any back injury, or if her spine was severed, or on the verge of being severed, he could very well have just delivered her a devastating blow. Dozens of different scenarios spun wildly through his mind as he sat, his body a steely, taut vise, waiting for the tires to hit. She could end up paralyzed because of him. He could lose everything he had, everything he owned, if his decision to right this vehicle without help led to a permanent disability.

  He could kill her.

  “I’m doin’ the right thing. She’s fadin’. She ain’t makin’ it unless I get her stable,” he whispered into the seat, squeezing his eyes closed.

  “Careful!”

  The car tipped and jolted as the tires finally hit the ground. Gravity was no longer a force to contend with, but he couldn’t move. Until Rescue took over, he resorted himself to holding her, securing her body, her spine, best he could with what he’d chosen to do. The shallow rise and fall of her chest and the resonance of her heartbeat gave him a sliver of comfort.

  One of the townsmen poked his head into the open passenger door. “Rescue’s above. They’re lowerin’ down now. You good, Sheriff? What can we do?”

  “Nothin’ more. Rescue’s gotta handle the rest. Thanks for the hand,” Rylan said through the thickened ball in his throat. He stole a quick glance out his window. EMS made their way down the incline with the aid of rope, the spine board carried between two men, and a third man at the head. Ryder’s Fire Rescue prepared for retrieval from the road while two more rescue team members followed EMS down to the car with the cutter and spreader.

  One of the ranch hands tried to pry Rylan’s door open, but the crushed and mangled metal resisted. Another attempted the driver’s door and received a shriek from the jammed metal.

  “Boys, back away. We’ve got it from here,” Chris, Rylan’s friend and the Chief of Fire Rescue, said. Shit, I’m in for a good scoldin’ when this is all over.

  Chris caught his eyes through the webbed glass. Beneath his fire hat and behind the thick collar of his fire coat, his lips drew firm and straight, his expression one of frustration.

  “Ry, you ain’t doin’ anyone any good here. You need to leave. Let us take care of this scene.” Chris held him by the shoulders. Each thrust Rylan made to get closer to Hailey’s body was met by a strong, more controlled shove back until he was farther from the truck than he initially thought. All he could see was Hailey, her blonde hair matted with patches of red, the truck crushing down on her back, her body angled at an impossible degree against the rock.

  A loud sob escaped his lungs. The biting wind stung his wet eyes. He grabbed the box tucked in his jacket pocket, finding a bittersweet comfort in the square shape.

  “That’s Hailey! That’s my woman there! Let me help my girl!”

  “No, Rylan. This is not your scene. Go. Now. Or I will call one of your own to cart you outta here. This ain’t your place.”

  Rylan saw that same flash in Chris’s eyes just before he reached the car and tried the door. He dropped his head against the seat once more, silently cussing himself, knowing the motivation behind his decision rested in the horrors he, himself, couldn’t face again.

  This ain’t your place, Rylan. You’ve fucked this up if something happens to her now.

  “Ry,” Chris acknowledged. “Gonna have to cut away the door. You okay in there?”

  “Go for it,” Rylan said.

  Time crept by, but then again, anxiety had a funny way of fucking with the mind. Rylan listened to the speedy tempo of his heart, wondering how much longer it would take to extract Brianna from this death cage. Fire licked up and down his arms, his muscles tiring, his stomach turning. The screech of steel against metal made him cringe. Glass popped, bolts and mechanisms resigned to the pressures of the tools. The sounds should have been reassuring, but instead, they raked down Rylan’s nerves over and over.

  Maybe it was seconds or minutes, but at last, the door creaked open. Another round of sheering metal and the door fell away. One of the EMS members reached in and completed a rapid assessment, then backed away as the fire team continued to cut away at the side of the car.

  When, at last, the car lay open, EMS worked around him, relieving him of his care as they rapidly transferred and secured Brianna onto the spine board.

  Chris grabbed Rylan’s arm and pulled him out of earshot of the other workers. “You ordered that car turned. You know that goes against protocol.”

  Rylan faced his friend with the same determination that Chris fronted. “She was spiraling down.”

  “And she could very well spiral further after that careless act. Ry, you have a bad rapport with this site. You should’ve waited until we g
ot here.”

  Rylan scowled. “This fuckin’ curve takes more lives than it forgives. I wasn’t gonna sit back and wait until you got here to tend to the driver. She might’ve died.”

  Chris let out a sharp breath, tipping his head closer to Rylan. “She could very well die en route, Rylan. You know that. Don’t get your hopes up.” He tossed a glance to the road’s edge. Martha was herding the crowd away, ordering them to leave the site. “Let the others handle it from here. This ain’t—”

  “Don’t, Chris,” Rylan growled, knowing damn well what his friend was about to say. “I’ll be ridin’ with her to Westfield.”

  “You will—”

  Rylan threw up his hand, holding Chris’s gaze level. “I will. This is my scene today. Get her out of that tin can and en route so she has a chance to survive.”

  Jason and Kyle arrived as Rylan was hoisting himself back to the road. He instructed one of his men to meet him at Westfield with his truck while the other stayed behind to help crowd control and cleanup. Once EMS lifted Brianna to the road and onto the awaiting stretcher, he followed the men to the back of the ambulance and took a seat at the end of the bench. The doors slammed shut. The techs worked on the battered and bloodied woman. Sirens blared to life as they rushed to the next town.

  He didn’t quite understand why it was so important he made sure this particular woman survived, but he wasn’t going to dwell on what he couldn’t understand. His anxiety started to dissipate. His adrenaline plummeted. The events from the moment he’d seen the broken guardrail until now ran through his mind.

  He rested his hand on the woman’s ankle, snugly secured beneath a blanket, and turned his eyes up to her braced head. She was ashen, her mouth a sickly pallor, her face painted with blood that still oozed from the wound on her forehead. The monitors followed her heartbeat, displaying the numbers of her blood pressure. In the sudden haze that settled over him, he heard the hurried voices of the techs.

  Administer this.

  Another reading that.

  “Control the bleeding.”

  “Push the IV fluids.”

  “She’s goin’ down fast.”

  Chapter Two

  Rylan broke one very hefty rule in his personal book when he stepped through the sensor motor glass doors. He crossed a threshold he shouldn’t have considered crossing. He did his job, but an unseen pull drew him back to this very spot, after visiting hours. He didn’t belong here. Not now.

  Here he stood, and he wasn’t about to turn back until he got what he came for.

  I need to see her.

  He made his way down the fluorescent-lit hallways. The overly clean scents of antiseptic, plastic, and burnt coffee greeted him with more enthusiasm than the woman sitting behind the desk. She looked up at him, her eyes dull, her face a mask of boredom, and gave him a once-over.

  “May I help you?” she asked, her voice just shy of desert dry.

  Guess there’s no sweet-talkin’ this one.

  Rylan removed his wallet and flipped it open to his badge. The woman’s shoulders and back straightened, and she put her phone down.

  “I accompanied a young lady here earlier today. She was in a motor vehicle accident. I wanted to follow up on her condition and see if her next of kin had arrived.” Rylan held up a small paper bag. “I have some of her belongings I would like to return.”

  “It’s after visiting hours. I can send the belongings up with security.”

  “Is there a charge nurse or manager I may speak with?” Rylan asked. He glanced at his watch. “I have only a few minutes. I won’t be long.”

  The woman ground her teeth behind tightly closed lips. Her gaze hardened before it dropped and she picked up the phone.

  “Last name of the patient?”

  “Cabot. C-A-B-O-T. First name Brianna.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. Rylan leaned against the counter and tapped his wallet on the shiny marble surface as the woman called up to the floor.

  “What did you say your name was, sir?” the woman asked.

  “Sheriff Rylan Ryder,” Rylan said. A stunned and curious expression snapped over the woman’s face, and her eyes suddenly brightened. Rylan slid his wallet into the pocket of his jeans. Part of him hoped that this delay would knock some sense into him. Part of him was anxious to get above floor and see Brianna.

  The woman hung up the phone and handed Rylan a guest badge. “She’s on the fourth floor. Make a left from the elevators and head down to the nurse’s station. Samantha will be waiting for you.”

  Rylan gathered the paper bag and gave the woman a small nod, imitating the tipping of a hat. “I greatly appreciate this. Thank you.”

  Rylan suppressed his anxiety as he rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Samantha waited for him at the nurse’s station, a tired expression pasted to her face beneath a relaxed smile.

  “Sheriff?” she asked. Before Rylan managed to answer, Samantha motioned him to follow her. She cocked her head, casting him a short glance. He picked up his pace to fall in step beside her. “You know I can’t disclose much information about the patient. It’s against policy. Her next of kin hasn’t arrived yet. She should be here in the morning. I can tell you, however, her condition is stable and she should recover from her injuries fairly quick.”

  Samantha paused outside a closed door. Through the window, Rylan peered into a dark room lit only by the dim glow of monitors and programmed IV drips.

  “Can you tell me if she sustained any spinal injuries?” Rylan asked, unable to look away from the silhouetted figure beneath the white hospital blanket. With the backlight from the hallway, he could barely make out any detail of Brianna’s face.

  Samantha sighed. “Sheriff, you’re aware of health care policies.”

  Rylan pinned her with a regretful look. “I won’t ask you any more questions of her condition if you can answer me just this one. I need to know.” He turned back to the window. “I need to know if I made the right decision.”

  “Let me put it like this. She is sure to make a full recovery. That’s all I can say.” Samantha shifted beside him, but his attention was fixed, his fingers itching to open the door and see for himself that the woman in the bed was the woman he rescued earlier. In the back of his head, he refused to believe any positive prognosis after seeing the devastating wreckage from the crash site. “I’ll have to call security up to check the bag before it goes into the room.”

  “Of course.” Rylan placed the bag on the small alcove table and forced a grin. “I’ll leave it out here. May I go in?”

  “For a couple of minutes. She’s sedated and needs her rest.”

  Rylan slipped into the dark room. The low-pitched hum of the IV line and the machine at the foot of the bed lent the only sounds to the room. A monitor tracked respiratory rate and heart rate, holding his attention away from the woman as he gained his bearings. Standing in the room left him feeling surreal. Something about this moment, and all the events leading up to this moment, squeezed the first real emotion from his grieving heart. His sweet Hailey did not survive the crash that this woman did. He was not there to help his soon-to-be fiancée, but he saved the life of a stranger. He fought with the fairness of the two situations, the two outcomes. A complete stranger in Ryder, Kansas, survived a lethal accident that took the life of a long-time resident.

  Rylan squashed the dark anguish and resentment that threatened to bubble up from the pit of his conscience. He tore his gaze away from the monitor and lowered it on the sleeping woman.

  For the first moment, he saw nothing. His mind blanked, his thoughts ceased, and he felt like he was floating somewhere in between here and the unknown. Brianna’s face slowly came into focus, grounding him even if an unnatural lightness filled his chest and left his legs weak. He took one step closer, then two, until he leaned against the raised bed rail, fingers wrapped tightly around the plastic. He stared, disbelieving what he was seeing.

  How different she looked not coated in blood. How
…pretty. An obvious bruise had formed on her forehead around the simple adhesive that covered the laceration. Her upper lip was swollen, a dried cut leaving the tender skin darker that he imagined normal. Her skin appeared pale in the darkness, her hair a stark contrast of black against white.

  You look like a sleepin’ angel.

  Rylan pressed his lips together, keeping his hands from reaching toward the woman. He had no business being here. None. Compelling or not, he helped in her rescue, contacted her next of kin, and returned her belongings. The only reason for future contact would be for a police report to file an insurance claim.

  “I’m glad to hear you’re doin’ well, Ms. Cabot. You had an angel lookin’ after you today,” Rylan murmured, stepping away from the bed. He watched her for another moment, then turned and left the room.

  * * * *

  The voice was that of a stranger. The same stranger she vaguely recalled from the hazy memories that refused to come together.

  The presence was warm and protective. As much as she wanted to open her eyes, her body was exhausted, her mind swimming in a wading pool of clouds. Her eyelids would not budge, and she didn’t want to fight them. The blanket that swaddled her was so enticing, more than anything…until she heard that voice.

  “You had an angel lookin’ after you today.”

  Angel?

  The blanket grew snug around her, pulling her away from the shores of consciousness, back into deeper dreams.

  I do have an angel. He saved my life.

  Chapter Three

  “Ry!”

  Jackson Morrell cinched the strap of his duffle bag around his shoulder and chest, tightened his grip on his luggage, and squeezed between the two passengers standing in his way. Rylan’s observant gaze pinpointed him, a small smile coming to the man’s lips. Jackson jogged the stretch from the carousel to his friend, his excitement growing with each step.