A Rancher to Love

by Trish Milburn

  “Where else are you hurt?”

  “I fell at the end of the driveway.”

  “Does it feel like anything is broken?”

  Other than her entire life? She shook her head. “Probably just a nice bruise waiting to happen.”

  “Can you walk?”

  That was an odd thing to ask considering she’d just come barreling onto the ranch like a crazy woman, but then she also had nearly face-planted in front of him.

  “Yeah. I’m okay now.” She tried to move away from him, but he didn’t let her. Such an action would normally frighten her, but right now her soul cried out a thank-you for being there, supporting her.

  “I’ve got plenty of first aid supplies in the house.”

  “Not necessary. I’ll take care of it, but I do need to call a tow truck for my car before someone hits it.”

  Tyler pulled his phone from his belt and punched it a couple of times. They stood there in the dim glow coming from the house as he listened to it ring on the other end.

  “Hey, Greg, it’s Tyler. I need to you to come out my way as soon as you can. Leah had an accident and her car is partially in the road.”

  Leah managed to answer his questions about where exactly the car was and how far in the road it sat, and Greg assured them that he would be out in a few minutes. If the car was still drivable, he’d bring it to the ranch. If not, he’d take it to his shop.

  “Thank you,” Leah said.

  “I’m just glad things weren’t worse,” Tyler said. “What happened?”

  She shook her head. “I swerved to keep from hitting a deer and went too far and couldn’t correct my mistake in time.”

  Tyler nodded as if he understood. “We’ve all had a run-in with a deer at some point or another. I ran into one last summer and had to replace the whole front grille, bumper and radiator on my truck.”

  Leah tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but now that the adrenaline had stopped pumping through her veins, the pain was increasing to fill the void.

  “You need to get off your feet.”

  “I think you’re right.” She made to move toward her new home, but Tyler didn’t let go. Instead, he supported her as she started walking, gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t give voice to all the aches and stings and straight-to-the-brain pain she was feeling.

  She didn’t argue. Didn’t have the energy, either physical or mental, to do so. While his closeness reinforced just how large he was compared with her, a sliver of rational thought told her that if he was going to hurt her, he’d have done it already. But he hadn’t, instead giving her much-needed support as they made their way slowly toward the bunkhouse.

  When she fumbled the keys for the front door, Tyler took them from her in a smooth motion that caused his fingers to graze the back of her hand. Despite how her body was sending out pain signals in all directions, that contact inserted a very different type of signal into the mix. For the first time since they’d met, her attraction toward him trumped the anxiety. Though she wasn’t sure that was a good thing, she latched on to that feeling nonetheless. It certainly was more pleasant than the ache in her hip and the stinging across her palms.

  Tyler opened the door and turned on the overhead light. “Come over to the sink.”

  Though he didn’t touch her this time, she sensed the warmth of his hand near the small of her back as she limped toward the kitchen area. He stepped around her and turned on the cold water. Leah hesitated, anticipating that it would hurt. Tyler took her arm and gently turned her hand over and eased it under the flow. She winced at the initial contact, but relaxed as the cold gradually replaced the sting.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said.

  “No problem. I have a lot of experience with this. My sister and I dealt with it plenty when we were growing up, usually because one of us was chasing the other.”

  As his words faded, she thought she detected a hint of...sorrow? But then he moved to cut off the water and dab her hands dry with paper towels.

  “You have anything to put on your hands?”

  She looked up at him, so close, and her breath caught on its way to give her words a voice. The realization that she was staring at him, probably with her mouth hanging open, sent a shot of “Say something, dummy!” straight to the speech center of her brain.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks for your help.”

  He smiled then, the first time she’d seen him smile, and it was the kind of thing that turned a reasonably intelligent woman into a blithering idiot.

  “You said that already,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You thanked me twice.”

  Her brain scrambled for an appropriate response, and for some reason it had her lifting her hands. “Once for each hand?”

  He laughed at that, making her smile, too.

  It was such a one-eighty from how she’d felt only minutes earlier as she’d fled an evidently fully imagined threat that she actually felt dizzy. And must have wobbled as a result because Tyler reached out and steadied her.

  “Why don’t you sit down?”

  She wanted to argue that she was fine, but she wasn’t sure that was true. It was as if now that she felt she was safe, her body didn’t know what to do with the sudden absence of mind-numbing fear flooding through every part of her.

  “I guess you’re not used to having to find your way through the dark, huh?”

  As Leah sat on the couch, her eyes met Tyler’s. The blue reminded her of some of the glacial mountain lakes she’d seen while visiting Montana on vacation.

  “Uh, no. It’s really dark out there.” Please don’t let him ask why she was running as though an ax murderer was after her.

  “Funny how the world can be so different in two places that really aren’t that far apart.”

  “Yeah.” In Houston, it was never truly dark, even in the dead of night.

  She caught his gaze again, and even though he didn’t say so she got the impression that he knew there was more to what had prompted her crazed race from her car to the ranch. Leah broke eye contact, partly because she didn’t want to encourage more questions and partly because having him so close unnerved her. But not in a fearful way this time, at least not a fear of violence.

  The sound of an engine outside drew their attention. Tyler stood and crossed to the window.

  “Looks like Greg with your car.”

  “That was fast.” She started to stand, but Tyler gestured for her to stay seated.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “That’s not necessary. I can do it.”

  “I’m sure you can, but I’m already standing.” He crossed to the door in two strides. “And faster than you.” A hint of a smirk appeared at the edge of his mouth.

  Before she could say anything, or even think of how to respond, he was out the door. And it wasn’t whether her car was damaged that occupied her thoughts. Nor how she’d allowed her imagination to overwhelm her, or even how much her body hurt. Rather, her brain fixated on the man who had helped her. The feel of his strong arm around her shoulders, not allowing her to fall. The way his smile totally changed his face. And those blue eyes that drew her with a power that would scare her if she thought about it.

  For tonight, she chose not to think about it.

  Chapter Six

  “So were you whispering sweet nothings in Leah’s ear, making her drive off the side of the road?”

  Tyler eyed Greg and noticed the mischief in his friend’s eyes. “I wasn’t even with her, you goob. She swerved to avoid a deer.” He glanced at Leah’s car, which didn’t have any damage other than a dent where the edge of the bumper had hit the bank.

  “She’s lucky then,” Greg said, sounding more serious.

  Yeah, she was. A deer could do a lot of
damage to a vehicle and the people inside. He suspected Greg was thinking over all the cars and trucks he’d hauled away from such collisions that hadn’t fared so well, maybe even the occasional fatality.

  “Thanks for coming out so quickly.”

  “Luck was with you. I’d just finished unloading a car at the station when you called.” As if it were a full-moon night for towing, Greg received another call. He shook his head as he hung up. “Seems TJ put his car in the ditch again.”

  Tyler didn’t have to ask whom Greg was talking about. Everyone in Blue Falls knew best friends TJ Malpin and Adam Parker, regular fixtures at The Frothy Stein when they weren’t sleeping it off in the drunk tank. Usually someone managed to make their car keys disappear before they could get behind the wheel and endanger anyone, but he guessed TJ was slippery tonight. And he’d bet good money that TJ wasn’t getting his car or its keys back anytime soon.

  He glanced toward the bunkhouse, glad it wasn’t TJ’s drunken driving that Leah had met out on the road.

  “I’m outta here,” Greg said as he opened the driver’s door of the tow truck. His mischievous smile showed up even in the dim light. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Tyler resisted flipping Greg the bird, but his friend must have deduced what Tyler was thinking because he was still laughing as he slipped into the truck and shut the door.

  He waited until Greg was out of sight before he turned to face the bunkhouse. Before he took Leah’s keys back to her, he stood and considered what had really happened before he’d seen her fall between the barn and the house. He had no doubt that she’d really run off the road to avoid a deer, but that didn’t explain the pure terror he’d seen on her face when he’d called out her name. Though he’d played it off as her just being unused to the deeper darkness that came from living in the country away from ever-present streetlights, something else was going on. Combined with the fact that she seemed so nervous around him, he wondered if she was running from something. Or someone. Was it something he needed to know about to ensure Maddie’s safety? Maybe he should ask Conner.

  His first priority was of course Maddie, but Tyler also found himself wanting to protect Leah. Sure, he didn’t really know her nor anything about her other than she was Conner’s cousin, lived in Houston before coming to Blue Falls and evidently liked crafts judging by all the supplies he’d just seen on her kitchen table. But that didn’t negate the feeling of protectiveness he’d experienced as he’d seen that fear in her eyes and as he’d helped her to the bunkhouse.

  If he was being honest, more was at play than the urge to protect. While his main concern had been seeing her safely to the bunkhouse, he’d been aware of a warmth spreading throughout his body, originating where his arm wrapped around her small shoulders. The soft waves of her honey-blond hair had moved against his skin as they’d walked, and a faint, fruity scent had tickled his nose. Citrus of some sort.

  When he’d felt her limp over the uneven ground, he’d had to resist the urge to scoop her up into his arms and carry her. He would have been able to do it so easily, but instinct told him that she was scared and doing that would have sent her over the edge.

  He glanced toward the house, quiet at this hour since Maddie was asleep, then back at the bunkhouse. Maybe the buzz of attraction he’d been feeling toward Leah was a product of his mind looking for something good, something fun. He had so much worry on his mind with Kendra being MIA with her boatload of problems and Maddie barely communicating that it wasn’t surprising for him to be attracted by someone beautiful and uncomplicated.

  But Leah wasn’t uncomplicated, was she? No, he suspected she might very well come with her own cargo hold full of baggage.

  * * *

  THE BIRDS CHIRPING nearby evidently didn’t get the memo that it wasn’t a “sing the praises of a new day” kind of morning. But then, they probably hadn’t damaged themselves through irrational fear the night before either.

  Leah stared at the window in her bedroom, wishing she could pull up the blinds with the power of her mind. She’d like to look out at what seemed like another beautiful morning, but the last thing she wanted to do was move. She felt as if she’d been body slammed by a professional wrestler.

  That thought led to an image of Tyler in her mind. He was that big and broad, but she’d witnessed a kindness in him the night before that tempted her to get to know him better. If nothing else, it would be nice to have a friend nearby who could squash pretty much any threat that came her way. But when he’d returned to the bunkhouse with her keys after talking with Greg about her car, the distance was back, almost as if the glimpse she’d seen of the man beyond it had existed nowhere but her imagination.

  Maybe it had. After all, she’d already been in full-on imagining-things-that-weren’t-there mode. She closed her eyes and shook her head on the pillow. She must have looked like a deranged fool when Tyler had seen her fall. Did he think he’d made a mistake renting this place to her?

  But he hadn’t acted like it when he’d helped her clean the bits of gravel from her hands, although she wondered if he’d changed his mind between the time he’d left to talk to Greg and when he’d returned with her keys.

  She sighed, telling herself to stop running what-if scenarios like an Indy race in her head. If Tyler wanted her to move, she’d deal with that. And if he went back to keeping his distance, she’d roll with that, too. Right now, she needed to heave her butt out of bed and get to work. The only time in the past twenty-four hours when she’d felt almost like her old self was when she’d been sitting on the porch creating jewelry.

  When she sat up on the side of the bed, she questioned her decision to move. But she forced herself to stand and head for the bathroom. As she’d expected, she was sporting quite an impressive bruise on her hip, one that felt as if it went deep. She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  “This has got to stop.” This being the great-big fear monster that had been riding piggyback on her since that night Garton had shattered her mostly carefree existence. She wanted that back and, damn it, she was going to get it, no matter how hard it was.

  After showering, dressing and eating a bowl of oatmeal, she once again carried her supplies and her cup of coffee out to the porch. Tyler’s truck sat where it had the night before, but she saw no sign of him or the little girl. She wondered again if he was married, but she was leaning toward no because she doubted he would have helped her the way he had the night before if he were. At least she hoped not.

  When she finished a pair of jade chandelier earrings, she looked up to stretch and noticed the little girl watching her again. This time, the child didn’t hide behind a tree. But when Leah smiled and waved at her, she spun and ran back toward the house.

  Leah wondered if she should ask Tyler to introduce them so that the girl wouldn’t be so skittish around her, but then reconsidered. She might not be doing the girl any favors by having her trust too easily. Not that Leah had ever met Jason Garton prior to his attack on her. At least she didn’t remember it. He swore to the police that she had flirted with him at the sub shop down the street from her apartment, but she had no recollection of ever even seeing him. And she was almost 100 percent certain she’d never spoken to him.

  With those thoughts digging their claws into her, she found it hard to concentrate on work so carried everything back inside. Even though it was lunchtime, she’d lost her appetite. She shifted gears and worked a bit on her site and corresponding with people who’d inquired about specific items, then made an actual work plan for the rest of the week. But even all that couldn’t quite dispel the toxic thoughts she’d allowed to take up residence.

  Needing to move after sitting for so long, she headed outside, intent on taking a walk.

  In the light of day, the expanse of the ranch seemed harmless. She examined some of the wildflowers growing across the driveway, discovering a
path that led down an incline beyond the trees. Her nerves fired as she considered taking the path, fear returning at the thought of what might be lying in wait among the bushes and smaller trees.

  So tired of being scared, she straightened and took a deep breath. The likelihood that someone was down there waiting for her was about as likely as her being chased by Garton through the dark the night before. “I can do this.”

  She eased down the path, careful not to fall again. When she rounded a bend, she spotted a creek flowing over a bed of stone. It was as if she’d stepped into a different world, one so different from the rest of the ranch that she looked behind her to see if the path still existed. Feeling a welcome peace descend on her, she walked to the water’s edge and slipped off her sandals.

  As she stepped into the water, she gasped at how cool it was. She looked up the creek to what looked like a low cave. Maybe the creek was spring fed, which would explain the cold water. She shifted her gaze to her feet and wiggled her toes beneath the flowing water and smiled.

  She wasn’t one to believe in things like fate, but she had to wonder. Her flight from Houston had been in search of a peaceful place to heal, and that journey had led her here.

  Not wanting to leave, she waded for a while and skipped rocks like she had as a child when they’d visited various parks. She smiled again when she found she was still pretty good at the skipping. The longer she stayed in the little oasis, the lighter she felt. It made her wish it was visible from the bunkhouse.

  After sitting on an outcropping above the creek long enough for her feet to dry, she reluctantly stood and climbed back up the path. While it felt safe to do so, she wanted to explore a bit more of her new home.

  She made her way down the driveway, pausing to look out across the pasture at part of Tyler’s herd of cattle. At least she thought the animals were his, but she hadn’t seen him out there with them.

  As she closed in on the barn area, she looked toward the house, a two-story with a mixture of limestone and pale yellow siding on the exterior. She imagined a child-sized version of Tyler and his sister growing up there with his parents. Were his parents still alive? Did his sister live in Blue Falls? She felt as if he were a mystery that would take peeling away several layers to solve.