by BJ Wane
Leland, Roy and Cory were sitting on the front porch when the alarm came in. Within seconds, every cowhand working around the stables was rushing toward trucks or horses, the drills they bemoaned practicing every other month paying off.
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back,” Roy said, jumping up and shouting orders as he sent the men off in different directions.
“Where’s Kurt?” Leland tried not to panic as he cast a wild look around the bustling yard for his son. Before Cory could answer, he watched in alarm as Atlas and another horse came barreling in from the pasture, icy tentacles of fear squeezing his chest when he saw the bright red splotch on the stallion’s flank.
Fighting back the panic welling inside him, he called out to Roy who was sprinting toward the truck parked in front of the house. “Get the passenger door open. I’m going with you.” Turning to Cory, he snapped, “Give me your arm.”
Puzzled, Cory held out his arm, surprise spreading across his and Roy’s faces as Leland stood showing more strength in his left arm and leg than they’d witnessed before.
Leland didn’t spare them time for explanations. “Quit gaping and help me down the steps.”
“You’ve been holding out on us,” Cory accused, assisting him down the steps and over to the passenger side of the truck. “Why?”
“Not now. My boy is in trouble, and by God, I’m not sitting on my ass while everyone else runs to help him.”
Enlightenment dawned on his employees’ faces at the same time as Leland maneuvered with little effort onto the seat. But it was Roy who said, “You kept your progress quiet and fought against therapy to keep Kurt here, didn’t you?”
“Talk later, drive now,” he ground out, impatience snapping at his heels. Cory shut the door as Roy dashed to the driver’s side and slammed the truck into gear.
Casting his friend and employer a disbelieving glance as he sped east, Roy muttered, “Why the hell didn’t you just ask him to stay?”
Guilt settled like a heavy weight on Leland’s chest, his eyes shifting out the window at the land he loved so much. “I couldn’t, not after the way I turned on him when we lost Brittany.”
“You were grieving, Leland. The injustice of losing two family members so close together would drive anyone into lashing out at those around him.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Kurt would never behave in such a callous manner. Losing my wife, hell yes, that was hard, but a child, Roy, that’s a kick in the gut you can’t imagine. I’ll be damned if I lose my son too.”
Greed ended up costing Malone everything. Giving up after ten minutes, he started to crawl back onto the ATV only to see a cloud of dust hailing the arrival of multiple trucks and horseback riders converging on him. He was so fucked, he groaned, seeing the hard, grim faces staring at him, the number of guns leveled his way, but he aimed to get some satisfaction before going down.
“How’d they get here so fast?” Leslie took a deep breath of relief as she heard and then saw the cavalry coming to their rescue. Less than fifteen minutes had passed since those first shots had threatened her life and her sanity.
“Like I told you, sweetheart, you’re safe with me. Don’t move. They have him penned in between them and us. He’d be a fool to try anything now, but he might be desperate enough to prefer going down in a fight.”
Another truck roared up, slamming to a stop in front of the semicircle of vehicles and horses, all of the cowhands aiming rifles at the lone assailant still squatting behind his ATV. Kurt almost fell over when his father slid out of the passenger seat and lifted his rifle above the door.
“Drop it you motherfucker,” Leland ordered, his voice strong and sure, vibrating with a rage Kurt had never heard before.
“What the hell?” he muttered, confused and yet pleased beyond measure.
Despite the still dicey situation they were in, Leslie giggled, leaning into him. “He loves you, he just hasn’t known how to ask for your forgiveness.”
“But… shit!” Kurt lifted his rifle as their attacker stood and took aim their way, this time looking through binoculars at the same time. Before he could get off a shot, Leland beat him to it, his bullet hitting the man in the shoulder with enough force to drop him. A grin split his face as he grabbed Leslie’s hand and led her out from behind the tree. “That’s my dad. Come on, let’s go home.”
Word traveled fast and by the time they returned to the house, Grayson and his deputies were arriving with sirens blaring, the county ambulance right behind them. After loading his prisoner into the ambulance along with a deputy, the sheriff spent the next hour taking statements from everyone and calling the Feds with an update. The vet arrived to tend Atlas’ wound, which only needed a few stitches and an antibiotic shot, much to Kurt and Leslie’s relief.
As the cowhands started to disperse and return to their chores, Babs stepped onto the porch and announced sloppy joes and corn on the cob for everyone in two hours, a loud cheer greeting her offer. “Let me help,” Leslie insisted, following Babs back into the house. After giving her brief statement that matched Kurt’s to Grayson, she had needed to get out of the testosterone filled den and it had been nice to sit outside without worry. The inner shakes that had begun the moment Kurt had thrown her off Anna Leigh and that gunshot had tossed her back into the nightmare of walking in on Alessandro’s murder were starting to subside. Now, all that was left to contend with was anxiety over the future. Just because one culprit had been taken out didn’t mean another wouldn’t follow.
They made a good team, Leslie thought, working with Babs to brown hamburger and fill buns with the barbequed meat. A long table was set up out front and the simple meal was devoured in no time, the camaraderie among the hands evident in the way they joked around as if nothing untoward had occurred that afternoon. Here less than two weeks, and Leslie realized how much she would miss them, the ranch, and even Leland if she couldn’t stay.
“What’s wrong?” Babs asked, giving her a one-arm hug as they stood side-by-side at the counter cleaning up several hours later. The sun no longer shone through the window and the gray evening cast of twilight mirrored her bleak mood. “Bad guy has been hauled off and everyone is safe, fed and happy.”
“Yes, this time, but what about the next time? I can’t stay here and risk everyone’s safety forever.”
“You won’t be.” Kurt strode into the kitchen, hauling her against him and kissing her with his usual deep possessiveness that she welcomed with a rush of heat. “I needed that. Been a hell of a day.”
“What did you mean?” she asked, licking her lips.
Reaching for the last brownie sitting on a platter, he replied, “If you’d answer your phone, you would know. Edwin Glascott, that albatross around your neck for the last four years, committed suicide, apparently after hearing his hired thug was singing like a canary. You’re free of him, sweetheart, and free to live openly wherever you want.”
“I am?” she squeaked, thrilled beyond measure and yet saddened by another death as Kurt dragged her out of the kitchen.
“You are. Now,” he stated, leading her onto the front porch, “all you have to decide is whether you love me enough to stay here with me, or if you need more time and want to return to your apartment.”
Giddy with relief and pleasure, she flipped him a look of curiosity as he sat down and pulled her onto his lap. “Isn’t returning to Reno one of my options?”
“No. There’s nothing left for you there. Everything you want is here, and now yours for the taking. All you have to do is say yes.” Gripping her hands together, he held them at the wrist as he bent and nipped at her neck before sliding his lips up to her ear. “I love you, Leslie. Is there really anything left for you to think about?”
“Well,” she breathed with a catch as he flicked a nipple and she responded with a flood of liquid heat, “when you put it that way, no, there’s not, Sir. Yes, I’ll stay.”
“That’s my girl.”
Kurt left Leslie soaking in his big bathtub, in
tending to join her as soon as he wrapped up one more loose end to the day. He found his father in the den, sitting in his favorite recliner, a walker next to him, gazing at Brittany’s picture. How could he have not seen Leland’s ruse before now?
“Did you really think I couldn’t forgive you for lashing out?” he asked, taking a seat on the sofa next to his chair.
“I would have had trouble, if the situation had been reversed.” Leland slid his gaze from his deceased daughter to the son he’d come too close to losing. “But I should have tried. I’m sorry, Kurt. Once you came back, all I could think about was how to keep you here. I feared if I got back on my feet too soon, you would return to Houston, and I would lose my chance to slowly make amends.” He sighed, shaking his head at his own culpability. “Brittany was spoiled, you know that. You were nine when we found out we were going to have another child, and it was such unexpected and wonderful news. When her behavior turned wild in her teens, it was only her close relationship with your mother that kept her in check, I know that now. Without her, Brittany lost her way.”
“We tried, Dad, both of us.” Kurt saw the pain reflected in his father’s eyes and his heart went out to him.
“No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t, not near enough. I laid it all on you because I couldn’t get past my own grief. You were right to leave.”
Eager to get back to Leslie, Kurt stood and reached out to squeeze his dad’s hand. “We’re good, Dad. I’m not leaving again, you’re going to quit hiding your progress and push it even more now, and with luck, you’ll be a grandfather by this time next year.”
With that thought in mind, Kurt left Leland staring after him with tears swimming in his eyes and walked toward a future he never dreamed would be his.
The End
Submitting to the Doctor
Cowboy Doms, Book Seven
Published by Blushing Books
An Imprint of
ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc.
A Virginia Corporation
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Charlottesville, VA 22901
©2020
All rights reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The trademark Blushing Books is pending in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
BJ Wane
Submitting to the Doctor
EBook ISBN: 978-1-64563-207-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-64563-255-9
v3
Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design
This book contains fantasy themes appropriate for mature readers only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual sexual activity.
Prologue
Denver, Colorado
Soft, white snowflakes fell from the gray sky onto the dark clothing of the mourners slowly dispersing from the gravesite. Doctor Mitchell Hoffstetter gazed with grief-stricken, unseeing eyes at the flower-covered coffin. He thought he’d been prepared for his beloved wife’s passing after the chemotherapy treatments had failed to wipe out her cancer these past six months. Last week, he’d stood by Abbie’s hospice bed and watched her shudder through her last, painful breath, the peace that settled over her stricken face almost beautiful to see after months of ravaging torment. Following her diagnosis, he’d reached out to the top oncologists in the state for help, cut back on his job as chief trauma surgeon at Denver Health and prayed for a miracle.
All to no avail.
The murmured condolences and sympathetic eyes of friends and colleagues went unheard and unseen as Mitchell shivered against the bleak future now lying ahead of him. He would turn forty-one this summer and yet, instead of hitting his prime looking forward to the future, he now dreaded the months and years that stretched out ahead of him without his cherished wife. For eight years, she had been the perfect wife and submissive of his dreams, the only woman he’d ever vowed fidelity to or imagined sharing his life for the long haul. Her death shattered the dream and left a nightmare he was desperate to escape from.
“Mitchell, let’s go. People will be stopping by the house.” His mother, Louise, gripped his arm and looked up at him with worry etched on her lined face.
Patting her hand, he nodded and turned to take his sister’s elbow. “I’m ready. Let’s get you and Tracy out of the cold.” He feared there would be no escaping the cold for him for a long time, if ever.
Eighteen months later
The July sun beat down on Mitchell’s shoulders as he loaded the last of his suitcases in his Tahoe and closed the back hatch. The For-Sale sign in the front yard of the two-story home he’d shared with Abbie was now topped with a Sold sign. His chest constricted as he took one last look at the flower beds she’d planted and tended with such meticulous care. He recalled the way she would kneel and wiggle her ass, sending him a taunting grin over her shoulder when he would pull into the driveway. The tall hedges in front of the porch offered enough privacy for him to shock her one time and deliver the bare butt spanking she’d been itching for right then and there. She’d loved the exhibitionism and risk as much as the pain-induced pleasure he’d heaped upon her soft, lily-white buttocks.
Sliding behind the wheel, he pulled away for the last time, praying the move to Montana and the new, much less strenuous position of family physician in the smaller town of Willow Springs would offer the change he needed to cope better with his loss. His mother and sister, as well as Tracy’s husband and two boys, all encouraged him to accept the position when he found the ad and showed it to them. With his father gone these past five years, he’d hesitated to move away from his mother, but she’d been the one to insist the loudest for him to make the change.
“It’s a one-day drive,” Louise had said at Sunday dinner last month. “Just be sure to get a place big enough to put all of us up for a week and we’ll be on your doorstep more than you’ll want.”
Mitchell hadn’t prayed much since burying Abbie and his happiness, but as he drove away from the home they had shared, the position he’d worked hard to attain and the city he’d lived in his whole life, he found himself sending up a silent entreaty he wasn’t making a big mistake.
Chapter 1
Tears blinded Lillian Gillespie’s vision as she stumbled out the door of the special care facility. The cold slap of February wind that hit her added to the chill that had invaded her body as she’d watched her cherished twin sister take her last breath. The nursing staff who had cared for Liana for the last month as she lay in a coma meant well with their embraces and whispered condolences of ‘it’s for the best’, but right now, Lillian couldn’t see it that way.
She let the tears fall as she slid behind the wheel of her car, slammed the door and huddled in misery, wondering what she would do without Liana in her life. They’d shared the special bond of twins for thirty-four years, stood side by side when they’d buried first their father and then their mother a scant year later, and they’d watched men come and go without regret as long as they had each other.
And now Lillian was alone.
Rubbing her forehead, she tried to gather her thoughts and run through what needed to be done. Once Liana had stabilized following a ruptured brain aneurysm six weeks ago and was moved from the hospital to the long-term care facility with a poor prognosis of ever recovering or even coming out of the coma, the staff had convinced Lillian to make funeral arrangements. At first, she’d fought the very idea, clinging to the small thread of hope the trickle of blood still reaching her sister’s brain offered, but now she was glad the hospital counselor had talked her into it. It was one less burden to weigh her down now.
Pulling out of the lot, she automatically drove toward Brad’s house, her thinking still muddled by heartbreak. She was halfway to his upscale neighborhood in Salt Lake City when the change in her circu
mstances hit her with a quick flash of clarity. I’m free of that son-of-a-bitch. That startling acknowledgement forced her to pull into a strip mall lot as a cold, burning anger replaced her emotional numbness, giving her the inner shakes. I’m free, but God, sis, I never wanted to get away from him at your expense. No, she couldn’t look at it that way. It was Lillian’s fault for ignoring the warning signs of the renowned neurosurgeon’s possessiveness for too long before breaking off their affair. Maybe, if she hadn’t been so immersed in her art, preparing for the Naples National Art Show, she would have ended the relationship much sooner. Liana had often berated her for losing focus of everything and everyone around her when she lost herself in her painting, and Lillian had finally paid the price for her artistic absorption.
But no more. Liana’s death rendered Dr. Brad McCabe’s threats useless and severed the hold he had over her. As much as her passing pained Lillian, she couldn’t prevent a ripple of relief as she got back on the road. To say Brad had taken their split badly was an understatement, but she could never have imagined just how obsessed he’d become with her until Liana was sent to the long-term care facility.
Lillian gritted her teeth as she turned onto the street of million-dollar homes and pulled into the drive of Brad’s two-story, one-acre estate. No one would ever believe the skilled doctor, one of the most sought-after bachelors in the city was a manipulative, sadistic bastard. She still couldn’t believe she’d fallen for his solicitous support when he’d found out about Liana’s condition a month after they’d broken up. During the two weeks doctors, including Brad, were working to give her sister every chance at recovery, he never brought up their relationship even though he’d sworn to get her back. He’d offered encouragement, a shoulder to lean on and a comforting embrace when the medical team announced there was nothing else they could do.
