Tempted by a Cowboy

by Vonna Harper, Melissa MacNeal

  Diana nodded rapidly, trying not to be sick when she saw the unnatural angle of Michael’s shoulder and the blood oozing through his shirt. As the EMR crew checked him over, she cringed at his groans. This was way too much like the ordeal Garrison had suffered—

  Get over yourself! You’ve got to act in Michael’s behalf.

  When the paramedics placed her man on a stretcher and rushed him to the ambulance, Diana clambered in after them. The vehicle lurched, and as the EMR guys hooked him up with needles and tubes, she noted the pallor beneath Michael’s dark complexion…felt his pain as he writhed on the padded table.

  She recalled all too well the surreal atmosphere of the emergency room. As the hospital admitting clerk recited the questions on her computer screen, Diana realized how much she didn’t know about Michael White Horse. “I’m sorry,” she rasped. “He left his wallet in his duffel—at the rodeo—during his ride.”

  His last ride, she thought ominously.

  By midnight they’d stabilized him. The ER doctor had set his broken shoulder, and his nose and wounds were bandaged, but until an orthopedist reviewed his X-rays they could do nothing more. When the nurse closed the door behind them, Diana was left to gaze at a man in excruciating pain. Michael’s eyes were so black and swollen she barely recognized him.

  “Get me outta here. Take me home,” he rasped.

  Diana grabbed his hand. “You’re going nowhere until the orthopedist—”

  “No insurance. Lost my coverage when I left the casino.”

  Her heart quivered. This was a nightmare revisited. “Michael, I can’t just wheel you out of here—”

  “Give ’em the cash in my wallet and get me the hell out of here, angel.” He took a labored breath. “Put me in the truck. Get me to the ranch. Have Will call my mother’s brother. He’s a…shaman.”

  Diana pivoted so he wouldn’t read the terror on her face. How many miles—how many days—between San Bernardino and Seven Creeks? And how the hell would she get him there in a stick-shift pickup she couldn’t drive?

  Diana gripped the shift knob and gritted her teeth. As the pickup lurched like an animal with a bad cough, she envisioned the pain she was causing poor Michael. He rode in the bed of the truck, on a mattress the sympathetic nurses had found for him. They’d rigged a canopy out of a tarp, and the air conditioning blasted toward her open back window. She had a supply of sample antibiotics and pain relievers, and the best wishes of a staff who had reluctantly released her battered, broken cowboy.

  Diana eased her foot off the clutch, praying she didn’t bash into the other vehicles in the lot…praying for Garrison’s angelic assistance as she listened for second gear. Why hadn’t she learned how to drive a manual transmission?

  Just get into traffic without killing yourself.

  Somehow she made the next stop light…the next turnoff toward the highway…the interstate that would take them a more direct route than they’d come on. She reminded herself that her driving dilemma was far easier than what Michael faced: bad enough that he hadn’t made the finals in Las Vegas. If his internal conditions were worse than the ER doc thought, he might not make it home.

  A shaman…how could she entrust her Michael to a witch doctor?

  And who else will heal him? Takes money to go to real doctors.

  She grimaced as she hit a pothole and had to downshift. After the first fretful hour of maneuvering through the gears and the traffic leaving San Bernardino, she pulled into a rest area. Diana lifted the bright blue tarp and forced herself to remain calm: Michael’s lips were a thin, white line of pain.

  “What can I get you? I’ve got all sorts of pain killers and—”

  “Peyote buttons. Bottle of Yukon Jack.” He groaned as he shifted on his mattress. His black hair clung to his face in the heat, yet he put on a smile for her. The shiners from his broken nose looked like something out of a horror film. “If we stop every hour, it’ll take forever to get home, angel.”

  She gripped his hand and he gripped back. As Diana climbed into the cab, she cried silently so he wouldn’t hear her sniffling through the open window. The truck lurched like a kangaroo with hiccups as she backed out of the parking space. It was going to be one helluva long hard ride. But if she didn’t drive them, who would?

  Never had she seen such a welcome sight as the gateposts of Seven Creeks. Diana pulled in, too exhausted to appreciate how the truck didn’t cough or die going around the uphill curve. She focused on the front porch, and the male figure at the railing. Will Killiam vaulted into the back of the truck before she’d even shut it off.

  “Hey, you! Get your ass out of this—” His voice faltered when he saw how horrible Michael looked. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make light of—good God, Mike, why didn’t you call me? I could’ve sent a private plane, or come for you myself, or—”

  “Save it.” Michael turned his pale face toward them and extended his arm. “Diana and I weren’t finished with our road trip.”

  “Yeah, well”—Will glanced toward the house—“your uncle’s got your room ready. Smells sorta like the dorm after we had ourselves a high old time.”

  Diana’s eyes widened and she yanked Will aside. “We should call a real doctor!” she whispered frantically. “I’ve got the money Michael sent me. He wouldn’t let me use it, or I’d have kept him in the hospital—”

  “He would’ve crawled out.” Will smiled patiently, yet fear lurked behind his hazel eyes. “He’s scared shitless of hospitals. Couldn’t stay upright or conscious while his twins were being born. So the sooner we let his uncle work on him, the sooner he’ll recover. Trust me.”

  “Better listen up, Diana,” Michael rasped from beneath the tarp. “You can ride me, babe, but you’ll never tame this bronc. So where the hell’s Uncle Zeke?”

  She wanted to razz him, but a man was coming out of the house…a man who foretold how Michael would look in forty years. Ezekiel Greentree was shorter and more compact than his nephew, and his raven hair was salted with streaks of gray, but his face appeared ageless. He wore a large necklace of animal fangs and preserved paws, but otherwise he looked more normal than the witch doctor she’d imagined. And she couldn’t deny the man’s presence. He had a sacred air of wisdom from walking in worlds she would never understand.

  “Diana,” he murmured in a voice much like Michael’s. “Thank you for listening. For getting him here, where spirit and herbal remedies will restore him.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ll find a few empty remedy bottles back here—” Zeke’s grip stilled her. Power and energy pulsed from his palms into hers. “Thank you for coming, Uncle Zeke. He’s in your hands now,” she said more politely.

  The shaman knelt beside Michael to converse quietly, and then tugged the mattress to the end of the truck bed. Will stepped up, but the older man waved him away. With a strength that defied logic—and moves that went against convention about shifting injured patients—Zeke slipped his arms around Michael and carried him effortlessly toward the porch.

  Diana gaped.

  “Never underestimate the power of a shaman with herbs and spirits on his side,” Will murmured. “Let’s get you something to eat so you can crash.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” she replied.

  18

  Diana awoke with the sun in her eyes and the salty-sweet aroma of bacon filling her room. She was in her own cozy bed, still bone tired from that god-awful road trip but feeling better than she had for days.

  “Michael,” she whispered. She padded through the kitchen to peer out the back door, where Zeke had prepared a “sick room” on the deck. The tang of incense and potent herbs drifted through the screen. The healer knelt beside Michael’s pallet, murmuring in a low singsong voice as he ran his hands over his nephew’s chest and face.

  Michael lay eerily still.

  Will grabbed her hand on the doorknob. “Uncle Zeke told me to keep the pretty female out of sight while the medicines and the spirits do their work. So why not shower a
nd eat? Then we’ll do some work of our own.”

  She was too dazed to argue…amazed at how immaculate the house looked and how kind Will Killiam was. He’d called every day they were on the road, he’d summoned Uncle Zeke, and he’d kept Jerry Pohlsen at bay during her absence. “I owe you a lot for—”

  “Nope. I’m repaying Mike’s favors over the years.” He poured her a steaming mug of fresh coffee. “Clear your head, lady. You’ve got papers to sign.”

  “So this loan really, truly gets Pohlsen off my land?” Diana tingled as she held the pen over the loan application. “My next concern is how I’ll repay—”

  “Not a problem.” His eyes sparkled with a secret. “Zeke isn’t the only guy here who works magic, you know. Your cowboy has a way of making things happen, and he’s got plans for this place. Plans for you.”

  “Oh, really?” With an arched eyebrow, she signed on the highlighted lines. “Who does he think he is, to tell me how to—”

  Will snickered. “You sound just like him, Diana. I’m glad you’ll give him a run for his money, after Carina crept out like a thief in the night. You want me to go with you? Or would you prefer to upstage Pohlsen alone?”

  A grin settled over her face. How would Jerry explain to Miss Fritzi that she’d never have her mega-mansion on this pretty hillside?

  Diana dressed in a snug shirt that showed off her curves. She let her loose curls drift around her face and applied makeup to set off her eyes and smile: she was a woman on a mission. And as she rumbled down the driveway in the pickup, she realized how far she’d come. No more holing up at home. No more nightmares where Jerry Pohlsen announced they were tearing down her house. No more of that smarmy voice intimidating her to tears.

  It was a pleasure to fetch the check from Paul Mathis, the banker Will had set her up with. But it was a bigger thrill to enter Pohlsen’s facility, where the tellers didn’t meet her gaze anymore, and wait for the polecat himself to wave her into his office.

  “So! Did you leave that shiftless cowboy out west?” he joked. “This process’ll go much easier now that you’re working with me to—”

  She thrust the check at him. It was none of his business that Michael lay on her deck with a medicine man mumbling over him. “This pays off my mortgage. Guess I won’t be seeing you around Seven Creeks anymore.”

  His face got splotchy as he glanced at the check. “What kind of craziness is—what makes you think you can just—”

  Diana shrugged, ready to dance circles around him. How fine it felt to be the one dishing up the dirt! “The ranch is mine again, like it should’ve been all along,” she replied. “Any banker with a conscience—any real friend of Garrison Grant’s—would’ve told me I had other options instead of kicking me while I was down and then calling it progress.”

  “I won’t change my development plans just because—”

  “And I won’t listen to your bullshit for another second!” she spouted. She stared him down until he plopped backward into his executive desk chair. “All it took was one lawyer and one call, and your resort’s down the toilet with the rest of your crap.”

  “But how’re you gonna make good on this loan, when—”

  “That’s my problem, isn’t it? Your concern is breaking this news to Fritzi and your political cronies.” She planted her palms on his desk and nailed him with a dark gaze. “Fetch my papers. I’m going to watch you mark everything paid, and then I’m going home. Got it?”

  He twitched, rallying his power. “The architects and the contractors have invested too much in this resort to let you get away with—”

  “That’s their mistake, for going along with your underhanded scheme. Good luck running for congress, by the way. But don’t count on my vote.”

  Diana bubbled like champagne as she strode out to the truck—and then she bought a bottle of it, for when Michael could share it with her. All the way up the road she sang with the radio. She’d reclaimed her ranch and that hunk of a handsome cowboy had plans for her! Life was good! She imagined the ideas Michael might have…saw herself as his devoted nurse…his wife? Was it too soon to consider that? After traveling halfway across the country with this man, she certainly knew what she’d be getting into.

  Like his stretchy little bikini?

  She giggled and pulled up alongside the house, but then her heart stilled. Will Killiam stared out across the pasture as though he’d lost his best friend. As Diana hurried up the porch steps, she caught a whiff of something nasty and burnt and medicinal.

  Her attorney finally met her eyes. “He’s not responding.”

  “What?”

  “Zeke’s been brewing poultices and god-awful concoctions for Mike to drink. Says he’s put our boy into a sort of coma, where his body can heal in the care of the spirit world, but…but I’m not buying it.” All his courtroom bravado left him. Will looked like a scared little kid. “If this was a bad idea—if I should’ve called the ambulance instead of letting that old man—”

  The door opened and Zeke stepped outside. Diana looked at his impassive expression, trying to read between the lines etched deep into a face the color of clay. “It’s out of my hands now. Time will tell if the spirits heal Michael’s internal injuries and let him return to us.”

  “Or?” Diana didn’t dare consider other options—not after she’d busted her butt to get him here from California. Not after she’d tended him at rest stops and resisted the urge to turn off at every blue HOSPITAL sign posted at highway exits. Not after she believed he had plans for this ranch.

  Zeke didn’t smile. “Time will tell.”

  19

  Diana barely endured the next three days. After peeking at him once, she didn’t dare look again: Michael White Horse lay with his hands at his sides and his hair smoothed over one bare shoulder. His eyes were closed, and the rings around them shone in sickly shades of greenish purple. From all appearances, she had a dead man on her deck. A naked dead man.

  The third night she had vivid dreams of Michael making love to her: bending her over the bed…sliding her up the shower wall as the water hissed around them…taking her from above as his lustrous hair fell around her. Diana cried out with sweet release in her dream—awakening herself by crying out for real. She wanted Michael so badly, but all she could think about was taking care of Garrison that last week, when he was too ill to respond.

  She dressed and left a note on the table: CAN’T STAND ANY MORE OF THIS. WENT TO TOWN.

  She tossed her cell phone into the passenger seat. Didn’t have a clue where she was going. It was just too weird being in a house where a shaman mumbled to himself as though she and Will weren’t there while filling the place with the bitter scent of herbs and smoke. While she wanted to believe Uncle Zeke knew what he was doing, she didn’t want to be there if the old guy had to admit defeat. She just couldn’t handle that again.

  Diana turned in at Klineschmidt’s doughnut shop, north of town. The guy at the counter smiled kindly as he handed her a cup of high-test coffee and a bag of apple fritters and bear claws she intended to share with Will when she ventured back. She ate mechanically, staring into the corner of the shop so no one would interrupt her funk.

  Halfway through the third pastry, her cell jangled. She wiped the sugary glaze from her fingers…saw her home phone number, and was afraid to answer. “Y-yeah?” she murmured.

  “Diana.”

  She went still. The voice was unmistakably Michael’s, but it sounded so…hollow. Her thoughts raced morbidly. Could spirits call you from the “other side?” “Yeah”? she breathed.

  “Imagine my…disappointment and humiliation when I woke up with a huge hard-on, calling your name,” he said in slow, measured tones, “but it was Will and Uncle Zeke looking down at me.”

  She snorted so hard coffee spewed out her nose. Was it the extreme caffeine, or was her heart pounding so hard because this was Michael! Wanting her! A little bleary, but alive! “And what did they do about your—predicament?” she sai
d, aware the others in the shop stared at her.

  “They pointed and made crude remarks. Will you pleeeease come home and set these guys straight?” he pleaded in a little-boy voice. “I need you, angel.”

  She gestured for the guy behind the counter to refill her bag with fritters and bear claws and chocolate-covered eclairs. “Would you believe I woke up in that same predicament?” She fished more money out of her pocket, and darted out of the shop without her coffee. She felt too jittery—too giddy—to risk any more stimulation.

  “And was I fucking you in the shower?” he whispered. “And then from behind—”

  “Over the foot of the bed, yes.” Diana couldn’t believe what she was hearing…how their dreams had meshed in that otherwordly nightscape. “And when I woke myself up hollering for you, you were—”

  “Between your legs, letting my hair tease your face.”

  “Jesus, Michael.” Diana cranked the ignition. “I—you looked so out of it, and for three damn days I thought you were—”

  “Uncle Zeke has great power. Thank you for not running him off. Your house smells like a frat house the morning after a hard-core party.”

  “Yeah, well, we can fix that. Hang on, Michael. I’m coming home.”

  Home. What a sweet feeling she thought when she pulled into the driveway of the ranch she’d nearly lost. And what a sweeter feeling, to see Michael sitting upright in a porch chair, wrapped in a quilt. Waiting for her.

  Diana ran from the truck, arms extended. He didn’t stand up—still had those nasty shiners, and his left arm was bent in a sling again—but the hug he gave her with his good arm made her sob against his shoulder and kiss him wildly. “It’s so good to—I thought you were—and I just couldn’t go through watching another man die, so—”

  “Shhhh,” he murmured against her ear. He smiled at her as best he could, considering how messed up his face was. “I was floating, catching glimpses of you yet unable to tell you I was okay. Maybe it was the drugs, but I received some very direct messages while I was in that suspended state.”