Saving the Soldier (Selkirk Family Ranch Book 2)

by Vartanoff, Irene

  JD looked around. Paula wasn’t here. Figured. She didn’t need exercise. She had a perfect body already. Especially those luscious breasts. Too bad she had a witchy personality.

  He went back up the stairs and prowled around the first floor. Bingo. Paula was sitting on a couch in the great room, using a tablet.

  “Are you watching a TV show?” he asked. “The satellite dish can be cleared off if the TV isn’t getting reception. Although Miss Betty is having no trouble watching her reruns.”

  She shook her head. “No need.”

  He peered over her shoulder, getting a handsome view of her rounded breasts while he was at it. She had one button unbuttoned and he could just see the exposed curve of flesh. His male parts instantly heated. He wished he could undo the rest of her buttons.

  He would, soon. First he had to disarm her.

  Her tablet showed a page with columns of numbers, some of them changing constantly.

  “The stock market. Are you checking your personal investments, or something else?” Of course her father probably simply gave her stocks, but she supposedly ran a division in an investment bank herself. Was she an investor of her own money? Did she follow her father’s rules to the letter? He’d never thought about her life outside of his family.

  What did she want? He’d learned she was determined to take care of and protect his little sister. Which was amazing since Tess was pretty useless at the moment. But Paula had stuck with her since boarding school.

  Perhaps it was Paula’s gravity that drew Tess to her. Paula never had laughed at his jokes. He’d always thought it was her fault for not having a sense of humor. Then again, maybe his jokes weren’t all that funny.

  “Is this what you do when you aren’t drugging and abducting defenseless men who should be in the hospital?” he asked humorously.

  She shot him a cross look, as if she was tired of him acting immature. “Grow up, cowboy. I drugged you mostly for the sake of Tess and Addie.”

  “Flattering that you think I can solve this knotty family issue. Dad’s turning into a real patriarch type. He wants to be the puppet master, control us all.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You think he is deliberately obstructive?”

  “Absolutely.” He lowered himself to sit next to her on the couch. “Not at first, maybe. I’ll give him credit for caring about me. He dropped everything to move to Cheyenne.”

  Paula nodded. “That was pretty impressive, I always thought.”

  He shrugged, “Yeah, but for the past year he’s been playing politics, and I don’t mean with the family. Been lobbying influential legislators, buddying up to them.”

  “Why?”

  “Second career?” he suggested lightly. “All I know for sure is that Daddy now is good friends with the governor and with the most powerful senators. He knew them before, of course, but now they’re close.”

  “Does he want to run for public office?”

  “Don’t see how he could after this heart attack. Maybe he’s angling to be appointed a judge or something.”

  She stared at him. “Interesting second career. So what are you planning for yours?”

  Trust Paula to bring it right back to putting him on the spot. She’d be hell to live with, always after a man to do something, to achieve.

  Paula must have seen his rejection in his expression, because she added, “I can tell you haven’t been thinking very seriously about anything beyond inhabiting a hospital bed. Eventually, even the VA is going to toss you out. If you don’t have a plan, maybe it’s time to start thinking about one.”

  “What are you, my mother?”

  She looked at him searchingly. After letting out a deep breath, she returned to gazing at the numbers on her tablet. “Go away, JD, if you don’t want to be serious.”

  He grinned. He liked getting to her. “You can’t toss me out in the snow. We’re stuck here together for the duration. Might as well talk.”

  “It’s a big house. Go bother somebody else.”

  “Tried that. Baron’s down in the new exercise room, mooning over Addie. Miss Betty’s watching her sitcoms and taking a well-earned rest. That leaves just you and me at loose ends.”

  She looked up again. “There’s a pack of cards in that drawer,” she pointed at the end table.

  “We can do better than that,” he said, picking out a lock of her dark, chin-length hair and playing with it.

  Paula froze.

  He could have her. She might resist him today, but she was his for the taking. A man always knew.

  “JD, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked. She must have intended to make it a bold, challenging question. Instead, as he tucked her lock of hair behind one ear and played with the earlobe, her words trailed off and ended with a squeak.

  “What does it look like? Finding something interesting to do with our time, that’s all.” He reached his hand around the back of her head and pulled her just a little. “Why don’t you close your tablet?”

  Paula’s eyes went wide and her mouth opened in shock. She was ready. No sense wasting time. He leaned in and took the tablet out of her hands, reaching across her to put it aside on the end table. Then he turned his attention back to her and kissed those pink lips before she had a chance to recover.

  She made a sound. Just one. He swallowed it and all of her, too.

  The kissing went on for a while. He finally couldn’t resist touching her plump round breasts. When he did, she moaned.

  She pushed him away. “No.”

  She stood, and grabbed her tablet. She glared at him. “I’m not your amusement when you’re bored.”

  She stalked out of the room, an effect ruined by the sweet swaying of her well-rounded backside.

  JD sat back on the couch and relaxed, stretching his arms over his head and clasping them. A good afternoon’s work. He was softening her up. She’d be all prickly and defensive the rest of the day, so he’d use his patented method and let her stew for a while. She’d expect him to pounce on her after dinner, but he’d be a pure-hearted knight, willing to do his lady’s bidding without thought of recompense.

  Right. What a bastard he was. Paula had him pegged, almost. He was amusing himself by seducing her, but he had a motive other than scoring. He would punish her for daring to abduct him, for making him even less of a man than he already was.

  Maybe he’d go the whole hog, and have her in his bed, and then tell her why. Or maybe he’d stop at bringing her to a high pitch of yearning, and leave her unfulfilled. He could tell she wasn’t an innocent virgin. She knew her own desire. That would make his plan all the sweeter.

  His body was eager. In fact, he was damned uncomfortable at the moment. Kissing her had aroused him but good. He enjoyed kissing and touching Paula, seeing her skin flush with desire and her eyes go wide as a doe’s. Maybe too much.

  ***

  Paula swiftly retreated to her room, although JD had made no effort to stop her or to chase after her. Once inside, she locked the door and threw herself on the bed, face down. She lay on the covers and contemplated JD’s surprising change of behavior.

  It had started with that angry kiss in the hospital. He’d crossed the line for some reason. The moment he’d touched her, she’d melted. Perhaps that was the first moment JD had ever thought about her as a female. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about him as a male. When he’d come home so grievously injured, she’d wanted to fling herself onto his hospital bed and kiss him until he forgot he was in pain, forgot he couldn’t walk, forgot everything but that moment. The mad impulse didn’t last, chiefly because JD took to being injured with such a bad grace. He was bitter and vocal with it. His nastiness attempted to drive everyone away. His vile tongue left Tess in tears day after day, although he didn’t try that with Anita, his mother.

  What had changed? JD had walked again, despite what the doctors had predicted. He’d only been doing it for the past five months, and he hadn’t practiced with his prosthesis much. He was aw
kward and unsure with what he sarcastically referred to as his fake foot.

  She had a guilty thought. She had forgotten his crutches. They were still back in her Mercedes. How would he get around without them tonight once he took his prosthesis off for bed? How could he bathe? He called it a “fake foot,” but the doctors had made the classic cut below the knee. The prosthesis covered to above his knee. She’d talked to them about what a replacement limb could do. It was remarkable how much range of motion was possible. That presented another problem she hadn’t thought about when she concocted this grand scheme to save the ranch from being sold. The leg was motorized on battery power to enable it to make the fine adjustments a real leg could. JD needed a charger to keep it working. She had no idea how recently he’d charged it. Considering he routinely spent his whole day lying in bed, maybe he hadn’t charged it at all before going to see Robert Selkirk.

  She looked up artificial limbs on the net. Battery power usually lasted only five days at most. Uh-oh. JD would need crutches for night time and then day, because his leg would freeze up. Otherwise, he’d limp like a peg legged pirate from an old movie. That would do wonders for his sour attitude.

  She must find crutches for JD. Miss Betty might have some in a storage closet. Surely over the years three children must have racked up a few instances of needing them. Or possibly Hoot could check with the manager of the ranch hands and see if there happened to be a spare pair where the hands bunked.

  She hadn’t thought through all the ramifications of her brilliant idea to abduct JD and get him to the ranch. She’d been thinking mostly that time was of the essence. Her big idea had been that if she got him there before Baron could do anything drastic, maybe she could keep the Selkirk family from imploding. She hadn’t reckoned on the crazy Wyoming wind that could bring in a dramatic weather change in mere minutes. Worse, she hadn’t given any serious thought to JD’s comfort or his need for help with maneuverability.

  Playing God was hard on the conscience. She wasn’t sure why she’d done it, not really. Tess was a little sister to her, but Paula didn’t like Robert Selkirk’s sexist attitude very much, and Anita mostly acted like a pale shadow around him. As for Baron, he seemed to have forgiven her for helping Addie escape six months ago. He’d never said anything much about what Paula had done. He still talked to Tess, too, who had been hoist in the plot along with her.

  What was she going to do about JD? According to Miss Betty, a storm like this could strand them here for up to a week, or even more. The Selkirks had the manpower available to plow the landing strip, so once the snow let up and the storm had passed beyond Cheyenne, Paula could fly out and take JD back to the hospital if he insisted. Meanwhile, she couldn’t just order him a new battery charger and expect FedEx to deliver in this storm.

  They had at least a day or so of isolation here to get on each other’s nerves. JD seemed to be making a direct push to seduce her. She’d say yes in an instant if she thought he cared a rip for her. He didn’t. He disliked her. He might even be doing this to pay her back.

  Kissing her, touching her. He’d caressed her breasts again. They were so sensitive. His hand had been gentle yet knowing. She’d ached to have him touch her even more. Another few seconds and she would have undone her bra herself.

  She moved her legs restlessly on the bed, clenching her roiled insides. She didn’t trust JD’s turnaround. She’d had meaningless sex before. She loved JD. She couldn’t have meaningless sex with him. She’d thought that any intimate contact with him would be enough. Now she realized her feelings made her dangerously vulnerable. JD could destroy her.

  Chapter 9

  The wind continued to howl and the snow kept piling up as the afternoon wound down. “A foot so far,” Baron announced after poking a yardstick into the white accumulation from the steps of the front porch. The screened porch wasn’t all weather, so snow had drifted in. Paula had donned her jacket and followed him out just to get some air. She’d hung out in her room most of the afternoon and was restless.

  “I can’t even see the sky,” she shouted against the wind. “How long will this keep up?”

  “No way of telling by looking. Maybe Hoot could tell, but not me. With all the shifts in weather due to climate change, we could be looking at a lot more snow.”

  “Isn’t that unusual for Wyoming? Cheyenne almost never gets snow. I thought this was a desert?” They stamped their feet and went back inside.

  Baron said, “Here in the southwest part of the state, we do see some. Never like this when I was a kid, though.”

  “You think it’s global warming?”

  “People are seeing weird extreme weather all over the U.S. these days. Why should Wyoming be exempt?”

  “Will this mean the cattle operation won’t be viable in the future?”

  “Damned if I know. Or care,” he replied.

  She laughed a little. “You’re really fed up, aren’t you?”

  “I am. If my buyer showed up right this minute, I’d still try to sell to him. JD isn’t acting like he’s interested in taking over.”

  She said, knowing it was a delicate subject, “I, uh, I understand from Miss Betty that maybe you and Addie have a time deal about this place?”

  “Not many secrets around here,” he grimaced. “You know what an ass I was six months ago. I’m very lucky Addie has forgiven me.”

  “It was love.”

  He cast her a dark look. “No, it was frustration. My need to be in charge. Plus a few other less savory motives having to do with sex.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “To hear Addie tell it, you were always the perfect gentleman.”

  Baron said, tolerantly, “Addie has chosen to erase the worst moments from her memory. Me, I make it a point to remember them every day. I never want to make those mistakes again. I want to be a better man for her.”

  Impressive. Not only that he wanted it, but he was willing to say it out loud to her. “Couldn’t you do that without leaving the ranch?”

  He frowned. “Only if someone else is in charge. I was running the place as a fill-in, on an emergency basis. JD’s walking now, something we didn’t expect at the beginning. He could take over.”

  “Would the men follow his orders? I mean, wasn’t he always the kid brother, not the serious type?”

  He shrugged. “He’s a man now. Being in war made him grow up. The men will respect him for his service. He can build on that.”

  ***

  After grabbing some pie, JD watched a movie, then went up to his room. A pair of crutches had materialized by the bed. Not his, but they’d do. He adjusted them. Must have been his or Baron’s during one of their frequent ankle twists. Running all over the hills produced plenty of minor injuries, but he’d loved living here as a kid.

  Could he ever live here again? How could he answer that question when he had no idea what he could do with the rest of his life? He couldn’t stay in the hospital forever. Despite his family’s influence, eventually, his bed would be needed for a more recently wounded veteran. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. The wound had healed and he could still use his hand pretty good. His eye was cloudy, but he could see. His left leg would never win a beauty contest, but it was fine after having been in severe danger initially. He’d had a bad infection in it for a while and the docs had wanted to cut it off, too. He’d refused.

  Why was he going over his hurts? Wasn’t this how he spent nearly every hour at the hospital? Thinking about what he’d lost? Better than thinking about that little girl with the dark eyes, clinging to her mother’s skirt. Trusting.

  He rubbed his face. Time to do something to divert himself. Go rile Miss Betty. Talk to Baron about the future of the ranch. Anything would do. He’d like to know how Baron figured the right sale price for his mysterious buyer. Baron was too vague about their vast holdings. Crazy not to know exactly how many head of cattle they had. Dad would know precisely.

  Dad wasn’t coming back. They were lucky he hadn’t died from th
at heart attack. Dad loved the cattle. JD, not so much. He preferred to let Hoot manage that part of the ranch. Baron kept saying Hoot was too old. He was semi-retired, helping out. Too bad Baron couldn’t find a manager for the place. Maybe he hadn’t offered the right incentive? Baron didn’t seem to have a head for the business. He’d never had to size up a new recruit and decide how to utilize him without compromising the unit’s effectiveness, and at the same time giving the guy a chance to prove himself and to grow into the job. If JD were in charge here, he’d hire ex-military. They were responsible and trustworthy.

  Too many were like him, though, haunted by memories. He’d been lucky. He didn’t have a ton of nightmares. He’d woken many times hearing other vets yelling. It happened every night. The guys back from deployment were in the prison of memory. He was okay, though. Didn’t need the psychiatric help the docs kept trying to make him accept. Some of the counseling was mandatory. He couldn’t escape the visits to his bedside, but he didn’t have to cooperate and he never had. The psychologist would ask questions and he wouldn’t answer. Finally, the shrink would give up.

  What was the point? They couldn’t make him forget that little girl, with her dark eyes. So trusting in the goodness of mankind. So wrong.

  Constant noise from the medical staff all day. Frequent outbursts from the crazed inmates all night. Memories he reviewed hourly. Why was he so eager to stay in the hospital?

  He knew. He didn’t kid himself, not really. He stayed because he didn’t want to accept the challenge of daily living again. Why bother? Everything ended in misery and death.

  Chapter 10

  JD’s cell phone rang the next morning just as he arrived in the kitchen. His mother. “Hi, Mom.”

  Her tearful words poured out. “I went to see you and you weren’t in your bed. You’re always in your bed at this time of day. Where are you?” she wailed.