The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  If he didn’t know better, he might even make the mistake of thinking he was enjoying himself on this case.

  “Colt! Hey, Colt!”

  The high-pitched shout dragged him from his thoughts, and he turned to find Nicky peeking through the rails of the fence, his big brown eyes bright with eagerness.

  A grin split Colt’s face at the sight of the little boy decked out in that Wild West getup again.

  “Well, howdy. If it isn’t my old amigo, Nicky the Kid.”

  Maggie’s son beamed and stuck out his thin chest. “I’m all ready to ride. Got my chaps on and everything.”

  “I can see that. You look like a regular bronc buster.”

  “Mom tried to get me to just wear jeans but I told her I had to wear my chaps or I’d get saddle sore, isn’t that right?” the little boy said.

  “Smart move.” Colt bit down on his smile and turned his attention to Maggie, standing a few paces behind her son. She wore tan jeans and a pale pink T-shirt that made her skin look pearly, almost translucent. Her long hair, loose and unrestrained, swayed like wheat dancing in the wind when she walked forward.

  Despite his best intentions, his mouth started to water.

  Oblivious to his sudden sharp hunger, she propped her elbows on the top rail of the fence. “What’s a mom supposed to say to that kind of argument? I wouldn’t want him to get saddle sore, after all.”

  Her voice was as cool as ice cream in July. Damn. She’d put up those walls between them again. He’d been so close to gaining her trust. This morning he had sensed she was desperate for someone to share her concerns with, that she wanted to tell him what had her running scared. It would make his job so much simpler if she would confide in him. For every inch of progress he made, though, she forced him back another two.

  At least the kid was on his side. “Well, partner,” he turned to the little boy, “you ready to saddle up?”

  Nicky nodded and scrambled through the fence. “You betcha.” He skidded to a stop near Scout’s forelegs and, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, took the big gelding’s measure.

  Up close the horse must have looked a whole lot bigger than he had from the fence, because Nicky stared at him, gnawing his bottom lip and frowning.

  “Uh, Colt...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think I can climb up there.”

  “I’ll help you.” He lifted Nick and swung him onto the saddle. The boy looked incongruously small atop the big horse, but he sat in the saddle like he’d been born to it. He reached forward and patted Scout’s neck. “Hi there, Scout. My name’s Nicholas.”

  “Okay now, I’m comin’ up Hang on.” Colt grabbed the horn and swung up behind him. The boy settled into his arms and gave a little squeal of excitement when Colt spurred Scout forward

  “Mom!” he yelled to Maggie, watching from the fence. “Look, Mom! I’m ridin’ a horse!”

  “I can see that,” she called back. “Hang on.”

  They were the only ones using the practice race track, and Nick chattered excitedly as Scout moved along at a steady walk. Colt smiled at one of the boy’s funny little observations and was astonished at the pleasure he found in his excitement.

  He’d never thought about having a child before. Not that he was consciously opposed to the idea; he’d just never had the opportunity. Cynthia hadn’t exactly been the maternal type, and he’d never had strong feelings either way.

  Besides, during their two-year marriage he’d been so completely focused on the job he’d never given the idea of bringing children into the world a second thought.

  With the soft weight of Maggie’s son in his arms pressing against his chest, though, he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have a kid of his own, to be teaching his own boy how to ride.

  His father had taken him up on a horse just like this before he could walk. It was one of his earliest memories of Jack McKendrick: his father’s rough, scarred hands on the reins, his gravelly voice in his ear, telling him how to hold the reins and guide with his knees.

  The ache in his throat took him completely by surprise. Jack had been gone nearly fourteen years, after all, since Colt was twenty-two. He thought he’d long ago become accustomed to the realization that he’d never be able to make things right with his father.

  “Hi, Mom!” Nicky suddenly yelled. While he was busy woolgathering, Scout had carried them back around the track to where Maggie stood watching. She waved and smiled, and the breeze caught strands of her hair, twisting them around her face.

  Lord, she was beautiful. The unique thing about Maggie Rawlings was that she seemed completely oblivious to her appeal. There was a shy kind of innocence about her.

  Unless he was a hell of a lot better at concealing it than he thought, she had no idea of the heated little darts of desire that sizzled beneath his skin that would have been obvious to another woman.

  He thought again about his vow to contain his growing attraction. He was fairly sure he could handle the physical end of things. It was the emotional tug he felt toward both Maggie and Nick that scared the hell out of him.

  “Can we go around again?” Nicky asked.

  Colt looked at Maggie for permission. She shrugged. “It’s up to you. It’s your horse.”

  “I hate to disappoint a customer. Hang on.” He spurred Scout to a trot and was rewarded with a shriek of glee from the boy.

  The warm summer sun warmed her back as Maggie leaned on the fence watching Colt and her son. Nicky was absolutely eating this up. Already, he was imitating everything the cowboy did, from his slow—and she had to admit, very sexy—drawl, to the the way he cocked his dark head when he grinned.

  She wasn’t exactly sure how that made her feel. Amused, certainly. And maybe a little bereft, too, as if Nicky was pulling away from her.

  She did know it shouldn’t move her so much to see the big, rough cowboy being so gentle with her son. Colt sat with one hand around Nicholas’s belly to hold him in place and the other on the reins. As they came around the track again, she could see him dipping his dark head as he talked to Nicky. A few moments later he handed him the reins to let him control the horse for the rest of the ride.

  Soon they reined in the horse in front of her again.

  “Did you see me, Mom?” Nicky nearly bubbled over with excitement. “I rode Scout, and Colt didn’t even help me. Well—” honesty compelled him to admit “—not very much.”

  “I watched you. You make a good wrangler.”

  “That’s what Colt says. He says maybe I can ride Scout again tomorrow. Can I, Mom?”

  “We’ll see.”

  He was still chattering when Colt hefted him down from the saddle and set him on the ground.

  Colt glanced up at the sun, now high overhead. “Looks like it’s about lunchtime. How would you two like to go somewhere for lunch?”

  The invitation took her completely by surprise. “I don’t—”

  “Please, Mom!” Nicky asked, obviously loath to leave his new hero’s side.

  Refusing would sound churlish, especially after he had been kind enough to take them riding, but she knew he couldn’t have much money or he wouldn’t be desperate enough to ride on the circuit.

  And heaven knew she didn’t have much, not even to go Dutch for fast food.

  “Why don’t I make us some sandwiches?” she offered, knowing even as she said it that she would regret it later. “We could take them over to the park across the way and have a picnic.”

  “Sounds great,” he replied. “Nick, why don’t you help me take care of Scout, here, and then the two of us can see if we can rustle up something to drink.”

  Yes, she was definitely going to regret this, she thought as she watched Nicky’s eyes light up with excitement. How was she supposed to keep distance between them when her son obviously adored the man?

  Chapter 5

  Would two sandwiches be enough for Colt? Knife in hand, Maggie studied the bread laid out in front of her, then
pulled two more slices out of the bag. Better safe than sorry. And she hoped he liked turkey, since that was the only lunch meat she had.

  While she spread mustard on the bread and added cheese slices and lettuce, she hummed a song she’d heard on the radio, driving to Montana the day before.

  It felt nice to be making a meal for a man again. The thought flitted through her mind and she winced. Good grief, don’t let anybody from the National Organization for Women hear her. Or the American Medical Association, for that matter. She could almost hear the chorus. Surely you didn’t spend four years in medical school and another four in residency to be content shoving cheese slices on some he-man cowboy’s turkey sandwich?

  She didn’t mind, she had to admit. She always used to fix Billy Joe’s meals when they were on the road, until he married Peg, anyway, when she was ten, and then she and her new stepmother had shared kitchen duty. No one could ever call her a gourmet cook, by any wild stretch of the imagination, but she had always enjoyed the process of putting a meal together, of preparing something nourishing and filling for her father.

  She smiled at the comfort the memory gave her. No matter what she fixed, he would tell her “thank you kindly” in that soft drawl of his and pull her into his thick arms for a hug. He would smell like livestock and Old Spice aftershave, and she would clutch that feeling close to her through all the times she lived away from him.

  Michael, of course, never wanted her to soil her hands in the kitchen. Never mind that she spent most of every day up to her elbows in blood in the clinic. It wasn’t at all the same, he would argue. “That’s why we have domestic help,” he used to tell her with that damned superior smile of his.

  She used to sneak into the kitchen and help Rosie cook things for the next day whenever he had to work late—when—ever he stayed late to play around with his secretaries, she amended.

  A hollow knock sounded on the aluminum door. Swallowing her sudden, uncomfortable bitterness, she opened the door to find Colt with one boot resting on the step and the other on the ground.

  She was so busy trying to tell her pulse to settle down at the sight of that wide grin and those blue eyes that it took her several seconds to realize he was alone. Without Nicky. She scanned the area but could see no sign of her son. Panic suddenly spurted through her like blood from a ruptured artery. “Where is he? Where’s Nicky?”

  “Relax, he’s fine,” Colt assured her. “We ran into the girl who had him last week when you fixed my shoulder—”

  “Cheyenne?”

  “Right. Cheyenne. She was on her way to the little general store at the campground office and took Nicky with her to pick out some pop for our lunch.”

  Maggie concentrated until her breathing had slowed back to its normal rhythm. She hated this. Absolutely hated it. She used to be so solid, so centered, but now she felt as if she were going crazy, as if everything that had been sane and normal in her life had been forever destroyed.

  “Anyway,” Colt went on, “they should be here in a few minutes, after he raids the candy counter.”

  She frowned, although she was relieved to be feeling a normal motherly anxiety instead of raw panic, for a change. “I thought you said he was buying pop.”

  “I gave him a little extra for a candy bar.”

  “He’ll spoil his appetite.”

  “Well now, I warned him you’d say exactly that. I told him we’d both be in trouble if he didn’t save it until after lunch.”

  The last of her panic ebbed and she even summoned a smile. “Smart man. Why don’t you come in while I finish the sandwiches?”

  She held the door open for him, then sucked in a sharp breath when he squeezed past in the small doorway and his forearm brushed the curve of her breasts.

  He didn’t seem to notice, just ducked his head to enter the trailer. Even inside, he was too tall to stand completely upright so he tucked his chin to avoid bumping his head.

  Immediately the little eight-foot-by-fourteen-foot trailer seemed to shrink to half that, every inch of it filled with Colt’s broad shoulders and long, rangy legs.

  Just as this morning, awareness flooded through her. Flustered and dismayed by the reaction she couldn’t seem to control around him, she quickly returned to the counter to finish the sandwiches.

  “Can I help you with lunch?” he asked.

  “I’m almost finished. It’s not much, I’m afraid. Just plain old turkey sandwiches.”

  “Anything’s fine. I’m gettin’ pretty sick of chili out of a can.”

  “Why don’t you sit down so you don’t have to put a crick in your neck standing like that?”

  “Thanks.” He settled onto one of the vinyl-padded benches on either side of the table and stretched those long legs out.

  She caught herself staring and quickly jerked her attention back to putting the sandwiches in plastic bags. “Thank you again for taking Nicky riding today. You’ve really made his month.”

  “I told you before, he’s a great kid.”

  “You’re very good with children.”

  “Never had much to do with them before, if you want the truth.”

  “You don’t have any of your own?” She wondered why it had never occurred to her before. He was such a natural that she could easily imagine him with a whole houseful of children. For some reason the idea didn’t sit well with her.

  He shook his head. “I was married once but we never had kids. Made it that much easier when the marriage fell apart, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about. It was a mistake from the beginning. Neither one of us could be what the other one needed.”

  “Your wife didn’t like ranch life?”

  The open friendliness in his face faded and he focused on the floor. “No,” he said shortly.

  Now why did she have the feeling he was hiding something from her? Before she could decide whether to pursue it, he turned the tables on her.

  “What about you?” he asked. “You said the other day that your husband died recently. Was it an accident?”

  Only if you call a bullet hole to the head at close range an accident. “No,” she said, as shortly as Colt had just a moment before. “He was murdered.”

  She hadn’t meant to tell him that, but somehow the words came tumbling out before she could gather them up and store them safely away. If she expected him to be shocked, though, she was doomed to disappointment. Other than a tightening around his mouth, Colt seemed remarkably unmoved by what she considered a fairly dramatic revelation.

  Maybe he lived in a world much more violent than hers. Again she wondered about his background, about the pieces to the puzzle that didn’t quite fit.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “That must have been traumatic for both you and Nicky.”

  She concentrated on placing the sandwiches in the basket for their picnic. “I don’t really think he understands the implications, other than that his father is gone. Nicky and Michael weren’t very close. He was a—a distant sort of father. Still, Nicky tried so hard to please him.”

  We both did, she added to herself. That was what she was most ashamed of, that she had completely submerged herself in an effort to become the sort of wife Michael had wanted. Except for her work at the clinic, anyway. He had wanted her to quit, but she had steadfastly refused.

  Becoming a doctor had been her dream, something she couldn’t explain to anyone. It was a seed that had been planted inside her through those summers with her father, when she would see cowboys be carried out of the arena on stretchers only to return to competition the next night. She used to watch with complete fascination as the paramedics worked their healing magic.

  It was ironic, really, that the turmoil of the last month should bring her full circle back here, to the rodeo circuit where her dreams began.

  “Can I ask why you’re workin’ rodeos?” he asked, as if he could read the wanderings of her mind.

  “What do you mean?”<
br />
  “Don’t take this wrong, but it seems an odd career choice for a woman with a kid. I don’t imagine a doctor as skilled as you would have too hard a time finding work somewhere you wouldn’t have to travel so much.”

  She fumbled for an answer for several seconds, and he must have seen her turmoil because he held a hand up in apology. “Sorry I asked. It’s none of my business. Maybe you like the traveling.”

  She used to love it with her father, but now all she wanted was somewhere safe and warm to settle down and raise her son. She couldn’t possibly explain that to Colt without going into the details of Michael’s death, details she wasn’t prepared to share.

  “I’m just about done here,” she said instead, to change the subject. She bagged the last of the sandwiches, then reached into the storage area above the stove where she had placed a few picnic supplies purchased the last time she went shopping. Most of the trailer’s compartments were within easy reach, but this was a deep cupboard above her head. She stood on tiptoe and stretched as high as she could, but the paper plates she sought were just out of range of her fingers.

  “What did you need?”

  She jerked her head around to find Colt standing only inches away. “How do you do that?” she muttered, disgruntled.

  “What?”

  “Sneak up on me so easily.”

  He chuckled and she watched in fascination as the sea of wintergreen cotton covering his chest rippled. “Just a gift, I guess. What did you need up here?”

  She lifted her gaze to his face. “Paper plates,” she said through a suddenly dry throat. “They’re at the back of the cupboard.”

  To her disgust, he barely had to lift his arms above his head to reach into the compartment. He handed the plates to her with another grin. Up close like this, she could see that the little scar at the corner of his mouth wasn’t perfectly curved, it zigzagged ever so slightly.

  Intrigued, she stared at it, wondering what his lips would taste like, if they would be strong and sure on hers, if his bushy dark mustache would tickle her skin.