The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “The kid’s a little character,” Joe said after a few moments of silence. “Reminds me a little of Charlie Junior.”

  Colt sent another quick look at his friend. Charlie Junior was Joe’s nephew, the child of Joe’s brother and the girl Colt had always figured would marry Joe. “How is Annie these days?”

  Joe gazed at the horses that finally came loping over for dinner and were now milling around the feed trough. “You ought to go see for yourself. Maybe she’d listen to you about kicking him out.”

  “When did she ever listen to anybody?”

  “True enough.”

  Annie had been the third party in most of their mischief as kids. She lived on the nearest ranch to the Broken Spur and the three of them were always tumbling into one scrape or another when they were kids. Whatever trouble they got into, he had usually been the brains behind it, Joe the muscle, and Annie the guts. That’s why neither of them could figure out why she continued to put up with a husband who had spent the last dozen years grinding her into dirt.

  Colt frowned. “Things still bad?”

  “I talk to her until I’m blue in the face but she won’t leave him. It’s like he’s sucked all the life out of her. Like father, like son, right?” Joe stared at the horses for a minute longer, then shoved away from the fence and yanked on his gloves. “Guess I’d better get my work done if I want to have some of that chicken your friend is cooking in there while it’s still hot.”

  He walked away, leaving Colt watching over him and wondering about the choices people make and the walls they build around themselves to keep out people who want to help them.

  She wasn’t going to be able to sleep anytime soon.

  Maggie would have punched at her pillow in frustration a few times if she wasn’t afraid of waking Nicky, sleeping soundly in the other bed in the Broken Spur’s guest room. As it was, the bedsprings in the old iron bed creaked every time she rolled over, so for the last half hour she had tried to remain as still as possible.

  Instead of finding a comfortable spot, she gazed out the window at the moonlight filtering through the branches of a big catalpa tree and listened to the tree’s long, dark seed pods rattle against each other in the breeze like bony fingers.

  Her first chance at a real bed in weeks and here she was tossing and turning just as if she were on that awful mattress in the trailer. It was the novelty of being in a strange bed, she tried to tell herself. Her restlessness had nothing to do with Colt and the sparkly heat he ignited in her with simply a look.

  An owl hooted somewhere outside, and its cry was answered by another owl farther away. She listened to their conversation for several moments while she tried to force her body to relax, and then finally, exasperated, she slipped from the bed and pulled on a pair of shorts to wear under the long T-shirt she had been trying to sleep in.

  She probably shouldn’t be wandering around a strange house, especially when she was a guest here. It seemed rude, somehow. Presumptuous. But she would just walk outside for a moment to listen to the night, she promised herself. She was almost positive her host wouldn’t mind.

  She walked out into the dark hallway, closing the door softly behind her, and she thought about her host, Joe Redhawk, and the strange, subtle undercurrents between him and Colt, undercurrents she couldn’t even begin to figure out.

  The two men seemed friendly enough, but many of their words to each other seemed to have double meanings, hidden messages. It was almost as if Redhawk was baiting Colt. Taunting him.

  It was a puzzle, but obviously one neither man seemed inclined to explain to her.

  She quietly made her way down the stairs and through the living room. Despite its obvious masculinity—heavy, oversize furniture, bold colors and the complete lack of anything resembling the kind of knickknacks women tended to surround themselves with—the whole house was comfortable, inviting.

  But not as inviting as the cool breeze and that comfortable rocker she knew waited outside on the porch. She walked to the door, then drew back as she realized someone else had had the same idea. A lean figure sprawled casually on the wide porch stairs.

  Colt.

  For an instant she wondered if she perhaps had expected to find him here, on some subconscious level. Before she could analyze it further, she caught the expression on his profile as he gazed out at the ranch, and her heart bumped uncomfortably in her chest.

  There was longing here, a bittersweet yearning, like he was looking at something he wanted and could never have.

  A disturbing suspicion took root just as he sensed her presence and turned. Whatever she thought she might have seen in his eyes faded quickly, replaced only by concern.

  “Somethin’ wrong, Doc?”

  “No,” she said softly through the screen. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “Join the club. You’re welcome to come out here and sit with me if you want. I’m just lookin’ for Cassiopeia. You can point her out to me.”

  “I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Too late,” she thought she heard him mutter, but she must have been mistaken because he gestured to the steps. “Come on out. There’s plenty of room.”

  She opened the screen door and walked outside. The wide wooden planks of the porch felt cool and smooth beneath her bare feet, and the night smelled incongruously of sagebrush and roses. The sage she could understand, since the rolling hills around the ranch wore a thick coat of it, but the roses threw her off until she noticed a climbing bush next to the steps, heavy with lush blossoms.

  She settled onto the steps next to him, drawing one knee up and clasping her hands around it. He sat with his elbows propped on the step behind him and his long legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles.

  They sat in silence for several moments, content to let the night breeze eddy around them.

  He was the first to break the fragile peace. “So what do you think of the Broken Spur?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Prettiest spot in the whole region. A couple filmmakers came a few years back and wanted to make a movie here but I...uh, Joe wouldn’t let ’em. Thought it would spoil the place.”

  She hesitated, not wanting to intrude in things that weren’t any of her business, but the yearning she had seen in his gaze earlier compelled her to push the matter.

  It was the doctor in her, she supposed, the healer who couldn’t rest unless she had tried to fix everyone she came in contact with. “Colt, is the Broken Spur your ranch?”

  He stiffened, losing his relaxed pose. “What?”

  “You told me you used to own a ranch. Was that ranch the Broken Spur?”

  He turned away, looking back out into the darkness “Now why would you think that?”

  “It would explain a lot of things. Your familiarity with the place, how you seemed to know where everything was earlier when you showed us to our rooms. The strange looks I’d have to be crazy not to notice between you and your friend.”

  She paused, hugging her knees tighter against her chest, then added gently, “It also might explain that longing I see in your eyes whenever you look at the mountains. Like this is home.”

  A muscle in his jaw worked. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  “It’s just a guess. I’m right, though, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “I grew up here.”

  She tried to find bitterness in his voice, but couldn’t. He spoke as casually as if he were talking about the weather or a sporting event he’d watched on television.

  “What was it like?” she asked.

  Again he paused, and she thought for a moment he was going to ignore the question, then he grinned suddenly, his teeth flashing white in the dark. “It was a hell of a place to be a kid. You couldn’t ask for better. Joe’s dad worked for mine, and his family lived in the foreman’s quarters. He and I and little Annie Calhoun over at the Double C did everything together. Fishing or swimming every day in the summer, riding horse
s all over the mountains, going on roundups in the fall.”

  She sighed wistfully. “It sounds wonderful. That’s the kind of life I want to give Nicky—the freedom to explore his world without fear.” Would the day ever come when she could let him, or would she always be hovering over him, afraid to let him stray far out of her sight?

  Some of her frustration must have shown in her expression, because Colt reached a hand toward hers and rubbed a thumb over her knuckles. “You’ll get through this, Doc. I promise.”

  Instead of taking comfort from the gesture, her pulse sped up a notch at the continued contact, at the heat suddenly kindling in his gaze. For one crazy instant she completely forgot about the fear that had become as much a part of her as her own skin.

  The kiss they had shared in her trailer sizzled through her memory, that gentle, soft kiss that left her aching for more. She had a sudden, wild urge to flip her hand over and grasp his rough fingers tightly, to tug him toward her, to press her lips against that hard, sensuous mouth....

  He cleared his throat, and she jerked her gaze from his mouth to find him staring at her, heat shimmering from his dazzling blue eyes. Quickly she looked away. What was she doing? This wasn’t what she had come out here for tonight.

  Driven only by the need to regain her equilibrium, she struck on the one topic she knew would erase that sudden want from his gaze. “So how did your friend Joe come to own the ranch?”

  As she expected, he stiffened and pulled his hand away. Instead of relief, she felt strangely bereft as that mouth tightened and he looked out at the night with a face devoid of expression. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  She studied the sharp planes and angles of his face created by the moonlight, regretting her question. If he didn’t want to talk about the ranch, it wasn’t her place to push him. He obviously wasn’t comfortable with the subject, and, she reminded herself, it was really none of her business.

  Still, she couldn’t completely suppress the tide of sympathy that washed over her, almost—but not quite—dousing the fierce attraction she didn’t want to feel for this man. She forced herself to focus on that compassion, rather than the hard-edged desire.

  It must have been terrible for him, leaving the Broken Spur. To have loved and lost such a place would have been heartbreaking. “You didn’t have brothers and sisters, then?”

  He shook his head. “My folks were older when they met. Dad was a confirmed bachelor until he met my mother on a stock-buying trip. She was waitressing at a truck stop along the way and it was love at first sight. I guess you could call me an afterthought.”

  “Where are your parents now?”

  “My mother died when I was just a kid, five or six. She had breast cancer.”

  Again, that sympathy crested over her for the little boy he had been, losing his mother when he was just Nicky’s age. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It must have been devastating for you.”

  “I was too young to know much of what was going on. Just that she was too sick to play for a long time and then she wasn’t here anymore and Dad stopped smiling for a long time.” He shrugged. “Joe’s family moved in not long after that and Mary, his mom, took me under her wing. I guess you could say she sort of adopted me.”

  “And your father?”

  He was silent for a long time, much longer than was comfortable. “He was killed when I was just out of college,” he finally said. “He died of a massive heart attack while trying to break up a bar fight at a honky-tonk between here and Ennis. The drunk cowboy who started the fight just happened to be his only son.”

  “Oh Colt. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged again. “It was a long time ago. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Of course it does. It matters to you. You’re still hurting, I can tell. You still blame yourself.”

  He stood abruptly, thrusting a tight fist against the post of the porch. “Hell, yes, I blame myself. All he wanted was for me to settle down on the ranch, but I had my head full of all kinds of stupid dreams. Saving the world. Winning a National Rodeo Finals belt buckle to show him I could be as good a cowboy as he was. Anything but staying on the Broken Spur.”

  “Colt—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “If I hadn’t been drinking, trying to act like such a damn hotshot, he wouldn’t have had to come lookin’ for me. He would have been safe at home, watching TV or reading one of those Westerns he loved so much. Hell, he’d probably still be here today, herding cattle and riding the rest of us into the ground.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t know.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Colt, take it from a physician, heart disease isn’t something that develops overnight. If it hadn’t happened then, it probably would have happened later that night when he was home in bed.”

  “This is something I’ve had fourteen years to deal with. I was a cocky, restless, immature idiot and my father died as a result of it.”

  She followed his gaze to her hand over his, to the contrast of her paler skin against his tanned, weathered skin. His voice deepened, vibrating in the night. “But I do appreciate you trying to make me feel better, Doc. You’re a very compassionate woman. I admire that.”

  Abruptly the mood shifted. The night sounds seemed to take on a seductive music of their own, and she became intensely aware of the heat of his skin underneath her hand, of the hard strength of his muscles. His gaze met hers and her stomach did a long, slow dive to her toes at the desire flaring in his blue eyes.

  She pulled her hand back and folded it carefully with the other one. “Colt—” she began, but whatever she intended to say was snatched completely out of her mind when he reached for her.

  Chapter 10

  Even as his mouth descended to touch hers, he cursed himself for his weakness. He knew damn well he shouldn’t be doing this, that he was compromising the whole investigation. If Beckstead ever discovered he had more than a professional interest in the case—and in the lovely widow who could be their key witness against DeMarranville—he would yank him so fast his head would spin.

  He just wanted a kiss, he told himself. One tiny kiss, just one more chance to taste that sweetness. Surely one kiss couldn’t blow the whole case, could it?

  He didn’t give himself a chance to argue. His mouth met hers like a hawk finding its nest and he felt the impact of that single soft connection clear to his toes. She tasted every bit as sweet as he remembered from that day in her trailer—like ripe peaches, bursting with flavor.

  Her eyelids fluttered shut at the first touch of his mouth, but he forced his to stay open. He wanted to watch the way her thick lashes fanned her cheeks and the way her skin took on a color like the pale pink of the sky when the sun first sneaked above the mountains.

  His fingers caught and tangled in that sleek cascade of hair. The contrast of silk against the roughness of his skin was so sensual, so unbelievably erotic, it ignited fireworks of need in him.

  What was it about this woman that affected him so powerfully, that made him feel as if he were on the brink of some mysterious, wonderful discovery?

  She had a fragile, innocent kind of beauty, sure. But his attraction to her went far deeper than that.

  She was kind, he realized with a jolt. A genuinely goodhearted person. Even when she was in the midst of what was undoubtedly the most terrifying time of her life, she had been moved almost to tears when he told her of his father’s death. Hell, he had practically watched her heart smash into tiny little pieces because she thought he had lost the Broken Spur.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had come in contact with that kind of goodness. For too many years his life had teemed with hatred and violence, and Maggie’s goodness was like a soft, healing rain after years of drought.

  He ruthlessly forced the thought away. It wasn’t like that. Just as she had said the other night back in Butte, they had some powerful chemistry bubbling between them. That was absolutely all there was to it.

  There
was no room in his life for goodness, for a soft, vulnerable woman like Maggie. He had to be hard, completely focused, or he would never be able to atone to his father for what he’d done.

  He knew he should have stopped the kiss right then, but the feel of her mouth under his was too enticing, too welcoming, and he was dying of thirst. He couldn’t resist teasing his tongue ever so gently at the corner of her lips. She drew in a sharp, ragged breath at the soft contact but she didn’t pull away. Instead, her lips parted ever so slightly, just wide enough to allow him to slip inside.

  With a rough growl, he deepened the kiss. Just a minute longer, he promised himself. One more moment of this forbidden bliss and then he would let her go, would try to block from his mind and his heart this desire pulsing through him.

  Her tongue met his shyly, hesitantly, then with growing enthusiasm while her hands trembled between them as if she wasn’t quite sure where to put them. Finally they slid up his chest to encircle his neck, holding him even closer.

  The movement flattened her breasts against him. The tantalizing, seductive sensation, combined with the hot tangling of their mouths, nearly sent him over the edge.

  While her fingers raveled in his hair, he dipped his hands under the hem of her T-shirt, to the silky skin above her hips, wishing his hands weren’t so rough against her softness. While her tongue played against his, he slid his thumbs to the undersides of her breasts.

  Just before he would have touched her, caressed her, he thundered to his senses. He was crazy—absolutely nuts—to torture himself like this, to start something he knew he couldn’t finish without jeopardizing all the slow, painful progress he had fought for on his case.

  With vast regret pounding through him, he straightened, wrenching his mouth away. Maggie froze for several beats, her fingers still tangled in his hair, and then she slowly, carefully dropped her hands to her side. She took a step backward, bumping up against the screen door.

  Her eyes had darkened to the color of rich cocoa and he could almost see the wheels of regret spinning like some wild, frenzied merry-go-round in her mind.