The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She watched them for a few moments, smiling at their antics. It was so peaceful here, even with the angry chattering from the birds. She could feel the the serenity of the place wash over her just like the wind skimming over the water.

  The worry that had haunted her for the last month suddenly seemed as distant as those marshmallow clouds overhead.

  This is exactly what she needed, she decided, and she made a mental note to thank Colt for having the wisdom to insist she come with them.

  A few moments later he and Nicky walked into view carrying what, in her inexperienced opinion, looked like enough fishing equipment for a dozen people.

  Her son held out a fishing pole to her. “Here you go, Mom. Colt says this is for you.”

  She gave the pole a wary look. “No, thank you. I believe I’ll leave the fishing to the two of you.”

  “Come on, Mom. Aren’t you even gonna try? It’ll be fun.”

  About as fun as sticking one of those hooks in my eye. She mustered a smile. “How about if I watch you guys for a while to see how it’s done? Maybe I’ll try later.”

  “Chicken,” Colt said under his breath as he passed the blanket and headed for the trail around the lake.

  She smiled sweetly, too content to let him goad her. “Cluck, cluck,” she retorted.

  He turned back toward her, looking so big and rugged and gorgeous she had to catch her breath. Never far from her thoughts, the memory of their kiss the night before flickered through her mind again, of being held safe and warm in those strong arms. She wanted that again, dammit. It simply wasn’t fair that the one man who made her feel alive again should come charging into her life at the worst possible time.

  Oblivious to the wayward direction of her thoughts, he grinned at her. “You’ll be sorry you missed out when we haul in all the big ones, won’t she, partner?”

  Nicky giggled. “Yep. You’ll be sorry, Mom,” he echoed. Somehow she managed to kick start her heart again and forced a smile. “I guess that’s a chance I’ll just have to take, isn’t it?”

  Her reading forgotten now, she watched them dodge rocks and deadfall on the narrow trail until they stopped about a hundred yards away, near two huge boulders that hunkered at the water’s edge.

  She drew her knees up to her chest, smiling at the solemn expression on Nicky’s little face as he listened intently to Colt explain what she could only assume were the rudiments of fishing.

  They were too far down the shore for her to hear their conversation, although she caught snatches of it on the wind. Colt, a hip resting against one of the boulders, pointed to something on the fishing pole, and Nicky nodded vigorously. He smiled his gap-toothed grin and said something that resulted in a deep laugh from Colt.

  She sucked in a breath. Even from a distance, the man could make her pulse race. He crouched down again and pulled Nicky into the crook of his arms so the boy could watch up close while he baited the hook. Sunlight glinted off their heads, one dark, the other blond, and it looked for all the world as if they belonged together.

  Her stomach quivered suddenly, sharply, and she pressed a hand to it, fighting down nausea. Oh, mercy. What had she done?

  She had let Colt insinuate his way completely into their lives, even though she knew from the beginning it was a mistake, even though she knew perfectly well he would be just another transitory figure in an already ephemeral existence.

  How could she have let down her guard, allowed the two of them to become so vulnerable? She should have been more careful. Nicky already loved Colt, and her son would be nothing short of devastated when the cowboy moved on.

  And so would she.

  The truth loomed in her mind as huge and forbidding as the mountains around them.

  She was falling in love with him.

  No, not falling. She was well on her way, had tumbled much too far down to claw her way back up to safer ground.

  Where had it come from, this fragile, tender emotion that had taken root and begun to blossom in her? And when had it begun to grow? Last night in his arms or earlier? She tried to pinpoint the exact moment but couldn’t. Her feelings had grown steadily over the past few weeks. Maybe she had begun to fall in love with him a little the night she had stumbled on him in the dark, fixing her flat tire.

  All this time, she thought she could keep her heart untouched, that a friendship with him would be safe and harmless. It seemed so foolish now, self-delusion at its very worst.

  Looking back, she could see that his kindness had tantalized her from the first: the patient, gentle way he talked to her son, the concern he had shown her when the rest of the world seemed a dark, scary place. His misguided efforts to watch over her.

  He had made no secret of his attraction to her. And although, the intensity frightened her a little, it had been like a soothing balm to her self-esteem, bruised and broken by her mistake of a marriage.

  How stupid could she be? She had known from the first that he would prove dangerous to her soul in ways DeMarranville’s men couldn’t even begin to touch, but she had ignored her instincts and indulged herself in what could only end in disaster.

  She had a sudden, wild urge to weep. What had she done? Hadn’t she screwed up her life enough, made enough mistakes for a hundred women? She had married Michael when she was still lost and grieving from her parents’ deaths, and look what a gross error in judgment that had been.

  Now, when she was even more vulnerable than she had been then, she had buried her common sense, unplugged all her internal alarms, and allowed herself to fall in love with a gorgeous, wandering cowboy with secrets in his eyes.

  Nothing could come of it. She knew that perfectly well. Colt was attracted to her, he had made that clear, but he simply wasn’t the kind of man a woman settled down with. Even if he was, she couldn’t ask him to share the nightmare her life had become. The idea of putting him into danger sent ice racing through her veins.

  No, she would just have to get through these next few days here at the ranch by anesthetizing her feelings as best she could. Once they were back into the rhythm of life on the road, she could begin the long, hard process of putting distance between them again.

  Chapter 12

  “What’s wrong?”

  At the sharpness in Colt’s tone, Maggie whipped her attention from helping Nick dismount from the pony after their ride down from the lake. She followed Colt’s gaze to the doorway of the barn, to find her host standing there, his wide shoulders blocking the light.

  She could tell by the jut of Joe Redhawk’s jaw and the fury in his dark eyes that something was drastically awry, and Colt had obviously recognized the same thing.

  “Annie’s here.” His voice was taut and heavy. “She brought the kids.”

  Colt started a vicious curse, glanced at Nicky, then bit off the word. “How bad this time?”

  “Bad. I think her arm is broken.”

  “That son of a—” Colt looked as if he wanted to throw the saddle he held through the wall of the barn, but he clamped down on his temper. He sent his friend a critical look. “What are you still doing here?”

  “I didn’t want to leave her and the kids here alone. Thought I’d wait until you got back.”

  “Good.” Some silent male communication passed between them. “I’ll go with you.”

  The rancher nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. “I’ll wait for you inside, then.” He turned on his boot heels and headed toward the house, leaving a tense, awkward silence in his wake. Colt didn’t seem inclined to break it as he hurried through the motions of removing saddles and tack from the trio of horses.

  Finally Maggie couldn’t stand it anymore. “Isn’t Annie your neighbor? The one you were talking about who used to get into so much trouble with you and Mr. Redhawk?”

  He nodded curtly, throwing the saddles over sawhorses set up in the corner of the barn. “Annie Redhawk, used to be Calhoun. She married Joe’s older brother.”

  He glanced at Nicky again but the boy was
too busy petting one of the barn cats to pay any attention to them. “Charlie’s a real peach of a guy,” he went on. “Takes after his father—whenever he drinks too much he likes to pound on his wife.”

  She murmured a distressed sound. Poor woman. No matter how bad her marriage had been, at least Michael had never struck her.

  “Look, I hate to do this to you when you’re on vacation and all, but would you mind looking at her injuries, Doc, while Joe and I go take care of a little business?”

  She nodded, knowing perfectly well the “little business” he and Joe planned to take care of was Annie Redhawk’s abusive husband. “Of course. It will only take me a moment to grab my bag.”

  When she and Nicky walked into the kitchen, Maggie found two dark-eyed children—a girl who looked about eleven and a boy around Nicky’s age—sitting at the kitchen taking tiny, polite nibbles out of a couple of cookies and staring down at the worn gingham tablecloth as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

  Nicky grabbed a cookie and flipped a chair around as Colt had done earlier that day. “Howdy,” he mumbled around the cookie. “My name’s Nicholas. Who’re you?”

  “Leah,” the girl said shyly. “My brother’s name is C.J.”

  Maggie left them to make friends in that magical way children have and climbed the stairs for her leather medical bag. When she returned to the kitchen, the children’s faces had lost that scared, haunted look and they were chattering away with Nicky about fishing and horses.

  Joe Redhawk had returned, as well. “Colt says he asked you to examine her,” he said in a low voice so the children didn’t hear. “She won’t like it. She’s ashamed to have anybody know.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Redhawk.” She kept her voice brisk, professional. “I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, but if she’s injured, she needs medical attention.”

  He gave a curt nod. “You don’t have to convince me. I agree with you. I just hope you can do a better job of talking some sense into her than I seem to be able to do. Come on, she’s back here in Co—in my room. This way.”

  He led her down the hall, to an area of the sprawling ranch house she hadn’t seen yet and into a large, masculine room, with hunter green walls and oversize furniture.

  Despite some clothing folded neatly on one of the chairs and a few books by the bed, the room seemed sterile, unlived in.

  The dominant feature in the room was a huge log fourposter bed and dwarfed inside it was a woman who could only be described as elfin. Maggie had a brief impression of a tiny woman with short-cropped red hair, who hardly looked old enough to go on dates, let alone have an eleven-year-old daughter.

  She walked closer to the bed then sucked in a breath, her stomach flip-flopping The woman was probably very pretty under normal circumstances, but right now her eyes sported matching black and purple contusions, an angry-looking abrasion covered one check, and her bottom lip was swollen to what was likely twice its normal size.

  Maggie had seen plenty of domestic violence cases working at the clinic in the city. Stabbings, shootings, beatings. But it never failed to sicken her what abusers could do to the people they should have taken the most care with. All in the name of love.

  Joe walked to the other side of the bed and reached out a rough hand and smoothed it down the woman’s hair, with a gentleness that seemed jarring, somehow, coming from such a big, taciturn man.

  “Annie?” he whispered.

  The woman’s eyes fluttered open, and Maggie could see in their unfocused green depths remnants of a nightmare she couldn’t begin to imagine. When Annie Redhawk focused on Joe at her side, she relaxed and even tried a smile that turned into a wince as the movement stretched her swollen lip.

  “Hi,” she said in a hoarse voice, like a rusty swing rattling in the wind, and struggled to sit up.

  The rancher dropped his hand and began to fiddle with the rim of his cowboy hat. “This is Maggie Rawlings. She’s a doctor and she’s here to take a look at you.”

  Abruptly, that lopsided smile of welcome faded, and Annie’s eyes blazed wounded accusation at him. “You promised me you wouldn’t call anybody.”

  “I didn’t. She’s a guest of the Broken Spur. A friend of Colt’s. She just wants to see if anything’s broken.”

  “I don’t want her poking at me. I’m fine.”

  Maggie perched a hip on the edge of the bed and folded her hands together in her lap. From past experience working with domestic abuse cases, she knew she would have to tread carefully if she wanted the woman to agree to an examination. “You have two beautiful children out there, Mrs. Redhawk. What are their names?” she asked, although she had already heard the answer from them.

  The woman frowned at the conversational gambit. “Leah and Charlie. C.J.,” she answered warily.

  “How old are they?”

  “Leah will be eleven next month. C.J. just turned five.”

  “I have a five-year-old myself. Five going on twenty. My Nicholas wants to be a Wild West outlaw. He thinks he can rope and ride with the best of Mr. Redhawk’s cowboys.”

  Some of the suspicion in Annie’s expression faded. Encouraged, Maggie reached a hand out and laid it on the other woman’s cold fingers, on top of the thick down comforter.

  She looked steadily into her mossy green eyes, eyes that had seen too much pain. “Annie, I know you must love your children. What use will you be to Leah and C.J., though, if you’re laid up with injuries that don’t heal properly?”

  Annie’s head dropped back against the pillow, and she closed her eyes. For a moment Maggie didn’t think she had heard her. When she opened them there was a look of resignation there that seemed oddly familiar to Maggie. It took her several seconds to realize why—it was the same expression she had seen on her own face in the mirror throughout the last few years of her marriage.

  “Go away, Joe,” the woman finally said.

  “Annie—”

  “Go on. If I have to do this, I don’t want you in here watching. I’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll wait outside then.” With one last worried look toward the woman on the bed, he slipped from the room.

  Annie Redhawk remained stoic and silent while Maggie examined her injuries, mostly scrapes and bruises. She winced only once, when Maggie manipulated her arm.

  Maggie’s lips tightened and she pulled the only chair in the room—a big Mission rocker—over to the bed. “It’s just as Mr. Redhawk suspected. Your arm appears to be fractured. I really can’t know for sure, though, unless you have it X-rayed.”

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I go to a hospital, they’ll call the police.” The fingers of her good hand tightened on the comforter. “Can’t you just set it here?”

  “Not without an X-ray to show me exactly where the fracture is, and not without some kind of pain medication for you. If I tried, it would undoubtedly cause more harm than good. At the very least, I likely wouldn’t be able to set it correctly. Besides,” she asked gently, “why would calling the police be such a bad thing?”

  Listen to what a hypocrite she was, giving the woman advice she was unwilling to follow herself. Maggie shifted uncomfortably on the rocking chair. She had valid reasons for not going to the authorities after Michael’s death, though, didn’t she? She had tried to do the right thing when she called the police from Rosie’s house, but instead of calling in the cavalry, somehow she had alerted DeMarranville’s men to her presence.

  Her heart still picked up a beat when she remembered her fear when the two men she had seen from the elevator had shown up in Rosie’s driveway, her frantic flight out the back with Nicky in her arms.

  Maybe she had somehow misinterpreted the whole thing. The thought flitted into her head like one of those angry magpies she had seen on the mountain earlier. Maybe the police hadn’t tipped DeMarranville off to her whereabouts. Maybe they—or another of DeMarranville’s men—had simply seen her leave the building and follo
wed her without her knowledge and had just arrived before detectives could make it.

  “I’ve been through the whole routine with the police,” Annie said, wearily closing her eyes, and Maggie jerked her mind from her own problems to the woman’s more immediate ones.

  “The sheriff arrests Charlie,” her patient went on, in the same lifeless voice, “and when he gets out after spending the night in jail, he takes his anger out on me.”

  “If you press charges, he won’t get out.” It was the same argument she had made hundreds of times before during her work at the clinic. Like all those times before, Annie Redhawk obviously didn’t want to listen.

  “Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but he’ll eventually post bail and come looking for me,” she said.

  “What about a restraining order?”

  “You probably know as well as I do they’re only worth about as much as the paper they’re printed on.” She rubbed at her arm above the fracture, refusing to meet Maggie’s gaze. “Look, Dr. Rawlings, I appreciate you taking a look at me but I don’t want to go to the police.”

  “Mrs. Redhawk—”

  The woman didn’t seem to hear her. She looked out the window at the Broken Spur and spoke quietly, woodenly, almost as if she was speaking to herself and not to Maggie. “He wouldn’t have hit me except I—I pushed his buttons. I just can’t seem to learn my lesson. I know what’s going to set him off but I can’t seem to help myself from doing it, anyway.”

  “When a man beats his wife, he’s the only one to blame. You’re not responsible for his actions...” Her voice trailed off. They were words she had said a hundred times before in other similar circumstances but they had never struck her with such force before.

  Her situation was not at all the same as Annie Redhawk’s. She had never been physically abused, never had to face this kind of ugliness. But Michael had used words as his weapons. He had spent the six years of their marriage relentlessly beating down her spirit.