Wind River Cowboy

by Lindsay McKenna

“That’s so inspiring,” Kira whispered, deeply touched.

  “Shay’s responsible,” he told her. “She’s the world’s biggest mother hen—with the exception of you.” A slight grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “Shay has given us a safe place to heal ourselves, Kira. We get weekly counseling and there’s a woman military vet, Dr. Libby Hilbert, who leads our weekly sessions. We can go to her for individual counseling if we want.”

  “Shay is remarkable. Someone should give her a medal,” Kira agreed. She sipped her coffee.

  “I’m sure you’ll do well here.” Garret frowned. “The only potential stress on you will be Ray Crawford.”

  “Shay warned me.”

  “He’s an alcoholic. Reminds me too much of my father,” Garret said flatly. “Shay says he’s stopped drinking, but I don’t buy it. Alcoholics are the best liars and manipulators in the world.”

  “Maybe you can be a guide for me, Garret.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shrugging, Kira said, “My dad, Les, is a wonderful person. I love him so much. We don’t have alcoholism in our family like you do. I thought . . . well . . . if I have questions about something Ray does, can I come to you for help? Maybe some advice?” and she looked at him.

  “Any time,” Garret said. “I worry he’ll jump on you like he did Shay. He is, to this day, mentally and emotionally abusive to her. He wants to take back his ranch. Right now, Shay and Reese legally own and run the Bar C. Ray is trying to get well enough from his stroke so he can take the Bar C away from them. Hell, he’s the one who ran this ranch into the ground in the first place. He drove off all the wranglers with his cursing, anger and abuse of them.” Kira’s eyes widened, and Garret realized Shay hadn’t told her everything. He was damned if he was going to allow Kira to walk into the line of fire with Ray Crawford. He was a mean son of a bitch and there was no way in hell he was going to let Kira become his target.

  “Oh . . .” she managed, swallowing hard. “Shay said he was cantankerous and acknowledged he was an alcoholic. She didn’t talk to me about him wanting the Bar C back.”

  Garret held her gaze; he saw the concern in her eyes. “All alcoholics are manipulative, Kira. They lie to get anything they want. Did Shay tell you to check the cupboards, dresser drawers, the pantry and any other places he might hide bottles?”

  Grimly, Kira said, “No.”

  “You have to do it at least once a week. Also, take a good whiff of his breath. If you smell alcohol, you’ll know he’s drinking and hiding the bottle.”

  “Great,” she muttered, worried.

  “Look, I’ll be here to back you up,” Garret soothed. “He’s not supposed to be drinking, but if my childhood experiences with my old man are anything to go by, I believe Ray is still drinking but not admitting it to anyone. Shay think’s he’s dry, but I know he isn’t.”

  “Then I need to be careful about checking out hiding places.”

  “From what I understand, he sits in the living room and watches TV. A van from the local gym picks him up and he goes into town. That’s when he could get one of those drivers to buy him another bottle or two of liquor for the coming week.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you have to cook for him seven days a week?”

  “Yes. That and clean his house once a week.” Kira shrugged. “That’s easy stuff.”

  “What kind of translations are you doing right now?”

  She smiled a little. “I’m with a big website. I translate business letters and manuals from Arabic into English and vice versa. At the moment I’ve been asked to translate a five-hundred-page manual from English into Arabic. It’s good money. I get five cents a word. That adds up to a nice amount when they hire me. But there can be a week or more when I get no translation requests.”

  “So you’ll put fifteen percent of what you earn into the Bar C?”

  “Yes. Shay’s interested in me getting a savings account. Part of her overall plan to help me is to get money in the bank for a rainy day. It’s not a bad idea. She’s really practical about it.”

  “Everyone loves her,” Garret said, his voice thawing a little. “She’s doing too much, and when her old man decided to come back here and live on the Bar C again, she bought his lie.”

  “What was that?”

  “That he was coming back because he missed the ranch. The truth is, from what I can see, he intends to take it back from Shay. But she doesn’t believe it. I do.”

  “Have you talked to Reese about this?”

  Garret gave her a feral look. “I let him know a heartbeat after I figured it out. I get protective of women, kids and animals. And I don’t like to see a wolf in sheep’s clothing, which is what Ray Crawford is.”

  “Wow, there’s a lot of intrigue around here,” she said, shaking her head.

  “You need to know what’s going on, Kira. You’re right in the middle because you’re going to be around Ray more than anyone else on this ranch. You need to be Shay and Reese’s eyes and ears. Crawford isn’t to be trusted. At all. And don’t let him lure you in by being nice to you. If that happens, that means he wants something from you.”

  “How does he treat you, Noah and Harper?”

  “He thinks we’re worthless. He disdains us. Calls us cowards and weak because we have PTSD.”

  Kira made a sad sound in her throat. “But . . . why?”

  “Because Ray blames Shay for going into the military. He’s never been in and he’s antimilitary. Thinks we’re on the dole, asking for handouts. He doesn’t respect us at all. And he’s angry as hell that Shay left the ranch to go into the military. The truth is, she ran away from here because of him. Her mother was already dead. She couldn’t handle his abusiveness any longer, so she escaped and went into the Marine Corps.”

  Kira wrapped her arms around herself, staring down at the table, evaluating what Garret had shared. She lifted her chin. Meeting his gaze, she whispered, “God, it sounds like a war is going on right here. A quiet one. But a war between the daughter and the father anyway.”

  Garret’s eyes gleamed with pride as he looked at her. “You’ve nailed it, Kira. And you’re the party in the middle. You need to watch your six.” And I’ll be there to shadow you, protect you. But he didn’t say that out loud to her. He loved Kira. Garret was damned if someone like Ray Crawford was going to hurt her.

  Chapter Four

  Kira was nervous and her sweaty palms proved it. Today was her first day of work at the Bar C. She wanted to make a good impression on Ray Crawford. Would he like her cooking? She hoped so.

  In the kitchen, making herself breakfast at six a.m., Kira tried to be quiet, knowing that Garret was still sleeping, his bedroom door closed. She reached up into a cupboard that had several dry cereal boxes in it and drew one down. She had slept little the first night, her mind and heart in a free-fall tumble. Right across the hall from her, Garret slept. Lying in bed, her heart squeezed with so much love for him that had no place to go. She’d gone over their first conversation at the kitchen table so many times. Kira was looking for some hint, some sign, that Garret wanted to be more than a friend to her.

  There was no hint or sign.

  She had noticed he was far more hair trigger emotionally, especially when the topic of Ray Crawford arose. In the Special Forces team, she had been treated like one of the men. If they saw her woman’s body, no one said anything about it. It was understood that as a top-secret operation, it was designed to see if a woman could not only survive in combat but fight alongside her male compatriots. She was razzed like one of the boys, teased unmercifully at times, rousted out of sleep for her watch just like any other team member would be. Only Garret had been more prickly and protective toward her for as long as she could remember.

  Kira lay awake, remembering one night when she’d had terrible cramps from her period. Normally, she didn’t have one due to the high physical demands and stresses of the combat environment in which she lived. It was well known that women stopped men
struating for months at a time under this type of duress. She hadn’t had a period in four months, but one night, in the mud house she shared with Garret at the south end of the village, she was in horrible pain. The kind of pain that made her double up and cry, and she’d tried to keep from making any sounds. He had his bed, a cot, in another room. He’d awakened.

  Kira had told him to go back to bed, that she’d be all right. She was crying, trying not to sob, biting her lower lip to stop any sounds from escaping her. Garret had good night vision and Kira knew he saw the trail of tears down her cheeks. He’d insisted on starting a fire, boiling water in a black iron kettle and then soaking a towel in it. He’d asked if he could gently lay his hand on the area, promising it wouldn’t make her cramps worse. The heat from his hand would help. Garret had never, in all three years they’d spent together, touched her like he had that one night.

  Kira had hesitantly agreed and closed her eyes, the pain severe. While the water heated, he got up on one knee, leaned over her cot and placed his large hand lightly across the span of her abdomen. The moment Garret’s warm, callused palm lay across her flesh, the pain began to ease. He didn’t rub her belly. Rather, just the light contact, the heat radiating off his hand, was soothing to Kira. It had sent wild, pleasurable sensations throughout her tense body. Garret didn’t speak; he simply knelt there, beside her, getting her to relax, the heat from his hand releasing the tautness. She had never been touched by a man like Garret had touched her that night. Her mind spun wildly afterward, wondering hotly what it would be like to be loved by him. It was then that Kira knew Garret would be an extraordinary and considerate lover. For all his weight, size and bulk, she had experienced Garret’s tenderness. For a long time Kira had suspected he would be a wonderful lover, but on that one night, he’d shown her a side of himself she would never forget.

  Like a male mama bear, he’d fussed over her and laid the warm, moist towel across her belly to reduce the cramping. In truth, her cramps were nearly gone by the time he placed the compress across her. Within fifteen minutes the cramps had completely dissolved.

  Garret had stayed up with her for another half hour, wetting the towel, keeping it across that affected area. For all his size and his shoulders, so wide he’d get stuck in the doorways of many of the small Afghan homes, he was amazingly caring with her that night. Kira loved him so much and she couldn’t tell him. Now that she’d experienced his touch, Kira had wanted more. So much more. At some point she’d fallen asleep. When she woke up the next morning, her trousers were back in place around her waist, a blanket drawn over her and Garret gone.

  Those cramps never returned like that again. Even though she’d have a period every three or four months, Kira didn’t ask for special consideration or rest. She had duties to perform every day just like everyone else on the team. If one person didn’t pull their weight, it placed an unfair demand on everyone else.

  Garret had come back to their mud house to see her an hour after she was up, dressed and kneeling at the tripod with a kettle suspended from it. She saw the concern burning in his hazel eyes as he’d ducked down to enter the house. He crouched opposite her and asked how she was feeling. They were nine months into their first year together and she’d never experienced the cosseting side to Garret until then. Kira felt as if she were the center of his world in that moment. The burning care in his gaze had totaled her. She saw something else in them she couldn’t translate. Whatever it was, the feeling that washed over her in that moment was like a lover bringing her into his arms and holding her safe. Kira had to shake herself after he’d rose and left, returning to his duties for the day. Had she imagined it?

  On nights when Kira felt lonely without him beside her, she would remember that special night when she was on the receiving end of Garret’s care. On other nights, when her libido was high and she was gnawingly aware she wanted a man just to have sex with, Kira always visualized Garret in her imagination. She wasn’t a woman who hopped from bed to bed. No, she wanted a relationship that had depth and substance to it. But being in Afghanistan, with no way to satisfy any sexual urge, she would remember Garret’s hand gentle on her painful abdomen. It was as close as they had ever come to being intimate with each other. They’d never kissed. Never embraced. And now she felt pangs of yearning tremor throughout her lower body, imagining . . . imagining Garret making scaldingly hot love with her.

  “Hey . . .”

  Kira gasped, turned, a bowl in one hand, a box of cereal in another. Garret’s low, sleepy voice echoed from the hall and into the kitchen. He was dressed in a pair of black pajama bottoms, naked from the waist up, wiping his drowsy-looking eyes with his hand. His blatant masculinity slammed into her. Instantly, her lower body clenched. The dark hair sprinkled across his massive chest combined with the breadth of those shoulders, the muscles large and powerful, made her go hot with longing.

  “Sorry,” Garret mumbled, wiping his face as he halted near her. “Didn’t mean to scare the bejesus out of you.”

  Gulping, Kira tore her gaze from his chest and shoulders. He looked like a sleepy kid, his eyes half open, their hazel depths looking cloudy. “I tried to be quiet in here. I’m sorry I woke you . . .”

  Garret stared at her and then shook his head. “What time is it?”

  “6:00 in the morning.” It was hard not to fall back into military speak with him.

  He grunted. “You have to feed Ray at 0700?”

  “Yes.”

  He grimaced at the box of cereal in her hand.

  “Put that away. Let me make you a real breakfast.” He pointed to the table. “Go. Sit down. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Nonplussed, Kira nodded and put the cereal away. She couldn’t shake the masculinity of Garret. Oh, she’d seen him stripped to the waist before, but for whatever reason, it impacted her now a hundredfold. Maybe because they weren’t in the Army anymore? She didn’t have to hide from her own body and heart and continue to be in denial about her love for Garret. Shakily, Kira shut the cupboard door and poured herself some fresh coffee. Figuring Garret would want some, she filled a mug and left it on the counter for him.

  Garret ambled out ten minutes later. His hair was neatly combed, but that three-day growth of beard was still there, giving him a dark, sensual look. Her throat went dry. He had pulled on a tan T-shirt that did nothing but exploit his physique, and her lower body began to gnaw, making her keenly aware that she was long overdue for sex. But if she ever had the chance to go to bed with Garret, it would be so much more than for just sexual relief and an orgasm. Her heart was in the mix and it would make their loving each other so very special. A one-of-a-kind thing. Her gaze dropped to his jeans, which hugged his thick, long legs. He still looked drowsy in a little-boy kind of way that was endearing to Kira.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she protested.

  “I want to,” Garret growled, quickly gathering a large cast-iron skillet, eggs, cheese, bacon bits and an onion. “You like toast with your omelet?”

  “Sure. Can I—”

  “No. Stay where you are.” He gave her a hard look. “You’ve got dark rings under your eyes. Didn’t you sleep last night?” he demanded.

  A slight grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. “My, aren’t we cranky before we’ve had our first cup of coffee?”

  Snorting again, Garret set to work making his omelet. “You should wake me up when you get up.”

  “Why? I can feed myself.”

  “That’s not the point. I want to be here to help you, Kira. Let me. You okay?”

  She sat back, digesting his grumpy growls. And that’s what they were. “You sound like a snaggle-toothed lone wolf snarling around your lair.” She looked at his profile, seeing that beautifully shaped male mouth of his briefly hook upward.

  “Not used to living with a woman underfoot.”

  “Thanks, Batman.”

  “You can be my sidekick, Robin.”

  It was her turn to snort. “In your dreams, Fle
ming.” She saw his mouth hitch upward even more. Warmth sheeted through her because this was the Garret she’d lived with when they were with the A team.

  “Speaking of dreams,” he mumbled, whisking all the ingredients together into a steel bowl, “did you have any nightmares?”

  “No. I mostly tossed, turned and couldn’t shut off my mind.”

  “Everything’s new here, that’s why,” he said, giving her a glance across his shoulder. “Adds stress. Brings on the insomnia big-time because of our PTSD.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered unhappily, gratefully sipping the hot coffee.

  “By tonight you’ll be so damned tired you’ll be ready to keel over after you get done with Crawford’s dinner.”

  “You got that right.” Kira watched him move like he knew what he was doing. “You know, you did a lot of the cooking for the team. Are you doing the cooking here?”

  “I did over at Shay’s house until she married Reese. I made three meals for everyone on the ranch every day using the Wolf stove in her house. We ate at that big trestle table of hers in the kitchen the first year I was here. Now? I cook Sunday dinner for everyone over at their house. It’s always a great meal and we enjoy one another’s company. A time to catch up and relax a little bit.”

  “You cooked for everyone for a year?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Garret popped the sourdough bread into the toaster and walked to the fridge to find the butter dish.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Anyone meeting you for the first time wouldn’t automatically think chef.

  “What? More like wrestler? Bouncer? Mixed martial arts fighter?” and he chuckled, flipping the top over on the omelet in the skillet.

  “For sure.” Kira felt lighter. Happier. Just being around Garret again was a natural high for her. And if she was any judge, he looked pretty happy, too, although all she could see was his profile from time to time. The breadth of his back and those massive, thick shoulders of his, took her breath away, too, but in a good way. Kira could see each time he moved, the set of muscles contracting and sliding smoothly into the next set beneath the tight-fitting T-shirt he wore. The man was in superb athletic condition.