Cowboy Seeks Perfect Wife. Linda Lewis

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       Chapter One

      Sidonie Saddler slammed her foot on the brakes, and her brand-new red pickup truck shuddered to a stop. The small dog on the seat next to her slid onto the floor and looked accusingly at Sidonie.

      “Sorry, pup. I wasn’t expecting a gate. Are you okay?”

      The solemn-faced dog hopped back onto the seat, turned around three times and curled up into a ball. Sidonie gave the animal a quick pat and opened the truck door. She eyed the shiny aluminum gate illuminated by the headlights. “There shouldn’t be a gate,” she muttered, wincing as she straightened her left leg to get out of the truck.

      The road only led to one place, her father’s ranch— her ranch for the twelve years since his death. Sidonie unfastened the gate and swung it open, then returned to the pickup and drove through. She hadn’t lived in the country for years, but she remembered to stop and close the gate behind her.

      “We’re almost home,” she told her passenger. Excitement began to build inside her, muting the painful throb from her left knee. Against doctor’s orders, she’d taken the brace off for the drive from Dallas to Cache, Texas, and she’d been paying the price since Alvarado. Ignoring the pain, Sidonie wondered at her strong feeling of homecoming. She’d always thought of herself as a gypsy wanderer, a rolling stone, not á homebody.

      Lately, though, even before the accident, she’d begun having these strange longings for home and hearth. At first she’d shrugged them off and gone on to the next rehearsal, the next opening with her usual enthusiasm for the new and different. New people and different places had always been the lure that kept her moving on, never settling down.

      But a new kind of excitement gripped her now, and the feeling had grown with every mile. She was going home. Embarrassing to admit, but the sound of the pickup’s wheels on the paved road sounded suspiciously like Dorothy’s voice in The Wizard of Oz. She could swear the tires were humming, “There’s no place like home, no place like home.”

      But Cache, Texas, hadn’t been her home for years. Not since she was five. She hadn’t visited the place more than two or three times since Buck died. She hadn’t gotten emotional on those trips, so why this time?

      After a few moments she figured it out. Sanctuary. She was heading for sanctuary. The ranch was going to be her refuge while she healed and regained her strength. This feeling of homecoming wouldn’t last. As soon as her body was well and strong again the old restlessness would return and she’d be on her way again.

      But when she caught her first glimpse of the frame house with its wraparound porches, Sidonie had to swallow a lump the size of a grapefruit. Blinking tears away, she patted the little dog on the head. “Home, sweet home,” she murmured, a little embarrassed by her weepy sentimentality.

      She sat for a few moments drinking in the moonlit scene. The hackberry tree she’d first climbed when she was eight stood on the side of the house, one of its branches still drooping temptingly close to Sidonie’s bedroom window. Crepe myrtle trees her mother had planted flanked the short walk to the front porch, and pecan trees towered over the back of the house. “Everything is just the same.” Sidonie sighed, relieved. She hadn’t known until that moment how much she longed for something familiar, something unchanging.

      “Enough being maudlin,” she said briskly, blinking the mist from her eyes. It wasn’t like her to get emotional over a place, even the place where she’d been born.

      Sidonie opened the truck door and got out, waiting until the dog had jumped to the ground before starting up the walk. Wagging its tail, the little dog followed her to the front porch.

      The porch light was on, thank goodness. When she’d called Judge Longstreet to have the water and electricity turned on, she’d only talked to his answering machine. The welcoming light proved he’d gotten the message. It had occurred to her, on the long drive from Dallas, that it might take more than a few hours to get the job done. The thought of arriving at a cold, dark house in the middle of the night had almost made her stop at the next motel and wait until morning to finish the drive. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

      Sidonie reached down and scratched the scruffy little dog behind her ears. “But if I’d done the sensible thing, I wouldn’t have met you.”

      Remembering how the dog had been cowering under a picnic bench at the rest area where she’d stopped to stretch her legs, she had to blink away more tears. Poor little thing, so lost and alone. She’d lured the abandoned and starving dog to her with cold French fries left over from a stop at a Dairy Queen.

      “Come on, dog, let’s get in out of the cold.”

      The porch light went off the instant Sidonie put her key in the lock. The small hairs on the back of her neck rose as the door swung open before she turned the key. Someone was in the house! Sidonie’s brain barely registered the dark, masculine shape in the shadowed doorway before she reacted instinctively.

      She kneed the man in the groin.

      Unfortunately she used her injured knee to do it. The man fell to the floor and folded into a fetal position. Sidonie fell on top of him, clutching her knee. He did not break her fall—the man was as hard as the hardwood floor.

      “Oh! Oh! Oh!” moaned Sidonie.

      “Ow! Ow! Ow!” groaned the man.

      The dog seemed to think it was a game. She was dancing around, yapping at the two entangled humans.

      The man shoved Sidonie aside and rolled onto his knees. After a few deep breaths, he got up. Bent over, he staggered to the wall switch and turned on the hall light.

      “Why did you do that?” he snarled. “Who the hell are you?”

      “Who the hell wants to know?” Sidonie snarled back as she struggled to a sitting position. That was as far as she could get by herself.

      She eyed the man leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. He didn’t look like a burglar. More like a banker—if bankers ever had a sleepy, rumpled sort of look. He was wearing a white shirt, unbuttoned and untucked in, and dark blue trousers. A conservatively striped red-and-navy silk tie hung loosely around his neck.

      The clincher was his feet. They were bare. No shoes, no socks. He couldn’t be a burglar. Everyone knew burglars wore black, from their ski masks to their rubber-soled shoes.

      “Why did you knee me?” he asked again, through tightly clenched teeth.

      “I didn’t expect anyone to be in my house. Why are you here?”

      “I live here.”

      “No, you don’t.” She held out her hand. “Help me up.”

      “Yes, ma’am, at your service, ma’am,” he said, hobbling closer. His overly polite response did not sound completely sincere to Sidonie, but she took his hand, anyway.

      The man yanked her upright before she was ready to stand. Her knee promptly buckled, and Sidonie fell into the man’s arms. Holding on for dear life, she couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t a flabby kind of banker. Solid as a rock. Sidonie looked into the man’s dark brown eyes. СКАЧАТЬ