Montana Cowboy Daddy. Linda Ford

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СКАЧАТЬ love when her parents lived. Her mother, especially, lavished it on her. Isabelle didn’t doubt Cousin Augusta’s affection was genuine. But apart from Kate, every other friendship had been tainted by the color of her money.

      They crossed the rutted street and Isabelle had to concentrate on where she put her feet. It helped her avoid thinking of the fact that she meant to step into a doctor’s office...something she’d managed to avoid since her parents’ deaths. They entered a narrow room with benches on either side. A couple of dusty men sat clutching their hats and sprang to their feet as Dawson entered.

      “He’s here? The new doc?” one asked.

      Dr. Baker stepped forward. “I’m the doctor. Where are the injured men?”

      Two heads tipped in the direction of another door. Dr. Baker and Kate crossed toward it.

      Isabelle followed. The wood of the place being new, there were no sickroom odors. Nothing to remind her of when her parents were ill.

      She crossed the threshold into the other room, and after a fleeting glance at a mangled hand on one man and the blood-soaked rag around the head of a second, she averted her eyes from the third man stretched out on the examining table. Every muscle in her body tensed, just as they had back then. Perhaps if she concentrated on the supplies, she could manage to forget the sights and smells and fears she recalled from watching her parents die.

      She went to Kate’s side as her friend pried open one crate and quickly arranged an array of bottles and instruments on the shelves as Dr. Baker bent over the man on the examining table.

      Isabelle didn’t hear what the doctor said to Kate or if Kate knew what he needed without words. Kate uncorked a bottle and poured some liquid on a cloth and handed it to her father.

      The odor assailed Isabelle with revolting familiarity. The smell of sickness and death.

      The room tilted. Her stomach churned. Clasping a hand to her mouth, she fled back to the waiting room and sank to the nearest empty spot on a bench. She sucked in a deep breath to calm her stomach and slowly righted her head to meet the challenging look of Dawson Marshall. He’d removed his hat to reveal thick blond hair. A fine-looking man but one who—if she was to guess from the way his pale eyebrows knotted together—wondered at her sudden exit from the examining room.

      Unable to explain herself, she lowered her gaze to Mattie, who offered her wide-eyed wonder and then a shy smile.

      Isabelle armed herself with that sliver of a welcome.

      There must be something useful she could do in this town that didn’t require her presence in the doctor’s office. Something to prove to herself and everyone else that she was more than a rich heiress.

      A moan came from the doctor’s office and she bolted out the door.

      * * *

      Dawson stared after the woman. Had she taken such a dislike to him she couldn’t bear to be in the same room? He leaned his head back against the wall, ignoring the two miners who watched him, their eyes wide with curiosity. She had no right to scold him about Mattie’s safety. He’d seen the wagon bearing down and would have died before he let his daughter be hurt. He’d gently admonished her to look both ways before she dashed across the street...exactly what a good parent should do.

      Isabelle’s criticism of him reminded him sharply of Violet. She, too, had picked holes in everything he did. His now-deceased wife, a city woman who thought to find adventure and satisfaction on the Marshall Five Ranch, had instead found boredom and disappointment. A fact she never ceased to bemoan, saying she should have remained in the city. He totally agreed.

      Isabelle’s clothes and manners screamed the fact she, too, was a city woman. Her words had accused him of being a blundering father. Violet had called him a bumbling cowboy. He guessed one was pretty much the same as the other.

      “Papa, she sure is pretty but why is she afraid?”

      He ground down on his molars. The last thing this town or Dawson Marshall or his daughter needed was another woman like Violet—a fancy city woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept the demands of life in the West. He should never have married Violet. But he’d been a dewy-eyed nineteen-year-old. When she learned life on a ranch was hard work, she’d sought excitement elsewhere and ended up dying in a reckless horse race against some cowboys from Wolf Hollow, the nearby mining town, leaving him with a three-year-old daughter to raise.

      Now a wiser twenty-six-year-old, he knew enough not to be blinded by a woman’s beauty. Nor her gentle manner. Not even her concern for his daughter’s safety.

      Such a woman was not equipped to live out here.

      “Come on, Papa.” Mattie tugged on his arm.

      “Where are we going?”

      “After her.”

      “I expect she is about her own business.” He could only hope and pray that business, whatever it was, would not attract any more of Mattie’s interest.

      Mattie got up and tugged at Dawson.

      He didn’t budge as Mattie did her best to pull him to his feet. She tugged. She jerked. She turned her back to him and leaned into his outstretched arm like a stubborn mule, grunting under the strain.

      He laughed at the accurate comparison. If Mattie set her mind to an idea, she would not easily give it up. His smile flattened. Reason enough to divert her attraction from the beautiful newcomer.

      He curled his arm about his daughter’s waist and drew her to his chest. “You know you will never be strong enough to move me.” He bussed a kiss on her neck.

      She giggled. “There’s more than one way to get you to move.”

      “Really? Who told you that?”

      “Aunt Annie.”

      Yup, his sister would feel free to tell Mattie her opinion. His little sister was only nineteen but had been taking care of Mattie for three years now. And the rest of the family even longer. She’d developed some very strong notions about things.

      Mattie gave a decisive nod. “And Grandfather. He knows everything.”

      She, like everyone else, called the eldest Marshall Grandfather. Dawson’s father was known to her as Grandpa Bud.

      “Grandfather might not know everything. After all, he’s just a man.” The words almost stuck to his tongue. No one, least of all Grandfather, would look kindly on such a statement. After all, Bella Creek had been built by the Marshall patriarch to provide a safe and pleasant alternative to the ramshackle collection of buildings in the wild mining town known as Wolf Hollow. Many of the businesses had been created by him. Before that, he’d started the ranch. It was Grandfather who’d insisted the Marshalls were responsible for rebuilding the section of town the fire had destroyed and seeing to the replacement of the doctor and teacher.

      “I’d do it myself if I could.” Grandfather had slapped at his legs as if to remind them all he could barely walk, let alone ride or do carpentry work. A wreck with a horse had left him badly crippled. But it wasn’t beneath him to use his regrettable condition to guilt them all into complying with his wishes.

      For the most part, СКАЧАТЬ