The Wrangler And The Runaway Mom. RaeAnne Thayne

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      “You’d be working deep undercover so we can keep her whereabouts a secret,” Beckstead went on. “Only Dunbar and I would know you’re not just taking an extended vacation.”

      “Who would be my contact?”

      “Does that mean you’ll do it?” Beckstead didn’t bother to conceal his satisfaction. Like a fisherman who knew he’d just hooked his sucker, Colt thought. The analogy was an apt one. He couldn’t think of any other bait but DeMarranville enticing enough to make him give up the chance to spend time on his ranch in exchange for a summer wearing his rear out traveling to every two-bit town with a rodeo across the West.

      He gave the mountains one more regretful look then pinched at the bridge of his nose again. “Looks like I don’t have much of a choice.”

      He hung up the phone and glared at Joe Redhawk. “Don’t say a word. Not one damn word.”

      “Who me?” the Shoshone’s mouth twisted into the closest he ever came to a grin. “Looks like you owe me twenty bucks, brother.”

      * * *

      “You got another one comin’ in. Busted-up shoulder.”

      At the shout from the doorway, Maggie jumped at least a foot. The bandage roll in her hand flew across the little trailer, unraveling into a gauzy mess as it sailed into the corner behind the examination table.

      “Sorry, hon.” Peg’s eyes shimmered with sympathy inside their fringe of thick black mascara. “I keep forgettin’ I’m not supposed to sneak up on you that way.”

      Maggie fought to control her breathing, the panic that spurted out of nowhere these days at loud noises or sudden movements. Would she ever stop jumping at shadows or would the fear always be lurking there, just under her skin?

      She forced a smile that quickly turned genuine as she caught sight of Peg’s ensemble for the evening—skintight hot pink jeans with a glittery western-cut shirt and matching pink tooled-leather cowboy boots. With her bleached hair and her smile as big as Texas, Peg looked like an older, lessfavorably endowed Dolly Parton.

      “It’s not your fault. I’m just a little jumpy tonight.” She retrieved the now-contaminated bandage roll from the floor and tossed it in the garbage. “Too much caffeine on the road this afternoon, I think.”

      “If you say so, darlin’.”

      She looked away from Peg’s worried frown. She knew her father’s second wife—and widow—was brimming with curiosity about why she had abandoned her new apartment and her job at the clinic so soon after Michael’s death. But to her relief, Peg hadn’t pushed for an explanation, either when a desperate Maggie called her in the middle of the night three weeks earlier or in the intervening time they had traveled the rodeo circuit together.

      Instead of answering the unspoken questions, Maggie busied herself gathering the supplies she would need to treat a cowboy with a bum shoulder.

      “How’s Nicholas?”

      “Last I checked, he was runnin’ Cheyenne ragged, and that granddaughter of mine was lovin’ every minute of it.”

      “She’s the best baby-sitter that rascal has ever had. I don’t know what we would have done without the two of you.”

      “You know I’d do anythin’ for you, darlin’. And not just for your daddy’s sake, either. God rest him.”

      The two wives of Billy Joe Rawlings couldn’t have been more different, Maggie thought, not for the first time. Her mother had been pearls and imported lace. A cultured debutante, the worst possible choice of wife for a cowboy trying to be a rodeo star. Helen had run off with Billy Joe when she was seventeen, more to spite her parents than for any grand passion, and had spent the rest of her life bitterly regretting it.

      It had been a disastrous marriage, and their divorce when Maggie was three had been a relief to everyone involved.

      Peg, on the other hand, had been perfect for her father. Even though she seemed flighty, with her flamboyant wardrobe and her ever-changing hair colors and her gaudy jewelry, Peg was the most grounded person Maggie knew. She had turned Billy Joe’s dream of being a star into something more realistic, the creation of a world-class rodeo stock company that provided animals to events across the West

      Peg was warmhearted and generous and had been more of a mother to Maggie in the six weeks each year she spent with her father than Helen had ever been.

      Feeling guilty for the thought, she jerked her mind back to her job. “So where’s my patient?”

      “He should be comin’ anytime now. Wouldn’t let ’em bring him in on the stretcher. You’d have thought the damn thing was a coffin the way he carried on.”

      She sighed. “There’s nothing like a stubborn cowboy.”

      “Nothin’ like a gorgeous one, either, and I’m telling you, this one’s a Grade A prime cut. Haven’t seen him around before and, believe me, I never forget a good-lookin’ man. I’d let this one leave his boots under my bed anytime.”

      “Thank you, ma’am.”

      At the slow drawl, Maggie turned to find a dusty, hatless man filling the doorway, his arm pressed across his stomach at an awkward angle. Peg hadn’t exaggerated about his looks. The contrast of black hair and eyes as blue as a mountain lake was arresting, as was the cowboy’s firm jaw and thick, cry-on-me shoulders.

      If she were the sort of woman who went weak-kneed over the rugged Marlboro Man type, she would have collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor by now.

      Lucky for her, she wasn’t that sort of woman.

      Peg winked at the cowboy. “You ever get lonely,” she said on her way out of the trailer, “mine’s the green-andwhite rig with Rawlings Stock written on it in big pink letters.”

      “I’ll keep that in mind.” He managed a grin but Maggie recognized the lines of pain slashing the edges of the stranger’s mouth.

      “If you’ll climb up here, I can take a look at that shoulder.” She gestured to the examination table.

      “It’s just dislocated. You only need to pop it in and then I can be on my way.”

      “Why don’t you let me make my own diagnosis?”

      He shrugged and slid a Wrangler-covered hip to the table. “Whatever you say, Doc.”

      She carefully unbuttoned his colorful cotton shirt then slid his arm out of the sleeve. “I’m afraid I haven’t been paying attention to the announcer. What event were you riding? It’s too early in the evening for the bull riders, which is where I get most of my business. Does that make you a bronc buster, then?”

      He gave a gruff laugh. “Bronc buster? Do I look crazy to you?”

      She glanced at him under her eyelashes, then instantly wished she hadn’t. He looked tough as hardened steel, with that tanned skin stretching taut over hard muscle.

      She had patched up dozens of cowboys since she’d been hired. Broken wrists, pulled muscles, cuts and СКАЧАТЬ