A Willing Wife. Jackie Merritt

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СКАЧАТЬ Fortune left his pickup truck parked near his sprawling adobe house, located not far from the ranch’s main house where his father lived, and walked the short distance to the barns and corrals. It was a sunny, clear day in late November, and the midday air was pleasantly warm. He’d been up since five and had already put in hours of work with the ranch hands.

      More and more, Dallas was taking over duties that his father, Ryan, had once enjoyed doing, which was fine with Dallas for several reasons. First of all, he loved the Double Crown Ranch as none of his siblings did. Matthew was a doctor of medicine, Zane preferred working in the family’s corporation, Fortune TX, Ltd., and the twins, Vanessa and Victoria, had chosen careers that had nothing at all to do with the ranch or the family.

      A second reason for Dallas’s dedication to the ranch’s operation was his father. Ryan’s plate was pretty full, considering the nasty divorce he was going through, the fact that Matthew and Claudia’s baby son Bryan had been kidnapped right from under everyone’s noses during a family get-together for the child’s christening, and last but certainly not least, Ryan was crazy in love with Lily Redgrove Cassidy and couldn’t marry her until his divorce was final.

      But Dallas’s third reason for putting in long hours and deliberately exhausting himself so he could sleep nights was deeply personal. His wife Sara had died two years ago while giving birth to their stillborn son. The double tragedy still haunted Dallas—and a third tragedy was that he didn’t give a damn that it did. He’d become a loner, a man lost in his own past, and he often shunned social events and people, both friends and family, because some had the unmitigated gall to say right to his face that he had mourned long enough. Their attempts at matchmaking sickened Dallas. And the women who paraded themselves before him to get attention caused exactly the opposite reaction.

      Dallas did have a few female friends, of course. His sister-in-law, Matthew’s wife Claudia, had been a friend since college, and he had developed a more recent friendship with Savannah Clark Perez. Not once, though, since Sara’s death had Dallas felt the slightest inclination toward anything but friendship with a woman.

      He also did a bit of traveling now and again. In fact, he had just returned from Europe, a trip that had been mostly business, as almost everything was to him these days. Pleasure simply wasn’t on his agenda anymore, and he apologized to no one for his attitude or life-style, either.

      He wasn’t thinking of those things as he hiked down to the barns and corrals today, however. His thoughts were on the herd of longhorns in one particular corral that had been sold and were scheduled to be picked up by a cattle truck at one o’clock. He had discussed the sale with his father, and Ryan had agreed with Dallas’s decision to weed out some of the older longhorns. Dallas intended to be there when the truck arrived.

      Approaching the corral, Dallas heard the longhorns milling around and bawling much more than he’d anticipated. Frowning, Dallas broke into a jog, and as he got closer to the penned animals he saw the reason for their disturbance. A small boy Dallas didn’t recognize had climbed to the top rung of the corral fence!

      Dallas’s heart skipped a beat. One wrong move and that kid could fall into the corral. The longhorns were already nervous over his presence; the boy could be trampled to death.

      Realizing that he had to be careful, and that the “wrong move” could be his own, Dallas circled the corral until he was behind the boy. Then, walking as silently as he could, he moved in on the child.

      He grabbed him just as the boy lost his balance and fell forward. With a wildly beating pulse borne of dread and relief, Dallas lifted the youngster back over the fence and then set him on his own two feet on the ground.

      Travis’s small heart was beating a mile a minute. Holding back tears because he was really a very tough guy and didn’t want to cry in front of the tall man who had rescued him, Travis stared up at him.

      Dallas leaned down and looked directly into the boy’s blue eyes. “And who might you be, young fellow?”

      “Tra-Travis Randall.”

      “Well, Travis Randall, didn’t anyone ever tell you that longhorns can be ornery critters, and that climbing the fence of their pen could be dangerous business?”

      “I just wanted to see ’em better.”

      “Haven’t you ever seen longhorns before?”

      “Mama showed me some pictures.”

      “And what is Mama’s name?”

      “Uh, Maggie. Mama’s name is Maggie.”

      Out of the corner of his right eye Dallas caught sight of someone running hell-bent for leather. He turned his head for a better view, and saw that the runner was a woman, a small woman with long, flowing dark hair and a figure any man would notice. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a white tank top that left little to the imagination.

      “Could that lady heading this way at ninety miles per hour be your mama?” Dallas asked young Travis.

      The boy took a look and visibly shrank. “She’s mad.”

      “At you?”

      Travis nodded and fell silent. Dallas rose and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and both of them waited for Maggie to reach them.

      Out of breath, she ran up, took one look at the pale face of her son, then knelt down and put her arms around him. “Something happened, didn’t it? What was it?” Her gaze rose to Dallas’s face.

      Dallas cleared his throat. “Travis accidentally fell into the corral.”

      “And I suppose he ‘accidentally’ climbed the fence?” Maggie gave her son a small shake. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in Grandma’s yard?”

      “Yes, Mama,” Travis said meekly.

      “He didn’t actually fall, Maggie,” Dallas said. “He’d just started to fall when I caught him.”

      “How do you know my name?”

      “Travis told me. Are you Maggie Perez Randall?”

      “Yes, that’s my legal name—my married name. But I prefer Maggie Perez. And you’re…?”

      “Dallas Fortune.”

      He was a Fortune. She should have known. Good-looking, confident. Oh, yes, she should have guessed that he wasn’t just another cowhand.

      And maybe she should have remembered him from childhood. They’d known each other as children, after all. Obviously he was back from his trip. Where was it she’d heard he’d gone? Oh, yes, Scotland, to look over some special breed of cattle. Or was it France? Well, it didn’t really matter. What did was that he was here now and he had saved Travis from a nasty fall.

      Rising, Maggie offered her hand, which Dallas readily shook. “Thank you for being in the right place at the right moment. If Travis had fallen into that corral…” She couldn’t even say it; just the thought of her precious son being trampled by cattle hooves was more than she could bear. But precious or not, Travis was going to get a good talking to, at the very least.

      “Don’t be too hard on him,” Dallas said quietly, as though reading her mind. “Small boys are naturally curious creatures.”

      “He СКАЧАТЬ