A Measure Of Love. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ back over his shoulder, the adrenaline pumping through him making him a bit shaky. The damn woman. Who the hell was she? Didn’t she know any better than to drive like a kamikaze pilot down a dirt road like that? He grudgingly admitted that at least she had had the presence of mind to veer away from him.

      “Hey, Boss,” Pete called.

      Rafe lifted his head, rain slashing at his face. “Yeah?”

      “Mel’s clear up by the first line shack. That’s fifteen miles away.”

      Damn! They had the first herd of the year to move up to the high pastures. He couldn’t afford the costly time out to take care of the woman himself. “All right, tell him to stay put. I’ll take her back to the ranch myself. What about Millie?”

      Pete dipped his head, his dark chocolate eyes mirroring his worry. “Said she’d call the doctor and prepare a room for the little lady.”

      “Good. Come on down and give me a hand,” he ordered.

      Pinto Pete was only five feet nine inches in height, but he was wiry and amazingly agile for his sixty-five years. The old mustang wrangler had joined the Triple K forty years before and had stayed ever since. He watched as his boss jerked off his hat and then pulled off the huge poncho, leaving himself to be soaked by the rain.

      “You want her in that?” he guessed.

      Rafe nodded, settling the hat back on his head. The late-April temperature was in the forties, the rain cold and bone-chilling. “Yeah, I’ve got to ride with her for two miles. I can’t have her getting pneumonia on top of whatever else is wrong with her. Here, help me, and I’ll put this over her.”

      Pinto Pete squeezed in between Rafe and the car door to lend a hand.

      They managed to get the poncho over her head, but it snagged on the bun at the base of her neck. Jerking off one deerskin glove, Rafe leaned across her and fumbled with an array of bobby pins. Her feminine scent assailed his nostrils, and automatically he inhaled it. The almost forgotten perfume of a woman’s body unconsciously pleased him, and he pulled the remaining pins out of her hair more gently.

      “Okay, let me pull her clear,” he said to Pete.

      Rafe braced his shoulder against the frame of the car door as he slid his arms beneath her, taking care not to snap her neck back and possibly cause her more injury. The fact that she hadn’t awakened in the past ten minutes bothered him. A bump on the head was one thing–a concussion another. Usually, if a person was knocked out, they could be expected to wake up in five or ten minutes.

      After some jockeying, Pinto Pete lifted the woman back into Rafe’s rain-soaked arms after he had mounted. At least she would remain reasonably dry. Something old and hurting wrenched free in Rafe’s chest when her long blond mane fell starkly across the slippery black surface of the poncho as her head came to rest against his chest. He made sure she was comfortably situated across the saddle, and he kept both arms around her. He guided his gray gelding down through the pine with pressure from his legs. Like all good ranch horses, the animal had a long, swift walk. Rafe didn’t dare go any faster for fear of hurting the woman even more. He tried to protect her face, which was nuzzled beneath his chin, from the rain. Her blond hair quickly became soaked by the rain, lying in vivid goldenrod colored sheets across the poncho. Rafe had never seen anyone with hair that unusual blond before, and he was transfixed by it.

      The ride took a good twenty minutes, and he tried to ignore how good it felt to have a woman in his arms again. How long had it been? Then he snapped the lid shut on those memories that still burned in his heart like a painful branding iron. Pete had stuffed her black leather purse into one of the saddlebags. He’d find out who she was in a while. What was she doing out here? Had she gotten lost on the back roads of the Rockies? Was she looking for directions on how to escape the mountains and get back to civilization? A bare hint of a smile tipped one corner of his mouth as he gazed down at her. His initial anger had abated, and he studied her curiously. Maybe it was the soft fullness of her parted lips that made him feel less antagonistic toward what she had done. Maybe it was the thick mane of blond hair she had tried to capture into a bun that made him a little more inclined to ease up on her stupidity. He wasn’t sure. She looked like a city girl, with her fancy tailored suit, black heels and hair tamed into a sophisticated style.

      Too bad, Rafe thought, his blue eyes glittering. His hands tightened against the slippery poncho, keeping her balanced as he guided his horse between the barns and to the back porch of the ranch house. He saw Millie, the housekeeper, come flying out to the enclosed screened porch, and a ranch hand, Carl Cramer, came to help.

      Rafe lowered the woman into Carl’s waiting arms and then dismounted. The rain was easing. That figured, Rafe thought with irony. He took the woman back into his arms and mounted the wooden stairs onto the porch. Millie’s plump face was pinched with worry as she opened the door to the house.

      “What happened, Rafe?” she asked, waddling quickly through the kitchen and down the hall.

      “Car accident,” he muttered, his boots squishing with each step he took across the polished brick floor of the kitchen. “She came over the hill like a grand-prix racer, saw us and then took to the hill. Ended up in some pine.”

      Millie clucked sympathetically, hurrying as fast as she could make her sixty-year-old body move as they went down the darkened hall. “Doc Miller is on his way. But you know what the weather and roads are like. He said it’d be at least an hour. Said to treat her for shock and a possible concussion, from the description Pinto gave me.”

      Rafe slowed his stride, frowning. He’d hoped Millie had given the woman the guest room. Instead she swung the door open to another bedroom: the one that hadn’t been used since Mary Ann’s death.

      “Can’t use the guest room,” Millie said, as if reading his mind and the objections he was going to voice. She hurried over to the bed. “I’m busy spring-cleaning it.”

      “I see.” Rafe had given orders that this room never be used again; it hurt too much to be in the room because of the memories it dredged up. Swallowing hard against the past that still haunted him, he gently laid the woman on the bed, took off his drenched hat and let it drop to the highly polished cedar floor. He glanced up at Millie. “Can you handle her by yourself?” There wasn’t another female around to help the old housekeeper.

      Millie’s face puckered. “Of course I can’t, Rafe! Now don’t go giving me that moon-eyed look! You’ve seen a woman before. Land’s sakes! Come on, help me get her out of this poncho.”

      Properly chastised, Rafe took the poncho off her. And then Millie found the woman’s clothes were damp despite all he had tried to do to protect her from the wet weather.

      “We’ll have to undress her,” Millie muttered. “I can’t put her to bed like this. She’ll catch her death of cold.”

      “I’d like to paddle her,” he growled.

      “You ought to be thankin’ her for not hitting you! Now stop your growling like an old grizzly.”

      Rafe helped Millie gently remove the wool blazer, then the pale peach blouse. They left her full-length slip on, and Rafe was momentarily transfixed by the sight of her slender, gently contoured body outlined by the ivory silk.

      “She’s built like an Arab,” Rafe muttered, picking her up while Millie pulled back the bedding. He laid her on the mattress, and the housekeeper tucked in the crisp sheet and covers around СКАЧАТЬ