Her Texas Rescue Doctor (19 page)

The chauffeur handed Grace out. She carried her purse and
Sophia's, and walked quietly along the edge of the carpet, the silent signal to
the organizers that she was an assistant, not to be photographed or fussed over
despite her silver designer dress and her obviously professional hair and
makeup.

Sophia said something to Alex, then started walking toward
Grace. Grace actually turned to see who might be behind her. “What are you
doing, Sophie?”

“We've never done pictures as sisters. Don't protest. That
silver dress is the bomb.”

For the first time, Grace found herself arm in arm with her
sister, strolling to the center of the red carpet, smiling at the barrage of
camera flashes. The rhythm of it came naturally after watching Sophia do it for
years—look left, center, right, pausing for just enough seconds that it felt
awkward—then they turned toward the stairs, and Alex escorted them with one
sister on each arm.

That hadn't been the plan. Grace hoped Sophia knew what she was
doing. This little threesome would only raise speculation. Which sister was Alex
escorting?

Their happy family group turned back into a twosome as Alex and
Sophia took their places at a reserved table at the front of the ballroom.
Grace, like the good personal assistant she was, slipped a white purse to her
sister. “Your cellphone and lipstick are in there, safety pins and bobby
pins.”

As she turned to leave, Sophia caught her hand. “Thanks, Grace.
You really are the best.”

Well, okay.
That seemed a little
intense for a few pins, but Grace smiled and then concentrated on winding her
way to the very back of the ballroom. Her dress was too valuable to let it get
caught or stepped on, so she was absorbed in avoiding chairs, sidestepping
waiters with their heavy trays, turning sideways to pass other women in gowns,
and dodging Deezee Kalm as he came barreling past her, running toward the front
of the room.

Deezee Kalm!

Grace whirled around and started fighting her way back to her
sister's table. The going was harder, because everyone was pushing back their
chairs and standing to see what was happening. Deezee made it easier for them by
leaping onto the center of her sister's dinner table, planting his high-top
sneakers right where the salads and rolls sat, a filthy, asinine,
attention-getting move.

“Excuse me,” Grace said over and over, pushing her way to her
sister. Her dress would have to survive the crush. “Excuse me.”

Grace broke through the crowd as Deezee dropped dramatically to
one knee. Since he was on the table, he was still above Sophia, not exactly the
humble pose of a man about to propose. Alex had Sophia tucked behind his back
protectively, but Sophia looked ecstatic, positively glowing with
excitement.

“Run away with me.” Deezee held out his hand, more of a demand
than a plea. “Right now, baby. Let's go. I've got a private jet waiting. Just
you and me on a tropical island, away from all this crap.”

Sophia sidestepped Alex and placed her hand in Deezee's. “You
want to marry me right now?”

“Sure, girl. Let's go crazy.”

* * *

“That was crazy.” Grace looked out the limousine window
at the Austin city lights.

Alex held her hand. “Are you okay?”

“I suppose so. I'm not really hurt. Sophie just wants to be
happy. I'm just afraid that Deezee isn't the man who is really going to make her
happy.”

“We could be wrong.”

Grace put her head on Alex's shoulder. “Martina set it up
yesterday. I should have known there was a reason Sophie switched to that white
gown. I know this isn't important, but I always assumed I'd be her maid of
honor. I guess that's not going to happen.”

Alex dropped a kiss on her very fancy hair. “Maybe that's why
she wanted those photos with you tonight. She knew she was in her wedding
gown.”

“And this is my bridesmaid's dress?” Grace sat up and turned to
face Alex. “If you're trying to make me feel better, you're succeeding.”

She wanted to talk to him about everything, but the limousine
was moving toward the airport, and her time was short. She took her cellphone
out of her silver purse, her prop for this talk. “I have something to show you.
It's Sophia's boarding pass to get on the plane tonight.”

Alex watched her as she swiped her finger over the screen.

“But here's mine. It's cancelled. I'm not going to back to LA
tonight.”

Alex looked truly stunned.

“Some woman named Jackson was supposed to spend a week making
love to her new man in Texas, so I thought it might as well be me. I told Sophia
today I was taking some long overdue vacation days.”

Alex started to laugh as he reached into his inner jacket
pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Let me show you something. This is my
boarding pass. I decided if I couldn't stand to be apart from you, then I ought
to stay with you. I was going to be on your flight to LA tonight. I arranged
with the other doctors to take my long overdue vacation.”

“Oh, my gosh. What should we do?”

Alex raised one eyebrow at her. “We should take a
vacation.”

Grace wanted to cuddle that digital boarding pass on his
cellphone to her chest like the treasure it was. It gave her courage. “I've been
thinking more long-term. When Sophia gets back from her trip, I told her I'd
help her interview new assistants. I'm ready to live my own life.”

Alex said nothing.

Grace held on to her courage. “Conventional wisdom says I
should take some time to adjust. I should get a job and think only about myself
for a while.”

“You're probably right about that.”

It was a terribly neutral answer, but Alex was watching her
closely, intently listening to every word she had to say. He wasn't neutral at
all when it came to her.

There was no time like the present—no time like a private limo
ride in a silver gown to proposition a man in a tuxedo.

“But here's what I really want to do, in my heart. I'm good at
being a couple. I like living with someone else. It's too much, too soon,
everyone will say, but I'm afraid I'm going to miss seeing your face. I love
being around you. I love having you for a friend. I don't want to be clingy or
dependent, but I want to live with you.” She came to a stop, choked up by
emotion and afraid she was babbling.

Alex looked so terribly serious as he picked up her hand. “When
it comes to living together, I'm afraid that all I can do is offer you all or
nothing.”

“Oh.” Grace could feel her heart pounding hard. She didn't know
quite what he meant.

“I can love you like that, but it would have to be for keeps. I
couldn't handle living together for a few weeks or a few months or a few years,
only to have you disappear. It would have to be forever, Grace.”

“I can do forever.” But she looked at him cautiously, unsure of
his mood. He was so very grave.

“Good, because that's the kind of man I am.” Then he reached in
the pocket of his jacket once more, and her heart tripped in a seriously happy
dance of anticipation. “I bought something today. I was prepared to carry it
with me until you were sure of what you wanted, no matter how long that took. I
should have known you already had a plan. The best plan. The only plan for
us.”

“Oh, Alex. Are we really going to do this?”

He pulled out a diamond ring and smiled at her, the most
intimate, perfect smile a man has ever given a woman.

“Yes, Grace. We're really going to do this. Together.
Forever.”

* * * * *

Will Sophie Jackson ever find love? Don't miss her story, next in
Caro Carson's
TEXAS RESCUE
miniseries, coming soon
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ALWAYS A COWBOY
by Linda Lael
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Drake Carson is willing to put up with Luce Hale, the supposed “expert” his mother brought to the ranch, as long as she can get the herd of wild horses off his land, but the pretty academic wants to study them instead! Sparks are sure to fly when opposites collide in Mustang Creek...

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Always a Cowboy

by Linda Lael Miller

CHAPTER ONE

T
HE
WEATHER
JUST
plain sucked, but that was okay with Drake Carson. In his opinion, rain was better than snow any day of the week, and as for sleet...well, that was wicked, especially in the wide-open spaces, coming at a person in stinging blasts like a barrage of buckshot. Yep, give him a slow, gentle rainfall every time, the kind that generally meant spring was in the works. Anyhow, he could stand to get a little wet.

Here in Wyoming, this close to the mountains, the month of May might bring sunshine and pastures blanketed with wildflowers—or a freak blizzard, wild enough to bury cattle and people alike.

Raising his coat collar around his ears, he nudged his horse into motion with his heels. Starburst obeyed, although he seemed hesitant about it, unusually jumpy, in fact, and when that happened, Drake paid attention. Horses were prey animals and, as such, their instincts and senses were fine-tuned to their surroundings in ways a human being couldn't equal.

Something was going on, that was for sure.

For nearly a year now, they'd been coming up short, Drake and his crew, when they tallied the livestock. Some losses were inevitable, of course, but too many calves, along with the occasional steer or heifer, had gone missing over the past twelve months.

Sometimes, they found a carcass. Other times, not.

Like all ranchers, Drake took every decrease in the herd seriously, and he wanted reasons.

The Carson spread was big, and while Drake couldn't keep an eye on the whole place at once, he sure as hell tried.

“Stay with me,” he told his dogs, Harold and Violet, a pair of German shepherds from the same litter and two of the best friends he'd ever had.

Then, tightening the reins slightly, in case Starburst took a notion to bolt instead of skittering and sidestepping like he was doing now, Drake looked around, squinting against the downpour. Whatever he'd expected to see—a grizzly or a wildcat or even a band of modern-day rustlers—he
hadn't
expected to lay eyes on a lone female. She was just up ahead, crouched behind a small tree and clearly drenched, despite the dark rain slicker covering her slender form.

She was peering through a pair of binoculars, having taken no apparent notice of Drake, his dogs or his horse. Even with the rain pounding down, they should have been hard to miss, being only fifty yards away.

Whoever the lady turned out to be, he wasn't giving her points for alertness.

He studied her as he approached, but there was nothing familiar about her. Drake would have recognized a local woman. Mustang Creek was a small community, and strangers stood out.

Anyway, the whole ranch was posted against trespassers, mainly to keep tourists on the far side of the fences. A lot of visiting sightseers had seen a few too many G-rated animal movies and thought they could cozy up to a bear, a bison or a wolf and snap a selfie to post on social media.

Some greenhorns were simply naive or heedless, but others were entitled know-it-alls, disregarding the warnings of park rangers, professional wilderness guides and concerned locals. It galled Drake, the risks people took, camping and hiking in areas that were off-limits, walking right up to the wildlife, as if the place were a petting zoo. The lucky ones got away alive, but they were often missing the family pet or a few body parts when it was over.

Drake had been on more than one search-and-rescue mission, organized by the Bliss County Sheriff's Department, and he'd seen things that kept him awake nights, if he thought about them too much.

He shook off the gruesome images and concentrated on the problem at hand—the woman in the rain slicker. Wondered which category—naive, thoughtless or arrogant—she fell into.

She didn't appear to be in any danger at the moment but, then again, she seemed oblivious to everything around her, with the exception of whatever it was she was looking at through those binoculars of hers.

Presently, it dawned on Drake that whatever else she might be, she
wasn't
the reason his big Appaloosa gelding was so worked up.

The woman seemed fixated on the wide meadow, actually a shallow valley, just beyond the copse of cottonwood. Starburst pranced and tossed his head, and Drake tightened the reins slightly, gave a gruff command.

The horse calmed down a little.

Once Drake cleared the stand of cottonwoods, he stood in the stirrups, adjusted his hat and followed the woman's gaze. Briefly, he couldn't believe what he was seeing, after days, weeks and months of searching, with only a rare and always distant sighting.

But there they were, big as life; the stallion, his band of wild mustangs—and half a dozen mares lured from his own pastures.

Forgetting the rain-slicked trespasser for a few moments, his breath trapped in his throat, Drake stared, taking a quick count in his head, temporarily immobilized by the sheer grandeur of the sight.

The stallion was magnificence on the hoof, lean but with every muscle as clearly defined as if he'd been sculpted by a master. His coat was a ghostly gray, darkened by the rain, and his mane and tail were blacker than black.

The animal, well aware that he had an audience and plainly unconcerned, lifted his head slowly from the creek where he'd been drinking and made no move to run. With no more than a hundred yards between them, he regarded Drake for what seemed like a long while, as though sizing him up.

The rest of the band, mares included, went still, heads high, ears pricked forward, hindquarters tensed as they awaited some signal from the stallion.

Drake couldn't help admiring that four-footed devil, even as he silently cursed the critter, consigning him to seven kinds of hell. The instant he pressed his boot heels to Starburst's quivering sides, a motion so subtle that Drake himself was barely aware of it, the stallion went into action.

Nostrils flared, eyes rolling, the cocky son of a bitch snorted, then threw back his head and whinnied, the sound piercing the moisture-thickened air.

The band whirled toward the hillside and scattered.

The stallion stood watching as Drake, rope in hand and ready to throw, drove Starburst from a dead stop to a full run.

Before Starburst reached the creek, though, the big gray spun on his hind legs and damn near took wing as he raced across the clearing and up the slope.

Drake and his gelding splashed through the narrow stream, and up the opposite bank, the dogs loping alongside.

But hard as he rode, the whole experience felt like a slow-motion sequence from one of his brother Slater's documentaries. He and Starburst might as well have been standing still for all the progress they made closing the gap.

The stallion paused at the top of the ridge, he and his band sketched against the stormy sky. Time seemed to stop, just for an instant, before the spell was broken and the whole bunch of them vanished as swiftly as if they'd melted into the clouds.

Drake knew he'd lost this round.

He reined Starburst to a halt, grabbed his hat by the brim and slapped it hard against his left thigh before jamming it back on his head. Then, still breathing hard, his jaw clamped down so hard that his ears ached from the strain, he recoiled his rope and fastened it to his saddle.

Harold and Violet were at the foot of the ridge by then, panting visibly and looking back at Drake in confusion.

He summoned them back with a shrill whistle, and they trotted toward him, tongues lolling, sides heaving.

Only when he'd ridden across the creek again did Drake remember the woman. Coupled with the fact that he'd just been outwitted by that damn stallion—again—her presence stuck in his hide like a burr.

She stood watching him as he rode toward her, her face a pale oval within the hood of her slicker.

With bitter amusement, he noticed that her feet were set a little apart, as in a fighter's stance, and her elbows jutted out at her sides. Her hands, no doubt bunched into fists, were pressing hard into her hips.

As he drew nearer, he noted the spark of fury in her eyes and the tight line of her mouth.

Under other circumstances, he might have thrown back his head and laughed out loud at her sheer audacity, but at the moment his pride was giving him too much grief for that.

He hadn't managed to get this close to the stallion—or his prize mares—for longer than he cared to remember. While he hated letting them get away so easily, he knew the dogs would be run ragged if he gave chase, and might even end up getting their heads kicked in. They'd been bred for herding cattle, not wild horses.

They were disappointed just the same and whimpered in baleful protest at being called off, which only made Drake feel like more of a loser than he already did.

Harold and Violet, named for two of his favorite elementary school teachers, ambled over to him, tails wagging. They were drenched to the skin and getting wetter by the minute, but they were quick to forgive, unlike their human counterparts, himself included.

Just then, Drake's chestnut quarter horse, a two-year-old mare with impeccable bloodlines, caught his eye, appearing on the crest of the ridge. Hope stirred briefly, and he drew in his breath to whistle for her, but before he could make a sound, the stallion came back, crowding the mare, nipping at her flanks and butting her with his head.

And then she was gone again.

Damn it all to hell.

“Thanks for nothing, mister!”

It was the intruder, the trespasser. The woman stormed toward Drake through the rain-bent grass, waving the binoculars like a maestro raising a baton at the symphony. He'd forgotten about her until that moment, and the reminder did nothing for his mood.

He was overreacting, he knew that, but he couldn't seem to change course.

She was a sight, he'd say that, plowing through the grass the way she was, all fuss and fury and wet through and through.

Drake waited a few moments before he spoke, just watching her advance on him like a one-woman army.

Miraculously, he felt his equanimity returning. In fact, he was mildly curious about her, now that the rush of adrenaline from his lame-ass confrontation with the stallion was starting to subside.

Drake waited with what was, for him, uncommon patience. He hoped the approaching tornado, pint-size but definitely category five, wouldn't step in a gopher hole and break a leg, or get bitten by a snake before she completed the charge.

Born and raised on this land, where there were perils aplenty, Drake understood the importance of practical caution. Out here, experience wasn't just the best teacher, it was often a harsh one, too.

As the lady got closer, he made out her face, still framed by the hood of her coat, and a pair of amber eyes that flashed as she demanded, “Do you have any idea how long it took me to get that close to those horses? Days!” She paused to suck in a furious breath. “And what happens when I finally catch up to them?
You
come along and scare them off!”

Drake resettled his hat, tugging hard at the brim, and waited.

The woman all but stamped her feet. “Days!” she repeated wildly.

Drake felt his mouth stretch in the direction of a grin, but he suppressed it. “Excuse me, ma'am, but the fact is, I'm a bit confused. You're here because...?”

“Because of the horses!”
The tone and pitch of her voice said he was an idiot for even asking such a question. Apparently, she thought he ought to be able to read her mind—ahead of time, and from a convenient distance. Just like a woman.

Silently, he congratulated himself on his restraint—and for managing a reasonable tone. “I see,” he said, although of course he didn't see at all. This was his land, and she was on it, and he still didn't have any idea why.

“The least you could do is apologize,” she informed him, glaring. Her hands were resting on her slim hips, like before, causing her breasts to rise in a very attractive way.

Still mounted, Drake adjusted his hat again. The dogs sat on either side of him, looking on with calm and bedraggled interest. Starburst, on the other hand, nickered and sidestepped and tossed his head, as startled as if the woman had sprung up from the ground like a magic bean stalk.

When Drake replied, he sounded downright amiable, his tone designed to piss her off even more, if that was possible. If there was one thing an angry woman hated, he figured, it was exaggerated politeness. “Now, why would I apologize? Given that I
live
here, I mean. This is private property, Ms.—”

She wasn't at all fazed by this information. Nor did she offer her name.

“It took me hours to track those horses down,” she ranted on, flinging her arms out wide for emphasis. “In this weather, no less! I finally get close enough to observe them in their natural habitat, and you...you...” She paused, but only to take in a breath so she could go right on strafing him with words. “
You
try hiding behind a tree for hours without moving a muscle, with water dripping down your neck!”

Drake might have pointed out that he was no stranger to inclement weather, since he rode fence lines and worked under any and all conditions, white-hot heat and blinding snowstorms and everything in between, but he felt no need to explain that to this woman or anyone else on the planet.

Zeke Carson, his late father, had lived by a creed, and he'd drilled it into his sons early on: never complain, never explain. Let your actions tell the story.

“What were you doing there, anyhow, lurking behind my tree?” he asked moderately.

She bristled. “
Your
tree? No one owns a tree. And I wasn't
lurking
!”

“You were,” he contradicted cheerfully. “And maybe you're right about the tree. But people can sure as hell own the ground it grows out of, and that's the case here, I'm afraid.”