The door of the Hip Hop Café swung open. A cowboy in a
thigh-length shearling jacket strode inside on a swirl of
frosty January air. The chill mingled with the laughter that
flowed around Dr. Carey Hall. She pulled the cardigan draped
over her shoulders closer around her.
Watching the
cowboy, she noted his quick survey of the restaurant. His
eyes were a startling blue in the deeply tanned face.
Whatever thoughts flickered in those azure depths were
sternly hidden behind a granite shield.
J. D. Cade
looked like a man who'd hit the road at an early age… and
the road had hit back.
While his expression showed no
emotion, his face was weathered and craggy, his body lean
and sinewy, like that of a lobo who lived by his wits at the
edges of civilization. There was silver in his hair,
although it was difficult to see among the sun-bleached
strands of light and dark blond.
A man who'd been
there, done that.
His restless gaze skimmed past her,
paused, then returned. In the space between two heartbeats,
his eyes locked with hers.
During that split second,
sparks seemed to fly between them as they had the first time
she'd seen him at the Kincaid ranch—the day she'd taken care
of Suzanne Paxton's brother. She'd felt that tingle of
electricity each time the two had met during the months
since his arrival in Whitehorn, Montana. Finally his gaze
moved on, and she was released from the spell he
cast.
She looked around the crowded room, her heart
racing a bit. Every table was filled. If she'd been alone,
would he have joined her? From someplace deep inside, the
answer leaped into her mind… yes. Just last week
he'd headed straight for her, then Reed Austin had called
him over to his table.
A momentary lull heightened
the awareness of the outsider's presence, then conversation
resumed, but at a lower pitch, as if the diners now huddled
closer, wariness seeping into the earlier cheer they'd
shared in the odd little restaurant.
They should be
wary. An alien, dangerous and self-contained, was in their
midst. The man looked as out of place among the bric-a-brac
of the café as that off-breed mongrel he owned would have
looked at a purebred dog show.
He crossed the café in
a rangy, almost insolent, slouch and chose a stool at the
counter, then ordered the dinner special. His voice drifted
across the room, deep and gruff—the growl of a beast from
deep in a cave. It carried an element of menace, of danger
best avoided.
She sensed a slight easing of tension
in the atmosphere now that the invader had settled. Or maybe
she was the only one who felt on edge. It had been a hard
week at the hospital. She wasn't in the mood for fun and
laughter. Not tonight.
She forced herself to relax
and smile. The jokes of her companions had turned risqué.
Susan, the senior staff nurse in pediatrics, had recently
become engaged and they were having a congratulatory dinner
for her.
"You have to train them right from the
start," Annie, who looked like a curly-topped version of
Raggedy Ann and was loved by every child in the pediatric
wing, advised. "Every time he leaves his dirty socks on the
floor, sweep them into the dustpan and dump them into the
trash. That teaches him real quick to put stuff in its
proper place."
"Did you do that to Bill?" someone
asked.
She grinned sheepishly. "For two weeks. When
he ran out of socks, he bought more. When I asked him about
it, he admitted he thought I washed only once a month and he
didn't want to admit he didn't have enough clothes to last
that long."
Carey laughed with the other
women.
"But I also showed him the washing machine and
taught him how it works. Are you going to do that with Ken?"
Annie demanded of the senior nurse.
Susan sighed and
gazed at her ring, turning her hand so the diamond flashed.
"I don't know." She sighed again. "Women are such
fools."
Carey knew what was troubling Susan. They'd
talked about it at lunch one day before Susan had accepted
the proposal. Like Carey, the nurse was divorced. Susan's
marriage had fallen apart because of another woman, Carey's
because of her career. Medicine and marriage didn't mix, not
in her experience.
No. It had been more than the
demands of her job that had caused the failure. She'd
thought she could be the emotional anchor for Jack. She'd
tried to give him the stability she'd thought he'd needed.
She'd learned that wasn't possible.
He'd been
restless and fed up with small-town life within a year.
After moving from job to job for two more years, he'd
finally taken one in another state and demanded she go with
him snap! just like that. She'd refused.
End
of marriage.
She sighed. They'd been divorced for
three years. At times the loneliness got to her, and she
regretted the split. However, she'd gotten Sophie out of the
deal. The five-year-old was the bright spot of her life, her
reward for the long days of worrying about other people's
children.
Her eyes went to the long, lean cowboy, who
was still a stranger in spite of the months he'd been in
town. He might fill the lonely hours, but she sensed he,
too, wasn't a man to hang around for the long haul. She knew
herself. Like moss, she wanted to grow on a stone that would
stay put.
"The other nurses wanted me to ask,"
Annie's laughter-filled voice interrupted, "is this a
want-to marriage or a have-to?"
Since Susan was well
past fifty, this brought another round of
giggles.
"Have to," Susan replied, undaunted by the
younger nurse's teasing. Her voice dropped to confidential
tones. "His mom came by last Sunday and caught
us…"
"Yes?" three voices chorused.
"Making
pancakes."
"Phooey," Annie said. "That's
nothing."
"We weren't wearing much of anything at the
time," Susan finished with a demure smile.
The group
voiced a satisfied, "Aah."
"My dad would kill me if
he ever found me at a man's house making pancakes, even if I
wore a suit of armor," bemoaned Sara, the youngest of their
staff, an eighteen-year-old records clerk fresh out of high
school.
Carey cast the girl a sympathetic smile. Her
thoughts shifted as the conversation again centered on the
wedding. She felt death as a lurking specter at her
elbow.
Jennifer McCallum was seriously ill. Baby
Jennifer, as the reporters had called her when she'd been
found, was an abandoned child who had turned into an heiress
when it was discovered she was the illegitimate daughter of
the late Jeremiah Kincaid, who had been the richest rancher
in those parts. Jennifer had been adopted by a social worker
named Jessica Larson, who'd married the deputy sheriff,
Sterling McCallum.
Carey fought the despair that
threatened to engulf her. She'd received the test results
that afternoon. Jennifer, that laughing, mischievous
three-year-old, had leukemia, and the chemotherapy wasn't
working.
The café blurred. Carey blinked
rapidly.
Glancing away from the chattering group at
her table, she encountered eyes as blue as topaz. J.D.
watched her with an intensity that reached right down inside
her and shook something free that had been tied up for a
long time.
His gaze held her. She fought it for a few
seconds before giving in. She let herself drift like a piece
of flotsam in a warm sea as he continued to study her. His
gaze became warmer… hot…
A slow smile kicked up one
corner of his mouth, as if he mocked the attraction that had
sparked between them from the first minute they'd met. She
trembled, but didn't—couldn't—look away.
Hunger
opened like a chasm inside her. He could fill that
need….
She had a sudden image of his lean body
pressed over hers, filling her with his hot demands,
bringing ecstasy and forgetfulness, if only for an hour or
two. She wanted that.
One night of mindless
bliss.
Sophie was at her first sleepover at a
friend's home. No one would have to know. Dear God, she was
insane.
Without breaking eye contact, he picked up
his coffee mug and took a drink. His hands were slender, the
fingers aristocratically long.
A cowboy would have
calluses. She would feel the slight abrasion from them when
he touched her in all the places that hadn't been stroked in
years—
She silently gasped when she realized the
direction her thoughts had taken. However, it wasn't the
first time she'd had erotic daydreams about J. D.
Cade.
That fact confused her. She wasn't a man-hungry
woman. She'd never been boy crazy as a teenager. She didn't
flirt or dress provocatively or wear makeup. Medicine had
been her goal, her first love, even back
then.
Tonight, she had other things to think of,
important things that didn't include an interlude with a
drifter who would probably move on when the next fierce
storm of the year came blowing through.
Running
before the wind was the term for cows that got lost in
a storm. They blindly and instinctively walked in the
direction the wind was blowing. Like tumble
weeds.
And men like J. D. Cade.
She was
distracted when the waitress poured fresh coffee for them.
She picked up the cup and took a sip, welcoming its warmth
all the way to her stomach. When she looked up, J.D. was
cutting into his serving of chicken-fried steak, his
attention on his food.
Anger with him and with
herself for her erotic musings added to her frustrations.
She glared at the steam rising from the hot brew before
her.
Annie nudged her with an elbow. "Lighten up,
Doc. We're here to have fun."
"You're here to give me
a hard time," Susan corrected.
"That's the fun part."
Annie grinned and tossed her mop of fiery red
curls.
"Where's that cherry cobbler?" she demanded,
joining in the merriment. "I won't leave without it, and a
big helping of ice cream melting on top."
The rich
dessert arrived, and Carey again found J.D.'s eyes on her
when she picked up the spoon. He watched while she took a
bite of the luscious treat. The smile appeared at the
corners of his mouth.
She thought of all the places
he might kiss her as she licked ice cream off her
lips….
Heat erupted all over her body at once. She
couldn't decide if it was anger, embarrassment or just plain
wild, lustful longing. Not that it particularly mattered.
She had no time for any of them. Or for a cowboy with eyes
that promised paradise.
"Look, Doc is having a hot
flash," Annie, the irreverent, declared, pointing at the
moisture that had collected on Carey's upper lip and
forehead.
"It's the cobbler," one of the others piped
up. "It's so delicious I'm getting erotic thoughts,
too."
Annie eyed her fat-free sherbet in disgust,
then grinned slyly. "Maybe I'd better order two servings of
cobbler to take home. Bill needs all the help he can
get—"
"I don't want to know about it," Susan stated
firmly. "After all, I'm about to become a blushing
bride."
"I hear the other guys in the lab are betting
on when you and Ken will surface after the ceremony. They
give Ken three days at the most, then he'll have to get out
of the house for some rest. They're thinking of renting a
motel room so he can grab some sleep."
"He'll need
it," Susan declared.
This drew another knowing "Aah"
from the group before they dissolved into another round of
laughter. They were still teasing the nurse about taking it
easy on her husband-to-be when Carey left.
She saw
that J.D. had already finished and was gone when she paid.
He'd slipped out while her group was giving Susan a hard
time over the nuptials, which would take place on
Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day—five weeks away.
Christmas had passed in its usual whirl of pine boughs,
tinsel and colored lights. A new year had begun, and she
could barely recall the previous one—
"Oh."
She laid a hand over her pounding heart as a tall,
lanky form stepped out of the shadows.
"It's okay,"
J. D. Cade told her in his gravelly voice. "I didn't see
your car and thought you might need a ride."
Carey
was surprised that he'd noticed. Obviously he'd been
silently watching her as much as she'd been watching
him.
"No, thanks. I have to go back to the hospital.
I left my car there."
He nodded and pulled his
Stetson farther down on his forehead. "The wind is picking
up. There might be snow before morning." He fell into step
beside her.
"Maybe. Maybe not." For some reason, she
stubbornly refused to agree with him.
She rammed her
hands into the pockets of her old parka, bought at a
closeout sale at the Army-Navy Store five years ago. The
same went for the cardigan she wore and the gloves she'd
forgotten somewhere. She was bad about losing things. She
could never remember putting gloves and such down, and so
couldn't remember where to find them.
"I really don't
need an escort," she said.
"A woman shouldn't be
alone on the streets after dark. It could be
dangerous."
"In Whitehorn?" Her tone was openly
scoffing.
The only danger she sensed came from him
and the odd longing that made her want to crawl into his
arms and stay there while passion flashed between them like
heat lightning until they were both consumed.
Lordy.
"Bad things have happened here," he reminded
her.
The wind whipped the low statement away with a
shriek as they turned the corner of the building at the end
of the block. She staggered when the gale hit her full force
in the face.
Her unsought companion looped an arm
over her shoulders and tucked her in beside him, using his
greater bulk to partly shield her from nature's fury. She
felt instantly warmer. And safer. Which was odd, because
she'd never felt less than at ease in the town. Nearly
everyone knew her. After all, she'd grown up
here.
"Bad things happen everywhere," she offered
softly, sensing things from his past that he wouldn't share.