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Say You'll Stay And Marry Me
Patti Standard


SAY YOU'LL STAY AND…One lean and lonesome cowboy stood between Sara Shepherd and her vacation plans. But Sara wasn't sure she wanted Mac Wallace out of her way! If she truly wanted to go, why stay to help out the rancher and his sons after he'd fixed her truck?Mac hadn't complained when Sara started caring for his house and kids. But when would she get around to him? Then Sara showed him her special TLC, and Mac's spirits perked right up! How could he get a dose of Sara every day? There was only one thing to say….







“I can run for a long, long time yet.” (#ua83ac9b1-d4b5-5eed-881d-26ad6f11401e)Letter to Reader (#u62038174-c22f-5b1b-a32f-88199c9b2dcc)Title Page (#u156f8778-f7ac-5326-b90e-095c0ff3029e)Dedication (#uae7e048f-3158-555f-99dd-3db77bcdd02e)About the Author (#u03a4b302-c4b6-5ab1-9eda-5d61568260da)Chapter One (#u63ce78f5-22af-5c01-bf98-8530956583a5)Chapter Two (#u61b28096-79b9-52ee-b54d-6ea90e35237c)Chapter Three (#udbbb9c90-ec2d-5b68-a840-9282dd121d92)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


“I can run for a long, long time yet.”

Sara’s voice was composed as she walked to the front door. But once the screen closed behind her, Mac heard her take the stairs two at a time.

It was good she’d left before he pulled her to him. Before he plundered her mouth with a thoroughness that would make her forget she was in a hurry to leave.

He cursed the cast that kept him pinned when he needed to pace until the image of Sara standing in moonlight faded along with his restlessness. Until the heady scent of roses that clung to her skin was replaced by the smell of sage and rangeland.

He must be very, very careful, he warned himself. Sara had proven she’d bolt when the going got really tough. He needed a team player. Definitely not a woman like Sara.

But how could he let her go?


Dear Reader,

To ring in 1998—Romance-style!—we’ve got some new voices and some exciting new love stories from the authors you love.

Valerie Parv is best known for her Harlequin Romance and Presents novels, but The Billionaire’s Baby Chase, this month’s compelling FABULOUS FATHERS title, marks her commanding return to Silhouette! This billionaire daddy is pure alpha male...and no one—not even the heroine!—will keep him from his long-lost daughter....

Doreen Roberts’s sparkling new title, In Love with the Boss, features the classic boss/secretary theme. Discover how a no-nonsense temp catches the eye—and heart—of her wealthy brooding boss. If you want to laugh out loud, don’t miss Terry Essig’s What the Nursery Needs... In this charming story, what the heroine needs is the right man to make a baby! Hmm...

A disillusioned rancher finds himself thinking, Say You’ll Stay and Marry Me, when he falls for the beautiful wanderer who is stranded on his ranch in this emotional tale by Patti Standard. And, believe me, if you think The Bride, the Trucker and the Great Escape sounds fun, just wait till you read this engaging romantic adventure by Suzanne McMinn. And in The Sheriff with the Wyoming-Size Heart by Kathy Jacobson, emotions run high as a small-town lawman and a woman with secrets try to give romance a chance....

And there’s much more to come in 1998! I hope you enjoy our selections this month—and every month.

Happy New Year!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo. NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3




Say You’ll Stay And Marry Me

Standard, Patti







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


TO STARR.

YOU KEPT THE PRESSURE ON.


PATTI STANDARD

started her writing career after she stopped working full time and began an at-home typing service. She says that the brand-new word processor and all those blank disks were too tempting to ignore. Having been a romance fan since her teens, she decided that the time would never be better to try to put on paper the stories she’d been writing in her mind for years.

Patti also loves to travel. She says that she started with Hawaii when she was sixteen and has been going ever since. Her family knows that trouble is brewing when she spreads out her map collection on the living room floor. She lives in a small town in western Colorado at the edge of the Rocky Mountains with her children and husband.








Chapter One

Sara Shepherd slammed the door and walked to the front of the truck, gravel crunching under her tennis shoes. She pushed sweaty bangs off her forehead with an exasperated. shove as she watched steam hiss its way around the edge of the hood, the white wisps of vapor evaporating instantly in the dry Wyoming air. Gingerly, using the hem of her yellow T-shirt to protect her hand from the hot metal, she pulled the latch and lifted the hood. Steam billowed out, an antifreeze cloud escaping from a gash in a rubber hose connected to the radiator.

Sara cursed softly, using language her English professor husband would have dismissed as a sign of an inadequate vocabulary if he’d still been alive. That her dilemma was her fault only added to her frustration. She’d thought about buying extra belts and hoses before she left Denver last week, but had decided against it since the truck was only two years old. Leaving the hood propped open, she walked to the cab, stepped onto the running board and stuck her head in the window to look at the odometer.

Sixty-three thousand two hundred and fifty-eight miles—plus some odd tenths.

In two years.

Sara felt a combination of pride and dismay at the thought of all those miles, hard, compulsive, seldom-stopping miles from Canada to Mexico, east coast to west. And so many miles still ahead of her. She dropped to the ground and carefully tucked the edge of her T-shirt into her jeans. She surveyed the empty asphalt that snaked in both directions before disappearing in a shimmering haze of heat at the horizon. Not a car in sight.

Wyoming surrounded her, desolate, with only sparse grass and sagebrush corralled behind the miles of barbed wire fence that edged the narrow, two-lane highway. A stray gust of wind brought a windmill creaking to life behind her, forcing its rusted blades to make a desultory turn, movement enough to shake its weathered wooden frame all the way to the ground but not enough to raise so much as a drop of water to fill the empty stock tank at its base. Just looking at the alkali deposit that ringed the tank made her thirsty. She licked her lips as she tried to decide what to do.

A well-worn rut cut off the highway and crisscrossed its way to the distant mountains. It looked tempting, especially since Yellowstone National Park lay behind those mountains. She’d planned to reach Yellowstone sometime tomorrow after spending the night in Jackson Hole. But she knew that rut could just as easily peter out at some gully as lead to a house and telephone. Better to backtrack to that gas station she’d passed, Sara decided, hoping it was only a few miles back.

She took a long drink from the thermos in the cab, then grabbed her credit card and driver’s license from her purse and stuffed the leather purse under the seat. She locked the truck’s doors, double-checking that the door to the white camper covering its bed—her home for the past two years—was also securely locked. She started down the road, the asphalt under her feet soft from the afternoon sun, well aware that she left her entire life’s possessions behind her.

The little gas station was closer than she remembered. It sat at the junction of two rural highways, alone except for a big white farmhouse ringed by shady cottonwood trees about a hundred yards behind the station. It was little more than a wide spot in the road, but the station’s neat white siding and green shutters looked wonderful after a forty-minute walk. Two gas pumps squatted on a paved mat, sharing space with rainbow oil slicks and a pothole or two. The door to an attached garage yawned wide, and she could see a hydraulic lift inside, workbenches stacked with tools and thankfully, a collection of belts and hoses on hooks near the ceiling. She should be on her way to Yellowstone in a few hours, after all.

She pushed open the glass door to the station and set a bell jangling somewhere inside. A boy, perched on a stool behind the counter, looked up from his comic book at the sound. Maybe twelve or thirteen, he had an open, friendly face with freckles and a slight overbite that braces were trying to correct.

“Hi. I didn’t hear your car.”

“I’m on foot,” Sara told him. “My truck’s about two miles up the road with a blown water hose. I was hoping you could help me out.”

“What year?” He dragged a dog-eared book from a shelf over the cash register and flipped it open on the scarred countertop.

She told him and described the location of the hose—by now she knew her truck intimately, inside and out. The boy thumbed through the pages, stopped at one, then followed a line of type across the page with his finger.

“Bingo! We’ve got one of those.”

“Great.” She relaxed and smiled with relief. She’d stubbornly tried to ignore her nervousness as she’d walked to the station. It hadn’t helped that her daughter’s warnings had come so easily to mind, keeping her company with each step. I told you so, the voice had said. A grown woman driving around the country like some middle-aged hippy. It’s just not safe, Mother. And her mind had spun out the word mother in a perfect mimic of Laura, in that exasperated and exasperating tone her daughter had adopted since graduating from college.

Sara had only broken down once before, and it had been a simple flat tire. But she would think seriously about trading in her faithful blue truck for a new model when she passed through Denver this fall. A breakdown in the winter was something she didn’t even want to contemplate.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll use your rest room for a minute while you ring that up. Add a bottle of that orange juice, too. It’s going to be a hot walk back.” She pointed to a cooler against the wall filled with drinks.

The boy’s mouth fell open slightly, revealing even more of the braces. “You’re going to walk to your truck?”

“I guess so.” Sara smiled. “I didn’t pass many taxis on my way here.”

“But you’re not going to fix it yourself,” he protested.

“Sure I am. I’m pretty handy with a screwdriver. It shouldn’t be hard.”

He shook his head, adamant. “You can’t walk all that way alone.” He sounded truly concerned, and Sara was touched.

“It’s not that far.” She gave him another reassuring smile.

But he kept shaking his head, and fine brown hair sifted into his eyes. “If my dad found out I let a woman walk off alone to fix a truck by herself, I’d be mucking stalls for a month. No, ma’am, you better wait here while I go get my dad. He’ll drive you back.”

“No, really, I’ll—”

But he seemed determined. “You wait right here, ma’am. I’ll go fetch my dad. He’s up in the north field fixing some fence so it might be a minute or two. You just make yourself comfortable. Have that orange juice. I’ll be right back.”

He locked the register, grabbed a hat from a hook near the door and disappeared into the attached garage. Sara heard the roar of an engine and looked out the door. The boy had appeared in front of the station riding a three-wheeled motorcycle, a sturdy all-terrain vehicle with heavy, wide tires. He gestured to her and she pulled open the glass door and stepped outside.

“If anybody comes wanting to buy gas, you better have ’em wait for me to get back,” he yelled over the engine. “There’s not another gas station for forty miles, so they’re not going anywhere.” With a metallic grin and wave, he skidded around the side of the station and disappeared.

Sara rounded the corner after him and watched him head up a gravel lane toward the house. She had to smile at the sight of the boy, in jeans, cowboy hat and scuffed boots—every inch a cowboy—seated on the noisy machine as comfortably as on a horse. S-shaped irrigating tubes and a muddy shovel were strapped to the back of the ATV, bouncing at every rut.

Modern ranching. All helicopters and three-wheelers and million-dollar equipment. Not like when she was a kid growing up on a small farm on the outskirts of Denver, she thought with a twinge of nostalgia, when Denver still had traces of the real, honest-to-goodness cow town it used to be. Denver certainly had its share of cowboys even now, but that had more to do with fashion than with livelihood. She knew most of the Wranglers she saw had never touched a saddle.

Sara got a juice from the cooler and returned to the wooden bench that ran along the side of the station. She stretched out her legs to wait for her rescuer. It appeared chivalry wasn’t dead, after all, she thought, taking a sip of the cold juice. Or at least not up here in the middle of Wyoming. Maybe there was still a sliver left of that famous cowboy code of the West. In spite of the ATV, the whole place seemed to be caught in some kind of 1950s time warp. She fanned aside a fly that buzzed lazily near her ear. The big old farmhouse, with its wide veranda just made for a porch swing and its huge swath of lawn, complete with shaggy lilac bushes, looked like something out of an old black-and-white western.

A memory drifted up, nudged to life by the Hollywood setting. Goodness, she hadn’t thought of that endless summer in years. She’d been thirteen, horse crazy like all her friends, and for some reason she’d taken to reading Zane Grey books. She’d read every one, staying up long into the night when the house was as dark and silent as the heroes Grey wrote about. That teenage Sara had decided the long, lean, slow-talking cowboy was her kind of man. The hero was the same in every one of those classic westerns—concerned about his horse, concerned about his honor and devoted to his one true love. He never spoke more than a word or two to that true love throughout the book, but Sara had read volumes into the way he’d rolled his cigarette or the way he’d squinted into the horizon.

Sara squinted at the figure she saw appear from behind the ranchhouse, a horse and rider trotting down the lane toward her—her imaginary cowboy come to life. A man on a black horse, a man who sat in the saddle like he’d been born to it, a man with spurs, she saw as he reined to a stop in front of her and jumped to the ground with a jingle. Faded jeans, cracked leather belt, denim work shirt rolled back from his wrists, dark brown hair curling from underneath a dusty gray cowboy hat, face hidden by its brim—Zane couldn’t have done better himself.

“Mac Wallace,” he said, striding toward her. He slipped off a leather work glove and extended his hand.

“Sara Shepherd,” she replied, noting the calluses as his big hand swallowed hers. Mac Wallace was several inches taller than she, and she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes, midnight blue eyes with intriguing lines fanning from the corners, testimony to years of outdoor work. Now that his hat no longer shadowed his deeply tanned face, she could see thick eyebrows, broad cheekbones, a square chin and the beginnings of an afternoon stubble. She breathed in the smell of horse and man sweat and was reminded once again of childhood summers.

“I hear you’re having trouble with a water hose.”

Sara nodded. “I told your son I could handle it, but he was kind enough to offer some help. I don’t want to take you away from your work if you’re—”

“No problem. We’ll have you back on the road in no time.”

The sound of the ATV returning caused the gelding to shy, and Mac quickly stepped back to grab the reins. “Damn machines. I hate them.”

He soothed the horse with one hand while he made an impatient slicing motion with a finger across his throat. His son immediately cut the engine and coasted the rest of the way to the station to join them.

“Michael, take Justice to his stall and have your brother rub him down. I’m going to go fix Ms. Shepherd’s truck.” As the boy obediently swung into the saddle, Mac turned to Sara. “Do you have any water to refill the radiator?”

Sara nodded. “Five gallons.”

“Antifreeze?”

She shook her head. “I better get a gallon or I’ll overheat in the mountains for sure.”

He escorted her inside the station, and she pulled her credit card from the back pocket of her jeans and laid it on the counter. Mac punched buttons on the cash register and handed her the receipt the machine spit out. She scribbled her signature.

“My truck’s out front next to the mailbox,” he said. “I’ll get that hose and meet you there.” He disappeared into the garage.

Sara looked at the receipt as she walked past the gas pumps to the gray truck parked beside the mailbox at the edge of the highway. She frowned.

“Mr. Wallace?” she began as he came toward her, minus the spurs but with a gallon of antifreeze in one hand and a black rubber hose in the other.

“Mac,” he corrected, throwing them in the back of the truck and moving to open the door for her.

“Mac. This receipt doesn’t show a charge for your repair service. Or the orange juice, either.” He was very close. He stood beside her with a hand on the open door, his arm making a protective circle. Sara looked up from the receipt and was startled to find herself acutely, unexpectedly aware of the breadth of him, the warmth, the masculine, horsey smell. She felt a ridiculous urge to move closer into that circle. How long had it been since she’d stood, even casually, this near a man? Disturbed, she held out the white piece of paper.

But he didn’t even glance at it. His eyes met hers. “There’s no charge for being neighborly, ma’am.”

“I thought making a profit from another’s misfortune was the American way. And it’s Sara.”

“Well—Sara—that might be, but it’s not my way.”

She cocked her head and studied him, curious. Yet another example of cowboy chivalry, that fabled code? Finally, she said, “Then I thank you very much.”

“My pleasure.”

She found herself reluctant to look away from those dark, dark blue eyes. The moment lengthened, lasted for a heartbeat longer than it should have, that split second between a man and a woman when a look slides over the edge toward awareness. She was so aware of Mac Wallace she felt heat on her face and knew it came from more than the Wyoming sun. Embarrassed by her reaction, she folded the slip of paper, turning it again and again into neat squares, methodically creasing the edges, then tucked it into her pocket Eyes lowered, she quickly stepped into the truck.

Mac shut the door and crossed behind the truck to the driver’s side, smiling at the blush that had tinged the woman’s cheeks, accenting her delicate features. He might spend his days surrounded by kids, cows and sweat-soaked leather, but he could still recognize healthy attraction in a woman’s eyes when he saw it. Damn right. He pulled taut the blanket that covered the worn spot on the seat and slid behind the wheel.

“My truck’s a couple of miles up that way.” Sara pointed north.

“Headed for Yellowstone?” he asked as he turned onto the highway.

“Yes, I’m going to spend a few days there.”

“Are you staying at the lodge? It’s quite a place.” He had spent his honeymoon there. A wonderful beginning to a dismal marriage.

Sara shook her head. “I’ve got a camper on my truck. But I do want to see the lodge. I’ve seen pictures of it and it looks charming.”

Mac took his eyes from the road and looked at her more closely, wondering why a woman would choose to camp alone in Yellowstone. Especially a woman who used words like charming. He studied her profile as she watched the passing sagebrush from the window. She looked a couple years younger than his forty-five, and no makeup and the way her light brown hair was pulled into a ponytail made her appear younger still. Her features were fine, with an aquiline nose and high cheekbones that spoke of afternoon teas and painted china. Charming. Her patrician features were at odds with her jeans and tennis shoes, and he noted the way the tan on her left arm was more pronounced than on her right, typical of someone who spent a lot of time driving with an arm propped on an open window. Contradictions intrigued Mac.

“Are you from around here?” he asked.

“No, I’m from—” Sara hesitated, intriguing him even more. “I’m originally from Denver,” she finished.

“You’re not so far from home, then,” he said.

“Not yet.”

Her cryptic reply had him glancing at her again, and he found himself caught by the clouds he saw in eyes a misty shade of gray. “So you’re going farther than just Yellowstone?”

She nodded. “I’ll probably head into Canada, I think. I want to see Banff, even though it’s supposed to be so commercialized now. Then maybe Calgary.” She shrugged. “I’m not really sure yet.”

“You’re not sure where you’re going?” He frowned. “You mean you’re just...traveling?”

“Just traveling.”

Mac could tell his questions made her nervous. She seemed relieved when her truck came into view.

“There it is.”

He pulled behind the late-model, four-wheel-drive truck and camper. Sara jumped from his truck before he had time to open the door for her. Pulling a key ring from her pocket, she unlocked the door to the camper and unfolded a set of aluminum stairs. “I’ll get that water,” she said over her shoulder.

Mac peered into the camper through the open door. The compact space had a table and padded bench under one window and a tiny kitchen on the other side—although he wasn’t sure he would call a sink the size of his cereal bowl, a shoe-box-size refrigerator and a two-burner stove exactly a kitchen. A mattress covered with a floral-print spread was tucked over the cab, and closets and storage bays cunningly crammed every spare inch. Like the inside of a doll house, everything was neat as a pin, almost clinically so, from the wrinkle-free bedspread to the paper towel roll with a perfectly torn edge centered on the wall above a miniature cutting board.

“Quite a setup you’ve got here,” he said as Sara pulled a five-gallon water jug from a cupboard under the stove. He took the heavy container from her and helped her down the stairs.

“Everything I need.”

“A little small, though.”

“I prefer to think of it as cozy.”

“Cozy like a turtle, maybe.”

Sara laughed, and the sound was enough to stop him in his tracks. He looked at her, captivated again by her dove gray eyes, alight with humor.

“I guess it is,” she said. “I’ve never quite thought of it that way. I just carry my home around with me wherever I go—like a turtle.”

“I wouldn’t call it exactly a home, would you? More like a hotel room. But it must be pretty convenient when you’re on the road.” He saw her smile fade and wondered. He started walking and set the water in front of the truck. “Let me get my toolbox and we’ll start in.”

Not a home? Sara patted the blue metal fender well protectively. It was the perfect home, as far as she was concerned. A thousand times more home than the neat brick house near the university where she’d lived for twenty years with her husband. Those bricks had formed walls so high they’d blocked her sun, cut off her air, made her fear they would tumble in on her at any moment, trapping her in the debris. But this, the metal under her hand warm and smooth, this truck and camper were freedom—and all the home she ever planned to have again.

She watched while Mac deftly removed the clamps, pried off the torn hose and slipped the new one in place. He filled the radiator with antifreeze and water and screwed the radiator cap tight.

“All set. Why don’t you start ’er up, Sara, and let’s make sure that new hose is going to do the trick.”

Sara turned the key and the engine roared instantly to life. She smiled in satisfaction.

“Uh-oh.” Her satisfaction was short-lived as she heard Mac’s warning over the rumble of the engine.

“What’s the matter?” She got out to stand beside Mac and stuck her head under the hood next to his. Her ponytail fell over her shoulder as she looked at the engine, the heavy-sweet smell of antifreeze making her wrinkle her nose. She followed his pointing finger and saw a small drop of water form along the bottom of a hose to the left of the radiator. The drop fattened, stretched, then fell to the ground. Another followed and another, making beads in the dust before collapsing to soak into the dirt.

“Maybe you spilled some water when you filled the radiator, and it’s just running down that hose?” she asked hopefully.

But he shook his head. “It’s another leak. You’ve probably had it a while and didn’t even know it. You better drive to the station and I’ll replace that hose, too. In fact, you ought to change out all your hoses if you’re headed clear to Canada.”

Sara sighed and nodded. “You’re right.” She felt her teeth begin to worry the inside of her cheek and forced herself to stop the nervous habit. Another hour or so didn’t make any difference. She’d still make Jackson in time to get a spot in a park, although it might be difficult this close to Yellowstone on a Friday evening in the middle of June. Well, she’d worry about it when she got there. If nothing else, two years on the road had given her a nonlinear perspective of time. Yesterdays and tomorrows tended to blend together. Straightening, she removed the metal rod and let the hood slam into place.

“I’ll meet you at the station then,” she said briskly.

“I’ll be right behind you.” Mac started for his truck and she allowed herself a moment to watch him while his back was to her, to appreciate the way he moved, confident and purposeful, with long strides that stretched his faded jeans in interesting ways around his hips.

Oh, for goodness’ sake, she chided herself. Ogling the man like some sex-starved, premenopausal old woman. She shook her head at her thoughts and climbed behind the wheel, reminding herself that with a ranch and two sons—maybe more—there was sure to be a wife in a gingham apron somewhere inside that big white house.

Sara reached under the seat and pulled out her purse. She set it in its customary place, precisely in the middle of the bench seat between the seat belt fasteners. Then she adjusted the side mirrors and tilted the rearview mirror a minuscule degree. Her thumb brushed over the lighted radio panel to remove the slight film of dust that had accumulated during her drive north from Rock Springs.

There.

Perfect.

She slipped the truck into gear and guided it onto the highway, heading back the way she’d come.

A half hour later, Mac was tightening the last clamp. Sara watched from where she sat on the cool concrete floor, her back against the leg of a splintered workbench. He’d raised the truck on the hydraulic lift to reach an awkward hose and was standing under the engine, arms above his head. His work shirt was pulled tight across his back, the denim worn thin enough that she could see the outline of his muscles as they bunched and flexed in his shoulders. His biceps swelled with every twist of his wrist, and she stared, fascinated by the masculine rhythm.

The loud jingle of the station door opening made her blink, and she dragged her eyes away from their voyeuristic study. “It’s, uh, it’s pretty busy around here,” she said. The bell had signaled a customer several times already, keeping Michael running between the pumps and the cash register.

“Weekends are good.”

She saw Michael head out to check the oil on a red minivan. “Michael’s certainly working hard. Do you have other children that help?”

“Jacob’s up at the ranch right now.” Mac muttered a quick curse as he tried to reach into a tight space.

“It must be tough to manage a ranch and a gas station at the same time,” Sara said. Talk was better than silence, she’d decided, considering where silence seemed to lead her thoughts.

“It’s not too bad. We only open the station in the summer—for the tourists. It’s a way for the boys to earn college money.” His voice echoed hollowly from inside the engine. “During the winter, we use the garage to repair the ranch equipment and store our fuel in the tanks. It beats running in to Dutch Creek every time you need gas.”

“You’re a long way from anywhere, all right.” She shifted on the floor, pulling up her knees and wrapping her arms around them.

“Sometimes too far.” He let out a puff of held breath as he gave a last twist to the screwdriver. “Sometimes not far enough.” He ducked his head and peered at her. “Hey, Sara, bring me a soda from the cooler, will you? And get something for yourself if you want.”

She got up and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “I still owe you for the last one.”

“I told you, it’s on the house.”

“Not this time. And not for your work this time, either. I expect a hefty bill for all this.”

Mac lowered his arms and grinned at her as he wiped his hands on a rag. “I’ll get out my adding machine.”

She went through the open door into the gas station, the whining of the lowering lift audible as she pulled open the foggy glass front to the soda case. “What kind does your dad like?” she asked Michael, who was at the cash register.

Before he could answer, Mac’s shout ricocheted from the garage, followed by an ominous thud—then silence. Her eyes met the startled boy’s. He sprang to his feet at the same time she turned, and together they raced into the garage.

“Mac?”

“Dad?”

Her truck was in the middle of the floor, innocently resting on its four wheels, but Mac was nowhere in sight.

“Mac?” Sara called again.

She rounded the truck, Michael at her heels, so close that he bumped into her when she stopped abruptly. Mac half-sat, half-lay on the cement, propped on his elbows, staring at his leg, his face pasty white. Sara’s stomach did a flip as her gaze followed his and she saw the way his boot twisted outward at an unnatural angle.

He looked at her with a small, rueful smile. “It looks like this is going to be an expensive job for me, too.”


Chapter Two

“Broken?” Sara asked, surprised at how calm she sounded since her heart thundered against her ribs, jolted by adrenaline.

“I’d say so.” Mac was obviously trying to sound in control, as well, but the roughness in his voice belied the calm words.

“Michael, go get your mother, please.” She laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and hoped it felt reassuring in spite of its tremble. “We better get your dad to a hospital.”

Michael shook his head. He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed, but no sound came out. His mouth opened and closed futilely.

“His mother and I are divorced.” A sheen of perspiration covered Mac’s forehead. “Michael, I’m okay. Run up to the barn and tell Jacob to get down here—see if we can pry me off this floor. Go on, now. I’m okay.”

Movement returned to the boy’s stunned limbs and he was out of the garage in a flash, running as if his father’s life depended on it.

Sara looked helplessly at Mac. “What happened?” She moved to kneel beside him, afraid to touch him but instinctively wanting to be close.

“Tire caught my boot when she came off the lift.”

Sara looked at his twisted foot, horrified. “You mean my truck landed on your foot?”

“Just the tip of my boot, but it knocked me off balance.” He joined her in staring at his foot, now free of the tire. “Leg went one way, foot went the other.”

She felt sick at the thought and her stomach lurched again. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Of course it is!” She reached toward him, then pulled back, her hand wavering in the air. “You were doing the code of the west thing, with the hat and spurs and all, just like Zane Grey, and look what happened! This is all my fault. Here, let me help you—”

Mac was trying to push himself up by sliding his hands forward a fraction at a time.

She could tell the movement was excruciating. She tried to support his back without jarring his leg. “Better?”

He nodded, a jerky little bob as if he was afraid of any larger movement. “Thanks. Now, what’s all this about Zane Grey?”

Before she could answer, she heard the thud of running feet, then two boys dashed into the garage, breathless.

“Jeez.” Jacob appeared older than his brother but had the same straight brown hair and country-scrubbed look, like he’d been hung to dry in the sun. His looks were at odds with the strong barnyard odor that clung to him, and Sara guessed he’d been mucking those same stalls Michael had worried would be assigned to him.

“Is it broken?” He echoed Sara’s words.

“Yeah. Call the Swansons and ask Libby to drive me into Dutch Creek.”

Jacob shook his head. “They’re in Cheyenne, remember? The Cattlemen’s Association meeting.”

“Well, call the Reeds then. See if Robby can—”

“They’re in Cheyenne, too. At the—”

“Right, the Cattlemen’s Association meeting.” Mac’s shoulders were rigid with tension.

“I can drive you, Dad,” the boy offered.

“No way.”

“Come on,” Jacob pleaded. “I’m fourteen. This is an emergency, for cripe’s sake. I’ll go real slow. I can do it, Dad.”

“Jacob, you don’t have a license. You can drive around the ranch all you want but you’re not going on the highway, and I don’t feel like having this discussion right now. Try Joe over at—”

“Is my truck fixed?” Sara interrupted.

All three turned to her in surprise, as if they’d forgotten she still knelt beside Mac, her hand touching his back.

Mac said, “It’s all set.”

“Then, gentlemen, let’s help your father up and see if we can maneuver him into the cab.” It was the least she could do, she thought. This was all her fault. She should have replaced those hoses in Denver. The truck should have been perfect before she left Laura’s. Perfect.

She stood and eyed the boys, both several inches taller than her own five-foot-five and quite a few pounds heavier. “One on each side,” she directed, “and let him put all his weight on your shoulders until he gets his good leg under him.”

Mac immediately protested, “Sara, we can manage. I’ll just call one of the neighbors and—”

“It sounds like they’re all in Cheyenne to me, and besides, I’m headed for Dutch Creek, anyway.” She smiled. “I’ll just push you out the door in the hospital parking lot. You won’t even slow me down.”

Mac’s answering grin was weak. “Since you put it that way, thank you.”

“Thank me once we get you up. I don’t think this is going to be pleasant. Ready, boys?”

Hesitant but determined, they positioned themselves beside their father. Mac put an arm around each shoulder and slowly, carefully, they stood, lifting him to his feet.

Sara could almost hear his teeth grind as he tried not to yell when his broken ankle shifted and the weight of his boot pulled on it. He blanched again and his jaw twitched spasmodically.

“Are you okay?”

Mac grunted and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly, hissing between clenched teeth, “Let’s go.”

With a half-hop, half-shuffle, the boys helped him around the pickup to where she held open the passenger door. Mac put his good foot on the running board and managed to heave himself sideways onto the seat, leaving both legs stuck out the door.

Michael appeared near tears as he watched his father inch backward, dragging his injured foot inside the cab bit by bit.

“Michael,” Sara said to the younger boy, hoping to distract him, “see if you can find something soft for your father to rest that foot on. It might swell less if it’s propped up.”

“There’s cushions on those chairs next to the counter,” he suggested, already turning.

“That should do the trick. Speaking of swelling, I wonder if we should try to get that boot off.”

“Don’t touch it!” It was clear Mac’s shout was involuntary.

She glanced at the heavy leather boot, obviously of high quality in spite of signs of wear. “I’d hate for them to have to cut off your boot, that’s all.”

“Nobody’s cutting off my boot!” He sounded even more alarmed. “Michael, you just put those pillows on the floorboard there and I’ll be fine.” He’d backed up until he was almost opposite the steering wheel, his legs still pointed toward the door. Michael piled three canvas-covered pillows on the floor, and slowly Mac slid his injured left leg off the seat to rest on the stack, as straight as the cramped confines of the cab allowed. He bent his right leg at the knee and pulled it in far enough for Sara to shut the door.

“Michael, take care of the station,” he called through the open window, “and Jacob, be sure to finish Justice’s stall. And take a shower.”

“Can’t we come with you?” Michael asked, still worried but trying hard not to show it. “Maybe we could ride in the camper?”

“There’s no sense you hanging around the hospital. You’d have to stay in the waiting room the whole time. I’ll phone you as soon as I get there and have somebody in town run me home.”

“But—”

Mac ignored his interruption. “I’ll only be gone a couple hours. They’ll stick me in a cast, hand me some crutches, and I’ll be home in time to fix supper. Scratch that, I’ll pick up a couple of pizzas, okay?”

“You’ll call?” Michael stood on the running board and leaned through the window.

“I’ll call.” Mac reached out to ruffle his hair. “And you call the hospital and tell them we’re coming in so they can track down the doctor. Sara, you ready?”

She tried to slide behind the wheel, only to find her hip and shoulder come up firmly against Mac. She had to press herself against the length of him in order to squeeze in enough to shut her door.

“Do you have enough room?” He started to shift over but a sharp intake of breath told her how much the effort cost him.

“You hold still. Just let me fasten my seat belt.” She groped awkwardly behind him until she managed to press the metal clip of her seat belt into the fastener that poked into Mac’s hip. Her fingers were clumsy with embarrassment as they fumbled against the back of his jeans, and she knew her cheeks reddened.

After turning the key to start the engine, she reached out to adjust the rearview mirror, but stopped herself halfway. No time for that. No time for the little ceremonies that so easily became habit. No time to make everything perfect. Ignoring the unease she felt at skipping the ritual, she shoved the truck into gear, her hand brushing along Mac’s thigh with every movement, and backed out of the garage.

Mac waved to the boys, who stood forlornly in the open door of the garage, and Sara guided the truck onto the highway, avoiding as many jarring potholes as she could.

As soon as they rounded a curve in the road, putting the garage out of sight, she felt Mac slump heavily against her. His shoulders rounded inward as he hunched against the pain.

“Damn,” she breathed, suddenly realizing his cheery wave had been an act for the boys’ sake. “How far to Dutch Creek?”

“Forty miles.”

“I’ll drive fast.”

“Good.”

They were silent, the only sound the growl of the truck’s engine as she accelerated well past the speed limit The door handle dug uncomfortably into her hip and she shifted in her seat. The imperceptible movement brought her into even closer contact with Mac.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay.” He made an obvious effort to collect himself. “Look, we’re going to be pretty close for the next forty-five minutes, so we might as well be comfortable.” He put his arm across the back of the seat behind her head, giving them extra inches of shoulder room. “Now, you lean into me and I’ll lean into you, and we’ll sort of prop each other up.”

Sara tried to relax against him but so many nerve endings tingled from his nearness she felt her muscles stiffen and contract rather than relax. The feel of his forearm so close behind the bare skin of her neck, the sight of his fingers curved loosely near her shoulder, the way she nestled so perfectly under his arm—

“So, now that I’m a captive audience—”

Mac’s voice made her jump, she’d been so engrossed in the unique sensations flooding her body, her unexpected reactions to the man.

“—we might as well get to know each other a little better. Tell me something about Sara Shepherd.”

She stared at the mountains ahead of her, a little closer, a sharper outline against the brilliant blue sky. The wind whipped in the window, teasing strands from the elastic band securing her ponytail. “I’m forty-three,” she began, pulling a wisp of hair from her mouth and pushing it behind her ear. “Grew up on a farm outside of Denver. Married young. Widowed for four years now. One child, a daughter named Laura. She’s twenty-four.”

She stopped. Over twenty years summed up in little more than a breath. Mac seemed to be waiting for more, but she suddenly could think of nothing else to say. Married, widowed, one child. The life of Sara Shepherd.

“That’s all? A succinct curriculum vitae if I ever heard one.”

She smiled. “Trying to impress me with your Latin, huh? Reminds me of a professor friend of my husband. He likes to sprinkle his speech with a little quid pro quo now and then.”

“It’s a habit I picked up from an old English professor of mine at the University of Wyoming.”

She looked at Mac in surprise. “The University of Wyoming? You can’t mean Cyrus Bennington?”

“Don’t tell me you know Cyrus?”

“Know him? I just spent two days visiting him in Cheyenne! He and my husband were very close. My husband was an English professor at the University of Denver.”

“How about that!” Mac exclaimed. “Cyrus and I have been friends since my college days. He comes out here every August, trades in that English driving cap of his for a Stetson, lights up a stogie instead of his pipe and plays cowboy for a week or so.”

She laughed. “Now that I can’t picture. Cyrus with a secret life. He’s never mentioned it.”

“Small world, huh?” Mac’s smile made the lines around his eyes crinkle even more, and Sara found herself wanting to take her eyes from the road often to look at him.

“So now that we’ve discovered we’re almost related,” he said, “I think you can enlarge a little on that life’s story of yours, don’t you?”

She shook her head. “It will bore you to tears—put you right to sleep.”

“A woman with a face like a cameo angel driving a truck all alone to Canada? I don’t think so.” She could feel his gaze slide over her features and her heart skipped a nervous beat. “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “if you put me to sleep I’d be grateful. And don’t bother to wake me up when we get to the hospital, either. Whatever they’re going to do to me, I think I’d rather be asleep.”

Guilt stabbed through her again. If listening to her talk would take his mind off his ankle, give him something to concentrate on besides the pain, she’d gladly talk from here to Dutch Creek.

“You want my whole life’s story then?”

“Start with the ‘just traveling’ part.” Mac laid his head against the seat and closed his eyes. “How long have you been just traveling?”

“Two years.”

“Two years!” His eyes flew open and he turned his head sharply to look at her, jarring his leg. “Ow!” He set his boot more securely on the stack of pillows. “I was thinking more along the lines of a couple of weeks.”

“Nope. Two years.”

“You’ve been traveling around the country, living in your camper, for two years?”

She nodded.

Mac settled against the seat once more like a child awaiting a favorite story. “Okay, start from the beginning.”

The beginning? She wasn’t sure there was a beginning. When had her life with Greg began to seem like a trap rather than a marriage? When had the dishes and the laundry and the PTA bake sales combined to drag her down until she had no idea how to lift herself up any more?

“I guess things sort of came to a head when Laura graduated from college.” She took a firmer grip on the steering wheel as she tried to pick her way through the debris of the past. “My husband had been dead for two years by then, and I was still living in Denver. Most of our friends had really been Greg’s friends, it turned out, and I found myself alone a lot. All alone in that house.” Her voice tightened. “That house. Dusting that same damn china every week, vacuuming that mile-long carpet in the living room—vanilla cream carpet—washing those blinds with all those metal slats, row after row of them, catching every particle of dust—” She broke off as she saw Mac looking at her curiously. She consciously relaxed her jaw, which had tensed at the memories.

“Anyway, when Laura graduated from college, I said enough. I threw in the suburban-housewife towel. Sold the house, the lawn mower, the matching china—I had a yard sale you wouldn’t believe. Sold every last thing.” She found herself smiling. Just the thought of ridding herself of the shackles of her previous life could still make her breathe easier, more freely. Twenty-two years worth of clutter—all gone.

Mac saw the smile and couldn’t comprehend it. He still had his merit badges from Boy Scouts, Jacob’s first baby tooth, his father’s World War Two duffel bag. Those possessions grounded him, defined him, located him and his space in the impersonal scheme of things. They were the physical, tangible record of a life, and no one sold a life at a yard sale.

He said, “I don’t believe it. Not everything. You couldn’t have sold your daughter’s baby book.”

“Of course not!”

Aha! He’d known it.

“I gave it away.”

“What?”

“I gave all that kind of personal stuff to Laura. Passed it on to the next generation, so to speak. Those things are important to Laura. All I’ve got left is three pairs of shoes, a few pairs of jeans, enough dishes to fill a strainer, a CD player...” She paused and appeared to think for a moment. “That’s about it. Oh, and a spider plant.”

“A decadent luxury.”

Sara laughed. “I’m managing to keep it alive.”

The throbbing in his ankle reached clear to his hip by now, but he ignored it, concentrating instead on this woman beside him who’d pared her life down to an unrecognizable skeleton. “You mean there’s no dog to share the campfire with? No collection of matchbooks from places like Sweettooth, Texas? No knitting bag with a halffinished chartreuse pillow cover?”

She shook her head. “I read a lot.”

“Hmm.” He scratched the back of his neck absently. They came up on an eighteen-wheeler and Sara passed the huge truck without loosing speed. Smooth. Controlled. Crossing and recrossing the white line with practiced skill—two years of practice. The more she told him, the more he wanted to probe.

“So you sold everything, got into your truck and headed—where?”

“It didn’t matter at the time. I guess it still doesn’t. Into the sunset sounded good as far as I was concerned. I drove to the closest interstate entrance, and since I didn’t want to make a left into traffic, I took a right. And right was north.” She rested her elbow on the open window and drummed her fingers against the outside of the door, occasionally letting the force of the wind lift her hand and push her palm open. It was as if she caressed the air, savored the motion, as she described that first dash to freedom.

“It was the middle of July, blastingly hot, so I kept on going north. Seattle, British Columbia, then skirted the northern states, Minnesota, New York, Maine. I ran out of land in Bar Harbor and it was starting to get cold so I turned south. By November I was somewhere in Georgia. I spent that winter in the south avoiding the snow, then when it warmed up I headed north again. Sort of a big, looping circle.”

“Sounds like the way herds migrate.”

She smiled. “I guess.”

He tried to understand. “But herds follow the food, the grass. What did you follow? What do you follow?” He studied her as she kept her eyes on the road, the asphalt singing beneath the tires. What siren’s song did she hear?

“It still doesn’t matter. There’s no destination to this trip.” She sounded very sure. He knew she’d already asked herself the same questions. “As long as I never have to write another to-do list as long as I live, I’ll be happy. No schedule, no have-tos, no responsibilities, no one depending on me—”

“But what about your daughter?” Where was the room for family in a one-woman camper? he wondered.

“Laura.” Sara sighed. “She’s a grown woman. She’s got a college degree, a good job, her own apartment, her own life—but she considers the way I live some kind of personal affront.”

“She doesn’t approve?”

“That’s putting it mildly. She thinks I’m nuts, having some kind of mid-life crisis or something, and I’ll snap out of it if she badgers me long enough. Go back to baking cookies or whatever it is she thinks I should be doing.”

“Oh.” Mac tried to sound noncommittal. Obviously he failed.

“And what does that mean?” Her eyes were narrowed against the lowering sun, hair tangling in the wind, golden strands mixed with the brown. “You think I’m nuts, too?”

“I didn’t say that,” he hedged. “But you have to admit it’s not your run-of-the-mill life-style.”

“Haven’t you ever had days when you wanted to say to hell with it all—” she waved a hand to encompass the road, the land, all of Wyoming “—and just take off for the tropics?”

Had he ever wanted to bolt? Mac considered her question. There had been a time, those nights right after his wife had left, when he’d sit at the too-silent supper table looking at his boys over the charred pot roast, dishes from last night still piled in the sink, the boys ready to burst into tears or fights at the drop of a pin. Could he have walked out?

He shrugged. “I’ve lived in the same house all my life. My father and grandfather were born upstairs. My great-grandfather homesteaded the land I work today.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else.”

Sara was silent a moment. “You’re lucky,” she said finally.

“I’m very lucky.” He knew he was. He might be tied to the land, but the ties were velvety soft and he willingly slipped his hands into the straps every time he plunged a shovel into the dark soil, every time he singed the Wallace brand into the hide of a bawling calf, every time he broke ice on a watering trough. Every time he dragged on his boots, tugged on his gloves, slapped his hat on his head and slammed the screen door, a door that had been slammed by four generation of Wallaces, he pulled the straps tighter, and more comfortably, around him.

“I’m not saying that ranching’s for everyone, either,” he felt compelled to add. “My ex-wife certainly didn’t think so. It’s hard work, the money’s lousy, and the winters are hellish.”

“But you love it.”

“I do.”

“She didn’t?”

“No, she didn’t.” He knew Sara waited for more, but he refused to elaborate. He didn’t like to talk about Ronda. He didn’t like to think about Ronda.

“Oh, so I’m supposed to tell all but you get to be the strong, silent type? Nothin’ doin’.”

“Ask me about something else then.” He saw the speculative look Sara gave him but was relieved when she dropped the subject of his ex-wife. His foot pounded in time to his pulse and he had to concentrate to keep his muscles relaxed. His marriage wasn’t something he could talk about without stiffening up until he was one big cramp.

“All right,” she agreed, “what does Mac stand for?”

“MacKenzie.”

“MacKenzie Wallace. A good clan name.”

“Quite a few generations back, but my father was proud of it. Being an only child, he made sure I’d carry on the name. Whereas you—” he looked at her carefully “—I’d say you’re from solid English stock.”

“And how can you tell that?”

His arm still lay along the back of her seat, and he reached up to trail a finger lightly along her cheekbone. “It’s that peaches and cream complexion of yours, like a rose petal settled right here—” He traced his way slowly up to her ear, suddenly unable to stop what had started as a casual touch. His blood quickened and he forgot all about the pain in his ankle. He wanted to let his finger slip down the curve of her neck, follow her collarbone, dip inside her T-shirt—

He jerked his hand away and curled his fingers around the back of the seat, gripping the padded upholstery tightly. The pain in his ankle roared to life, exploding from a dull ache to a white-hot throb, but the groan that welled from a place down deep inside came more from the unexpected and unwelcome feeling of desire than from physical pain.

He cleared his throat and tried to sound as if the touch of her silken skin under his fingers had left him unaffected. “You know, the English were bitter enemies of the Scottish clans. I bet my ancestors and yours were pretty nasty to each other.”

Sara’s cheeks were tinged a delicate pink, but her voice was calm as she said, “So I’ve heard. They wouldn’t approve of my aiding and abetting the enemy this way. Although I guess since it was my truck that injured you in the first place, I struck my blow for England.”

“It was quite a blow.” He pointed to the cluster of buildings that had come into view as the truck reached the top of a small rise. “Take a left at the stop sign. The hospital is right behind the high school.”

They were at the small clinic within minutes, a single-story cinder-block building painted sterile white. Sara parked directly in front of the double glass doors, ignoring the yellow-striped parking spaces on the other side of a low brick planter.

“Wait here. I’ll get somebody to help you.”

Sara jumped from the truck and disappeared inside. She was back almost immediately, followed by a nurse pushing a wheelchair.

“Afternoon, Susie. How are you?” he greeted her. Susie wore her usual no-nonsense white uniform covered by a shapeless, colorless sweater. She was as wide as she was tall, and her faded brown hair curled tight to her scalp like sheep’s wool. She’d been playing around with those home perms again, he saw.

“Mac Wallace, what have you done to yourself?” She yanked open the truck door and stood with her hands on her massive hips, her look disapproving.

“Have you been losing weight again?” he asked. “I swear, you’re going to disappear on me one of these days.”

“That didn’t work when you were a kid trying to get out of a shot, and it won’t work now. Come on, let’s haul your butt out of there.” She took off her wire-rimmed glasses and let them dangle from the gold chain around her neck, motioning with her hands. “Scoot forward. Try to take your weight on your good leg.”

He couldn’t believe the agony caused by the slightest movement. His denim shirt was soaked with sweat by the time he’d maneuvered himself into the wheelchair. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, before he looked at Sara. She stood in front of him, beside her blue truck, uncertain, looking as worried and as near tears as Michael had. He tried to smile reassuringly.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded. “You’re welcome.” The silence lengthened while Mac stared into dove gray eyes, suddenly hesitant to say goodbye.

“The doctor’s waiting for you,” Susie said, releasing the brake on the chair. “And he’s not too pleased about having his fishing interrupted, so we better get a move on.” She started to turn the chair to the door.

“Goodbye,” Sara called. She lifted a hand in a halfwave.

“Goodbye. Thanks again.” The chair faced the hospital entrance, and he could see Sara’s reflection in the glass doors. He watched her walk around the truck before the automatic opener on the hospital doors swung them wide, stretching her image until it broke and disappeared. He heard the truck door slam and the engine start as Susie pushed him over the threshold into the cool, antiseptic hallway. His teeth began to chatter. Delayed shock, he told himself, clamping his mouth shut. The empty feeling in his gut had nothing to do with loneliness.

Sara pulled into the hospital parking lot an hour later. Instead of heading down the highway, she’d had a hamburger from a drive-through ice cream stand and wandered around the four-block main street of Dutch Creek, self-proclaimed gateway to Yellowstone National Park. Miniature stuffed buffaloes and gaudily dyed geodes seemed to be the tourist merchandise of choice, along with the ever present T-shirts.

She’d followed the sidewalk past the last shop—a combination frozen-yogurt-southwestern-pottery store—to the park at the end of the street. She’d sat on a bench next to the empty playground under the shade of a cottonwood tree and worried about Mac. After a half hour of internal debate, she’d walked to her truck and returned to the hospital, unable to drive away without checking on him.

She felt guilty, she decided. That was why she was so reluctant to leave. It had nothing to do with the way his hand had lingered on her face that brief moment in the truck, his roughened fingertips gentle against her skin. She just needed to be sure he’d been released and was on his way to the ranch. Just a quick stop at the front desk was all it would take. She’d make it to Jackson Hole before dark.

But the admissions desk was shuttered when she entered the hospital, and there was no bell on the counter under the hand-lettered please-ring-for-service sign. A single hallway stretched before her, its waxed gray vinyl reflecting the overhead fluorescent lights, the walls a no-nonsense, industrial-strength green. She started down it, searching for the nurse’s station.

Mac’s voice was audible after only a few feet, coming from an open door at the end of the hall. She peeked around the edge of the frame. A narrow hospital bed, both foot and head raised, took up almost all of the tiny room, and Mac took up almost all of the bed. His one-size-fitsall beige gown came only as far as his knees, so the old-fashioned, white plaster cast, molded from mid-calf to toes, was the first thing to draw her eyes. The intravenous drip attached to the back of his hand was the next.

Mac was shouting into the perforated circle in a metal panel on the wall near his head. He held a cord in his free hand and was viciously poking the white button at its end with his thumb.

“Susie, this is the last time I’m saying this, I want to go home!”

Sara heard the nurse’s voice echo from the panel, impatience clear despite the scratchy intercom.

“You can’t go home, Mac. Now settle down before I come give you another shot of something. And stop pushing that buzzer.”

“The boys are home by themselves. I can’t just lay here. I’ve got to get home.”

“Listen, I’ll call the Swansons and have Libby go over—”

“They’re in Cheyenne.”

“At the Cattlemen’s Association—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted. “Now bring me my clothes and the only boot that damned doctor didn’t mutilate and—”

“Mac, the doctor said we need to keep an eye on you overnight. I can’t do a thing about—”

“I can stay with them.”

Mac’s head shot around at the sound of her voice.

“What was that, Mac?” Susie asked over the intercom.

“Just a minute, Susie. I’ll buzz you.”

“You touch that buzzer one more time and I’ll—”

Mac flicked the switch on the wall, cutting off the nurse’s threat.

“Hi.” He looked at Sara as if nothing would surprise him anymore. “I thought you’d gone.”

“I came back.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Oh.” He paused. “Did you know that damned doctor cut off my boot? Elephant. Genuine elephant. It’s not like you can go down to the local five-and-dime and get another elephant hide boot!”

“I’m sorry. They looked like nice boots.”

“Damn right! And now they’ve got me pumped so full of painkillers they say they want to keep me overnight so they can drip it into me drop by drop!”

“Mac, I’d be happy to go to the ranch and stay with the boys,” she said. Why not? That was the whole point of her new life—no schedule, no worries, no one to answer to. If she could help out someone who’d helped her, what did it matter if she took a day longer to get to Yellowstone? “Besides, I still owe you for that last batch of repairs. I could keep an eye on the boys tonight, come pick you up in the morning, and we can settle the bill then.”

“I can’t have you go to all that trouble.” Mac bounced his good leg against the mattress in frustration. “There’s got to be somebody who didn’t go to Cheyenne for the weekend.”

“You’d be doing me a favor, really,” she told him. “It’ll be difficult finding an RV spot this late in Jackson. I need a place to park.”

“It’s nice of you to offer, Sara, but...” Mac hesitated and she was surprised to see a look of embarrassment on his face. Of course! She realized the problem with a start. That time they’d shared in the truck had made her feel so close to him, she’d forgotten they were strangers. She couldn’t ask him to leave his children in the care of someone who’d wandered into his gas station mere hours before.

“But I could be a mass murderer or something?”

“I don’t mean that, but—”

“Hey, you can’t be too careful these days. You’re absolutely right. I’d feel the same way in your place.” Sara thought for a moment. “I tell you what, why don’t I give Cyrus a call over at the university? He’ll vouch for my sanity.”

“Any friend of Cyrus’s is a friend of mine?” Mac thought it over for a moment. “Sure, sounds like a good idea. Of course, it could be the morphine talking, but right now all I want is to go to sleep and I can’t think of any other alternatives.”

Mac did look tired, sick-tired, with dark smudges under his eyes. Sara picked up the phone next to his bed and dialed the number of her late husband’s oldest and dearest friend.

“Cyrus?” She was pleased to hear his voice after only the first ring. “You’ll never guess who I ran into in Dutch Creek.”

“Mac Wallace,” he replied promptly in his crisp English accent. When she gasped, he said, “My dear girl, there are only a dozen people living in that entire half of the state. It wasn’t exactly a stumper.”

She laughed. Cyrus always made her feel good. Briefly, she explained the situation, then handed the phone to Mac. “He wants to talk to you.”

Sara could hear only one side of the conversation, but Mac laughed out loud several times. She could just imagine what Cyrus was telling him about her.

“All right, Cyrus,” Mac said. “I’ll keep that in mind. It’s been great talking to you. The boys can’t wait to see you in August.” He held out the phone for her to hang up.

“Well?”

“Cyrus said you’re definitely sane, the salt of the earth, he’d trust you with his children any time—if he had any—and he urged me to marry you immediately.”


Chapter Three

“He what!”

“His exact words were, ‘Please pry that lovely child from that vile truck and wed her immediatus, which I think loosely translates into pronto.”

“Or, if your Latin’s as good as mine, could mean ‘when hell freezes over.’”

Mac grinned. “Cyrus has been trying to get me remarried for years. He thinks it’s my dumb luck that you happened into my garage and said I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I’m a gift horse?” She tried to sound lightly amused in spite of the way her heart had jolted at Cyrus’s eccentric suggestion.

“I was sort of paraphrasing what he actually said. He lost me when he started quoting Julius Caesar.” Mac’s smile faded. “Seriously, Cyrus said I should jump at your baby-sitting offer. So I’m jumping—as high as I can under the circumstances. And I really want to thank you for your help.”

“That’s all right. As a man once told me when he fixed my water hose for free, it’s just being neighborly.”

His look was warm and she felt unreasonably pleased by his gratitude. She felt as if she’d done something wonderful, rather than simply offered to baby-sit in exchange for a parking place. His blue eyes held hers, and she read things in them she told herself came from the morphine, not from Mac. Things that made the narrow hospital bed suddenly appear plenty wide enough for two, if she was pressed up tight enough against him... Discomfited, she picked up the phone and held it out to him. “Here, call the boys and tell them I’m coming—with pizza.”

“They like pepperoni.”

“Got it.” It was as hard to leave him now as it had been in the parking lot. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go? I think your nurse sounded pretty serious about not touching that buzzer again.”

“Not unless you happen to have an extra elephant-hide boot tucked away in that camper of yours.”

“Sorry, it’s just me and my spider plant, remember?”

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” His inflection made it a question, a lonely-sounding question. The small hospital seemed quiet and empty, no ringing phones, no gurneys whisking down the corridors on rubber wheels, no clipboards crisply snapping shut.

“I’ll ask what time they think you’ll be released. Try to get some sleep now.” Impulsively, she took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze as she dropped a light kiss on his cheek. But his skin was so firm and warm, with his shadow of whiskers prickling her sensitive lips, that an erotic jolt caught her unaware. She jerked upright and stepped away from the bed. Murmuring good-night, she walked quickly from the room before she found an excuse to linger any longer, her mouth still hot and tingling.

She arrived at the ranch just over an hour later. The sun hovered on the horizon, fiery layers of pink, orange and mauve, as she guided the truck up the gravel drive and pulled around the side of the two-story house. She walked up the wooden steps that led to the porch, balancing two large, flat pizza boxes.

Michael answered her awkward knock on the back door, delivered with the toe of her tennis shoe.

“Hi. Come on in.” He took the boxes from her and politely moved aside for her to enter.

His older brother stood in the kitchen, hair still wet from a shower. Jacob looked at her a little warily. She was sure the boys wished she were Libby—the name that had come first to everyone’s mind when Mac had needed help—rather than some stranger who’d been dropped in their laps. At their age, they didn’t need an adult hovering over them, making sure they brushed their teeth before bed, so she hastened to reassure them that she wouldn’t intrude.

“I just wanted to deliver these pizzas.” She stayed at the threshold. “Your dad said you liked pepperoni.”

They nodded and smiled stiffly.

“I’m all set up for the night in my camper—” she started to back away “—but if you men need anything, be sure to give a knock on the door.”

“Aren’t you going to have some pizza?” Michael asked, obviously surprised.

She shook her head. “I had a hamburger in Dutch Creek. Good night, then.”

“But Dad said to put clean sheets on the bed in the guest room,” Michael blurted. “And we even changed the towels in the bathroom.”

She tried not to smile. “That was sweet of you, but—”

“At least come in and have a cup of coffee,” Jacob offered. “Dad said to have some ready for you. I made a whole pot, and me and Mike don’t like it.”

“I like it,” Michael said.

“You like the cream and sugar,” his brother scoffed. “It’s a wonder your teeth haven’t rotted off under those braces.”

“Thank you.” Sara stepped into the kitchen before the argument escalated. “A cup of coffee would be nice.”

Jacob sat the pizza boxes in the middle of the large butcher-block table while Michael rather defiantly got out two mugs. She poured them both a cup of coffee without comment, although she spooned a generous amount of sugar and creamer into her cup so Michael’s lavish use of both wasn’t so obvious.

“Does he have a cast or just one of those bandage things?” Michael asked, dunking the end of a slice of pizza into his coffee.

“A regular cast,” she assured him.

Jacob sounded suspicious as he asked, “Is he really going to come home tomorrow? Sometimes Dad treats us like we’re still little kids so he won’t tell us stuff if he thinks we’ll worry.”

“I mean, they’re not planning to amputate his leg or something like that, are they?” Michael added, fishing out a slice of pepperoni that had slid off the cheese into his cup.

“Heavens, no!” Sara set her cup down so suddenly that coffee sloshed onto her fingers. “Of course not.” She wiped her wet hand on to her jeans. “He’s royally mad about his boots—”

Michael stopped her with a groan. “We heard. We heard all about it.”

“But other than that he’s fine. They said he’d be released right after lunch. I’ll run in and pick him up and bring him back here—”

She broke off, frowning at the thought. “Is your dad’s bedroom downstairs?”

The boys shook their heads.

“How about that guest room you got ready for me?”

Another simultaneous shake.

“I was just thinking, it’s going to be hard for your dad to go up the stairs for a few days. Is there somewhere downstairs we could set up a bed for him?”

“The couch in the office folds out into a bed,” Jacob volunteered. “But it sort of sinks in the middle.”

“Let’s go take a look and see if we can’t fix something up.” She stood and carried her cup to the sink.

“My turn to do the dishes!” Michael shouted, jumping from his chair. He grabbed the two empty pizza boxes and, with a flourish, stuffed them into the trash can under the sink. “Done!”

Jacob looked daggers, but, in a show of restraint, he turned his back on Michael’s smile of triumph. “The office is this way, ma’am,” he said formally, obviously trying to appear more mature than his brother.

Once again, Sara found herself hiding a smile as she followed his stiff and dignified back down a hallway to a book-lined room.

The boys tugged and pulled until they had the couch transformed into a bed, albeit with a sizable sag in the center. Still, they decided it was better than the stairs, and after a quick search for sheets and blankets pronounced the office a suitable sickroom ready for Mac’s return.

“Anything else you can think of?” Jacob asked, giving the mattress another bounce.

She shook her head. “Looks good to me.”

“Then I think I’ll head for my room and listen to some tunes.” He was at the door in two strides. “Good night, ma’am. Thank you for your help.”

Michael looked desperately after his brother, and she knew this was Jacob’s revenge for the dishes scam. He’d left Michael alone to entertain her for the rest of the evening, slick as a whistle.

“How about another cup of coffee, Michael?”

“Uh, no thanks. I, uh—” His freckles blended together as his face reddened.

She took pity on him. “I think I’ll pour me a cup, then call it a night, if that’s all right with you. It’s been a long day.”

“That would be great. I mean,” he amended hastily, “you have all the coffee you want. Or watch some TV or something. I guess I’m going to my room, too, so you can just—”

“You go on up. I’ll let myself out.”

“Night.” He bolted for the stairs as if afraid she’d change her mind and want a partner for an evening of gin rummy or someone to hold her yarn.

She retraced her steps to the kitchen, filled her cup, then unplugged the coffeemaker and dumped the rest of the pot down the sink. Leaning against the counter, she looked around the big, cluttered, old-fashioned kitchen. The refrigerator and stove gleamed white with the rounded edges she remembered from appliances of her childhood. Their heavy lines were at odds with expensive Mexican tile, oak cupboards and a custom countertop that spoke of a recent remodel. One wall was decorated with shining copper molds—a fish, a sun, a pineapple—their soft glow warming the room. She wondered if they were a leftover touch from the days of that ex-wife Mac seemed so reluctant to discuss.




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