One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher: Tough to Tame / Carrying the Rancher's Heir / One Dance with the Cowboy

“I’ll kill you!” she told her brother.

“Now, now,” Dr. Rydel said complacently. “We all know I’m a horror to work for. He’s just saying what you aren’t comfortable telling me.”

“And he does have a sense of humor,” Kell said. “Thanks for bringing her home,” he added, and the smile faded. “My driving days are apparently over.”

“There are vehicles with hand controls now,” Dr. Rydel pointed out.

“We’re ordering one of those as soon as we get our new yacht paid off,” Kell replied with a serious expression.

Cappie burst out laughing. “And our dandy indoor swimming pool.”

Dr. Rydel smiled. “At least you still have a sense of humor.”

“It’s the only part of me that works,” Kell replied. “I’ve offered to check myself into a military home, but she won’t hear of it.”

“Over my dead body,” she reiterated, and glared at him.

He sighed. “It’s nice to be loved, but you can take family feeling over the cliff with you, darlin’,” he reminded her.

“Sink or swim, we’re a matched set,” she said stubbornly. “I’m not putting you out on the street.”

“Military homes can be very nice,” Kell began.

Cappie grimaced. “Your milkshake is getting warm,” she interrupted. She took the carrier from Dr. Rydel and handed one to Kell, along with a straw. “There’s your burger and fries,” she said. “Working?”

“Taking a short break to play mah-jongg,” he replied. “I’m actually winning, too.”

“I play Sudoku,” Dr. Rydel commented.

Kell groaned. “I can’t do numbers. I tried that game and thought I’d go nuts. I couldn’t even get one column to line up. How do you do it?”

“I’m left-brained,” the other man said simply. “Numbers and science. I’d have loved to be a writer, but I’m spelling-challenged.”

Kell laughed. “I’m left-brained, too, but I can’t handle Sudoku. I can spell, however,” he added, tongue in cheek.

“That’s why we have a bookkeeper,” Dr. Rydel said. “I think people would have issues if their names and animal conditions were constantly misspelled. I had a time in college.”

“So did I,” Kell confessed. “College trigonometry almost kept me from getting my degree in the first place. I also had a bad time with biology,” he added pointedly.

Dr. Rydel grinned. “My best subject. All A’s.”

“I’ll bet the biology-challenged loved you,” Cappie said with a chuckle. “Blew the curve every time, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “I bought pizzas for my classmates every Saturday night to make it up to them.”

“Pizza,” Cappie mused. “I remember what that tastes like. I think.”

“I don’t want to talk about pizza,” Kell said and sipped his milkshake. “You and your mushrooms!”

“He hates mushrooms, and I hate Italian sausage,” Cappie commented. “I love mushrooms.”

“Yuuuuck,” Kell commented.

She smiled. “We’ll leave you to your supper. If you need anything, call me, okay?”

“Sure. What would you like to be called?”

She wrinkled her nose at him and went out the door.

“Nice to have met you,” Kell told the vet.

“Same here,” Dr. Rydel said.

He followed Cappie out into the living room. “You’d better eat your own burger and fries before they’re cold,” he said. “They don’t reheat well.”

She smiled shyly. “Thanks again for bringing me home, and for the food.” She wondered how she was going to get to work the following Monday, but she knew she’d come up with something. She could always beg one of the other vet techs for a ride.

“You’re welcome.” He stared down at her quietly, frowning. “You sure you’re all right?”

She nodded. “I’m wobbly. That’s because I was scared to death. I’ll be fine. It’s just a little bruising. Honest.”

“Would you tell me if it was more?” he asked.

She grinned.

“Well, if you think you need to go to the doctor later, you call me. Call the office,” he added. “They’ll take a message and page me, wherever I am.”

“That’s very nice of you. Thanks.”

He drew in a long breath. His blue eyes narrowed on her face. “You’ve got a lot on your shoulders for a woman your age,” he said quietly.

“Some people have a lot more,” she replied. “I love my brother.”

He smiled. “I noticed that.”

She studied him curiously. “Do you have family?”

His face tautened. “Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“People get old. They die.” He became distant. “We’ll talk another time. Good evening.”

“Good evening. Thanks.”

He shrugged. “No problem.”

She watched him go with a strange sense of loss. He was in many ways the saddest person she’d ever known.

She finished her supper and went to collect her brother’s food containers.

“Your boss is nice,” he said. “Not what I expected.”

“How could you tell him what I said about him, you horrible man?” she asked with mock anger.

“He’s one of those rare souls who never lie,” he said simply. “He comes at you head-on, not from ambush.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s in his manner,” he said simply. He smiled. “I’m that way myself. It does take one to know one. Now come here and sit down and tell me what happened.”

She drew in a deep breath and sat down in the chair beside the bed. She hated having to tell him the whole truth. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

CHAPTER THREE

CAPPIE HITCHED a ride to work with Keely, promising not to make a regular thing of it.

“I’ll just have to get another car,” she said, as if all that required was a trip to a car lot. In fact, she had no idea what she was going to do.

“My brother is best friends with Sheriff Hayes Carson,” Keely reminded her, “and Hayes knows Kilraven. He told him the particulars, and Kilraven had a talk with the driver’s insurance company.” She chuckled. “I understand some interesting what-if’s were mentioned. The upshot is that the driver’s insurance is going to pay to fix your car.”

“What?”

“Well, he was drunk, Cappie. In fact, he’s occupying a cell at the county detention center as we speak. You could sue his insurance company for enough to buy a new Jaguar like my brother’s got.”

She didn’t mention that Kell had owned a Jaguar, and not too long ago. Those days seemed very far away now. “Wow. I’ve never sued anybody, you know.”

Keely laughed. “Me, neither. But you could. Once the insurance people were reminded of that, they didn’t seem to think fixing an old car was an extravagant use of funds.”

“It’s really nice of them,” Cappie said, stunned. It was like a miracle. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. My brother is an invalid, and the only money we’ve got is his savings and what I bring home. That’s not a whole lot.”

“Before I married Boone, I had to count pennies,” the other girl said. “I know what it’s like to have very little. I think you do very well.”

“Thanks.” She sighed. “You know, Kell was in the military for years and years. He went into all sorts of dangerous situations, but he never got hurt. Then he left the army and went to work for this magazine, went to Africa to cover a story and got hit with shrapnel from an exploding shell. Go figure.”

Keely frowned. “Didn’t he have insurance? Most magazines have it for their employees, I’m sure.”

“Well, no, he didn’t. Odd, isn’t it?”

“They sent him to Africa to do a story,” Keely added. “What sort of story? A news story?”

Cappie blinked. “You know, I never asked him. I only knew he was leaving the country. Then I got a call from him, saying he was in the hospital with some injuries and he’d be home when he could get here. He wouldn’t even let me visit him. An ambulance brought him to our rented house in San Antonio.”

Keely didn’t say what she was thinking. But she almost had to bite her tongue.

Cappie stared at her. “That’s a very strange story, even if I’m the one telling it,” she said slowly.

“Maybe it’s the truth,” Keely said comfortingly. “After all, it’s very often stranger than fiction.”

“I guess so.” She let it drop. But she did intend to talk it over with Kell that night.

When she got home, there was a big SUV parked in the driveway. She frowned at it as she went up the steps and into the house. The door was unlocked.

She heard laughter coming from Kell’s room.

“I’m home!” she called.

“Come on in here,” Kell called back. “I’ve got company.”

She took off her coat and moved into the bedroom. Kell’s visitor was very tall and lean, with faint silvering at the temples of his black hair. He had green eyes and a somber face, and one of his hands seemed to be burned. He moved it unobtrusively into his pocket when he saw her eyes drawn to it.

“This is an old friend of mine,” Kell said. “My sister, Cappie. This is Cy Parks. He owns a ranch in Jacobsville.”

Cappie held out her hand, smiling, and shook the one offered. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same here. You’ll have to bring Kell over to the ranch to see us,” he added. “I have a terrific wife and two little boys. I’d love for you to meet them.”

“You, with a wife and kids,” Kell said, shaking his head. “I’d never have imagined it in my wildest dreams.”

“Oh, it comes to all of us, sooner or later,” Cy replied lazily. He pursed his lips. “So you work for Bentley Rydel, do you?”

She nodded.

“Does he really carry a pitchfork, or is that just malicious gossip?” Cy added, tongue in cheek.

She flushed. “Kell…!” she muttered at her brother.

He held up both hands and laughed. “I didn’t tell him what you said. Honest.”

“He didn’t,” Cy agreed. “Actually Bentley makes a lot of calls at my place during calving season. He’s our vet. Good man.”

“Yes, he is,” Cappie said. “He brought me home after a drunk ran into my car.”

Cy’s expression darkened. “I heard about that. Tough break.”

“Well, the man’s insurance company is going to fix our car,” Cappie added with a laugh. “It seems they were worried that we might sue.”

“We would have,” Kell said, and he wasn’t smiling. “You could have been killed.”

“I just got bruised a little,” she said, smiling. “Nice of you to worry, though.”

Kell grinned. “It’s a hobby of mine.”

“You need to get out more,” Cy told the man in the bed. “I know you’ve got pain issues, but staying cooped up in here is just going to make things worse. Believe me, I know.”

Kell’s eyes darkened. “I guess you’re right. But I do have something to do. I’m working on a novel. One about Africa.”

Cy Parks’s face grew hard. “That place has made its mark on several of us,” he said enigmatically.

“It’s still making marks on other men,” Kell said.

“The Latin American drug cartels are moving in there as well,” Cy replied. “Hell of a thing, as if Africa didn’t have enough internal problems as it is.”

“As long as power-hungry tyrants can amass fortunes by oppressing other men, it won’t lower the casualty rates for any combatants working there,” Kell muttered.

“Combatants?” Cappie asked curiously.

“Two groups of people are fighting for supremacy,” Kell told her.

“One good, one evil,” she guessed.

“No. As far as African internal politics go, both sides have positive arguments. The outsiders are the ones causing the big problems. Their type of diplomacy is most often practiced with rapid-firing automatic weapons and various incendiary devices.”

“And IEDs,” Cy added.

Cappie blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Improvised explosive devices,” Kell translated.

“Were you in the military, too, Mr. Parks?” Cappie asked.

Cy hesitated. “Sort of. Look at the time,” he remarked, glancing at his watch. “Lisa wants me to go with her to pick out a new playpen for our youngest son,” he added with a grin. “Our toddler more or less trashed the first one.”

“Strong kid,” Kell noted.

“Yes. Bullheaded, too.”

“I wonder where he gets that from,” Kell wondered aloud, with twinkling eyes.

“I am not bullheaded,” Cy said complacently. “I simply have a resistance to stupid ideas.”

“Same difference.”

Cy made a face. “I’ll come back and check on you later in the week. If you need anything…”

Kell smiled. “Thanks, Cy.”

“I’d have come with Eb and Micah when they dropped by,” Cy added, “but we were out of town with the kids. It’s good to see you again.”

“Same here,” Kell said. “I owe you.”

“For what?” Cy shrugged. “Friends help friends.”

“They do.”

Cappie stared at her brother with a blank expression. A whole conversation seemed to be going on under her nose that she didn’t comprehend.

“I’ll see you,” Cy said. “Nice to have met you, Miss Drake,” he added, smiling.

“You, too,” she replied.

Cy left without a backward glance.

After he drove away, Cappie was still staring at her brother. “You didn’t say you had friends here. Why haven’t I seen them?”

“They came while you were at work,” he said. “Several times.”

“Oh.”

He averted his eyes. “I met them when I was in the service,” he said. “They’re fine men. A little unorthodox, but good people.”

“Oh!” She relaxed. “Mr. Parks has an injury.”

“Yes. He was badly burned trying to save his wife and child from a fire. He was the only one who got out. It turned him mean. But now he’s remarried and has two sons, and he seems to have put the past behind him.”

“Poor guy.” She grimaced. “No wonder he was mean. Who were the other men he mentioned?”

“Other friends. Eb Scott and Micah Steele. Micah’s a doctor in Jacobsville. Eb Scott has a sort of training center for paramilitary units.”

She blinked. “You do seem to attract the oddest friends.”

“Men with guns.” He nodded. He grinned.

She laughed. “Okay. I’m stonewalled. What do you want for supper?”

“Nothing heavy,” he said. “I had a big lunch.”

“You did?” She didn’t recall leaving anything out for him except sandwiches in a Baggie.

“Cy brought a whole menu full of stuff from the local Chinese restaurant,” he said. “The remains are in the fridge. I wouldn’t mind having some of them for supper.”

“Chinese food? Real Chinese food, from a real restaurant, that I don’t have to cook?” She felt her forehead. “Maybe I’m delusional.”

He chuckled. “It does sound like that, doesn’t it? Go dig in. Bring me some of the pork and noodles, if you will. There’s sticky rice and mangoes for dessert, too.”

“I have died and am now in heaven,” she said in a haunted tone.

“Me, too. Get cracking. I’m on the fourth chapter of this book already!”

“You are?” She laughed. He looked so much more cheerful. More than he’d been in weeks. “Okay, then.”

He pulled the laptop back into place.

“Do I get to read it?”

He nodded. “When it’s done.”

“That’s a deal.” She went into the kitchen and got out the boxes of Chinese food. It was all she could do to keep back the tears. Cy Parks was a nice man. A very nice man. Except for their splurged hamburgers and milkshakes, for which she still owed Dr. Rydel she reminded herself, there hadn’t been any convenience food for a long time. This was a feast. She put some of it in the freezer for hard times and heated up the rest. Her day was already getting better.

It got even better than that. A tall man with sandy hair and blue eyes came driving up in Cappie’s own car two days later. The big SUV was following close behind. Cappie gaped at the sight. Her old car had been refurbished, its dents beaten out and the whole thing repainted and repaired. There were even seat covers and floor mats. She stared at it helplessly surprised.

Cy Parks got out of the SUV and followed the sandy-haired man up onto the porch. “I hope you like blue,” he told Cappie. “There was a paint sale.”

She could barely manage words. “Mr. Parks, I don’t even know what to say…” She burst into tears. “It’s so kind!”

He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “There, there, it’s just one of those random acts of kindness we’re supposed to pass around. You can do the same thing for somebody else one day.”

She dabbed at her eyes. “When I strike it rich, I swear I will!”

He chuckled. “Harley Fowler, here,” he introduced his companion, “is as good a mechanic as he is a ranch foreman. I had him supervise the work on your car. The insurance company paid for it all,” he added when she started to protest. He grinned. “We get things done here in Jacobsville. The insurance agent locally is the sister-in-law of my top wrangler.”

“Well, thank you both,” she said huskily. “Thank you so much. I was almost ashamed to ask Keely for rides. She’s so nice, but it was an imposition. I live five miles out of her way.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The front door opened and Kell wheeled himself out onto the porch. He whistled when he saw the car. “Good grief, that was quick work,” he said.

Cy grinned. “You might remember that I always did know how to cut through the red tape.”

“Thanks,” Kell told him. “From both of us. If I can ever do anything for you…”

“You’ve done enough,” Cy returned quietly. His green eyes twinkled. “But you could always put me in that novel you’re writing. I’d like to be twenty-seven, drop-dead handsome and a linguist.”

Kell rolled his eyes. “You can barely speak English,” he pointed out.

Cy glared at him. “You take that back, or I’ll have Harley shoot all the tires out on this car.”

Kell held up both hands, his silver eyes twinkling. “Okay, you could get work as a translator at the U.N. any day. Honest.”

Cy sighed. “Don’t I wish.” He frowned. “Do you still speak Farsi?”

Kell nodded, smiling.

“I’ve got a friend who’s applying for a job with the company. Think you could tutor him? He’s well-off, and he’d pay you for your time.”

Kell frowned.

“It’s not charity,” Cy muttered, glowering at him. “This is a legitimate need. The guy wants to work overseas, but he’ll never get the job unless he can perfect his accent.”

Kell relaxed. “All right, then. I’ll take him on. And thanks.”

Cy smiled. “Thank you,” he replied. “He’s a nice guy. You’ll like him.” He glanced at Cappie, who was wondering what sort of company Cy’s friend worked for. “You won’t,” he assured her. “I used to be a woman hater, but this guy makes me look civilized. He’ll need to come over when you’re at work.”

Cappie was curious. “Why does he hate women?”

“I think he was married to one,” Cy mused.

“Well, that certainly explains that,” Kell chuckled.

“Thank you very much for fixing up my car,” Cappie told Cy. “I won’t forget it.”

“No problem. We were glad to help. Oh, mustn’t forget the keys, Harley!”

Harley handed the keys to her as Cy headed back and got into the other vehicle. “She purrs like a kitten now,” Harley told her. “She drives good.”

“The car is a girl?” she asked.

“Only when a guy is driving it,” Kell told her with a wicked grin.

“Amen,” Harley told him.

“Come on, Harley,” Cy called from the SUV.

“Yes, sir.” He grinned at the brother and sister and jumped into the passenger seat in Cy’s SUV.

“What a nice man,” Cappie said. “Just look, Kell!” She walked out to the car, opened the door and gasped. “They oiled the hinges! It doesn’t squeak anymore. And look, they fixed the broken dash and replaced the radio that didn’t work…” She started crying again.

“Don’t do that,” Kell said gently. “You’ll have me wailing, too.”

She made a face at him. “You have nice friends.”

“I do, don’t I?” He smiled. “Now you won’t have to beg rides.”

“It will be a relief, although Keely’s been wonderful about it.” She glanced at her brother. “I don’t think the insurance paid for all this.”

“Yes, it did,” he said firmly. “Period.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. You really do have nice friends.”

“You don’t know how nice,” he told her. “But I may tell you one day. Now let’s get back inside. It’s cold out here today.”

“It is a bit nippy.” She turned and followed him inside.

The week went by fast. She got her paycheck on Friday and went shopping early Saturday morning in Jacobsville. Kell had said he’d love a new bathrobe for Christmas, so she went to the department store looking.

It was a surprise when she bumped into Dr. Rydel in the men’s department. He gave her a curious look. She didn’t realize why until she recalled that she’d left her hair long around her shoulders instead of putting it up. He seemed to find it fascinating.

“Shopping for anything particular?” he asked.

“Yes. Kell wants a bathrobe.”

“Christmas shopping,” he guessed, and smiled.

“Yes.”

“I’m replacing a jacket,” he sighed. “I made the mistake of going straight from church on a large animal call. A longhorn bull objected to being used as a pincushion and ripped out the sleeve.”

She laughed softly. “Occupational hazard,” she said.

He nodded. “Your car looks nice.”

“Thanks,” she said. She could imagine how her old wreck, even repainted, looked to a man who drove a new Land Rover, but she didn’t say so. “Mr. Parks had his foreman supervise the work. The insurance company paid for it.”

“Nice of him. He knows your brother?”

“They’re friends.” She frowned. “Mr. Parks doesn’t look like a rancher,” she blurted out.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s something, I don’t know, dangerous about him,” she said, searching for the right word. “He’s very nice, but I wouldn’t want him mad at me.”

He grinned. “A few drug dealers in prison could attest to the truth of that statement,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Cy Parks is a retired mercenary,” he told her. “He was in some bloody firefights in Africa some years back. More recently, he and two other friends and Harley Fowler shut down a drug distribution center here. There was a gunfight.”

“In Jacobsville, Texas?” she exclaimed.

“Yep. Parks is one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met. Kind to people he likes. But there aren’t many of those.”

She felt odd. She wondered how it was that her brother had come to know such a man, because he and Cy seemed to be old friends.

“Where do you go from here?” Dr. Rydel asked suddenly.

She blinked. “I don’t know,” she blurted out, flushing. “I mean, I thought I might, well, stop by the game store in the strip mall.”

He stared at her blankly. “Game store?”

She cleared her throat. “There’s this new video game. ‘Halo…’”

“‘…ODST,’” he said, with evident surprise. “You’re a gamer?”

She cleared her throat again. “Well…yes.”

He said something unprintable.

She glared at him. “Dr. Rydel!” she exclaimed. “It’s not a vice, you know, playing video games. They release tension and they’re fun,” she argued.

He chuckled. “I have all three Halo games from Bungie, plus the campaigns,” he confessed, naming the famous company whose amazing staff had engineered one of the most exciting video game series of all time. “And the new one that just came out.”

Now her jaw fell open. “You do?”

“Yes. I have ‘Halo: ODST,’” he said, pursing his lips. “Do you game online?”

She didn’t want to confess that she couldn’t afford the fees. “I like playing by myself,” she said. “Or with Kell. He’s crazy about the Halo series.”

“So am I,” Dr. Rydel told her. His blue eyes twinkled. “Maybe we could play split screen sometime, when we’re both free.”

She gave him a wicked look. “I can put down Hunters with a .45 automatic.” Hunters were some of the most formidable of the alien Covenant bad guys, fearsome to engage in the Halo game because they were huge and it took a dead shot to hit them in their very few vulnerable places.

He whistled. “Not bad, Miss Drake!”

“Have you been a gamer for a long time?” she asked.

“Since college,” he replied, smiling. “You?”