“Won’t she lash out with her beak?” he asked as Carmen began to carefully unwrap the soft flannel shirt. It was awkward—sometimes she had to wiggle the cloth out from under the arm holding the bird to the table, but she managed to get the eagle unwrapped without inflicting further damage.
“Not typically. Their talons are their weapons of choice. But I wouldn’t put my finger in front of her face either—not if I wanted to keep it.” While her left forearm and hand held the right wing and breast in place, she eased open the nearly three-foot-long left wing and slipped off her right glove. With a featherlight touch, she traced the bones of the bird’s extended wing.
There. Right up close to the shoulder, she found the wound—just a graze, but the shock from the shot would have been enough to knock her from the sky. There could be spinal trauma or any number of internal injuries as well, but Carmen’s gifts told her otherwise. The poor thing had a wounded wing and she’d been stunned but would 10
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otherwise be fine. “The bullet just grazed skin and muscle,” she told Dash as she reached for the antiseptic. “It missed the bone, thank goodness. She’ll be flying again in a few days.”
“That’s great.” He sighed his relief. The man actually cared about the poor bird, she had to give him that. Not bad for a city slicker. “But I have to ask, if you don’t mind—
how do you know? I mean, I know you can’t…”
“Can’t really see?” she said matter-of-factly. “No, not much.” Though she pulled the magnifier over and used it to clean the shallow gouge. “It’s just something of an instinct, I guess. Leah works with horses. I can sense injuries in wildlife. I’ve never really tried to make sense of it. It’s just a part of my life.”
She sensed rather than saw him shrug. “If you say so.”
There was a little more to it than that, but she didn’t want to explain that to a virtual stranger. She felt the sting in her own shoulder as she absorbed some of the damage into herself to speed the eagle’s healing process. Meanwhile, she dabbed antibiotic ointment onto the wound then wrapped it in a heavy layer of gauze. “Try not to rip that off before morning,” she told the bird, who screeched back angrily as if she disagreed.
Dash watched in amazement. Every movement Carmen made was quick and precise even though he’d been told she was legally blind. Her pop-bottle-thick glasses obscured her big brown eyes while she worked, but Leah had mentioned that even with them, her cousin could only see shapes and colors, not detail. When he’d first moved out to the line shack on this end of the ranch, Leah had made it very clear that her visually impaired but otherwise gifted cousin was strictly hands-off as far as Dash was concerned.
And that was probably a good idea. Carmen was a knock-out, with rounded, womanly curves overlaying a frame of healthy muscle. Her long, straight hair was the same rich dark brown as the polished cherry wood table at the ranch house. Creamy tan skin was dotted with just a few freckles scattered across the tip of her turned-up nose.
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Strong cheekbones and a pointy chin gave her a heart-shaped face, and she had lush lips that just begged to be kissed. Yeah. Keeping her away from losers like Dash was definitely the smart thing to do.
Oh, how his body disagreed though. When Ken had guilt-tripped him into dancing one dance with the older man’s wallflower granddaughter, Dash had argued. He was still in lousy shape, with a leg that would never be one hundred percent after a bullet had shattered the femur and shredded the nerves. Not to mention the fact the burn scars on his face and hands would make any sensible female run screaming for cover.
But Ken had reminded him that Carmen couldn’t see the scars. And that she wasn’t much of a dancer either, so she probably wouldn’t mind Dash’s gimpy leg. So they’d danced. She’d come just up to his chin and he’d spent the next ten minutes inhaling the fragrance of rose-scented shampoo and warm, soft woman. He’d gone hard as a rock, which hadn’t helped his already crappy dancing a bit.
Now in this barn that looked more like a high-end vet’s office, spotless and gleaming with tile, wood and steel, Dash followed Carmen’s instructions and kept an iron grip on the eagle’s wicked-looking feet. He’d never seen one outside of a zoo before and sure as hell not this close up. When he’d wrapped the bird up, swaddling it like an infant, it had been unconscious. Now though, it looked as if it could easily—and happily—rip off what was left of Dash’s face.
“How do you know it’s a she?” he asked Carmen as she finished tying off the gauze. Using one hand to hold down the eagle’s broad chest, she tucked the shirt sleeve back around the injured wing, closing it so the bird was once again more or less the shape of a football.
“You can let go now. She’s too big to be a male,” she said, picking the bird up to cradle her carefully in both hands. “Birds of prey are different from other birds and most mammals. The girls get a lot bigger than the boys.”
“Huh.” Yet another thing he’d never known. Once upon a time, he’d considered himself a pretty knowledgeable guy, but that had been before he’d come to Texas. It 12
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seemed everything out here was different. He’d never even noticed that birds had a scent before, but he could definitely smell the eagle—sort of a dry, powdery odor over the tang of the disinfectant.
“Open up that cage over there, will you? Top one, left-hand side.” Her voice was low for a woman’s but rich and full. Remembering the opera he’d heard blaring in her cabin, Dash wondered if she could sing.
Forcing his concentration back on to the task at hand, he immediately stepped ahead of her to where a bank of wire cages in various sizes were lined up along one wall. The top left was the biggest and he could see she kept them clean and lined with fresh newspapers for when patients arrived. He stepped aside as Carmen laid the bird in it then unwrapped his shirt and stepped back. The eagle immediately clambered to her feet and let out a screech.
“Fill up one of those metal bowls with water, would you?” From a stack next to the row of cages, Carmen picked up a half section of a log—it was flat on one side and round with the bark still on the other. When she set it into the cage, bark side up, the bird immediately climbed up on it.
Obediently, Dash filled a big metal dog dish with water and brought it over to Carmen who put it into the cage. “What will you feed her?”
“Fish mostly. I expect Grandfather will show up in the morning with some fresh bass or lake trout. Even if he hadn’t sent you, he always seems to know when I have a new patient.” She latched the cage securely then moved back over to her worktable and started putting things away with crisp, economical movements. “Thank you, Dash. I’ll wash your shirt and get it back to you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. He scooped it up away from her questing fingers. “I go up and use the machines in the bunkhouse a couple times a week.”
“Grandfather said you were living in one of the line shacks.” Once the table was cleared, she spritzed it down with disinfectant and wiped it off with a paper towel. “I guess it would be uncomfortable sharing the ranch house with the newlyweds.”
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“Yeah. Mac and Leah are trying to talk me into building my own place. There’s plenty of room on the ranch, but…” He shrugged. “For right now, I don’t see the need for anything bigger than what I’ve got.”
“I know the feeling.” Her voice was filled with understanding, but it was warm and friendly, without the syrupy sympathy he’d grown used to hearing since his injuries eleven months ago. “I like my little cabin too. Not sure what I’d do with anything bigger. Drives my mom crazy.”
He followed her over to the sink where they both washed up. Only as they were leaving did he remember the enormous dog who’d plopped down by the door and hadn’t moved since they’d walked into the building. Bigger than any German shepherd he’d ever seen, even on the police force, it was mottled in shades of gray and black, with just one white stocking from the knee down on its left front paw. As soon as Carmen turned off the light and stepped out the door, the massive dog was right by her side, occasionally nudging against her when she strayed from the center of the path.
When they reached her door, she turned, her hand on the doorknob. “I made some chili. Way more than I can eat by myself if you’d like to come in for a bit.”
He shouldn’t. He should thank her nicely, get in his truck and drive away. He had half a bottle of Johnnie Walker stashed in his cabin. That and his hand would get him through the night. Because, god help him, he’d been wanting to jump Carmen’s bones the entire time she was working on the eagle.
“Come on,” she murmured softly. “It’s just a meal. You have to eat, don’t you?”
“I’d love to.” He heard the words come out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say them. Calling himself all kinds of an idiot, he followed Carmen into her house.
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Carmen couldn’t believe she’d gotten up the nerve to actually invite him in for dinner. She hadn’t been alone with a man other than her grandfather for ages. Well, maybe Shane, when he’d stopped by to check on a patient. But he was so stupid in love with Leah, Carmen could’ve walked out to the barn naked and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Dash Hyde though—he’d notice. Carmen hadn’t missed the erection he’d sported when they’d danced at her cousin’s wedding. He’d been as uncomfortable in the crowd as she was, but he’d definitely warmed up once he’d taken her in his arms. He seemed pretty uncomfortable now too, seated across from her at her kitchen table, eating chili and homemade cornbread. She’d had a couple of beers in the fridge, so they sipped at those while they ate, barely talking.
“So, have you heard from Leah?” she finally asked. “I got a postcard in yesterday’s mail.”
“Yeah, me too,” he replied. “So did Mac. Sounds like they’re having a good time in Hawaii.”
Of course they were—it was their honeymoon. She felt her face flame at the thought of what her cousin was probably up to right now. “Do you have family back in Illinois?”
“Yeah,” he answered slowly. “My mother and her husband have three kids, ranging from twenty to twenty-five. They’re all still in the Chicago area.”
“You grew up with brothers and sisters?” She wouldn’t have guessed that. He seemed like such a loner.
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“Two brothers, one sister—James, Lauren and Zach, all in college or grad school. I was ten when my oldest brother was born, so we were never exactly close,” he said. “It was just me and my mom until I was eight, when she married my stepdad.”
“So, you’re older than Leah.”
“Yeah. And Mac a bit.”
“And you were a cop.” Oh crap, she hadn’t meant to say that. She knew he’d been forced to retire from the Chicago police force after an injury, but nobody had ever told her what. She just knew that whatever had happened he was still carrying around an awful lot of grief from it.
“That I was.” His spoon clinked on the side of his bowl as he stirred his chili rather than eating it. “After four years in the Army, I went to the police academy and worked my way up from patrolman to sergeant. Twelve years on the force, and now, I guess, I’m a rancher—at least for the time being.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “It’s none of my business.”
She sensed his shrug. “It’s all right. Everybody else I meet out here dances around it. Truth is, I liked being a cop. I was good at it. Now I can’t do that anymore. Life changes, and if we don’t change with it, we might as well just curl up and die. Took me awhile, but I finally figured out I wasn’t ready for that yet. So here I am, learning to do something else.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” she said. “My parents would be happy if I still lived at home where they could take care of me and cater to my every whim, keeping me safe every minute of every day. I can’t live like that. So here I am, on my own. It’s difficult sometimes, but it beats sitting around like a useless doll.”
“I imagine Ken keeps a pretty good eye on you,” he said with a warm trace of humor creeping back into his voice. “Just like he does on Leah.”
“Yeah, Granddad is great, but he doesn’t smother. That’s one reason I live here, close to him, instead of in Houston near my parents. I love my mom and dad, but they drive me fricking crazy. ‘Are you sure you should be cooking?’ or ‘Do you really think 16
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you should go for a walk with just your dog?’ They make me feel like I’m twelve instead of a grown woman.”
“Well, I can attest to your ability to cook. This chili is fantastic.” Sounds of spoon on bowl and swallowing backed up the fact he was actually eating now. “But yeah, I know what you mean. My mom went overboard too after I was hurt. She’s the greatest, but I needed to get back on my own two feet again.”
There was a moment filled with nothing but the sounds of eating then he continued. “When it came down to it though, she knew that. I wasn’t going to come when the old man’s lawyer called. I figured he’d blown us off for all those years, why take anything from him now, you know? But my mother talked me into getting on that plane, insisted I needed to at least see the place, find out a little about who he was.”
“And did you?” Carmen ate slowly, enjoying his company, entranced by the sound of his voice.
“As much as I’d like to say I came to terms with my father, what I found out about him was really just about what I’d expected. My biological father was a complete and total bastard. He included Mac and me in the will because he didn’t want to hand his entire operation over to a woman, and a part-Comanche one at that, even if she was his own flesh and blood. He didn’t think much of Hispanics or blacks either, even though he had no problem fucking any of our mothers. In the end, Mac and I both believe he split the ranch and the money between the three of us because he couldn’t quite decide which of us was the lesser evil.”
Carmen listened for bitterness in his voice and was pleased when she heard only a little—the old hurt of the child he’d been, and nothing but resignation from the man.