How to Wrangle a Cowboy (3 page)

“All right, she’s pretty,” the cowboy admitted. “But pretty is as pretty does.”

Suddenly, it didn’t matter how pleasing the deep rumble of his voice was. Sorrow for her widowed grandmother, fear for the fate of the ranch, and grief over the loss of her grandfather stewed in Lindsey’s stomach, overwhelming whatever biological response had hijacked her hormones a moment before.

Blinking back tears, she raised her chin and looked the cowboy in the face. “This ‘pretty’ does just fine, thank you.”

What the heck did that mean? She had no idea, but it sounded like a witty comeback or maybe a vague threat. Either way, it was the best she could do.

Lockhart—the name would have been stunningly appropriate if only the man
had
a heart—shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. Grateful for the break in hostilities, Lindsey joined him, staring down at her shoes.

They were truly worth staring at. She’d borrowed them from her partner at the Wilde/Ward Veterinary Clinic. Ashley Wilde had paid a week’s salary for them and insisted they’d give Lindsey confidence. Instead, they’d tried to kill her fourteen times just today, and she couldn’t wait to get them off.

But when she wasn’t twisting an ankle or falling down, she supposed they made her look sexy. And they were a graceful counterpoint to Shane Lockhart’s boots, which were also black, with fancy tooling.

She glanced over at the little boy, who’d been hovering behind his father, never more than an arm’s length away. Once she made eye contact, he stepped forward and offered his hand with manners that put the foreman’s to shame.

“Hi. I’m Cody.”

Lockhart set a firm but gentle hand on his son’s shoulder. “Leave the lady alone.”

But Cody didn’t seem to hear. “You’re
beautiful
.” He shook Lindsey’s hand, fairly glowing at the privilege. “You look like my
mom
.”

The cowboy grimaced. “Sorry. He misses her.”

“Do you miss her too?” Lindsey figured a recent divorce might explain his hostility.

“No,” he muttered, turning away so the boy wouldn’t hear. “Not a bit.”

“Good to know.” Pointedly ignoring the cowboy, she knelt to the boy’s level. “I think you’re very handsome.” From his shiny, black hair to his dark, serious eyes, the boy was a perfect miniature replica of his father, but without the judgmental scowl. “Do you help your dad run this place?”

Cody spun to face his father with a grin as wide as the sky.

“She knew you were my dad!” He practically crowed in his excitement. “She could tell!”

Lindsey smiled, wondering at the boy’s reaction. There was an aura of tragedy about this pair, and she wondered if he was a widower. She hadn’t known of a wife or child the last time they’d met.

Last time.
She thought again of that night and wanted to sink into the ground, taking all her mistakes along with her—her mistakes, her screwups, her shame. Why was she even talking to him? She tried to tell herself it was for the child’s sake, or for Grace’s, but there was more to it than that.

Shane Lockhart was
interesting
. Rude but wildly attractive in a dangerous, Heathcliff sort of way. She’d been partial to Heathcliff as a teenager, until she’d realized the master of
Wuthering Heights
was a thug and a psychopath.

Maybe Lockhart was no better.

Scanning the crowd for other people she knew, she spotted someone Grace hadn’t introduced—a tall man who looked remarkably like Lindsey’s late grandfather, with deep-set eyes and a hatchet nose. His chin was pronounced, like Bud’s, but the way he carried his head, high and slightly to one side, made him look pugnacious. He was older than Lindsey but younger than her grandfather, and far less satisfied with life. In her mind, she dubbed him the anti-Bud—the opposite of her grandfather in every way but his appearance.

Maybe he was a cousin from far away. That would explain why she’d never met him, and it would also explain why his cowboy clothes looked like a costume hanging from his lanky frame. He stood at the edge of the grave, his too-shiny boots planted firmly in the dirt.

She hurried through the crowd, cursing her high-heeled shoes, eager to introduce herself. When her mother died, she’d believed herself and her grandparents to be the only remaining members of the Ward clan, but this man had to be related.

Neighbors stopped her as she teetered across the grass, offering their sympathy and telling her how much they’d loved her grandfather. By the time she reached the grave, the mysterious Bud look-alike was gone.

Looking left and right, she saw no trace of him. She would have thought she’d dreamed him if it hadn’t been for the distinct prints of two sharp-toed cowboy boots, pressed firmly into the dirt beside her granddad’s newly dug grave.

* * *

Shane had spent a fair amount of time since Bud’s death thinking about Lindsey Ward and preparing for their inevitable meeting. He’d known the attraction would remain. She was a butterfly, after all. But something else about her had changed—something far harder to resist than physical beauty.

She was softer somehow, and more sorrowful. He figured she’d been knocked around by life, or maybe by that ass she’d married. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out she was making a bad choice. The guy was a jerk.

Rodger, his name was. Rodger with a
D
. He’d spelled it out at every opportunity, as if anyone cared. He’d also made it clear that as a well-known surgeon—
the top man in my field
, he’d boasted—he was far too good to sit at the same table as Shane and the other ranch workers. Shane had overheard the man calling him and his men “farmhands” and seen his distaste when Lindsey had entered into a conversation with Shane’s new hire, a young Nebraska cowboy fresh out of high school.

When Grace’s little Jack Russell had raced in from the yard and threw himself at the esteemed doctor with a spirited terrier welcome, Rodger with a
D
had tossed the little dog to the floor, then grimaced as he’d plucked dog hairs from his golf shirt. He’d curled his lip at the rich, fragrant stew and fluffy biscuits Alice had served, and spoke only to Lindsey during the meal.

Bud made no more effort to hide his opinion of his granddaughter’s fiancé than Rodger with a
D
made to cover up his disdain for everything around them. Shane worried the old man would have a heart attack from suppressed rage, but they all managed to survive the evening.

The moment the meal ended, Rodger with a
D
made some excuse and headed upstairs. Grace went off to the kitchen to clean up, and Shane excused himself and his hands. That left only Lindsey and Bud at the table.

He didn’t know what Bud said or how Lindsey responded, because he’d fled to the barn, the peaceful haven he always sought in times of trouble. He was doing his best to calm the simmering rage Rodger with a
D
had set to boiling by brushing one of Grace’s old horses. With every stroke of the brush, he asked himself a question. How could Lindsey love such a man? Hadn’t she learned anything from her grandparents’ marriage? Relationships were based on love, and there was no way she could love that jerk.

Could she?

And why did it bother him so much if she did?

He’d just begun to feel better when he heard a squeaking sound from behind the barn. It sounded like some small creature had hurt itself and was smothering a cry of pain. Leaving the horse to doze in the cross ties, he rushed to the back door to check.

The small creature was Lindsey. Slumped on a bale of hay just outside the big back door, she was weeping as if everyone she loved had left her.

In that moment, Shane didn’t know where Rodger with a
D
was, and he didn’t care. All he could see was the little girl he’d known for so long, crying as if her heart would break. And he knew that bastard was the reason.

There wasn’t anywhere to sit but the hay bale, and there wasn’t anything to do but hold her. He didn’t mean anything by it. He just couldn’t stand to see her cry.

She leaned into him, her body warm and lithe, and he cursed himself for the thoughts that ran through his mind. This was Lindsey, his boss’s daughter. A girl he’d known half his life.

But she wasn’t just a girl anymore, and no matter how hard his brain tried to deny it, his body knew the truth. While she tried to explain, in words broken by heartache and blurred by sobs, why she was going to marry a man who didn’t deserve her, his traitorous body told him to stroke her hair, to hold her close, to murmur the soothing, comforting nonsense he used to calm his horses.

She finally exhausted herself with weeping and slumped against him, her head on his shoulder. There in the quiet dark, he’d wrapped his arms around her, looked up at the moon, and wondered what the hell he should do. He didn’t realize he was kissing the back of her neck until she twisted in his arms and he was suddenly kissing her face, her cheek, her lips.

Her lips.
They’d been warm, soft, and yielding. She’d been so sweet, so hot. Needy. Her hands had slid under his shirt, stroking and smoothing, and his had been everywhere—on her hips, her thighs, her beautiful breasts.

It had felt right, so right, and he’d known it was the same for her by the noises she made, little mews of desire and happiness. Her body had responded so sweetly to his touch. As his hands had swept over her subtle curves, he’d had the dangerous thought that they’d been each other’s destiny all along. Something vibrating in the air between them had made him sure of it.

Despite the prospective bridegroom back at the house, he’d known that she was his, all his, and had been all along. Certainly he belonged to her. How had he not known that? How had she ever given herself to anyone else?

Suddenly she’d pulled away, leaping to her feet as if the hay had burst into flame.

“Married.” She’d panted the words through lips bruised by kisses. “I’m supposed to get married. I promised…”

Clapping a hand over her mouth, she’d run for the house.

At the same time, Shane had remembered his own determination to stay away from women—especially beautiful ones with long, dark hair, who lured him with soft lips and sexy promises. He’d told himself he’d stay away from Lindsey in particular, but it didn’t matter what he thought or felt. She and Rodger with a
D
had left that very night, never to return—until now.

So where was good ol’ Rodger, anyway? Had his marvelous surgical skills been needed by some desperately ill child? Was he at his hospital, saving lives and bowing to the plaudits of his colleagues?

Or was he gone for good, leaving Shane alone with the one woman who tempted him to forget his resolution to avoid serious relationships the way he avoided rutting bulls?

Watching Lindsey as she made her way through the crowd, he clicked the resolution firmly back in place. Now that Cody had pointed it out, he realized Lindsey did look a lot like Tara, and the resemblance was a painful reminder of the trouble women could cause.

Of course, there were differences. For one thing, Lindsey had a veneer of class that Tara, a small-town girl in every way, could never aspire to—even though Tara had very nearly kept her promise to leave Wynott in a pickup truck and come back in a limo. She’d done the leaving part, in her daddy’s pickup with baby Cody by her side. But she’d had to settle for a BMW when she’d returned just a few short weeks before Bud’s death.

Shane had slept in his chair that night, as he often did. Living alone, he did as he pleased, eating at the kitchen counter, drinking milk from the jug, and tossing his clothes over the back of the sofa. He’d nodded off after the one-two punch of a John Wayne movie and a Louis L’Amour paperback.

There was no point in messing up his bed. Not when he had no one to share it with.

A few women had slipped between those sheets over the years, but none of them had lasted. It wasn’t their fault. It was Tara’s. She’d taught him to love—or at least to
make
love—but then she’d burned his heart to a blackened shell, curled in on itself like a steak left too long on a grill. What little remained had turned to coal when she’d taken Cody. Coal was hard as a rock. It didn’t feel pain or longing or love.

Since he slept lightly, he was already awake when headlights streaked across the wall. He stood, stretching his legs and rolling the kinks out of his neck. Striding to the door, he watched a vehicle bounce its way toward the ranch house beside his cabin. It was nearly midnight, and a drifting fog turned the car’s headlights into glowing funnels that rose with every bounce of the wheels.

Probably a lost tourist.

Shane watched the car stop in front of the big house. A woman emerged and stepped up to the door. He was just about to head over there and make sure Grace was all right when the woman returned to her car, started it up, and headed for his cabin.

She braked hard on the loose gravel in front of the hitching post, spattering gravel over the car’s expensive paint job. It was a BMW, one of the later models, and Shane thought the woman must not care much about it. Beemers were meant for highway driving, not rocky two-tracks.

Dark haired and slim, the woman glanced over at the cabin, then tugged on the emergency brake with grim determination, as if she’d parked on a hill.

Something about that gesture set off a faint bell of remembrance in the back of Shane’s mind. It was a warning bell, clanging and ominous.

When she stepped out of the car, his mind provided a sexy saxophone accompaniment—the drawn-out wail that always accompanied the arrival of the femme fatale in old movies. His nighttime guest was all legs and long, dark hair, with pale skin and blue eyes—a lethal combination for Shane. Tara had looked like that. In fact, this woman was—

Tara?

He took a step back toward the safety of the cabin.

With one hand resting on the car’s hood, she scanned her surroundings and wrinkled her nose. “Well, it looks like I made the right decision. You aren’t exactly setting the world on fire, are you?”