jeans before his knee swelled any more. Setting the boots aside, she rose and reached for his belt buckle…but jerked her hands back as she realized the intimacy that would require. She stole a glance at him and was relieved to see that his arm still covered his eyes, and he was unaware of her hesitancy. Frowning, she slapped a hand against the side of his uninjured leg. “Come on, Pete. Drop your pants.”
He lifted his arm to peer at her. “’Scuse me?”
She waved an impatient hand at him. “You haven’t got anything that I haven’t seen before, so drop ’em.”
In spite of the pain, Pete managed a weak grin as he reached for his belt buckle. “Maybe not anything different, but definitely more of it.”
She rolled her eyes and grabbed the waist of his jeans. “Braggart,” she muttered.
His grin broadened into a full-blown smile. “No brag, ma’am. Just fact.” He lifted his hips as she carefully worked the denim down over them, then sucked in air through his teeth when her hand grazed his manhood. She froze at the contact, her gaze snapping to his.
Pete watched the color rise on her cheeks, the panic in her eyes…and remembered a time when such an intimacy would have darkened those green eyes with passion, not panic. “Don’t worry,” he said wryly. “My knee’s hurtin’ so bad, you couldn’t get a rise out of me even if you worked at it.”
Her cheeks flaming, she jerked the jeans down his legs, making him yelp as the rough denim scraped over his swollen knee.
She spun away, folding his pants over her arm. “I need to feed my horses,” she said tersely, tossing the jeans over a chair. “Do you need anything before I leave?”
That she couldn’t look at him, or wouldn’t, irritated Pete. “A phone. I need to call Clayton and tell him to head home.”
She whirled, her eyes wide. “But you can’t! He hasn’t had a chance to talk to Rena yet.”
He scowled and shifted a pillow beneath his knee, gritting his teeth against the pain that even that slight movement caused him. “So what? You said yourself that he was wasting his time chasing after her.”
At the reminder, she caught her lip between her teeth and dropped her gaze, lifting a shoulder. “Yes, I did, but still…”
“Look, Carol,” he said in frustration and grabbed for the sheet. “It isn’t as if I want to call him home, but I can’t take care of his ranch for him if I’m laid up in bed.”
Slowly she lifted her gaze. “You could if I helped you.”
He froze, his fingers fisted in the sheet. “Help me?”
“Yes,” she said, and took a reluctant step closer. “You could tell me what needs doing, and I could do it. Just until the swelling goes down,” she added quickly. “A couple of days off that knee, and you should be able to take over again.”
Still scowling, Pete tried to whip the sheet over his propped-up leg, but it snagged on his toes and hung there.
Carol plucked the sheet free and pulled it up over him, letting it drop to settle at his waist. The ease with which she accomplished the task irritated him, but her reluctance to draw near him or touch him irritated him even more.
“We could do it, couldn’t we, Pete?” she asked hopefully. “It would give Clayton the time he needs to work things out with Rena.”
He stared at her, amazed, after what she’d said earlier, that she’d willingly to do anything to help Clayton win back his wife. “Well, yeah, but that’s easy for me to say since I won’t be doing anything but lying here in bed and giving orders.”
“I don’t mind the extra work. Really I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” She stooped to pick up his boots and set them out of the way, then headed for the door. “I’ll feed my horses, then I’ll come back and you can give me a list of chores for tomorrow.”
“Will you hand me my pain pills before you go?” He pointed at his duffel bag. “They’re in the side pocket.”
She fetched his pills and a glass of water from the bathroom. Keeping a safe distance, she set both on the bedside table within his reach, then headed for the door. “I won’t be gone long. About an hour or so.”
“Check and see if there’s water in the trough for those calves I penned. Oh, and Carol!” he called after her. “You might ought to throw down a couple of bales of hay for them.”
Carol methodically worked her way through her chores at the barn, putting out hay and oats for her horses and filling their water buckets.
But her mind wasn’t on her work.
It was centered on Pete.
How was she going to avoid him, when she’d have to see him every day in order to get a list of chores?
Frowning, she climbed the ladder to the loft. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him. Not entirely. Not now. Not after she’d offered to help him take care of the ranch. She dragged a bale of hay to the loft doors that opened over the corral, her frown deepening.
“Dang fool,” she muttered, cursing herself as she yanked a pair of wire cutters from her back pocket. “Why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut? Why did you have to offer to help him?” Slipping the tool between the thin wire wrapped tightly around the bale, she snapped the handles together, snipping the wire in two.
She hadn’t made the offer to help Pete because of any latent feelings she had for him, she told herself as she tossed down squares of loosened hay into the corral below. She’d made the offer for Rena’s sake. Rena was her friend and, despite what Carol had told Pete earlier that morning, she knew Rena wanted their marriage to work.
Sighing, she straightened and looked out over the land where the sun was dipping low in the western sky. Rena and Clayton had had a tough time of it, she reflected sadly. An unexpected pregnancy that had forced them into a marriage neither of them were prepared for. The birth of the twins. But in spite of the circumstances of their marriage, Carol knew that Rena loved Clayton. But did Clayton love Rena? Enough to put his family before his rodeo career? Enough to be the kind of husband and father that his family wanted and needed?
At the thought, she glanced toward the house, thinking of Pete and the similarities she saw in their past relationship. She envisioned him in the house as she’d left him, lying in Rena and Clayton’s bed in nothing but his briefs. She knew that being around him again wasn’t going to be easy. But she’d do what was necessary to give Rena and Clayton a chance to reconcile their differences.
Squaring her shoulders, she headed for the ladder and the house. She’d see that the ranch ran smoothly until Pete was back on his feet. And when he was…well, she would avoid him, just as she had planned to before.
At the back door she shucked off her dirty boots, then tiptoed across the kitchen and down the hall that led to the master bedroom, keeping her tread light in the event that Pete had drifted off to sleep. When she reached the open doorway, she glanced toward the bed, but found it empty.
“Pete?” she called softly, looking
