of blended whiskey or pricey bourbon and had warmed her like a bonfire more times than she cared to remember. A fine, hook-shaped scar rode the ridge of his cheekbone beneath his left eye—a reminder of his rodeo days and a run-in with a bronc that had all but stomped him into the arena floor.
There were other scars. His hands were peppered with the little nicks and scrapes of a working cattleman. The little bump on the bridge of his nose signified it had been broken once…probably by a horse, possibly in a bar fight. She knew he’d had his share of them, too, when he was rodeoing. The road, she knew, had been rough, and fists had sometimes flown as freely as the BS and the dreams of an NFR championship.
He’d come close to catching his dream. So close.
And so had she. She’d come close to reaching her dream of being loved by him. At least she’d come close in her mind.
“Carrie? Hellloooo? Where’d you go, sweet pea?”
She blinked, realized she’d gone back there…to that place where he filled her senses and her thoughts and kept her from moving away from him and toward her future.
“Sorry,” she said, and opened the door wider so he could step inside out of the chill. “You…surprised me,” she said lamely. “What’s up?”
He lifted a broad shoulder, gave her a sheepish look. “Just wanted to make sure we were okay after…you know.”
She tilted her head. “After you herded me out of the diner like a maverick calf?”
He actually flinched, then grinned. “Ah…yeah. After that.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said, determined to turn over this new leaf and ignore the slow, melting action going on around her heart. “But don’t let it happen again, okay?”
He considered her as he stood just inside her foyer. “Does that mean you’re still planning on—”
“Putting the moves on Dr. Beldon?” she interrupted cheekily, then told him how it was going to be. “Know what, Ry? I think you and Trav—and for that matter, the rest of the guys at the Cattleman’s Club—all function on some misguided notion that every female in the free world needs saving.”
He looked a little stunned.
“What? You don’t think I know what goes on behind closed doors at that place? Trav is my brother, for Pete’s sake. He disappears…sometimes for days. For that matter, so do you and the others. And isn’t it coincidental that shortly after you all pop up again, world or local headlines report on some heinous crime being thwarted, or some country being saved from a disastrous coup by some radical extremist group?”
She laughed at the pained and panicked expression on his face.
“Oh, don’t look so shell-shocked, Ry. Your secrets are safe. Case in point, Natalie. I know some-thing’s up with her and the baby. And I know you guys are knee-deep in it, trying to bring down whatever chased her to Texas. I hope you succeed. I love her like a sister, and little Autumn…well, she owns me heart and soul. I want them safe. I want that hunted look erased from Natalie’s eyes.”
“Carrie…” He said her name with such a preemptive wariness, she actually took pity on him.
“Yeah, okay, fine. You guys don’t really save nations or damsels in distress. You aren’t secretly investigating the horrible things that happened to Natalie. I got it. It’s your story, you can tell it any way you want to. But if you were…I know you would get to the bottom of it.
“In the meantime—” she held up a hand when he would have cut her off “—I don’t have anything to do with Natalie’s dilemma…which means I don’t need protection. And since I don’t, what I do and who I do it with is really none of your business.”
It could have been, she thought with more than a pinch of regret. But it’s not and you’re the one who wants it that way.
Something had replaced the shock in his expression. He looked a little sad…there might even have been a little regret in his eyes. It didn’t matter. She could no longer afford to care. But damn him, the next words out of his mouth made her want to.
“You will always be my business, sweetie.” He touched a hand to her cheek, and then, as if realizing what he’d done, let it fall. “Just…just be careful, okay?”
Then he reached out again, as if he couldn’t help himself, and cupped her nape with his broad hand. He drew her toward him, smelling of leather and sage and a little of horses when he leaned down and pressed his lips against her forehead. “’Night, Carrie-bear. Lock up behind me.”
She was still standing there, rooted to the spot, her heart making one final, futile dive when his truck’s engine fired and he drove away.
“Goodbye, Ryan,” she whispered to the empty street, knowing she was finally saying goodbye to the hope she’d fostered for fourteen years.
She went to bed a little while later, pushing Ryan further and further out of her mind, more determined than ever to get on with her life. But who was she going to get on with her life with?
“And wasn’t that an interesting sentence?” she asked herself aloud with a roll of her eyes.
Speaking of eye rolling… She ran through a list of likely candidates for the position of Mr. Right. It was a very short list. And with good reason. Travis grilled every prospective boyfriend until they were as charred as a well-done T-bone.
Oh, she knew her brother meant well. He didn’t mean to send every boyfriend she’d ever had running for their lives rather than toughing it out and actually taking a stab at a relationship with her—but he did. Aside from Ryan, Trav was the main reason she was still single and resenting the fact that she was a ripe twenty-four and still a virgin.
“Well, you’ve taken the protector role too seriously for too long, brother mine,” she murmured as she rolled over, punched her pillow and snuggled deeper into the covers. She was no longer the ten-year-old little girl, lost and confused and missing her mom and dad. She was a woman now—at least in years. In experience, however, she was as green as meadow grass.
But not for much longer. Tonight had really, truly, once and for all cinched it. She was ready to make the transition to wild oats. Since Ry was not going to be the man to guide her around that exciting corner, she was just going to have to find someone else who would.
There had to be someone who wasn’t intimidated by her brother. Someone who hadn’t grown up around here wouldn’t know enough to be afraid of Travis. Someone new in town.
Someone like Dr. Nathan Beldon.
It just kept coming back to him.
Yeah. She could settle for a doctor.
Settle.
She pulled in a deep breath, let it out. It probably didn’t say much about her strength of character that she was considering settling for any man who didn’t run from Travis. It also pretty much told the tale that she wasn’t evolved, in the feminist sense.
“Not everyone is cut out to be a mover and a shaker or a corporate ball breaker,” she muttered, and flipped over onto her back again. “No
