Trish Milburn - Cowboy to the Rescue

As her eyes closed and sleep started to overtake her, her brain replayed the sight of Ryan walking down the road in the dark. Only this time, he turned just before stepping out of sight and smiled at her. Warmth wrapped her in its embrace, and her heart drifted weightless as a child’s balloon. Her lips curved in a return smile as the last light of consciousness went out.

IN THE MORNING, he’d have to find his brain, because he’d obviously lost it sometime since meeting Brooke Vincent. How many times had he told himself to steer away from her since the punch of that first unexpected meeting in the kitchen? So what did he do instead? Suggest she stay at the ranch.

But the idea of her spending another night at the Rochester made his skin crawl. That place wasn’t safe, not for a woman with big doe eyes and a vulnerable smile. His fists clenched as he reached the area outside his parents’ house.

“Man, what’s up?” Simon asked as he descended the front steps. “I go to the john for five seconds and you make off with my girl.”

“ Your girl?” Ryan tried to keep his tone light, but it was damned hard.

“What, is she yours?”

Ryan stopped walking and faced his brother. “She’s not anyone’s. Geez, dude, she just got here. You letting Mom’s matchmaking get to you?”

“This has nothing to do with Mom and everything to do with that gorgeous new cook. You did notice her being pretty, right?”

Ryan started walking again. “I’m not blind.”

Simon stopped at the back of his truck. “Are you interested in her?”

Yes, you fool.

“You know me, would rather be on my own.” Ryan met Simon’s gaze, well-practiced at not showing what he was really feeling.

And what was that? Anger? Frustration? Jealousy? How could he be jealous when he’d known Brooke less than a day? Maybe it was anger that he no longer considered himself fit for a romantic relationship, nothing more than a casual date, anyway.

Simon seemed to accept his assertion at face value. “So, think she’d go out with me?”

“Not if she’s smart.”

Simon laughed. “You’re no help at all. Man, I wish I had a sister.”

And Ryan wished his mom had hired a safe woman, one old enough to be his grandmother.

We don’t all get what we wish for, do we?

“Want a ride?” Simon asked.

“What is it with people thinking I can’t walk two feet?” Ryan muttered.

“What?”

“No, I’m good.” Before he managed to make a complete idiot of himself, he headed toward home.

But when he got there and undressed, sleep remained elusive. Despite a long day in the shop, he stared at the ceiling as awake as he’d been at noon. Might as well get some more work done. He put his clothes back on and trudged out to the shop. He consulted his list of orders but didn’t feel inspired to work on any of them.

He sank onto the wooden stool next to his large workbench. He reached for the one thing that got him through nights when sleep refused to pay a call. The block of wood revealed only the hint of an angel’s outline. He closed his eyes and mentally scanned the shelf of angels that sat in his bedroom, remembering their details, each one different. When he opened his eyes and ran his fingertips over the surface of the wood, he fixed an image in his mind and started to carve, chipping away to find the angel buried inside the wood.

An hour passed with the chip and scrape of his carving tools against wood the only sound. He lifted the new figure toward his lips and blew away the shavings. An angel stared up at him—an angel with big doe eyes.

Someone had painted her eyes shut. Or glued the lids together, because they refused to obey her brain’s command to lift. Somewhere in her memory lay a reason why she needed to open her eyes, to move, to wake up.

Brooke sat up so quickly the resulting head rush made her blink and press the base of her palm against her temple. Once her vision cleared, pieces of memory switched her unfamiliar surroundings into familiar. She was in Texas, the Vista Hills Guest Ranch, at her new job.

Her job! She looked out the window, at the strong sunlight pouring into the bedroom. She leapt from the bed and raced to her suitcase for clean clothes. No time to shower. As she stripped off the previous day’s clothes, she searched the kitchen cabinets for a glass then rinsed her mouth. She paused in putting on a fresh blouse to search her purse for a stick of gum and popped it into her mouth.

Her hairbrush, along with the toothbrush and toothpaste, was back at the Rochester, so she finger-combed her hair as she raced for the door.

Please, don’t let me have lost this job before I’ve even really started.

She yanked the door open then yelped when she almost crashed into Ryan. Instinct made her lift her hands, and they made contact with his chest in the same moment he grasped her upper arms.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m late,” she said as she tried to catch her breath. She stepped back, breaking the contact between them. “I can’t believe I’m late on my first day. I’m never late.”

When she skirted Ryan and ran down the steps toward her car, he kept pace with her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Mom figured you’d need today to rest and get settled.”

“But we made plans last night for me to cook breakfast for the guests this morning.”

“She took care of it.”

Brooke still didn’t pause as she rounded the back of her car. Ryan slipped into the passenger seat as he had the night before. Why was he here?

“You can slow down,” he said as she started the car.

“I can’t lose this job.” She hadn’t meant for her desperation to go verbal, but her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

“Mom isn’t going to fire you.”

“You don’t know that. Being late on the first day doesn’t look good.”

“I do know because she’s the one who sent me out here to leave you a note saying it was fine if you wanted to start tomorrow.” He held up a folded piece of paper.

So he hadn’t appeared on her doorstep on his own.

Good. If he wasn’t interested in her, that would make interacting with him way easier than with Simon, who’d kept up a constant barrage of flirting the night before. Of course, neither brother was her chief concern at the moment. She raced down the dirt road, leaving a whirl of dust in her car’s wake.

“You might want to—” Ryan didn’t get the rest of his sentence out before she hit a pothole so hard her teeth slammed together.

“Sorry,” she said as she spared a glance for Ryan.

“That’s okay. I like whiplash.”

Horrified, she slowed to a near stop. “Did I hurt you?”

“Here’s a tip. We tend to joke a good amount, so you’ll want to learn to tell when we’re teasing.”

“So, you’re okay?”

He leaned against the door. “Yes.”

Brooke returned her attention to the road then drove the rest of the way to the main house and parked. She didn’t even look at Ryan as she bolted from the car, simply tossing a “‘Bye” over her shoulder. If he responded, she didn’t stick around to hear.

When she hurried into the kitchen, she found Merline putting away dishes.

“Good morning,” Merline said in a cheery voice. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m so sorry I overslept. It’ll never happen again.” She stepped forward to take over putting the dishes in the cabinets.

Merline placed her hand atop Brooke’s. “It’s okay. Didn’t you get the note I sent?”

“Ryan told me about it, but you and I made arrangements last night, ones I’ve already failed to fulfill.” Her mother had taught her at a young age the importance of fulfilling one’s responsibilities, so by being late she felt as if she were failing not only Merline but her mother as well.