Victoria Pade - Cowboy's Caress

He was tall, no less than six-two, and he looked much more like a muscled, ranch-rugged cowboy than the town’s new doctor she assumed him to be.

His hair was a pale, golden brown he wore short all over. His face had the distinctive McDermot lean angles and rawboned beauty Carly knew only too well since his brothers were residents of Elk Creek. His nose was long and thin and perfectly sculpted. His jaw was square and strong. And his lips were thin, kind and slightly sardonic all at once, not to mention way, way more sexy than Carly wanted to notice.

“Need some help?” he asked when he noticed Carly’s dilemma, coming off the porch on long, thick legs that were bowed just enough to look as if they’d spent more time straddling a saddle than standing at an examining table.

He wore faded jeans that rode low on narrow hips, and a plain white T-shirt that stretched tight across broad shoulders, powerful pectorals and bulging biceps that made Carly’s stomach do a little flip-flop when she got a closer glimpse of them as he joined her and Deana.

“I think I can manage,” Carly said, trying to remember what she’d been taught at the hospital about maneuvering the crutches when her brain was really in a haze due to the man’s head-to-toe staggeringly masculine glory.

“You must be Baxter McDermot,” she said feebly on her way onto the crutches.

“Bax,” he amended.

“Doctor McDermot,” Deana said with a hint of flirting in her tone that, for some reason, rubbed Carly wrong.

In spite of it she said, “I’m Carly Winters and this is Deana Carlson.”

“I apologize for showing up so early,” he said after a confirming nod of his handsome head. “We were in a motel for the night with World War III going on in the room next to us. We finally gave up tryin’ to sleep and figured we might as well finish the trip and catch a few winks when we got here.”

“Sure. Of course. There’s just been a little setback on this end,” Carly said, leaning her weight on the crutches and honing in on gorgeous sea-foam green eyes that stamped him a McDermot without a doubt.

“You aren’t leaving town and don’t want to hand your house over to us,” he guessed with a glance down at her bandaged ankle.

“I’m afraid I had an accident last night and I’m going to have to put off leaving until I’m healed up.”

“It’s okay. We can stay out at the ranch,” he offered congenially.

It might have been better if he’d been nasty about it. If he’d reminded her that they had a contract in the form of the lease that guaranteed she would turn the house over to him today.

Instead, he couldn’t have been nicer about it, offering to go to the ranch he and his brothers and sister now owned after having taken it over from their grandfather.

The trouble was, Carly knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do or he wouldn’t have rented her house in the first place. He’d arranged for the lease because he’d wanted to be closer to the medical facility where he would work—one of the same purposes the house had served for her father when he’d been the town doctor. And there was Bax McDermot’s daughter, too. He was determined to be near her so he’d be available to her during the daytime.

Carly knew all this because the real estate agent who had arranged the rental agreement had explained it to her. And now she felt bad that her change of plans had complicated his. She didn’t have to be told that if he had to stay out at the McDermot ranch, he’d be pulled in two directions. Not to mention that he wouldn’t have this precious time before he actually began seeing patients to get himself and his daughter settled into the house.

He was being such a good sport about it, it just made her feel all the more guilty.

“Listen,” she said. “A deal is a deal and according to ours the house is yours as of today. There’s a guest cottage just behind it that my dad sometimes used as a makeshift hospital. I could stay there until I’m healed enough to leave and you can have the house. It’ll just mean sharing the kitchen, but it will also give me a chance to show you around properly and teach you the workings of the place.”

“I don’t want to put you out. Maybe I could take the cottage,” he offered.

“It’s only big enough for one. Besides, I don’t mind. It’ll actually be easier for me to get around without having to use the stairs in the main house. And it will only be for a little while. As soon as I’m back on two feet I’m leaving. But in the meantime, things won’t have to be messed up for you.”

He seemed to study her for a sign that she meant what she said.

She aided the cause by adding, “Really, I don’t mind.”

He finally conceded. “If you’re sure…”

“I am.”

“Okay, then. Great,” he agreed with a slight shrug of broad shoulders and a smile that put dimples in both cheeks and made Carly’s head go light.

Not that her reaction had anything to do with him, she told herself in a hurry. She was just overly tired.

“Do you need me?” Deana asked.

Only in that moment did Carly remember her friend, and she was ashamed of herself for having been so focused on Bax McDermot that she’d forgotten her.

“I’m fine,” Carly assured too effusively. “Thanks for taking me to Cheyenne and everything else, Dee.”

“You’d do the same for me. At least if you were around,” her friend said pointedly. “I’ll check with you this afternoon. If you need me in the meantime, just holler.”

“Thanks,” Carly repeated as Deana closed the rear car door then got behind the wheel.

“Nice to meet you,” the new doctor said to Deana.

“You, too,” Deana answered just before she backed out of Carly’s driveway only to pull into the one next door.

“Short trip,” Bax McDermot observed with a laugh as he watched the move.

Annoyance struck Carly for the second time as she caught sight of the big man’s gaze following her friend.

She really did need sleep, she decided. Lack of it was making her cranky.

“We might as well go in,” she urged, taking her first steps on the crutches.

But heading across the lawn was a tactical error, and by the third uncoordinated three-legged hobble she set one of the crutches in a hole and everything went into a careen.

Bax McDermot lunged for her, catching her just short of falling with both of those big hands on her waist.

“Steady,” he advised.

But even though he’d accomplished just that, something about the warm feel of his hands sent things inside her reeling.

“Sorry,” she apologized, feeling like an idiot. “I haven’t had much practice on these things.”

“They work better on solid surfaces.”

Before she had any inkling of what he was going to do, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the porch on long, sturdy strides, setting her down near one of the posts so she could hang on to it for balance.

The whole trip took only a few seconds and yet that close contact had knocked her for even more of a loop.

So much so that it took her a moment of hard work to regain herself and realize he was introducing his daughter.

“This is Evie Lee.”

“Evie Lee Lewis,” the little girl corrected.

“Evie Lee McDermot is what’s on her birth certificate,” Bax explained. “She tacked on the Lewis herself a few months ago. I can’t tell you why or where she got it.”

“Everybody should have three first names,” Evie Lee added. “To tell them apart from everybody else.”

“Makes sense to me,” Carly agreed, seizing the distraction of the child.

“Why don’t you run and get the crutches?” Bax suggested to his daughter.

Evie Lee did just that, dragging them behind her on her return trip.