Karen Rock - Falling For A Cowboy

“She was upset when she found out I’d invited you to dinner.” Charlotte’s voice kept taking on air, getting higher and higher, thinner and thinner. “Jared, what if she’s hurt? Trapped out there?”

A long low howl rose in the dark night, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Wolves. And they weren’t the only animals a person had to worry about in the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

He slammed his hat back on, mind racing, thinking as Amberley would. He knew her as well as he knew himself. Maybe even better. Where would she go?

The answer smacked him full in the face.

Of course.

Dirt sprayed from beneath his boots as he sprinted down a familiar trail.

“I’ll find her, Charlotte!” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll bring her home safe and sound. Promise.”

Chapter Three

AMBERLEY STUMBLED ALONG a rutted path, her gasps of breath harsh in her ears. Her boots sunk into puddles forming atop the hard-baked soil. Soaked, her plaid shirt clung to her like a frigid second skin. It’d begun drizzling only ten minutes ago. Then, in that unpredictable way of Rocky Mountain weather, the sky turned on the world with what appeared to be crack-white flashes of lightning. Thunderous booms shook the electric air and thick sheets of rain pelted the earth, shaking her from the inside out.

Worst of all.

She was lost.

Clamping her chattering teeth, she trudged on, one foot in front of the other. Where was she? She’d run off a half hour ago, she estimated, and should have reached her destination: a small, abandoned one-room schoolhouse that had once served the local ranching families a hundred years ago. Its shape should have caught her attention by now. The dirt path that ran from her cabin led straight there, yet somewhere along the way she’d gotten turned around. Now she didn’t recognize which path she followed since staring straight at anything was like looking through a smudged, cracked, warped windshield. Reining in her mounting panic, she used her side vision to guestimate her location.

The waterfall of sky blurred the dim landmarks worse than her slipping eyesight. Skyscrapers of pitch-green trees, pines she supposed based on the smell and shape, loomed to her right. To her left, the land turned to beige shale and seemed to slope down. In fact, it seemed to disappear—

Her foot encountered air and she teetered for a gut-cramping moment on the edge of a drop-off. Her arms pinwheeled. A flash-thought forked in her mind. Would it matter so much if she tumbled right off this mountain? What difference would it make?

A wild shriek flew from her, voicing her anguish, her fear, her hopelessness, her rage, her despair.

Then a strong arm snaked around her waist and yanked her back. Hard. She and her rescuer smacked to the boggy earth with a sploosh. The man grunted, the air knocked out of him, and she blinked up at the shifting, whirling sky, winded herself.

An instant later, she scrambled away and rocked back on her heels. A tall, lanky man leveraged himself up on his elbows, then shot to his feet in a smooth, agile move she’d recognize anywhere.

Jared.

He opened his mouth to say something, but just then a deafening flash-bang splintered the fizzing air. The sky lit up and lightning burned through a nearby tree, amputating a crane-sized branch. It crashed with deadly force inches from their feet. Burnt wood and sulfuric fumes rose.

The sky growled, low and ferocious, readying for another salvo. Goose bumps broke out across her skin.

Jared gestured. “Come with me!”

Amberley nodded. No time to argue. He laced his fingers in hers and together they slid and stumbled through the howling tempest. The streaming air launched debris at them, hard bits of wood whizzing fast enough to strike with maximum impact. When a trail marker sign winged at them, she didn’t spot it fast enough to duck and it bashed straight into her forehead, sending her to her knees. She clutched her stinging face, and her fingers came away a sticky, blurred red.

She felt dazed. She shook her head to clear it, but the move only shot a bolt of pain through her. Without a word, Jared scooped her up in his arms, held her tight to his broad chest, and jogged down the trail until the outline of the old schoolhouse appeared. She grasped her thrumming head, afraid it’d either fall off her shoulders or explode if she didn’t.

Without pausing, Jared kicked open the door, shoved it closed behind them, strode inside the dark interior, then lowered to a tottering wooden chair at the front of the room. All at once, the world muted itself. The now-muffled rain snare-drummed softly on the roof. The fangless wind batted against the rattling windowpanes. The dank, musty space closed in. Their ragged breaths mingled. Beneath her ear, Jared’s heart galloped and the hands smoothing up and down her back shook.

She’d never sensed Jared flustered a day in his life, and for some reason this scared her as much as anything.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” he murmured, low in her ear. “I’ve got you, darlin’.”

She stiffened.

“You’re safe,” he crooned in a rumbling, husky voice.

Enough. She didn’t want to be safe. Least of all because of someone else rescuing her or seeing her at her weakest. Even worse, that person was Jared.

She wriggled free of his arms and faltered back a couple of steps. Her hands groped the emptiness behind her, a new habit, to feel for what she couldn’t see. Frustration and helplessness brewed in her belly, toxic and nauseating. When her fingers encountered the soft edge of an old desk, she leaned on it, testing her weight partially, before trusting herself to sit atop it.

“Let me.” Jared brushed back the hair sticking to the gash on her forehead. Something dripped from her temple. Warmer than water.

She’d never fainted in her life. Yet suddenly, a light-headedness stole over her, and she grasped the edges of the desk with both hands.

“Stop.” She jerked away and nearly cried out from the pain. A red drop splattered on the dusty floor.

Jared pivoted with her. “Hold still.” He flipped off her hat, grasped her chin in one strong hand and studied her. A deep longing to see his amber eyes seized her. Yet if they held pity, she’d rather not know. “This is going to need stitches.”

She started to shrug and realized that even the slightest movement made her head whirl and her stomach revolt. “A flesh wound,” she said, trying to joke, a reference to one of their favorite Monty Python movies, but her voice cracked like a thirteen-year-old boy’s.

“Not funny, Amberley,” Jared growled. “You could have gotten yourself killed out there.”

He pulled something from his back pocket, wrapped it around her head and tied it in the back. It smelled like him, she thought, breathing in the crisp cotton, clean soapy smell. His lucky bandanna, she guessed.

“So what if I had?”

He knelt in front of her and gathered her hands in his. Though she tried to stop them, tears of pain welled. She didn’t cry easily. In fact, she could count the number of moments on one hand. The time her glasses got knocked off and she’d had to crawl around on the playground looking for them while other kids laughed. And once when she’d dislocated a shoulder during a barrel racing accident. Then the day they’d buried Daddy.

“Well, if you’d gotten yourself killed, then I would have lost my mind,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, almost a croak.

Her frog prince. Back.

Only she didn’t want him anymore.

She didn’t want anyone.

Not even herself.

At least not who she was now.

She screwed her eyes shut. Jared brushed at her damp lashes with his thumbs, the gesture so tender it ached. “Your mother told me about your eyes.”