Diana Palmer - One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher - Tough to Tame / Carrying the Rancher's Heir / One Dance with the Cowboy

She made a face at him. “You have nice friends.”

“I do, don’t I?” He smiled. “Now you won’t have to beg rides.”

“It will be a relief, although Keely’s been wonderful about it.” She glanced at her brother. “I don’t think the insurance paid for all this.”

“Yes, it did,” he said firmly. “Period.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. You really do have nice friends.”

“You don’t know how nice,” he told her. “But I may tell you one day. Now let’s get back inside. It’s cold out here today.”

“It is a bit nippy.” She turned and followed him inside.

The week went by fast. She got her paycheck on Friday and went shopping early Saturday morning in Jacobsville. Kell had said he’d love a new bathrobe for Christmas, so she went to the department store looking.

It was a surprise when she bumped into Dr. Rydel in the men’s department. He gave her a curious look. She didn’t realize why until she recalled that she’d left her hair long around her shoulders instead of putting it up. He seemed to find it fascinating.

“Shopping for anything particular?” he asked.

“Yes. Kell wants a bathrobe.”

“Christmas shopping,” he guessed, and smiled.

“Yes.”

“I’m replacing a jacket,” he sighed. “I made the mistake of going straight from church on a large animal call. A longhorn bull objected to being used as a pincushion and ripped out the sleeve.”

She laughed softly. “Occupational hazard,” she said.

He nodded. “Your car looks nice.”

“Thanks,” she said. She could imagine how her old wreck, even repainted, looked to a man who drove a new Land Rover, but she didn’t say so. “Mr. Parks had his foreman supervise the work. The insurance company paid for it.”

“Nice of him. He knows your brother?”

“They’re friends.” She frowned. “Mr. Parks doesn’t look like a rancher,” she blurted out.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s something, I don’t know, dangerous about him,” she said, searching for the right word. “He’s very nice, but I wouldn’t want him mad at me.”

He grinned. “A few drug dealers in prison could attest to the truth of that statement,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Cy Parks is a retired mercenary,” he told her. “He was in some bloody firefights in Africa some years back. More recently, he and two other friends and Harley Fowler shut down a drug distribution center here. There was a gunfight.”

“In Jacobsville, Texas?” she exclaimed.

“Yep. Parks is one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met. Kind to people he likes. But there aren’t many of those.”

She felt odd. She wondered how it was that her brother had come to know such a man, because he and Cy seemed to be old friends.

“Where do you go from here?” Dr. Rydel asked suddenly.

She blinked. “I don’t know,” she blurted out, flushing. “I mean, I thought I might, well, stop by the game store in the strip mall.”

He stared at her blankly. “Game store?”

She cleared her throat. “There’s this new video game. ‘Halo…’”

“‘…ODST,’” he said, with evident surprise. “You’re a gamer?”

She cleared her throat again. “Well…yes.”

He said something unprintable.

She glared at him. “Dr. Rydel!” she exclaimed. “It’s not a vice, you know, playing video games. They release tension and they’re fun,” she argued.

He chuckled. “I have all three Halo games from Bungie, plus the campaigns,” he confessed, naming the famous company whose amazing staff had engineered one of the most exciting video game series of all time. “And the new one that just came out.”

Now her jaw fell open. “You do?”

“Yes. I have ‘Halo: ODST,’” he said, pursing his lips. “Do you game online?”

She didn’t want to confess that she couldn’t afford the fees. “I like playing by myself,” she said. “Or with Kell. He’s crazy about the Halo series.”

“So am I,” Dr. Rydel told her. His blue eyes twinkled. “Maybe we could play split screen sometime, when we’re both free.”

She gave him a wicked look. “I can put down Hunters with a .45 automatic.” Hunters were some of the most formidable of the alien Covenant bad guys, fearsome to engage in the Halo game because they were huge and it took a dead shot to hit them in their very few vulnerable places.

He whistled. “Not bad, Miss Drake!”

“Have you been a gamer for a long time?” she asked.

“Since college,” he replied, smiling. “You?”

“Since high school. Kell was in the military and a bunch of guys in his unit would come over to the house when they were off duty and play war-game videos. We lived off base.” She pursed her lips and her eyes twinkled. “I not only learned how to use tactics and weapons, I also learned a lot of very interesting and useful words to employ when I got killed in the games.”

“Bad girl,” he chided.

She laughed.

“I’ll probably see you in the video store,” he added.

She beamed. “You probably will.”

He grinned and went back to the suits.

Fifteen minutes later, she parked in front of the video store and went inside. It was full of teenage boys mostly, but there were two men standing in front of a rack with the newest sword and sorcery and combat games. One of them was Dr. Rydel. The other, surprisingly, was Officer Kilraven.

Dr. Rydel looked up and smiled when he saw her coming. Kilraven’s silver eyes cut around to follow his companion’s gaze. His black eyebrows arched.

“She’s Christmas shopping,” Dr. Rydel announced.

“Buying video games for a relative?” Kilraven wondered aloud.

Dr. Rydel chuckled. “She’s a gamer,” he confided. “She can take down Hunters with a .45 auto.”

Kilraven whistled through his teeth. “Impressive,” he said. “I usually do that with a sniper rifle.”

“I can use those, too,” she said. “But the .45 works just as well, thanks to that magnified sight.”

“Have you played all the Halo series?” Kilraven asked.

She nodded. “Now I’m shopping for ODST,” she said. “Kell, my brother, likes it, too. He taught me how to play.”

Kilraven frowned. “Kell Drake?”

“Yes…”

“I know him,” Kilraven replied quietly. “Good man.”

“Were you in the army?” she asked innocently.

Kilraven chuckled. “Once, a long time ago.”

“Kell only got out a year ago,” she said. “He was freelancing for a magazine in Africa and got hit by flying shrapnel. He’s paralyzed from the waist down—at least until the shrapnel shifts enough so that they can operate.”

Kilraven blinked. “He got hit by flying…he was working for a magazine?” He seemed incredulous. “Doing what?”

“Writing stories.”

“Writing stories? Kell can write?”

“He has very good English skills,” she began defensively.

“I never,” Kilraven said in an odd tone. “Why did he get out of the army?” he wanted to know.

She blinked. “Well, I’m not really sure…” she began.

“Look at this one,” Dr. Rydel interrupted helpfully, holding up a game. “Have you ever played this?”

Kilraven was diverted. He took the green case and stared at the description. He grinned. “Have I ever! ‘Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion,’” he murmured. “This is great! You don’t have to do the main quest, if you don’t want to. There are dozens of other quests. You can even design your own character’s appearance, name him, choose from several races…ever played it?” he asked Cappie.

She chuckled. “Actually it’s sort of my favorite. I love ‘Halo,’ but I like using a twohanded sword as well.”