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

“Really? Who knows that?”

“Cy Parks told me.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Did you try to pump Cy Parks for inside information?”

Kell gave her his best angelic look. “I would never do such a sneaky thing.”

“Sure you would,” she retorted.

“Well, Dr. Rydel knew why Cy was asking him, anyway. He just laughed and asked if there was any other inside information that Cy would like to have for us.”

She flushed. “Oh, my.”

“Cy said the good doctor talked more about you than he did about the heifer he was helping to deliver,” Kell added. “It’s well-known that Dr. Rydel can’t abide women. People get curious when a notorious woman hater suddenly starts seeing a local woman.”

“I wonder why he hates women?” she wondered aloud.

“Ask him. But for now, let’s eat. I’m fairly empty.”

“Goodness, yes, it’s two hours past our usual suppertime,” she agreed, moving into the kitchen. “I’m sorry I was late.”

“How’s the dog?” he asked, joining her at the table.

“He’ll be fine, Dr. Rydel said. The poor boy was just devastated. I felt sorry for his dad. He’d just lost his job. You could see he was torn between getting the dog treated and taking care of his family. There’s a new baby. Dr. Rydel didn’t charge him a penny.”

“Heart of gold,” Kell said gently.

“We were going to take up a collection, when Dr. Rydel reminded us that he drove a Land Rover,” she laughed. “He inherited money from his grandmother, Dr. King said, and he makes a good living as a vet.”

“That means he’ll be able to take care of you when you get married.”

She made a face. “Horses before carts, not carts before horses.”

“You wait and see,” he replied. “That’s a man who’s totally hooked. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

She smiled from ear to ear as she started putting food on the table. She’d already pushed her fears about Frank to the back of her mind. Kell was right. He surely wouldn’t risk his freedom by making trouble for Cappie again.

Dr. Rydel took her to a carnival Friday night. She was shocked not only at the invitation, but at the choice of outings.

“You like carnivals?” she’d exclaimed.

“Sure! I love the rides and cotton candy.” He’d smiled with reminiscence. “My grandmother used to save her egg money to take me to any carnival that came through Jacobsville when I was a kid. She’d even go on the rides with me. I get tickled even now when I hear somebody talk about grandmothers who bake cookies and knit and sit in rocking chairs. My grandmother was a newspaper reporter. She was a real firecracker.”

She was remembering the conversation as they walked down the sawdust-covered aisles between booths where carnies were enticing customers to pitch pennies or throw baseballs to win prizes.

“What are you brooding about?” he teased.

She looked up, laughing. “Sorry. I was remembering what you said about your grandmother. Did you spend a lot of time with her?”

His face closed up.

“Sorry,” she said again, flushing. “I shouldn’t have asked something so personal.”

He stopped in the aisle and looked down at her, enjoying the glow of her skin against the pale yellow sweater she was wearing with jeans, her blond hair long and soft around her shoulders.

His big, lean hand went to her hair and toyed with it, sending sweet chills down her spine when he moved a step closer. “She raised me,” he said quietly. “My mother and father never got along. They separated two or three times a year, and then fought about who got to keep me. My mother loved me, but my father only wanted me to spite her.” His face hardened. “When I made him mad, he took it out on my pets. He shot one of my dogs when I talked back to him. He wouldn’t let me take the dog to a veterinarian, and I couldn’t save it. That’s why I decided to become a vet.”

“I did wonder,” she confessed. “You talk about your mother, but never about your father. Or your stepfather.” Her hands went to his shirtfront. She could feel the warm muscle and hair under the soft cotton.

He sighed. His hand covered one of hers, smoothing over her fingernails. “My stepfather thought that being a vet was a sissy profession, and he said so, frequently. He didn’t like animals, either.”

“Some sissy profession,” she scoffed. “I guess he never had to wrestle down a sick steer that weighed several hundred pounds.”

He chuckled. “No, he never did. We got along somewhat. But I don’t miss seeing him. I had hard feelings against him for a long time, for letting my mother get so sick that medical science couldn’t save her. But sometimes we blame people when it’s just fate that bad things happen. Remember the old saying, ‘man proposes and God disposes’? It’s pretty much true.”

“Ah, you advocate being a leaf on the river, grasshopper,” she said in a heavily accented tone.

“You lunatic,” he laughed, but he bent and kissed her nose. “Yes. I do advocate being a leaf on the river. Sometimes you have to trust that things will work out the way they’re meant to, not the way you want them to.”

“Why do you hate women?”

His eyebrows arched.

“Everybody knows that you do. You even told me so.” She flushed a little as she remembered when he’d told her so; the first time he’d kissed her.

“Remember that, do you?” he teased softly. “You don’t know a lot about kissing,” he added.

She moved restlessly. “I don’t get in much practice.”

“Oh, I think I can help you with that,” he said in a deep, husky tone. “And for the record, I don’t hate you.”

“Thank you very much,” she said demurely, and peered up at him through her lashes.

He bent slowly to her mouth. “You’re very welcome,” he whispered. His lips teased just above hers, coaxing her to lift her chin, so that he had better access to her mouth.

Before he could kiss her, a deep voice mused from behind him, “Lewd behavior in public will get you arrested.”

“Kilraven,” Bentley groaned, turning to face the man. “What are you doing here?”

Kilraven, in full uniform, grinned at the discomfort in their faces as he moved closer and lowered his voice. “I’m investigating possible cotton candy fraud.”

“Excuse me?” Cappie said.

“I’m going to taste the cotton candy, and the candy apples, and make sure they’re not using illegal counterfeit sugar.”

They both stared at him as if he’d gone mad.

He shrugged. “I’m really off duty, I just haven’t gone home to change. I like carnivals,” he added, laughing. “Jon, my brother, and I used to go to them when we were kids. It brings back happy memories.”

“They have a sharpshooting target,” Bentley told him.

“I don’t waste my unbelievable talent on games,” Kilraven scoffed.

“I am in awe of your modesty,” Bentley said.

“Why, thank you,” Kilraven replied. “I consider it one of my best traits, and I do have quite a few of them.” He peered past them. Winnie Sinclair, in jeans and a pretty pink sweater and matching denim jacket, was walking around the penny-pitching booth with her brother, Boone Sinclair, and his wife, Cappie’s coworker, Keely. Kilraven looked decidedly uneasy. “I’ll see you around,” he added.

But instead of going to the cotton candy booth, he turned on his heel and walked right out of the carnival.

“How odd,” Cappie murmured, watching him leave.

“Not so odd,” Bentley replied. His eyes were on Winnie Sinclair, who’d just seen Kilraven glare in her direction and then walk away. She looked devastated. “Winnie Sinclair is sweet on him,” he explained, “and he’s even a worse woman hater than I am.”