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The idea was appealing. At least then he wouldn’t have to listen to his dad or grandfather telling him he needed to strap on his chaps and spurs and get back to being a cowboy. Not that he’d ever been one, Bowie thought dourly. His being a ranch hand was their delusion, not his.
“Can’t leave now. I have to have these blasted bandages changed every day for the next few weeks. Maybe longer.”
“Oh. Forgot about that. Lilly said the nurse Dad hired is a friend of hers. Have you met her yet?”
Met her? That was hardly the way he would describe the exchange he’d had with the beautiful Ava Archer, Bowie thought.
“She’s already been here this morning and left,” Bowie said as he stared out the passenger window.
“And?”
Rafe’s persistence put a frown on Bowie’s face. “She treated my burns and applied clean bandages. That’s all there was to it.”
Rafe was silent for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.
Bowie cut a sharp glance at him. “You find something funny about that? Maybe you’d like to change places with me?”
His voice still full of humor, Rafe said, “I don’t think Lilly would like that too much. In fact, I think she’d put on her nurse’s cap and take care of me herself.”
When the family learned Bowie was being released from the hospital and would need home care, Lilly had immediately volunteered for the job. Bowie had thanked her for the offer, but he’d not wanted to put his sister-in-law in the awkward situation of seeing him half-naked every day. So Ava had been hired instead. Lovely Ava, who’d lost her husband so long ago.
Bowie remained silent with his thoughts, and Rafe chuckled again.
“So a beautiful woman walks into your bedroom this morning and you have nothing to say about it? You are more than wounded, little brother, you’re sick with a fever or something.”
Bowie let out a heavy breath. He couldn’t hide from Rafe. The two brothers were too much alike.
“Okay, I’ll fess up. I got off to a really bad start with Ava,” Bowie muttered. “When she walked in I was on the phone telling Dad how I didn’t want a nurse. And a few other derogatory things that I wouldn’t have wanted any woman to hear. I had to do some fast apologizing to get her to stay.”
“Well, Ava’s too old for you, anyway. And from what Lilly says, she isn’t interested in having a man in her life. Which is unfortunate, if you ask me. The few times I’ve been around her, she seems like a woman who needs a family.”
Why had Rafe had to go and say that kind of thing and ruin the fantasies he’d been having of the sexy nurse? To Bowie, she’d seemed like a woman who needed a man to make love to her.
“Don’t look at me. I’m hardly in the market for a wife and kids. Besides, I like younger women. The kind that wants to have fun. Not babies.”
“So you’re still on that kick. I was thinking now that you’ve gotten out of the Marines you might be feeling different about women—and other things.”
“I might be out of the Marines, but I’m hardly ready for slippers and a recliner every night.”
“You’re hardly ready for a barroom brawl, either,” Rafe said drily. “Have your doctors given you an idea as to when you might go back to work?”
“Barring no complications, in six to eight weeks.”
“That quick?”
Bowie groaned. “You call sitting around on this ranch for the next six weeks quick?”
Rafe whipped the truck around a patch of sagebrush growing in the middle of the rough pasture road. “Be patient, Bowie, and you might get to liking it.”
So this was why his brother had taken him on this jaunt this morning, Bowie thought. Not for a breath of fresh air or a change in scenery. But to give him a pep talk about giving up the hotshot crew and becoming a full-time rancher.
“Look, Rafe, it’s nice that you and the rest of the family want me around. I appreciate that. But this kind of life isn’t for me. I’d go out of my mind with boredom. It’s one of the reasons I went into the Marines in the first place.”
Rafe snorted. “Bull. You didn’t go into the Marines because you were bored. You did it because you were a rebel. Hell, Mom was the only one who thought the military would be good for you. And I guess in some ways she was right,” he added thoughtfully.
“Mom,” Bowie repeated softly. “I sure wish she was still with us. You know, while I was in the Corps, I often caught myself imagining she was still here on the ranch. But now that I’m home, everything I look at reminds me she’s gone.”
Rafe glanced his way. “You know, the first time I met Ava, she sort of reminded me of Mom. She’s tall and dark and elegant like Mom was. Maybe that’s why I connect Ava with having a family. It’s just too bad that she can’t get past losing her husband.”
She didn’t want to get past losing him, Bowie thought. But that was her choice and had nothing to do with him. For the next few weeks he was going to enjoy her visits, but beyond that, she was off-limits.
They rounded a rolling hill covered in scraggly juniper, and a small herd of cattle came into view. Bowie was relieved to see them. He didn’t want to talk about Ava or hear his brother talking about the woman needing a husband anymore.
“There’s a herd off to the right,” Bowie said. “Are they the heifers you wanted to look at?”
“Sure are.”
Slowing the truck, Rafe steered off the narrow road and toward the black cattle. As soon as the animals spotted the vehicle, they came running with hopes of getting fed.
“If you don’t have some feed in the back of the truck,” Bowie commented, “those heifers are going to be mighty upset.”
Rafe chuckled. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I loaded some hay bales earlier.”
He parked the truck on a flat space of ground and waited for the cattle to gather nearby. By now fat flakes of snow were splattering against the windshield and dusting the backs of the black cattle. It had been years since Bowie had seen snow and experienced cold weather. He’d almost forgotten the hardship it placed on the livestock and the men who cared for them.
After Rafe had tossed blocks of hay to the cattle, he climbed back into the warm cab and held his gloved hands toward the vents on the dashboard.
“Sorry I can’t help,” Bowie told him. “I might not be much of a rancher, but I do know how to spread hay.”
“You know how to do more than spread hay,” Rafe said. “Remember when we were kids and we found that cow down by the river? She was trying to calve and was in really bad shape.”
“Yeah. I remember. I argued with you that there wasn’t enough time to go back to the ranch and get help. We pulled the calf ourselves.”
“And everything turned out good,” Rafe said with a wry grin. “I was fifteen and you were only ten. But you had more guts than I did, little brother. If you hadn’t been there with me, I would have lit out for the ranch.”
“Dad didn’t call it guts. He called it being reckless,” Bowie reminded him.
“Yeah, but he was happy.” He pointed to the heifers. “How do they look to you?”
“Good. Except for those two standing over at the edge. They’re not eating and their ears are drooped. They look a little sick to me.”
Grinning, Rafe was about to reach over and slap Bowie’s shoulder when he suddenly remembered his injuries and pulled back his hand. “Just what I expected. You haven’t forgotten a thing about being a cowboy. Welcome home, Bowie.”
Bowie started to remind him that he was only going to be home for a few weeks, but the smile on Rafe’s face was such a happy one, he just didn’t have the heart to ruin the moment.
Rafe, and everyone else in the family, would learn soon enough that he was heading back to the hotshot crew just as soon as his body had returned to working order.
* * *
Ava was still working the emergency room at Tahoe General when her friend and fellow nurse, Paige Winters, entered the sheeted cubicle where Ava was adjusting an IV on an elderly female patient suffering with flu symptoms.
“Are you nearly finished here?” Paige asked.
Ava glanced around at the redheaded nurse dressed in navy-blue scrubs. She was a tall, slender woman with a face dominated by a pair of clear gray eyes. Normally there was a perpetual smile on her face, but at the moment her lips were pressed together in a frustrated line.
“Yes, this patient is being admitted. Why? You need help with something?”
Paige jerked her thumb toward the opposite end of the room. “An unruly male. He slipped on an icy sidewalk and cut his head. He thinks he’s dying and demands the doctor see him this instant.”
“Dr. Sherman is busy with a cardiac incident right now. And Dr. Garza is tending to a toddler with whooping cough. The patient will just have to wait his turn.”
“I wish you’d tell him that.”
“You can’t?” Ava asked her.
Paige cast her a pleading smile. “I’m not nearly as good with a naughty man as you are.”
That was because she didn’t think of them as men. She thought of them as people. Except for the one she’d met this morning, Ava thought. Bowie was so potent she’d not been able to think of him as anything but a tough hunk of man.
“All right. I’ll deal with him.”
After hanging the patient’s chart on the end of the bed, Ava left the cubicle with Paige following close on her heels. When the two of them entered the compartment with the head injury, she found a young man sitting on the side of the narrow examining table holding a huge cotton pad to the side of his head. He was dressed in a sports jacket and tie. The knot at his throat was askew and blood splattered the toes of his wing tips.
“What the hell kind of place is this anyway?” he yelled the moment Ava stepped up to him. “I’m bleeding all over the place and nobody cares!”
Ava glanced over to see Paige rolling her eyes.
“Other than taking his vitals, Mr. Dobson here refused to let me touch him,” Paige explained. “He’d rather keep bleeding.”
“I came here to have my head treated by a doctor!” he practically shouted. “If I’d wanted a nurse to take care of me I’d have driven over to my grandma’s house.”
“Is your grandma a nurse?” Paige asked.
“No. But she’d know a damned sight more than you two. All I’ve seen you two do is carry clipboards around in circles.”
“See,” Paige said to Ava. “He’s a real sweetheart.”
Ava gave him a wide, phony smile. “This is an emergency room, Mr. Dobson. The most critical patients come first. If you don’t want to wait your turn to see the doctor, then perhaps you’d better let your grandma take care of you. Just try not to bleed all over the floor as you leave. I don’t want any of the nurses slipping and falling because of you.”
While the man spluttered with outrage, Ava urged her coworker out of the cubicle. “I hope you wrote intoxicated on his chart,” she said under her breath.
Paige frowned. “I didn’t notice alcohol. But now that you mention it, his eyes are pretty glassy. You don’t think that’s a result of banging his head?”
“Trust me. He’s belted back a few. And he isn’t going anywhere. He’s too much of a wimp.”
“Okay. You’ve been a nurse a lot longer than me. I’ll make a notation on his chart. Thanks, Ava.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I need to go check on another patient. I’ll see you in the locker room in thirty minutes.”
Ava looked at her with surprise. “Thirty minutes? Is it time for the shift change already?”
Paige grinned. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
The past nine hours of Ava’s evening shift in the ER had passed in a blur. The half hour she’d spent in Bowie’s bedroom this morning had felt like a whole day and then some. Maybe if she’d gone at the job of treating the firefighter like any other patient, the time with him would’ve spun by. But Bowie Calhoun wasn’t just any other patient. He was not like any man she’d met before.
* * *
A half hour later, in the nurses’ locker room, the two women were changing into street clothes.
“So you want to go get a drink or something to eat?” Paige asked as she slipped on a heavy coat. “I’m starving.”
Sitting on a wooden bench, Ava pulled a pair of knee-high boots over her jeans. “Not tonight. It will be one o’clock before I get home and climb into bed. And I need to be out at the Silver Horn by ten.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten about you taking on that extra job.” The redhead wrapped a long knit scarf around her neck. “Have you taken a look outside? It’s been snowing for the past two hours. You might not be able to drive out to the ranch in the morning.”
That might be a relief, Ava thought. Or would it? If she didn’t see Bowie in the morning, she’d think about him for the rest of the day. On the other hand, everything might be different in the morning, she thought hopefully. She might take one look at the hunky ex-marine and not feel anything at all, except the need to care for a patient.
“If the highways are treacherous, then I’m to call and someone from the ranch will come pick me up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drive me out there.”
Paige reached for her purse. “You’re kidding me.”
Ava stood and shrugged on her coat. “No kidding. One way or the other, the family is going to make sure Bowie has his nurse.”
“Hmm. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. From what I’ve heard, the Calhouns have more money than they know what to do with.”
Ava pulled the pins from her heavy bun and quickly ran a brush through the long tresses. “I never realized that raising cattle could make a family so wealthy.”
“It’s more than cattle, Ava. They sell high-priced cutting and show horses, too. And I hear they have lots of other holdings in mining and the gas and oil business.”
Ava put away the brush and pulled on her gloves while the image of Bowie lying on the king-size bed flashed into her mind. Surprisingly, he’d not come across to her as rich or spoiled. In fact, he’d seemed very down-to-earth. But then, she’d only been there for a half hour. A woman would need weeks, even months to learn the sort of man who lived behind that rugged face and muscled body.
“I wasn’t aware you knew that much about the family,” Ava replied.
“I don’t. But I read things in the paper from time to time. And I remember a few years ago, when old Mr. Calhoun was hospitalized. Some of the nurses were hoping he’d have a longer stay just so they’d get to look at the gorgeous grandsons coming to visit. So which one of them are you treating?”
“The youngest. Bowie. He’s the only one of them that’s still single.” Now, why had she bothered to give Paige that piece of information? His marital status had nothing to do with her job.
Paige chuckled slyly. “Lucky for you.”
Ava forced herself to laugh along with her friend. She might as well. The idea of her and Bowie ever having a relationship of any sort was totally laughable.
Picking up her handbag, she started out of the small locker room. “Sure,” she joked. “Everyone knows what a cougar I am.”
Chapter Three (#ulink_110f3d30-9a47-5753-94a4-339180abefd8)
The next morning the sun was out, but there was a layer of snow covering the patch of yard in front of Ava’s house. Snowplows had already cleared the few side streets she took to reach the main highway, but the last ten miles of graveled road leading to the ranch were another story. After a few incidents of sliding and spinning, she managed to reach the Silver Horn, although the effort left her tense and exhausted.
When she eventually entered the house, Greta instantly began to scold her. “Miss Archer, you should have called the ranch for a ride. The roads are messy today.”
Ava handed her coat and gloves to Tessa, who was kindly waiting to take her things. “They weren’t that bad in town,” she told the cook. “But I must say the rural road leading up here to the ranch was treacherous.”
