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“And a rodeo cowboy should have a lot harder time with it?”
She set the book down on the table and crossed her arms. “That is not what I meant at all. For all I know, there are Mensa members who ride bucking horses and chess champions who do tie-down roping. I think lots of people have hidden talents.”
“What’s yours?” He appeared to be having a hard time hiding a mischievous grin.
“I’ll have you know that I’m the family Scrabble champ and have been since I was twelve.”
“Yeah? Maybe you should broaden your competition.”
“Is that a challenge, Mr. Kelley?”
“Only if you’re willing to accept it, Dr. Brody.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to do everything you’re told so you can get better and we can have a Scrabble duel before you leave.” She took a step back from the side of Wyatt’s bed. “And speaking of leaving, I really am going home this time.”
“If you’re bored on your days off, you know where I’ll be.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
When she stepped out of the room, she nearly collided with Sophie, who was wearing a too-happy smile. “Dr. Brody.”
Chloe did her best not to utter an “oh, crap” at how loaded those two words from Sophie’s mouth were. She remembered their earlier conversation about the matchmaking pool and wondered if she’d just opened herself up to a full-on assault by Verona Charles and her determination to make sure everyone in Blue Falls got paired up to live happily ever after.
Perhaps the bigger danger was how much a part of Chloe liked that idea.
Chapter Four (#ulink_9c0e2c32-a15e-5ed3-a312-921585e1a4bd)
Chloe paused in slicing potatoes when she heard a text ping her phone. She activated the touch screen to see it was from Linnea. When she opened the message, it was a photo of the back of Linnea’s wedding gown. The confection of satin, lace and pearl buttons looked as if it were out of a fairy tale. But that was to be expected. Linnea owned one of the nicest bridal stores in Dallas, and she’d snagged herself a prince. Well, not literally a prince, but Michael Benson could certainly treat Linnea like a princess. He was a handsome financial executive who made a good deal of money, and had captured Linnea’s heart in record time.
A sigh escaped Chloe as she stared at the dress. She was thrilled for her best friend, but she wondered if she’d ever find someone who made her feel the way Michael made Linnea feel.
Her thoughts drifted to Wyatt Kelley, probably because he seemed to be the only guy on her radar at the moment. Maybe if Wyatt were local, she’d consider seeing if their conversations would lead to something else. She was normally pretty grounded and sensible, but for some reason she had to keep reminding herself that Wyatt would be gone in a matter of days. Besides, there was nothing between them other than some teasing and a few minutes spent together here and there.
“You okay, sis?”
Chloe closed the message on her phone before looking over her shoulder at Garrett. “Yeah. Why?”
“Because you’ve been staring at your phone for over a minute.”
Surely it hadn’t been that long. Had it? “Linnea just sent a text about her wedding dress.”
Garrett walked up to the kitchen sink, turned on the water and proceeded to wash his hands. “Hope she has unlimited texting the way she’s sending you photos almost faster than you can open them.”
“Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Maybe, but I guarantee you Michael isn’t sending photos of his tux and shoes and whatever else to his best man.”
She bumped his shoulder with her own. “Just because guys are simplistic creatures doesn’t mean we have to be.”
Garrett turned around and leaned back against the sink. “So you’re telling me that when you get engaged, you’re going to send Linnea fifty photos a day of every little detail?”
There it was, that crazy reference to her getting married again. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll send them to you and Owen, too.”
Garrett snorted then headed toward the front door. “Need anything from town?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Well, except for the memory of Wyatt from her dream springing into her head.
When Garrett was gone, she went back to slicing potatoes. It was a good thing she had a couple of days off, ones where she could immerse herself in tasks around the ranch and let the strange pull toward Wyatt fade. Part of her felt bad that he’d likely be bored crazy without anyone to visit him, but it wasn’t her responsibility to keep him entertained. She’d already done more for him outside her professional duties than any other doctor likely would.
Still, as she went through the day cleaning the house, doing laundry and putting fresh hay in the horses’ stalls out in the barn, her thoughts kept straying back to Wyatt. She actually had to fight the urge to drive into town to see him. Visiting him on days she worked and was already at the clinic or hospital was one thing, but how could she explain visiting someone she barely knew on her day off? And if Sophie and the other nurses had their way, Chloe would be in the town Cupid’s matchmaking crosshairs. And just because Verona had gotten it right before with people whose other halves were supposed to just be passing through Blue Falls didn’t mean that would be the case with Chloe.
Once she put the potatoes in the oven, she went out to the front porch to feed Roscoe and Cletus, the family’s two basset hounds. As soon as she stepped through the doorway with the scoop of food in hand, the dogs hopped up from where they were dozing at the edge of the porch and trotted over to their matching bowls, their long ears swaying.
“Hey, fellas,” she said as she scratched first Roscoe between the ears then Cletus. She laughed when they ignored her, their minds focused on dinner. Letting them chomp away, she went to sit at the top of the porch steps.
She watched as a hawk soared high above the pasture beyond the barn. The sound of horse hooves drew her attention back to ground level. Owen and her dad rode toward the barn from the south, what they all referred to as the back of the ranch. They’d been out checking the fence line after hearing about another strike on a nearby ranch by pranksters who for some reason thought it was great fun to cut ranchers’ barbed-wire fences, allowing their cattle to escape. What they either didn’t realize, or didn’t care about, was that their vandalism was dangerous. A cow could get hurt or, worse, someone might hit them with a car and be injured or killed.
When her dad and brother dismounted, Owen took the reins of both horses and led them toward the barn. Her dad turned toward the house.
“Find any breaks in the fencing?” she asked when he came close enough to hear her.
“For now, everything is fine. Until they catch these bastards, we’re going to have to keep a close eye on the whole spread.”
“I saw Simon Teague in town yesterday,” she said, speaking of the local sheriff. “He said they had something similar happen up in Runnels County a few months ago. He’s been talking with the sheriff up there, but they never caught the people.”
Her father shook his head. “If they were stealing the cattle, it would almost make sense. But this is just pure meanness.”
“Simon said they’re doing all the extra patrols they can.”
“But there’s no way he can be everywhere at once, not with what few men he has at his disposal.”
“Maybe they’ll get lucky.”
Her dad grunted as if he weren’t holding out much hope for that. After a moment, he seemed to set aside worries of the fence cutters and looked at her. “Hear you’ve made a new friend in that bull rider laid up at the hospital.”
Well, hell. She guessed it was too much to hope that word wouldn’t get out about her spending extra time with Wyatt. She shrugged as if it were no big deal. “Sort of stinks for him to be stuck in a hospital bed with no family or friends to keep him company. Doesn’t even have a roommate at the moment.”
A sad little smile stretched her dad’s mouth. “You’re so like your mother, lending aid and comfort to anyone who needs it.”
“It’s my job.”
“It’s more than that, always has been since you were a little girl befriending every kid at school who didn’t have friends.” He paused for a moment. “I wish your mom could see what a good woman you’ve grown up to be.”
Chloe pressed her lips together and blinked a couple of times against sudden tears. One would think that after all this time, talking about her mom wouldn’t make her want to cry. But at times, it felt as if she’d just talked to her mom, been held in her arms, only the day before.
Perhaps sensing how close her emotions were to the surface, maybe even feeling choked up himself, her dad climbed the steps beside her, patting her on the shoulder as he passed by.
Roscoe padded over and flopped down beside her, resting his head on her leg as if he knew she needed some comfort. She ran her hand over his head and down his back. He looked up at her with those big brown eyes, and her heart went gooey soft with love. Roscoe might be a dog, but he and Cletus were a part of the family.
“I see your sad puppy eyes, you adorable rascal.”
“I don’t envy the man who ends up falling for you,” Owen said as he sauntered toward her. “He’ll never beat out ol’ Roscoe here.”
Chloe scratched between Roscoe’s ears again. He enjoyed that more than anything. “What’s not to love? He adores me, doesn’t talk back, isn’t demanding.”
Owen leaned against the edge of the porch, and she could tell he wanted to say something else.
“What is it?”
“Thought you should know that scuttlebutt around town is that you’re Verona Charles’s next project.”
She sighed and stared out toward the road. “That woman needs to find her own man and maybe she’d stop poking around in everyone else’s love lives.”
“You’ve got a love life?”
Chloe snarled at him. “Be careful. I’ll sic Roscoe on you.”
Owen laughed. “I’m shaking.”
“Go on, Roscoe. Get him. Use his arm as a chew toy.”
“I think you could wrap my arm in bacon and these two still wouldn’t rouse themselves to attack.”
As if to prove his point, Roscoe let out a doggy sigh and closed his eyes as if about to take a nap while using her leg as a pillow.
Chloe shook her head at the dog. “Well, I guess I have to look elsewhere for my knight in shining armor.”
“From what I hear, you already have. Maybe silver spurs instead of shining armor.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes at her little brother. “Owen Brody, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop believing town gossip.”
Owen whistled. “Hit a nerve, did I?”
“Owen,” she said, warning in her voice.
He held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m backing off.”
Chloe continued to sit outside after her brother followed their father inside. If people were already pairing up her and Wyatt based on her just trying to be friendly, how long before Wyatt got wind of it? And when he did, how was she supposed to face him without letting it show that she didn’t mind as much as she should?
* * *
WYATT WATCHED THE minutes tick by on the clock, wondering when Chloe would be by to do her hospital rounds. If the other riders could see him now, laid up like an invalid and with nothing to look forward to beyond a visit from a doctor, no doubt they’d think him pathetic. Even the single guys on the circuit had someone—a girlfriend, brother, sister, best friend...parents. Most of the time, his lack of family didn’t bother him. It was just the way things were. He had friends, but they were out on the circuit somewhere, heading to the next event and another batch of points.
He heard Chloe’s voice from somewhere nearby, and his pulse jumped. Chances were if he’d met her in any other situation, he wouldn’t be so fixated on her. Yes, she was pretty, but it wasn’t as if she were the first pretty woman he’d ever seen. She was more like a lifeline to sanity than anything else, one he’d been denied the past two days.
Forty-eight hours of mind-destroying boredom. He’d read every one of the magazines she’d brought him cover to cover, even the Cosmopolitan, a fact he would never admit to anyone. That was boredom. In the wee hours when he couldn’t sleep anymore, he’d finished the last puzzle in the crossword book, and he’d only had to cheat a handful of times.
But if Chloe was just a way to keep from being bored, why did he get more excited to see her than anyone else who traipsed into his room? Sure, he talked to everyone from the nurses to the gal who mopped the floors. But Chloe, for some reason, was different. Maybe it was nothing more than hers was the first face he’d seen when he’d awakened in the emergency room.
He really needed to stop being so damn philosophical.
“So, I hear you’ve been contrary the past couple of days,” Chloe said as she breezed into his room with a scolding expression on her face.
“I deny that accusation.”
“So you haven’t been pestering the nurses to let you get up and saunter around the hospital?”
“I thought doctors liked to get patients up and out of bed as soon as possible.”
“As soon as possible. We’d prefer not to risk undoing the work we’ve done. Trust me, you don’t want to reinjure yourself. I’m sure it hurt enough the first time around.”
“Fine,” he said, unable to hide his frustration. “Then the least you can do is to play that game of Scrabble with me.” He gestured toward the board on the rolling table that belonged to the still-empty second bed, where he’d already played the word wander for twenty points.
“Where did that come from?”
“Your friend Sophie.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Of course it did.”
What was that about? “Am I missing something?”
She waved away his question and walked toward the Scrabble board. “Well, that seems appropriate.”
“What does?”
She pointed toward the tiles. “Wander. Sort of describes your life, doesn’t it?”
He knew she didn’t mean anything negative by it, but for some reason he suddenly felt as if his life didn’t have a lot of meaning. That was odd since he enjoyed what he did. Wasn’t that all anyone could ask for from a career, to enjoy it?
Chloe didn’t wait for an answer, but instead selected her tiles from the bag, quickly rearranged them then played her word. She rolled the table toward him so he could see.
He barked a laugh, one that hurt a little less than it had before. “Ornery?”
“I wonder why that word came to mind.”
He looked up at her and was struck anew by how pretty she was with those bright eyes, soft-looking skin and a smile always at the ready even when she was being serious.
“Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be doing the same thing if our roles were reversed? You don’t strike me as a woman who does idle very well.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Who knew cowboys were such good judges of character?”
“Have to be able to peg a bull’s attitude.”
“You’re comparing me to a bull?”
He thought he’d made a huge tactical error until the edge of her mouth twitched. “Bullheaded, maybe.”
She feigned offense with a dramatic gasp. “Pot, meet kettle.”
