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A total stranger would have known they were kin at a glance. The man had to be Trevor’s uncle Nick.
“What happened?” Mr. Dalton asked, realizing something was wrong.
“Accident,” Trevor said. He quickly explained about taking the old logging road and cutting the station wagon off at the county road, causing her to run into the ditch.
The older man came out on the porch, then stepped down on a giant flat granite boulder that served as the step to the front porch that ran all the way across the log portion of the house.
“My God,” he said. “Fay, is that you?”
“Yes, Nick,” her aunt replied with a smile in his direction. She clasped Trevor’s arm and walked with a decided limp toward the porch.
“I’d given up on you for today.” The Dalton uncle, wearing only socks, rushed to her other side and wrapped a supporting arm around her waist. “Call Beau,” he ordered his nephew. “He’s a doctor,” he said to Lyric’s aunt.
“Let’s get the women in the house first,” Trevor suggested with a hint of impatience.
Lyric followed behind the three, rather like a stray pup who hoped the others would take her in. She was beginning to feel very apprehensive about being here. Trevor didn’t seem thrilled to see her.
In the house, after Aunt Fay was seated in an easy chair and checked over again, Lyric stood inside the door and wondered what to do.
Finally the older man noticed her. “Are you all right?”
Lyric nodded. She had to clear her throat in order to talk. “Yes. I think so,” she amended, suddenly aware of pain in her knees, as if her body had come back to life at that instant and now reminded her of aches she hadn’t known she had.
“Nicholas?”
The Dalton patriarch turned back to her aunt and took her hand. “Now don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll have you right as rain in no time. Trevor, have you called Beau yet?” he questioned with a stern glance at his nephew.
Lyric was aware of Trevor’s gaze on her, of the tight set of his mouth, of the unwelcoming stance in his strong, lithe body. She felt terribly confused and disoriented.
He turned away. “I’m doing it now.” He went into the kitchen. In a minute she heard his voice explaining the situation to the nephew who was a doctor.
Lyric hadn’t met any of the Dalton family except Trevor, but she knew them all. Her aunt Fay had been a cousin and best friend to Milly Dalton, who had been married to Trevor’s uncle Nick. Milly had died in an automobile accident many years ago. Their daughter, Tink, had been taken from the scene of the accident and never found again.
At least, that was what was assumed. The three-year-old had disappeared. She could have wandered away and died in the wilderness, but the sheriff had concluded the child had been abducted for some reason, because the child’s body had never been found.
A tremor rushed over Lyric at the thought. One time a stranger had tried to grab her while she was on her way home from school in Austin, Texas.
She’d screamed and kicked and bit the man as hard as she could, the way her father had taught her, and had gotten free. She’d been lucky. A schoolmate on the next block had been kidnapped later the same afternoon. A month went by before the body was found in a lonely section of woods. That summer Lyric’s parents had moved to the ranch her father had inherited from his dad.
Another tremor ran down her body and lodged in her legs. Alarmed, she realized her knees were about to give way. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but…”
The words were barely a whisper.
She tried again. “I’m sorry, but…”
“Catch her,” a voice said from far away as the room became dark and mysterious.
Lyric blinked rapidly as strong arms closed around her. She knew these arms, this embrace.
Pressing her face into the clean expanse of the white shirt, she inhaled deeply and was filled with the scent of masculine aftershave, fresh-as-the-outdoors laundry and something more—a faint aroma that she recognized somewhere deep inside her. Yes, she knew this man.
She relaxed as he lifted her. She looped her arms around his shoulders and closed her eyes. Safe. She was safe. And home. Home at last.
“Here,” Trevor said, putting Lyric on the leather sofa. “Lie still,” he ordered when she started to sit up. He removed the glasses from her face, then winced at the redness on each side of her nose and running down under her eyes. The air bag had hit her hard, he realized. He laid the glasses on the end table.
A memory wafted into his mind—him removing her glasses, her laughing protests about not being able to see, his suggestion that she close her eyes, then the kisses…the hotter-than-molten-steel kisses, the fireworks that had gone off in his brain, stunning him with the force of the passion between them…and the feelings, the found-my-other-half joy of holding her….
“Get some ice,” his uncle said. “Fay needs some on her face and knees.”
“So does Lyric,” Trevor said.
His throat closed after he said the name. Last fall he’d vowed never to say it again.
He silently mouthed all the expletives he could remember while going to the kitchen and grabbing several first-aid ice bags from the freezer. The ranch always had a good supply of such items on hand for the occasional kick from a recalcitrant horse or stubborn cow.
Along with dish towels and clothespins, he took the ice bags to the living room.
“When will Beau be here?” his uncle asked.
“He won’t. He and the midwife have a difficult delivery going on. Since nothing is broken or bleeding and they’re both coherent, he said to bring them to the clinic in the morning and he’d check them out.”
“Mmm,” Uncle Nick said in his disapproving tone.
Ignoring Lyric, who now sat upright and as prim as a spinster, Trevor ministered to her aunt, affixing two ice bags and dish towels to her knees with the clothespins and advising her to put the other on her face.
Finished, he went to Lyric. “Put this on your nose,” he said, handing over the wrapped bag and noting the glasses were back in place. He couldn’t help but steal a glance at her left hand and the bare ring finger. Forcing his gaze to the task at hand, he knelt and, as careful as a doctor performing brain surgery, rolled up her pants.
He winced when he saw the abraded skin of her knees and the blotches that indicated more extensive bruising than her aunt had suffered. As the driver, she’d had her seat closer to the dashboard so she could reach the brake pedal and accelerator. That meant she’d hit the dash harder.
At five feet, five inches, she’d felt small and delicate in his arms. But curvy. For months after he’d come back to the ranch, he would wake from a sound sleep, clutching the pillow to his chest, and know he’d been dreaming about her, about the way she’d felt cuddled against him.
However, he and Lyric had never slept together. She’d been engaged to another guy the whole time she’d been responding to his caresses.
Mentally cursing, he forced the memory into the battered tin box of the past. He was over it now, over her and the wild emotion he’d thought was love. A cheating woman wasn’t on his list of most-wanted things.
Quickly, he secured the ice packs on her knees and moved away from the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her body, the spicy scent of her powder and cologne.
“Have you two had dinner?” Uncle Nick asked.
“Yes,” Lyric answered.
“No,” her aunt said at the same time. The older woman continued, “Lyric was so anxious to get here that she didn’t want to stop, so we had a salad at a fast-food place in Boise. That was hours ago. If I could bother you for some toast, that would be plenty for me.”
“I recall that you like chocolate cake with ice cream,” Uncle Nick said, his eyes all soft and glowing.
Lyric’s aunt removed the ice pack from her nose and grinned at the older man. “You don’t happen to have some of that, do you?”
“Well, now, I reckon we do.” He rose from the matching chair next to the aunt’s with a big smile. “You ladies sit still. Trev and I will get it.”
Trevor refrained from rolling his eyes at his uncle’s gallant manner. If the old man sparkled much more, they could wire him up to the light bulbs and save the cost of the electricity.
He followed the other man into the kitchen and helped prepare the treat. Glancing at the freshly made cake and the homemade ice cream, he frowned, recalling the way his uncle had insisted on preparing the dessert, even though the Fourth of July had been last week, which was when they usually made ice cream, and this was Tuesday, July the eighth. Since none of the orphaned Dalton cousins that Uncle Nick had taken in and raised as his own were expected at the ranch—they were all busy with new wives and jobs and the like—he’d wondered at the reason for the unusual activity.
Setting his jaw, he admitted he hadn’t suspected a thing, even though his uncle had made it plain he hadn’t wanted Trevor to head over to a neighboring ranch for a visit that evening.
Glancing toward the living room, he said in a low voice, “You knew they were coming, didn’t you?”
Uncle Nick nodded, busily spooning ice cream onto the saucers. “Fay and I have kept in touch for years, mostly cards at Christmas. She said she was restless and lonely this past winter, so I told her to come up for the wildflowers this spring, but she couldn’t make it until her niece had time to drive her.”
“You could have told me.”
Eyes as blue as his own glanced his way. “I did. Last month, right after we got things straightened out between Roni and Adam. I distinctly recall mentioning it at Sunday dinner when everyone was here.”
In May, Roni, one of the orphaned cousins and the only girl in the family, had married Adam. His younger sister, Honey, was married to Trevor’s older brother, Zack.
Trevor sighed. The family connections were becoming complicated, with his two brothers and his three cousins all getting hitched during the prior fourteen months.
Five weddings.
He was the only bachelor left of the six kids whose four parents had been wiped out in a freak avalanche twenty-three years ago. His father and uncle had been twins, the same as he and Travis were. Uncle Nick, the oldest of the three Dalton brothers, and Aunt Milly had taken all six children in and raised them as their own.
Glancing at the older man, who was acting as frisky as a new colt, Trevor experienced a clenching in the vicinity of his heart. Uncle Nick seemed okay now, but he’d had a heart attack last spring and a couple of weak spells since then.
Trevor heaved another sigh. If his uncle wanted to invite his deceased wife’s cousin to visit, there was nothing he could do about it. Why Lyric had come with her aunt was the thing he didn’t get.
Pasting a pleasant—he hoped—smile on his face, he carried two plates into the other room and gave one to Lyric while his uncle presented one to the aunt, then took the chair beside her and attentively asked about the trip and all that had been happening to her of late.
Trevor sat on the far end of the sofa from Lyric. Neither of them said a word for the next fifteen minutes.
“Trev, would you take the plates to the kitchen and bring out the coffee?” Uncle Nick turned to Fay. “I put on a pot of decaffeinated coffee. It should be ready. I find I can’t sleep if I drink regular coffee at night.”
“I have the same problem,” she said.
Trevor met Lyric’s gaze, and they exchanged spontaneous smiles as the older couple discussed aging and the changes it brought.
Lyric’s eyes reminded him of a brown velvet dress Aunt Milly had loved to wear. As a kid he’d once stroked the soft material and observed the way the light changed when the nap was smoothed down. Lyric’s eyes were like that—changing from brown to gold as the light reflected off the golden flecks around the black pupil.
He wiped the smile off and looked away. He wanted nothing to do with her. No memories, no shared amusement over the old folks, nothing!
“I’ll get the coffee,” he said.
In the kitchen he sucked in a harsh breath and wondered how long this visit was going to last. Not that he wouldn’t get through it just fine. After all, no one in his family knew he’d made a fool of himself over a woman who had been engaged to another and, in the end, had chosen that man over him.
He’d lived through worse. The death of his parents. The death of his twin’s first wife, whom he’d been half in love with all his growing-up years. The end of his rodeo career when he’d caved in several ribs and been advised by the doc to hang up his spurs. Yeah, life was tough.
Hearing steps behind him, he stopped the useless introspection and turned his head.
“I thought I would see if I could help,” Lyric said.
Her eyes searched his face anxiously, as if she sought something from him. Welcome? Understanding? Forgiveness? She’d come to the wrong place if she thought he had anything left for her.
He stifled the angry words that rushed to his tongue. “Sure. Bring the sugar bowl and cream pitcher. I’ll carry the cups on the tray.”
He picked up the walnut tray he’d made in shop class in tenth grade years ago. Part of him was keenly aware of the woman who followed him into the other room.
After the coffee was served, the two seniors went back to their conversation without a hitch, obviously interested in catching up on the other’s life since they’d last met twenty years ago. His uncle’s face beamed in pleasure, and Lyric’s aunt looked ten years younger in spite of the bruising on her face.
A lump came to Trevor’s throat. It wasn’t often that sentiment caught up with him, but he felt an overpowering love for this man whose heart had been big enough to take in six kids without a complaint, who’d buried his own wife with quiet grief no more than a year later and who’d lost his own daughter and had never known what happened to the child. Footprints and tire marks had indicated someone had taken three-year-old Tink from the scene of the wreck and left with her, but no one was really sure what had happened.
God, how had the kind, loving uncle stood the pain?
By holding on and meeting each new sunrise one day at a time, Trevor knew. Just as he’d done last fall and winter until he’d finally confined all the pain, anger and sense of betrayal to the little black box that was his soul. He’d locked it away and learned to live with it. He would keep on doing that.
Finally the group was ready for bed. He brought in luggage for the aunt and though Lyric insisted on getting her own, he determinedly took her larger suitcase and marched into the house. She trailed behind.
Uncle Nick assigned the older guest to the suite at the end of the west wing. The rose-colored room had its own bathroom and sitting area. Lyric was put in the spare room next to it.
Unfortunately his room was next door to hers, and they would have to share the bath across the hall.
Not at the same time, he hastened to add as his libido picked up on this idea. Okay, so there was still a physical attraction. So what? For a brief moment Trevor considered moving to his cousin’s old room in the other wing of the house, but knew that was stupid. He wasn’t going to let a woman make him run like a startled deer.
After he saw to the aunt’s luggage, he carried Lyric’s large case next door. She stood by the bed, her eyes taking in the furnishings.
He set the case on the cedar chest at the end of the bed. The words escaped before he fully realized he was going to say them. “So how’s your fiancé?” he asked.
She gazed at him with her soft, doe-like eyes. He saw her throat move as she swallowed, then her breasts—those gorgeous full breasts—lifted as she took a deep breath and slowly released it.
“Lyle—” she began, then stopped as unreadable emotions flickered across her face.
The name was a stab in the gut. Lyle and Lyric, as if they were a matched pair, meant for each other.
“Does it matter?” she finally asked in a strained voice.
He shrugged and left the tempting bedroom before he did something he’d regret—like grab her and crush her to him, like make good use of the bed behind them, like beg her to say she was sorry she’d chosen another over him.
And why the hell didn’t she wear an engagement ring like other women?
Chapter Two
On shaky legs, Lyric closed the door, then unzipped the smaller of her two cases. She pulled out the red ankle-length nightshirt made like a football jersey with the numeral one printed on it, a gift from her two brothers last Christmas, then sat on the cedar chest, the jersey clutched to her breasts.
Had Aunt Fay lied about her being included in the invitation to the ranch? If not, then it certainly wasn’t Trevor who’d asked for her presence. His uncle? The silver-haired rancher had never met her, so why should he?
With lethal humor, she wished she were still lost on the country roads, driving around and around in endless circles going nowhere. Because at the present moment she felt she’d crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
Lifting her chin, she decided she and Trevor would have to make the best of things. Her aunt planned on staying for the rest of the month.
Of course, she could leave Aunt Fay at the Daltons and go back home. But the hill country of Texas was a long way from Idaho. Since her beloved relative refused to fly, Lyric would have to return for her at the end of the month.
