He remembered every moment of their time together five years ago. Each sigh, each gasp. The angle of her head as he touched her, the flutter of her hands curling into his shirt. The agonizingly sweet welcome of her body.

This, though. The sheer delicious reality of having her in his arms once more—of her heat and softness against his skin, of her mouth trembling beneath his—beat the echo of those memories all to hell.

He knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. In a moment, one or both of them would find a semblance of good sense and pull away. But for now, she was here in his arms and she was kissing him … and the prowling restlessness inside him quieted.

About the Author

RAEANNE THAYNE finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including three RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com.

Dear Reader,

I sincerely love every hero and heroine I’ve ever created—flaws, foibles and all—but some seem to leave a more indelible impression on my heart than others. After I finished writing A Cold Creek Baby, I must confess to a few little qualms of disloyalty toward all my other heroes when I realized that Cisco Del Norte just might be my favorite hero ever (until the next book, I’m sure!). I adored this dangerous, troubled, mysterious man from the very moment I came up with the idea for this latest series of Cold Creek books and couldn’t wait to tell his and Easton’s story. I think I’ve received more mail from readers asking when I would finally write their story than about any other characters I’ve created! Through the process of writing A Cold Creek Baby, I came to love them both even more and was so happy to help them find their happy ending together … and to show Cisco the way home for good this time.

All my best,

RaeAnne

A COLD CREEK BABY

RAEANNE THAYNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Something yanked Easton Springhill out of a sound sleep.

She rolled over and squinted at her alarm clock, which glowed the dismal hour of 4:26 a.m. Her curtains were open, as usual, so she could wake to a view of the mountaintops still covered in snow. But from her bed she could only see a bright glitter of stars pinpricking the dark sky.

With a heavy sigh, she flopped back onto her pillow. She wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon, especially since her dratted alarm was set to go off anyway in little more than an hour.

What a pain. She really hated waking up before her alarm clock, especially when she had a feeling she’d been smack in the middle of some sort of lovely dream. She could only hang on to a few wispy tendrils of memory about what the dream might have been about, but she could guess that somehow he was involved.

She rolled over. Probably better, then, that she woke up. Whenever she dreamed of him, she spent the next day in a strange, suspended state—partly elated at having something of him again, even if only through her subconscious, but mostly depressed that she had to wake up and face the endless work of running an Idaho cattle ranch.

Alone, as usual.

The cotton pillowcase rustled as she shook her head a little, annoyed at herself.

She had a wonderful life here. She loved the ranch, she loved her friends, she had an honorary niece and nephew she adored.

So she didn’t have the one thing she had wanted since she was just a silly girl. Was that any reason to fret and fuss and pine over the impossible?

She sat up, wondering what had awakened her. Jack and Suzy, her border collies, were barking outside, but that could mean anything from a loose cow to a hapless rodent foolish enough to enter their territory.

Whatever it was, she knew she would never go back to sleep now. Better to just take advantage of the unexpected hour to get some work done before she had to go out and take care of the chores. The Winder Ranch accounts were always waiting, unfortunately.

She slid out of bed and was just feeling around for her robe when she heard a sound that seemed to echo through the huge, empty ranch house.

She froze in the dark, ears straining. What the heck was that? It sounded like a cross between a shriek and a yowl. A moment later, something clattered downstairs, a jangly, ringing sound, as if a hard plastic bowl had somehow fallen out of one of the cupboards onto the kitchen floor.

Her heart pounded and her stomach curled and she wished she had brought one of the dogs inside. Since Chester, her ancient border collie who had been more pet than working dog, died over the winter, she had been alone in the house.

The ranch house sometimes creaked and groaned, as old houses were wont to do, but this was more than the normal settling noises.

She shoved on her slippers and grabbed the robe by her bed to cover the ancient John Deere T-shirt one of the guys had left years ago and grabbed her uncle’s favorite old Benelli that Brant insisted she keep under the bed.

She lived alone on an isolated ranch where her nearest neighbor was almost a mile away. Only a supremely foolish woman would neglect to take basic defensive measures. She had been raised with three overprotective foster cousins and she was far from stupid.

About most things anyway.

Her heart pumped pure adrenaline as she fumbled for the shotgun shells in the drawer of her bedside table and loaded one each in the dual chambers.

As a precaution, she picked up her cell phone by the bed and slipped it into her pocket, not quite ready to call 9-1-1 yet until she checked out the situation to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. She would hate having to explain to Trace Bowman why she had called the police to deal with a raccoon in her kitchen.

She pushed open her bedroom door, chiding herself again for her stubbornness in staying in her upstairs room after Jo died. It would have been more convenient all the way around if she had moved downstairs to one of the two bedrooms on the main floor, but she had been obstinate in clinging to her routine, staying in the same room she had moved into as a grieving, lost sixteen-year-old after her parents died.

She started down the stairs and had almost reached the squeaky stair that had caused the boys such headaches back in the day when she suddenly heard that yowly sound again. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she gripped the Benelli more tightly.

That wasn’t any raccoon she’d ever heard. Danged if that didn’t sound like a mountain lion.

That would certainly explain the dogs barking. She thought of the tracks she had seen the afternoon before, but that had been clear on the edge of the north pasture, on the other side of the fence line.

Would a cat actually come into a house, even if she might have been foolish enough to leave a window open or something, which she was almost positive she hadn’t done?

She had never heard of one of the big cats breaking into an occupied house. They were reclusive, wandering creatures who avoided human contact whenever possible.

A bit like Cisco.

See what dreaming about the man could get her? she chided herself. Even when she couldn’t remember the content of her subconscious meanderings, she still spent the entire next day thinking about him, even at ridiculously inappropriate times like this one.

That couldn’t be a mountain lion in her kitchen. She refused to believe it. Despite her usual precautions, she had probably just forgotten to close the kitchen window she’d opened to the May air and the breeze was moving the blinds, which were subsequently knocking down the hand lotion and soap she kept in the windowsill.

It was a good explanation and one she was sticking to. If it didn’t quite explain the yowly sound, well, she wasn’t going to fret about that, yet.

She reached the bottom of the steps and her pulse kicked up a notch. She could swear she hadn’t left the kitchen light on when she went upstairs to bed. Part of her nightly ritual was to walk through the house to make sure it was closed up, the lights out, the doors locked.

She wouldn’t have forgotten—and unless she was dealing with a mountain lion who had particularly dexterous paws, she doubted any animal turned the light on.

The tinkle of breaking glass sounded from the kitchen followed instantly by a muffled curse.

Not a mountain lion. Definitely an animal of the human variety.

Her hands tightened on the shotgun and she flattened herself against the hallway wall. Should she sneak into her office, bolt the door and call 9-1-1? Or stick around and hold the intruder at bay with the shotgun until the authorities arrived?

But what if there were more than one? No, her best bet was the office route. She could avoid the kitchen altogether that way and let Trace and his police officers handle things.

She took a step toward the office and then another. When she had covered half the distance toward the open doorway, she heard a tiny squeaky sound, almost like a giggle, and then a gruff voice in response.

A giggle? What on earth?

She knew two adorable babies with that same kind of laugh, but she hadn’t been expecting either of them to be visiting her anytime soon, at least as far as she knew.

Joey Southerland, Quinn and Tess’s ten-month-old, was sleeping soundly in his Seattle bedroom right now and little Abby Western was in Los Angeles with Mimi and Brant.

If not them, who was currently giggling in her kitchen?

She had to find out.

She heard another giggle, which made up her mind for her. She would call 9-1-1 after she figured out who was breaking into her house.

She inched forward, pumping the shell into the Benelli’s barrel in that unmistakable che-che sound, then rounded the corner of the kitchen.

“If you make one move, I’ll take you out,” she snapped. “Don’t think I won’t.”

After the dimness of the stairs and the hallway, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light, before she could finally see who was standing in her kitchen.

The instant she recognized him, she knew without a doubt she would have preferred the mountain lion. When it came to dangerous beasts, any smart woman would far rather tangle with a ferocious carnivore on a rampage than the hard, dangerous man standing before her holding a … baby?

“Dammit, East. You scared the life out of me!”

Her cheeks suddenly felt hot and then ice-cold. This couldn’t be real. Maybe she was still stuck in some weird dream about him. Why else would Cisco del Norte be standing in her kitchen holding a dark-headed pre-toddler wearing a pink velour sweatsuit with a bright yellow duck printed on the front?

No. The shotgun felt only too real to her, hard and cold and resolute, and he was definitely standing in her kitchen, though he looked bleary-eyed and tired, as if he hadn’t shaved in days, and his clothes had certainly seen better days.

And he definitely had a baby in his arms.

She took another step into the kitchen, ejecting the shells from the chamber of the shotgun as she went.

“I just about shot your family jewels off, Cisco. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you call me? And who’s the … baby?”

The child in question giggled and Easton could see her skin was dusky like Cisco’s and she had huge blue eyes with long, inky lashes that matched her curly hair and a couple of darling dimples in her cheeks.

She appeared to be around the same age as Joey and Abby, which would probably put her on the short side of a year—but then, Easton wasn’t the greatest judge of those things. Show her even a photograph of a calf and she could guess how old it was within a few days either way, but human babies weren’t as easy.

“It’s a long story. I promise, you can put away Guff’s Benelli.”

She wasn’t so sure about that and figured she would keep the shells close, just in case. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning. What’s going on, Cisco? You want to tell me why I haven’t heard from you in months and suddenly you show up at the ranch out of the blue before 5:00 a.m., looking like you barely survived a tornado. And with a baby to boot.”

He sighed and she saw new lines around his mouth, another thin, brittle layer of hardness covering the sweet charmer he’d been as a boy. He looked as tired as she’d ever seen another person.

“Sorry about that. We probably should have found a hotel somewhere on the way. But we flew into Salt Lake late last night from Bogotá and Isabella fell asleep in her carseat the minute I picked up the rental car. I just figured I would keep driving until she woke up, but she slept the whole way, even when I stopped for gas in Idaho Falls.”

“Which explains exactly nothing, except that the baby’s name is Isabella and you’ve just flown in from Colombia,” she muttered. As he probably knew full well.

Cisco had always been very good at convoluting reasons, spinning stories and rationalizations until a person couldn’t remember her own name, forget about any information she might be trying to squeeze out of him. His particular gift had come in handy when he was still in school, but for personal relationships, those who knew and loved him found it frustrating in the extreme.

“Sorry. What was the question again?”

She might have thought he was being a smartass—he had always been pretty darn good at that, too—if not for the utter exhaustion on his features, the gray cast to his normally dark tanned skin.

When he swayed a little and had to catch himself with his free hand on the edge of the kitchen table, Easton finally set the shotgun on the table and reached for the baby, so they both wouldn’t go down if he toppled over.

She tried to ignore the sharp little gouge to her heart as the little girl giggled a greeting, at the soft, sweet weight of her.

“When was the last time you slept?”

He blinked at her, the lines around his mouth and eyes looking even more pronounced than they had a few moments earlier. “What day is it?”

She had a strong suspicion he wasn’t joking. “Wednesday. And if I had to guess, I would say by your bleary eyes, it was probably Sunday or Monday when you last had the luxury of sleep.”

“Not quite true. I slept a little on the plane.”

The baby patted her little chubby hands on both sides of Easton’s face and giggled again. She smiled in response, then shifted to glare at Cisco.

“What were you thinking? You could have been killed, driving when you’re obviously exhausted. And with a baby in the car, too!”

“I was fine.” He gave her a forced smile. “You know me. I can always manage to find my second wind somewhere.”

No. She didn’t know him. Not anymore. Once he and his foster brothers Brant Western and Quinn Southerland had been her best friends, sharing secrets, trading dreams. She had adored Cisco from the moment he arrived at Winder Ranch.

And then everything changed.

The baby grabbed a lock of Easton’s hair and yanked. Everything inside her wanted to weep—and not at the physical pain. She couldn’t shake the image of another beautiful dark-haired baby whom she had held for only a brief moment.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, East. I should have called, but it was late when we got into Salt Lake.”

Again, no real explanation about what he was doing there with a strange baby. He had become even better at evasive tactics, it that were possible.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” he continued. “Any chance you have room for us here at the ranch for a few days?”

She wanted to shut the door firmly against him—and especially against this little girl in her arms who dredged up old sorrows. But she straightened her spine. She was tougher than this. If she could run a cattle ranch by herself, surely she could handle a few days with Cisco del Norte and this mysterious child.

“You know you don’t have to ask. It’s only me in this big rambling house. There’s plenty of room. And anyway, you know you own a part share of the ranch, just like Brant and Quinn. I can’t kick you out.”

“Even when you’d like to?”

She opted to ignore his wry tone as the baby beamed at her with a grin that showed off two tiny pearl teeth on her bottom gum.

“Is she yours?”

She was relieved to see a little color return to the gray cast of his tired features.

“No. Hell, no!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you think I would have told you guys if I had a kid somewhere?”

She refused to think about the bitter irony of that. “You keep everything else from us. Why not this, too?”

Anger briefly broke through the exhaustion and flickered in his hot cocoa eyes. “She’s not mine.”

“Then where did she come from and what are you doing with her?”

His mouth pursed. “That is a really long and complicated story.”

She said nothing, just waited for him to expound. That was a trick she had learned long ago from her Aunt Jo, who had always been eerily effective at letting her foster children dig their own graves with their words.

Cisco apparently wasn’t immune to the technique. After a moment he released a heavy breath. “Her parents were friends of mine. Her father was killed right before she was born and her mother died last week. Belle’s paternal aunt lives in Boise. Before she died, her mother begged me to bring her to the States to her family. Only problem is, the aunt’s not available to take her for a couple of days.”

She could find enough holes in his story for her to drive her shiny new Kubota through, but he was literally swaying on his feet. She had a feeling that meager information was all she would be able to squeeze out of him for now.

She really didn’t want him here. Most days, she liked to think she was strong and capable, in full control of her little world here. Cisco only had to walk back through the door to dredge up all those feelings she worked so hard to fight back the rest of the time. She would have liked to tell him to find a hotel room somewhere, but she couldn’t. Winder Ranch was as much his home as hers, even if he seemed to want to forget that.

“We can talk about this after you have a chance for some rest,” she said. “Let me run up and put fresh sheets on your bed. Tess and Quinn have turned Brant’s old room into a guest nursery for Little Joe when they visit and Abby uses it when she naps. Isabella should be able to stay in the crib there.”

“You don’t have to make the bed. I can take care of it. And right now I’m so tired, I would stretch out right here on the tile floor of the kitchen if I had half a chance.”

“I know where everything is and you know you’ll sleep better on clean sheets. Just relax for a few minutes while I take care of it, if you can stay awake that long.”

“Thanks, East.”

He gave her a guarded smile that didn’t reach his eyes and she hated all over again the awkwardness between them, the tension that always seemed to hum between them like a tightly strung electric fence.

Nothing she could do about that now. She had lived with it for the last five years, since her uncle’s death and the events surrounding it. She could live with it for a few more days in order to provide Cisco and the baby a place to crash.

She took a moment to take off her nightgown and robe and throw on a pair of Wrangler and a T-shirt, then brushed her teeth and pulled her hair into a quick braid before she headed for his old room.

Her Aunt Jo and Uncle Guff hadn’t had the dozen children they had dreamed about to fill all the bedrooms of the old ranch house, so they had instead taken in troubled boys. Cisco hadn’t been the first or the last, but the three of them—Quinn Southerland, Brant Western and Cisco—had been closer than real brothers. Their rooms had always been kept at the ready for their visits home.

She purposely didn’t come into Cisco’s room often. She paid a young mother in town to come in once a month to keep the worst of the dust at bay throughout the house, which allowed her to leave his space largely untouched.

The room wasn’t much different than it had been when he lived here with her aunt and uncle. Plaid curtains in dark greens and blues, a utilitarian chest of drawers, a desk and chair, a full-size bed with the log frame her father and Guff had made.

It was nothing luxurious, just good-quality furnishings in a comfortable space. How must it have appeared to him when he showed up, the orphaned child of migrant farmworkers who had moved him from town to town with them according to the harvest?

She had a vivid memory of the day he arrived. She had been just a kid. Nine, maybe. Her parents had been alive then and she had lived in the foreman’s house just down the drive toward the canyon road. She had been sitting on the horse pasture fence rail watching Brant and Quinn work a new colt under Jo’s supervision waiting for Guff. She remembered how her heart had leaped when Guff pulled up in the old pickup he kept scrupulously clean. He wasn’t alone. A moment later, the passenger side opened and out stepped a dark-haired Latino boy in faded Levi’s that were a couple inches too short and a thin T-shirt in worse shape than the rags her mother used to wash the windows.

They had known he was coming. Jo had told them all about the kid who had been found a week or two earlier living in a tent by himself in the mountains, where he’d hidden away from authorities after his father’s death in a farm accident.

While she knew Brant and Quinn were a bit apprehensive about a new arrival, Easton was excited to add another honorary brother to her growing collection.

She remembered sliding down from the fence rail and walking with Jo toward Uncle Guff’s pickup truck, vaguely aware Brant and Quinn had followed.

Guff had come around the truck and placed a protective arm around Cisco’s narrow shoulders. For a moment, Easton’s heart had squeezed inside her chest at the expression in his eyes—lost and grief-stricken and frightened.

But then he suddenly gave a cocky grin that encompassed all of them. And she fell in love.

She still didn’t know whether it was that quick glimpse of vulnerability in his eyes or his valiant attempts to hide it, but she vowed that night to herself that she would love Cisco del Norte forever.

Easton snapped one corner of a clean fitted sheet over the mattress. What kind of idiotic female holds to a vow she made when she was nine flipping years old? Twenty years later, she still couldn’t get over the man.

She had been telling herself for years that this tangled morass of emotions wasn’t love. She had tried to talk herself out of it—or more accurately into letting herself love someone else. It was only a girlhood crush, something most sane women put away when they reached an age of reason, for crying out loud.

Yes, they had a history together. She drew a shaky breath and tucked in the bottom sheet, her mind drifting back five years to that surreal, painful time.

Plenty of people with difficult histories were able to move on. She was trying. She was even dating again, something she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do with any serious intent since the summer night after her Uncle Guff died, when everything changed.

For the past month, she had been dating the Pine Gulch police chief. On paper, Trace Bowman was everything she wanted. He was great-looking, he was funny, he adored his own family who had a ranch on the other side of town.

She was trying as hard as she could to let her fondness for him grow into something more. She wanted a husband, a family. Seeing Quinn and Tess together with their darling little boy and now Brant and Mimi and Abigail only intensified that ache to watch a child of her own grow and learn, to have someone else in this big rambling house to fill all the empty spaces.

She loved the ranch and found great joy in the hard work needed to make it a success. But she was ready for something more, something she knew she would never be able to find while she was hung up on Cisco del Norte.

She knew darn well she needed to move on. It was long past time. But every time she thought she was on her way, he showed up with that tired, cocky grin and those secrets in his dark eyes and she tumbled head over heels again.

Not this time. She pulled the thick Star of David quilt she, her mother and Jo had worked on the summer after Cisco came. She looked at the kaleidoscope of colors, the vivid blues and bright purples and greens. She could still see where her stitches had been crooked, amateurish compared to her mother’s and Jo’s.

She smoothed a hand over the stitches, remembering the time with two strong, wonderful women. After a moment, she tucked the edges in at the bottom.

She wanted to be tough like her mother and her Aunt Jo, to just forget him and move on. She almost thought she would have an easier time of it if he would only settle down somewhere instead of wandering from country to country in Latin America, doing heaven knows what.

If he ever stopped running, maybe she could relax a little, but she was never free from worrying about him. In all these years, he obviously hadn’t managed to find whatever he’d been looking for or he would have given up that life long ago.

And when he was tired of wandering, he would come back to the ranch for a few days or a week, dredging up all these feelings again.

She wished she could just tell him to stay away until she got her head on straight. But how could she? Winder Ranch was his home, the first and only really secure haven he had ever known.

As much as her heart cried out for him to give her a little peace and leave her alone, she couldn’t deprive him of that connection.

She couldn’t turn him away, but she could control how deeply she allowed her heart to become entangled with him. This time things would be different.

She couldn’t lose all the progress she had made to fall out of love with him. This time she wasn’t going to let those feelings suck her back down again. She needed to move on with her life, to accept that, like that mountain lion she had seen prowling the edge of her property a few days earlier, Cisco del Norte would always be a wild, roving creature she couldn’t contain.

Chapter Two

He shouldn’t have come here.

Cisco sat at the kitchen table in the Winder Ranch kitchen, fighting his way through the strange and twisted mix of guilt and regret and pain tempered by the sweet peace that always seemed to engulf him whenever he drove through the gates.

He was so damned tired and the raw, gaping hole just under his left rib cage tugged and burned like a son of a bitch.

Like he’d told Easton, he wanted to just lie down right here in the middle of the kitchen floor and sleep for a week or two.

Belle banged her sippy cup on the tray of the high chair Easton had pulled from the utility room off the kitchen. “For Joey and Abs,” she had informed him before she took off upstairs to do whatever she was doing with the bedrooms.

He shouldn’t have come here, but he had spoken the truth to her earlier. He hadn’t known what else to do, where else to go.

Like an idiot, he had been so sure he had everything figured out. He had originally planned to catch a direct flight to Boise, hand Belle over to her relatives, then head back without anybody knowing he was even in the country.

But when he finally was able to reach John Moore’s sister just before his flight left Bogotá to let her know about Soqui’s death and that he was on his way with her niece, she had been both shocked and distraught.

Seems that even as he called her cell number—information retrieved with no small degree of caution from the careful documentation Soqui had hidden away as insurance—Sharon Weaver was on her way to her father’s funeral in Montana and wouldn’t be back in Idaho for several days.

The news had thrown his plans into considerable disarray. He wasn’t too proud to admit he’d been terrified. Yeah, he had somehow managed the wherewithal to take care of Belle in Bogotá for a couple of days after her mother’s death without accidentally sending her to the hospital or himself to the nuthouse. But the idea of an indefinite stay with a nine-month-old baby in some hotel in Boise while he waited for Sharon to return sent him into a stone-cold panic.

Coming home to the ranch to spend those few days while he regained his strength seemed the logical choice.

Easton would know what to do. That had been the mantra he clung to. She was always so in control of every complication. Even when she was a little kid, she had been great at handling any difficulty that came along, whether in school, with his foster brothers or on the ranch.

He refused to admit that he returned to Winder Ranch like the swallows at Capistrano because this was home.

She was his home.

He touched the compass rose tattoo on his left forearm, the little squiggly E right over his radial artery that connected directly to his heart, while Belle banged her sippy cup on the edge of the table and giggled.

“You think this is funny, young lady?”

His voice was raspier than normal from exhaustion and that stupid pain he couldn’t control, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Ba ba ba ba,” she blabbered and he again thanked heaven she was such an easygoing baby. He didn’t know the first thing about kids and wouldn’t have been able to endure even a few days on his own if not for Isabella’s sweet disposition.

Even though she quite obviously missed her mother, she still was a sunny, good-natured little girl.

“You’re glad not to be moving for a minute, aren’t you?”

She beamed at him, her tiny silver stud earrings glinting in the early morning light.

Bringing her to the States was the right thing to do, no matter how hard the journey to get her here had been. With her last breath, Soqui had begged him, as she lay dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach, to take care of Belle, to bring her here to John’s family in Idaho.

He owed her this. She had faced danger with astonishing bravery, had risked her life to finish her husband’s work and to avenge his death against the drug lord who had killed him the year before.

Cisco had failed to protect her—big surprise there, since he had failed just about every woman unlucky enough to find herself in his life. But he would not fail in this. Soqui wanted Belle to be raised by her relatives in the United States and by damn, that is exactly what she would get.

Even if it meant he had to spend a few days at Winder Ranch fighting his demons.

Or fighting Easton, anyway.

Same thing.

As if on cue, she returned to the kitchen, bringing that elusive scent of mountain wildflowers that always clung to her skin. She had changed out of her night-clothes and into jeans and a T-shirt and pulled her hair back into a braid that hung down her back like a shiny wheat-colored rope.

She looked as sweet and innocent as the first pale pink columbines in a mountain meadow in springtime.

Ah, Easton. For a moment, the regret swamped everything else, even his worry about Belle’s future. He missed her so damn much sometimes he couldn’t breathe around it. Even on the rare occasions when he came home, he missed her—the real Easton, not this carefully polite woman he had turned her into with his stupidity and his out-of-control desire.

“I put fresh sheets on your bed. You’re good to go.”

“Thanks. I’m okay, though.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “Go ahead and sleep for a couple of hours. I can keep an eye on the baby while I work on ranch accounts, at least for a little while until Burt and the boys get here.”

Burt McMasters was the longtime foreman of the ranch who had taken over the job after Easton’s father and mother were killed in a car accident when she was sixteen.

Cisco had already enlisted in the Marines at the time of their accident and was stationed across the country. He had flown home for their double funeral and Easton’s devastated grief had destroyed him. Completely wiped him out. The moment he walked into the ranch house, she had flown into his arms and sobbed as if she had only been keeping herself together until he showed up.

“I don’t need two hours,” he said now, pushing the grim memory aside. “Just one should charge me up for the rest of the day. If you don’t mind keeping an eye on Belle, I would really appreciate it.”

She gave him a critical look and he knew he looked like crap on a stick. He felt like it, too. His head throbbed and the quick sandwich he’d grabbed at an all-night drive-up somewhere in northern Utah sat like greasy tar in his stomach.

Easton opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it again abruptly. “Sure. Take an hour,” she finally said. “Burt and I have some things to do later in the morning, but I’m free until then.”

“I didn’t bring Belle here to find a free babysitter.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

He could hear the unspoken question in her voice about why he did bring the baby there. He couldn’t answer it.

His vision seemed to be growing hazy around the edges and he knew if he didn’t find a horizontal surface soon he was going to embarrass himself by falling over.

“Thanks, Easton. I owe you.”

She didn’t answer him, turning instead to the baby. He thought he caught something strange in her deep blue eyes, a shadow of an old pain, but she blinked it away.

“You’re making a mess, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Belle giggled and clapped her hands. Easton smiled at the little girl, her features bright and lovely, and something hard twisted inside him, something he preferred to pretend didn’t exist.

He turned away. “I only need an hour,” he said again. “Thanks. And, uh, I’m sorry about this.”

“Go to sleep, Cisco. I can handle things for now.”

He nodded. She could handle anything. His Easton.

He wasn’t sure how but he managed to make it up the stairs to his bedroom, although he was covered in sweat by the time he reached the top step.

It smelled like her in here, sweet and flowery. Perfect.

He ought to take a shower to wash off the travel stink before he climbed into those nice clean sheets, but he didn’t have the energy. He would just lie here on top of the quilt, he decided.

Just an hour. That’s all he needed.

An hour in a room that smelled like heaven and Easton—although, really, wasn’t that the same thing?

“I’ll be there when I can. I’m sorry, Burt. I didn’t exactly expect this little complication today.”

Easton swallowed her sigh at her ranch foreman’s pithy response. Burt McMasters was a great ranch foreman—hardworking and dedicated, always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. She adored him, colorful language and all, and without his firm guidance, she would have had to sell the ranch when Jo was first diagnosed with cancer.

But he did tend to be sulky and impatient when his plans went awry.

“Yeah, I know. It’s a pain. I can’t help it. Just start the immunizations and I’ll be there when I can. Can you and Luis handle it without me for a while?”

“I s’pose.” She could swear she almost heard the glower in his voice.

“You be careful up there,” he went on in his gravelly voice that always sounded like he was choking on trail dust. “I don’t like the idea of that boy being back in the house. I know Jo and Guff loved him just like the others, but in my book, that one has always been nothing but trouble.”

She fought the impulse to jump to Cisco’s defense. Yes, he had been fast-talking and imaginative and as a result he had managed to land himself—and the others—in plenty of mischief when he was a teenager.

Burt had never quite forgiven Cisco for a prank he’d pulled at their grazing allotment up in the high country when he had somehow convinced the prickly, proud ranchhand that he thought a black bear might be stalking their camp.

Burt had been deep in the woods early one morning answering the call of nature when Cisco had sneaked around behind him making appropriate bear grunting noises and Burt had come running back to camp in a panic, his pants half-down and biodegradable toilet paper flying out behind him.

For the most part, Easton would have to agree that Cisco was trouble. Except Burt was wrong about one thing: He was far from a boy.

“He would never hurt me,” she blatantly lied, crossing her fingers behind her back. “You know that. He’s family.”

He harrumphed over the cell phone he abhorred almost as much as he did Cisco del Norte. “I still don’t like it. Doesn’t he know we have work to do around here? Maybe he’s been gone from these parts so long he doesn’t remember how busy this time of year can be on a cattle ranch.”

She contained her sigh. “I’m sure he remembers, Burt. He lived here for a long time. But he needed a place to stay for a few days and this was his best option. He owns a good share of the ranch, don’t forget.”

“As if I could,” he muttered. Easton would have smiled if not for the fretful baby in her arms.

“Look, I have to go. I appreciate you and the boys stepping up without me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Yeah, okay. Be careful,” he warned again before ending the call.

Too late, she thought as she turned once more to the baby, who looked at her with huge blue eyes that swam with tears.

“I know, sweetheart. Let’s get you a bottle and then we’ll go see what’s going on with that rascal Burt was just talking about.”

She headed into the kitchen and found the can of powdered formula Cisco had left on the countertop. Easton was grateful she’d had a little practice the last few months as honorary aunt to Joe and Abby or she would have been all thumbs with things like changing diapers and mixing formula.

She tested the temperature of the formula on her forearm, feeling a great sense of accomplishment at her own competence, then handed the bottle to the baby, who clutched it in her chubby hands and began sucking greedily, her darling cupid’s bow of a mouth pursed around the nipple.

Something soft and tender tugged hard at Easton’s insides. She settled the baby a little closer to her, trying not to look at the clock.

Three hours.

Cisco had promised he would be back downstairs in one. He lied, something he seemed to do with consummate skill.

Three hours and counting, actually, and Easton had work to do.

Not that there weren’t compensations to this. Belle sucked her bottle a little more vigorously and snuggled her head closer to Easton’s chest. Her eyes drifted shut, her eyelashes so long and curly that they looked almost fake.

She smelled of warm milk and baby shampoo, an intoxicating combination, and Easton inhaled like a wino fighting off the DTs.

Belle was by far the most sweet-natured baby Easton had any experience with. Until the last fifteen minutes when she started getting sleepy, she had been happy and smiling, content to play with a few of the other babies’ toys Easton dragged into her office.

With those black curls, tawny skin and the shocking blue of her eyes, she was also remarkably lovely.

For three hours, Easton had struggled valiantly to tamp down the tangled emotions this little girl stirred. She had forced herself to focus on her care—changing her, playing with her, finding age-appropriate things in the house for Belle to explore.

She hadn’t allowed herself a moment to think about the what-ifs that haunted her.

Now that the baby was asleep—or close enough to it—all those memories and regrets hovered just on the edge of her heart and it was becoming increasingly harder to keep them at bay.

She tightened her hold on the baby and headed in the direction of the makeshift nursery. Belle’s long lashes fluttered when Easton began ascending the stairs, but then her eyes drifted closed again. They stayed that way when Easton carefully laid her on her back in the nursery crib. Easton pulled the bottle out carefully and watched Isabella’s mouth continue to suck air for a moment before it went still.

She really was a beautiful baby, she thought as she pulled the baby quilt up and over her. What had happened to her mother? she wondered. Cisco said she was dead. How was he involved? He claimed the baby wasn’t his, but with those long, inky eyelashes and the black hair with the tendency to curl, she could be.

After a moment spent gazing in adoration at the perfection of a nine-month-old baby, Easton forced herself to turn away. She checked the intercom Quinn had installed so he and Tess could hear their precious little boy in any room of the rambling house.

When she was sure it was on and transmitting any sound coming from the room, she closed the door behind her and walked across the hall. She stood outside Cisco’s door, her stupid stomach jumping at the prospect of seeing him again.

She hated this awkwardness, but didn’t know how to change it. The events of the past were too deeply entrenched between both of them. After a moment of standing there like an idiot, she forced herself to knock sharply—only to be met by silence.

When he didn’t answer, she knocked with a little more force. Still no answer.

She frowned. Cisco had never been a particularly sound sleeper. He always seemed to be on the edge of something fun and exciting. Jo used to shake her head and say he didn’t sleep well because he was too afraid of missing something.

Even on roundup, when the rest of them would sink with exhaustion into their sleeping bags at the end of a long day, Cisco would be edgy and alert and would wake at the slightest distraction, even the wind rattling the tent.

She wrapped her fingers around the metal of the doorknob feeling foolish. Maybe he wasn’t even in there. Maybe he had seized the chance to escape his obligations and climbed out the window. Wouldn’t be the first time he had made use of the exit route along the porch roof and down the old maple that grew next to the house on the other side.

No. She couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t just dump the baby on her and run. Cisco might be many things, but deliberately irresponsible wasn’t one of them.

After a moment, she knocked harder. “Cisco? Everything okay in there?”

She thought she heard something inside and she strained her hearing. Weird. She could swear she heard a moan coming from inside.

Was he in the depths of some kind of nightmare? Even as disjointed as he tended to sleep, he hadn’t ever been much to toss and turn. But what did she know? He wasn’t the same person anymore, not with the hardness around his mouth, the secrets in his eyes.

The low moan sounded again from inside the room, unmistakable this time and Easton screwed her eyes shut, knowing in her heart she had no choice except to check on him. Either he was having a bad dream or he was in pain. Either way, she had to check out the situation, whether she wanted to or not.

She pushed the door open with caution and found the room dim, the curtains closed against the morning sunshine.

Her gaze flew to the bed and when her eyes adjusted she discovered he hadn’t climbed out the window at least. He lay on the bed, a sheet covering his lower body, but he was bare from the waist up—bare except for a wide bandage wrapped around his stomach, a pristine white except for a kiwi-sized spot that was soaked through with blood.

His skin seemed even more pale and she could almost feel the heat radiating off him from here. On closer inspection, she could see his hair was damp with sweat and more drops of perspiration dotted the shadow above his upper lip.

She hurried to the bed and pushed back the hair flopping across his forehead. Even before she touched his skin, she could feel the fever pouring off him.

“Oh, Cisco. What kind of trouble are you in?” she whispered. She didn’t know whether to be scared or angry or worried sick.

“Can’t. Oh, cara. Don’t ask me,” he muttered, his head tossing on the pillow. He said something quickly in Spanish she didn’t catch.

She touched his shoulder and was seared by the heat of his skin. Had he driven here all the way from Salt Lake International, a good four hours away, in this condition?

“Cisco? Wake up. You’re sick. We need to get you to a doctor.”

He opened his eyes halfway, his lashes as ridiculously long and lush as Isabella’s, then he uttered a long string of melodious words before he closed his eyes again. He had taught her enough gutter Spanish when they were kids that she caught the gist.

“Yeah, right back at you,” she muttered. “Come on, wake up.”

She looked at the bandage around his waist. Was it her imagination or had the red spot spread in just the few moments she had been in here trying to wake him?

She felt frozen with indecision. Should she continue to try rousing him or should she call the volunteer ambulance?

What if he had a gunshot wound? Weren’t the medical authorities required to report those? What if he was tangled up in something illegal?

Drat him for coming here and complicating her world like this, forcing her to make decisions without any information to back them up. She had a deep, fervent wish that Quinn or Brant were here. They would know what to do.

“Cisco, come on,” she pleaded.

Jake Dalton seemed her best bet instead of calling the volunteer paramedics. He ran the medical clinic in Pine Gulch and she knew he would be carefully discreet without breaking any laws. Only trouble was, she had no way to get Cisco into the clinic without a little cooperation on his part.

If she couldn’t rouse him, she was going to have to call for an ambulance and if she had to guess, she figured they would probably opt to take him to the nearest hospital in Idaho Falls, about thirty miles away.

“Come on,” she begged again, her hand on the hot skin of his biceps. “Please wake up, Cisco.”

Those hot cocoa eyes drifted half open again. “Sweet, Easton,” he murmured. “Smell so good. Like spring.”

Some silly part of her wanted to stand here beside the bed and bask in his words like a wildflower opening to the morning sun.

Unfortunately, the rest of her still had to deal with their current predicament.

“Wake up, you idiot, unless you want me to call the paramedics.”

Lines furrowed between his dark brows as if he couldn’t quite make sense of her words. She opened her mouth to urge him a little further to this side of Sleepy Town, but before she could speak, one hard muscled hand snaked out and grabbed her arm.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, just before he tugged her across his chest, wrapped both arms around her and kissed her.

For perhaps a full ten seconds, she couldn’t think beyond absolute shock. Dear heavens. How long had it been? He hadn’t touched her in years, not once since that night after Guff’s funeral. Not so much as a hug or a casual brush of his fingers on her arm or even a lousy handshake.

Finding herself in his arms again, his hard arms surrounding her, his hot, hungry mouth devouring hers, felt a little like jumping into a scorching hot springs after nearly dying of frostbite.

A woman couldn’t be blamed for sighing against him, for kissing him back for just a moment. Right? Especially when it had been so very long.

She moved her mouth over his and her stomach muscles trembled with joy when his tongue dipped into her mouth, when one hand slid down her back to cup her behind and pull her closer.

Stop. The insidious little voice slithered into her brain. He’s only touching you because he’s so out of his head he isn’t thinking straight.

Horrified at herself for losing all sense of self-respect, she wrenched her mouth away from his and scrambled out of his arms. “Cisco, wake up, damn you.”

His brown eyes blinked all the way open. He stared at her for a long moment, his pupils huge. An instant later, he reached under his pillow and yanked something out and her heart stuttered at the sight of him aiming a deadly looking black handgun in fingers that shook with chills.

“S’wrong?” he asked in a dazed voice.

You came back. How’s that for wrong? You came back and you kissed me and stirred everything back up again.

And then you pulled a gun on me, you son of a bitch.

She swallowed the words. “You want to put that away, cowboy?”

He shook his head a little as if to clear it and she saw him glance from her to the gun at the end of his quivering arm. Her heart fluttered with fear that he might accidentally fire on her. Wouldn’t that be a fitting end? He might as well shoot her through the heart since he’d been stomping on it for years.

“East?”

“Put the gun away, Cisco,” she spoke calmly, quietly, just as she would to a spooked horse. “Come on. It’s just me. I’m not here to hurt you.”

He didn’t seem entirely convinced of that, but after a few more beats, he engaged the safety. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when he returned the weapon under his pillow.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again, a little more clearly this time though he still slurred his words.

“You tell me. You’re burning up and you seem to be bleeding. You need a doctor. I’m calling Jake Dalton.”

He tried to sit up and because he wore no shirt she saw every muscle of his abdomen go taut—from pain or effort, she didn’t know. That tattoo on his forearm rippled with the effort.

“Can’t,” he mumbled. “Too many questions.”

In that moment, she hated him for doing this to her again. For coming home and dredging up all these feelings, for completely screwing up the sanity and reason she was trying so desperately to bring to her world.

For making her feel all these crazy, wonderful, terrible things again.

“I’m calling Jake,” she repeated, her voice harsh as she reached for her cell phone. “I don’t have time to deal with a baby and a corpse at the same time.”

“I’m not dying.” He raked a hand through his hair. “S’just a little poke.”

“A poke?”

“Knife. Bar fight. I’ve had worse,” he said in what she assumed he meant as some sort of twisted comfort to her.

What kind of crazy life was he tangled in down there? For the last decade, her policy had basically been don’t ask, don’t tell. She hated him for that, too.

She narrowed her eyes. “Well, your little bar fight poke appears to be bleeding again and is most likely infected, hence your three-thousand-degree temperature. But that’s just a guess. I’m calling Jake to be sure, so you’d better come up with a better cover story than a bar fight. I have a feeling he’s not as gullible as I am.”

He looked disgruntled, but didn’t appear to have the energy to argue with her. “Where’s Belle?”

She refused to be touched by his concern for the child. “Sleeping in the nursery next door. Guess I’ll have to wake her to come with us. Look, do I need to call an ambulance or can you make it down the stairs and to my pickup?”

He released a heavy sigh. “I can walk,” he muttered.

She had serious doubts about the wisdom of that, but knowing how stubborn he was, she was pretty sure he would manage it somehow.

His shirt hung on the slat-backed chair by the bed and she reached for it and handed it to him. He slid his arms in the sleeve only after great exertion. After she watched him struggle for a few more moments with the buttons, she sighed and stepped closer, doing her best to ignore the heat and pheromones radiating from him.

Just his fever, she assured herself. So what if he smelled so yummy she just wanted to stand here and inhale. She had more important things to worry about right now, like how in the heck she was going to move a hundred seventy pounds of delirious male down sixteen steps and outside without both of them falling down the stairs.

By the time he was dressed, Cisco wasn’t the only one sweating. She felt like she had just roped a steer singlehandedly in the dark.

“Do you want to tell me again how you managed to drive all the way here from Salt Lake City?” she asked as he took an unsteady step toward the door.

“Wasn’t that hard. Took I-15 to Idaho Falls and then turned right.”

She glared at him, even as she leaned in closer to support most of his weight. “I’m glad you find this amusing. I don’t. What if you had passed out? You could have driven off the road and killed both you and that darling little girl.”

He made a face she assumed was supposed to look repentant. “Sorry, Easton. Shouldn’t have come home. Not your problem.”

He had made it her problem. As she contemplated the logistics of loading him to the rental car—better than her pickup, so she could put the carseat in the back, she had realized—she thought about how simple her life had seemed this morning when all she had to worry about were falling beef prices, rising feed costs, taking her cow-calf pairs up in the mountains, the creek near one of the haysheds that was about to overflow its banks and the capricious eastern Idaho weather.

Chapter Three

“A bar fight? That’s really what you’re going with here, Cisco?” Maggiee Dalton pulled the thermometer away and shook her head at the numbers there.

He could only imagine. He was on fire, burning up from the inside out. Another half hour of this and all that would be left of him on the exam room table at the Pine Gulch Medical Clinic would be a little pile of charred ashes.

He couldn’t remember when he had ever felt so lousy.

Okay, maybe a few times came to mind if he jostled his recall. There had been that gunshot wound in Honduras when a stupid, spooked sixteen-year-old sentry had forgotten the password to the rebel camp he’d been infiltrating at the time and had mistaken Cisco for a hostile combatant. Okay he had been a hostile combatant, true enough, but the kid had no way of knowing that when he fired on him with—unfortunately for Cisco—better aim than his normal efforts.

And there was the time he had enjoyed a few delightful hours of torture from a particularly zealous arms dealer/terrorism financier in Panama after Cisco’s cover had been blown, before his support team could stage a rescue.

This was right up there among his least enjoyable moments. He was so damn tired, he just wanted to tell Maggiee to go away so he could curl up on the floor and sleep for a couple of weeks.

He couldn’t seem to shake this woozy, out-of-body feeling, the weird sense of disconnect.

“Yeah,” he grunted, after a too-long pause while he tried to collect his disjointed thoughts, for what they were worth. “Little dump outside Barranquilla. Drunk thought I was making eyes at his señorita.”

“Were you?”

He might have been, if there indeed had been a bar and a drunk with a knife instead of a brutal mid-level drug dealer with more vicious machismo than brains.

“Don’t remember,” he lied. “I’m sure she couldn’t have been as pretty as you.”

Maggiee rolled her eyes and yanked the blood pressure cuff tight enough that he winced.

Despite her current overzealous efforts to check his vital stats, he liked Maggiee. Always had. She’d been a couple years older than him, but he had known her a little from school, back when she had been plain Magdalena Cruz. Pine Gulch was a small town after all, and her family’s ranch had been on the same bus route as theirs.

He had been sorry to hear what happened to her in Afghanistan, especially when she had only been trying to provide medical care. Funny thing about that. He had been going through a rough patch of his own and had been on the brink of walking away from his complicated web of lies when Jo had told him Maggiee had been grievously injured in a terrorist explosion while she’d been deployed.

The news had shot new determination through him like pure-grade heroin gushing through his veins and he’d stuck it out a little longer.

Seemed a lifetime ago. She seemed to be getting around pretty well on a prosthetic leg, he was happy to see.

Or he would have been happy if he could manage to think through the pain and the slick nausea curling through his gut.

“You can try to sell that story of a bar fight if you want, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy it,” she said.

“You’re a hard-hearted woman, Magdalena.”

“True enough. Just ask Jake.” She smiled a little. “And where does the baby come in?”

How did he answer that? Guilt twisted even more viciously than the damn knife wound. His fault. Soqui was dead because of him, that sweet little girl an orphan because he hadn’t been able to protect her mama.

He should never have let Soqui in on the operation. After John’s murder, she had begged him to let her bring down El Cuchillo. He should have just sent her to safety, maybe here in the States with John’s family. Instead, he had used her fierce need to avenge her husband to help his own cover.

And now she was dead.

El Cuchillo’s thugs might have fired the shot that killed her, but Cisco might as well have been the one holding the AK-47.

“Mother was a friend of mine,” he finally muttered to Maggiee.

“Was?”

“She … died last week. But all the paperwork’s in order, I swear. She gave me custody before she died.”

He didn’t want to close his eyes. He could still see that grimy warehouse, bodies everywhere—including Cuchillo’s—Soqui bleeding out on the concrete.

She had known. He didn’t know how, but somehow she had sensed they were walking into an ambush. Maybe she had known it would end like that from the moment she begged him to be part of the operation, months ago.

“I have papers,” she had rasped out, her voice already thready and weak as her life ebbed away. Her hand was icy cold in his and each word seemed to choke her throat.

“Hidden under the … sink. Custody papers. Take my sweet Belle to Johnny’s family. Where she’ll be … safe. Swear to me, Francisco.”

Her voice seemed to echo in his aching head, heavy on the reverb.

How could he refuse? He owed her this much at least. He had failed to protect Soqui, but he would do whatever it took to take care of her little girl.

“All legal, Maggiee,” he said now. Technically, anyway.

Yeah, he had been forced to move both heaven and hell with a couple different embassies to speed up the process and had pissed off about a dozen agencies, but nobody could find any legal loopholes. He was Isabella’s legal guardian until he signed custody over to her family. Whenever that happened, the sooner the better.

“She has an aunt. Boise. She’s coming to take her in a few days.”

Maggiee probed around the six-inch gash just below his rib cage. Though her movements were gentle, he was desperately afraid he was going to pass out.

Big, bad super spy. That was him.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to clean things up a little before Jake comes in to take a look.”

“S’okay,” he lied.

“Why didn’t you have this looked at in Colombia?”

Because he was too busy getting Belle out of the country before Cuchillo’s psycho baby brother discovered her existence—and before all the people he bribed or threatened changed their minds about letting him leave with her.

“Then I would have missed your tender, loving care, Mag.”

She shook her head, even though she was smiling.

That was him. Always good for a laugh.

“What happens after Jake patches you up? You go back for more bar fights in some seedy cantina somewhere? Maybe next time with someone who has better aim?”

Damned if he knew. He was so tightly tangled in the web of lies he had spun that he didn’t have the first idea how to break free.

El Cuchillo hadn’t killed him, but Cisco was pretty sure it was only a matter of time before someone else would. He didn’t have a death wish. Far from it. But after the last ten years of deep undercover work against narcoterrorism, pragmatism was unavoidable.

He figured he was lucky he’d made it this long.

Maggiee tilted her head to study him. Too damn smart, that Maggiee Cruz Dalton.

“Hear you’ve got a couple cute kids.”

As a distraction ploy, it was pretty transparent but under the circumstances, it was the best he could manage.

“We do. One of each. A girl, Sofia, and a boy, Charlie. They keep us hopping.”

“Sounds good.” Would she mind if he checked out for a while? he wondered. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open.

“Maybe you ought to think about sticking around for a while while you recover from your bar fight. Easton is alone too much in that big old ranch house since Jo died.”

He didn’t need her laying that sort of guilt on him. He managed to pile on enough of his own, thanks.

“She’s not alone all the time. Mimi and Brant spend time with her when they come back, now that Brant’s stateside,” he answered. “So does Quinn and his family.”

He was the proverbial prodigal foster kid. The one Jo and Guff had always worried about the most. He regretted that, though before Jo died, he had finally told her the truth about his life and what he was doing. He knew a few hours’ conversation couldn’t make up for years of worry, but it was the best he could do.

“Family is everything,” Maggiee answered. “I’ve learned the last few years that we have to grab every moment with them.”

He thought of his strange family. Jo and Guff had taken a group of lost, troubled kids without much hope. Juvenile delinquents, orphans, abuse victims. Yet somehow they had managed to form a family.

Easton had always been their heart. Even when she was a blond, pigtailed brat who followed the older boys around. Without conscious thought, he pressed a finger to the E on his compass rose tattoo.

“You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?” Maggiee asked.

“You kidding?” he managed a grin, though it took just about all his remaining energy. “And miss a minute of a pretty nurse fussing over me? What kind of idiot do I look like?”

“Like an idiot who found himself on the wrong end of a sharp stick,” a man’s voice interjected. “And who might just find himself even worse off if he doesn’t stop flirting with my wife.”

He looked toward the sound, then winced at the pain in his head from the abrupt movement. Jake Dalton, Pine Gulch’s only doctor, stood in the doorway, giving him a mock glower.

“Hey, Doc. Long time.”

Jake stepped into the room and scrubbed his hands at the sink. “Yeah, I think the last time was when you toilet-papered my pickup truck once when I came home from college.”

He supposed it was a good thing Jake was a dedicated doctor who wouldn’t let Cisco’s assorted past sins keep him from providing quality medical care.

But then, he didn’t know the half of them.

“He belongs in a hospital, doesn’t he?”

Jake’s blue Dalton eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. “Let’s just say I’m not admitting him at this time,” he answered carefully.

“That’s not an answer.”

“East, you know I can’t say anything more because of privacy laws. It’s the best I can do. I’m sorry.”

She made a face. As much as she liked Jake Dalton personally, she hated all he represented. Doctors, hospitals, that distinctive smell of antiseptic and illness that lingered, no matter how one tried to wash it away.

Loss.

Seemed like every time she had any dealings with the medical community, she ended up losing someone, starting with her parents’ accident when she was a silly, giddy sixteen-year-old who thought she had total control of her universe.

Her father had died instantly that stormy January night when their car had slid head-on into an oncoming semi.

Her mother had survived the accident—barely—and had been airlifted to the hospital in Idaho Falls. Easton’s aunt and uncle had rushed her there to be at her mother’s side, but Janet Springhill had died on the operating table.

Then had come Guff’s heart attack. She had been the one to find him collapsed on the barn floor, clutching his chest. She had performed CPR while waiting for the paramedics to get there and had been able to get a pulse, but he had died on the way to the hospital in Idaho Falls. Easton, following behind the ambulance, had arrived in time for the grim news in the E.R.

Jo had been treated at the same hospital for the cancer that eventually claimed her life eighteen months ago. Whenever Easton had walked through the doors of that place to take her to chemotherapy or for an appointment with her oncologist, her stomach would churn in a conditioned reflex.

In another hospital room in another city hundreds of miles away, she had endured the most painful hours of her life. She couldn’t even think about that time without her breath catching in her throat.

So much pain and loss.

She knew hospitals also brought forth life. She had been there when Mimi’s sweet little Abby came into the world. And she imagined some hospital in South America had contributed to the birth of the little girl who was currently babbling on her lap.

“He insists he won’t go to a hospital. I agreed to follow his recovery here as long as he’s got someone to keep an eye on him.”

She supposed that meant her. “What sort of care will he need at home?”

“He mostly needs someone who can make sure he takes things easy and doesn’t overdo.”

“That’s a great plan in theory,” she muttered. “I have a feeling it won’t be so easy to implement.”

“Do what you can. Rest is the best thing for him to fight the infection and heal. And I need to know immediately if his fever spikes again.”

“Okay.”

Jake gave her a careful look, his handsome features concerned. She had seen that expression before. One of the things she loved about Pine Gulch’s only doctor was his concern not only for his patient, but also for those charged with their care at home.

“I could give the same advice to you,” he said in that calm, reassuring voice of his. “Don’t overdo, East. I’m sure we could find somebody in town willing to come out and help you with the little one there.”

The suggestion made sense. Heaven knew, she had enough to do at the ranch without throwing in the complication of caring for a needy baby and a recalcitrant patient.

On the other hand, Cisco had come to her for help. Right now he needed her, when he had made a point of not needing anyone for the last decade or so. She wasn’t about to surrender that to someone else.

“I’m sure I can manage for a few days. I’ve talked to Burt and he and the boys can pick up the slack for me for a while.”

“Are you sure?”

“Stop worrying about me, Dr. Dalton. I’m not your patient.” She smiled to let him know she still appreciated his concern and was warmed when he pulled her into a quick hug, baby and all.

During Jo’s long illness, Jake had been a rock, always willing to come out to the ranch to oversee her care.

If not for him and the hospice nurse, Tess Claybourne—now Southerland who had married Easton’s foster brother and distant cousin Quinn—Easton wasn’t sure she would have found the strength to make it through those last difficult days of Jo’s life.

“You take care of yourself, Easton. You have a bad habit of worrying about everyone else but yourself.”

She snorted. “Yeah and I’m the only one in this room with that particular shortcoming, aren’t I, Dr. Dalton?”

“Smarty. Just make sure he takes his medicine and promise you’ll let me know if his condition changes or if you have any questions.”

“I will.”

“He should be out in a minute.”

“Thanks, Jake.”

He smiled in response, then left the waiting room to return to the treatment rooms. Life as a small-town doctor probably rarely offered him a quiet moment, especially with Jake’s passion for his patients.

“He’s a nice man, Belle. That’s the kind of guy you should look for when you grow up. Someone kind and loving and dependable.”

The baby beamed in response to her observation and squealed with approval before she turned back to sucking on a key from the plastic toy ring Easton had found in the diaper bag Cisco had provided.

Easton smiled at her, even as a cautious part of her warned her to steel her heart. She feared she was already dangerously close to falling hard for this little girl with the sunny disposition and the cheerful smile.

And wouldn’t that be foolish? Belle would only be here for a few more days before her aunt came for her. Easton certainly didn’t need more loss in her world.

She was still worrying about that when the outside doors to the clinic opened and a tough, rugged-looking man in the brown twill uniform shirt of the Pine Gulch Police Department walked through.

His green eyes lit up when he saw her.

“Easton! This is a surprise!” Trace Bowman exclaimed as he strode toward her.

He leaned in to kiss her cheek, his slight dark stubble a tiny rasp against her skin. He always smelled so good, like laundry soap and starch and some sexy but understated aftershave. It was one of the things she had noticed first when they started dating a month ago.

“What’s going on? Are you sick? And who’s this little sweetheart?”

Belle gazed at him in fascination, then giggled when he made a funny face at her.

“Um, it’s a really long story.” Now why did that sound familiar? Cisco wasn’t home five hours before she was picking up bad habits from him. “I’m not sick. What about you? What are you doing here?”

He shifted his weight. “I just needed to interview Jake about one of his patients last week. He suspected abuse and asked me to look into it, so I was passing on the results of my investigation.”

For just a moment as she looked into his warm green eyes, Easton wanted to smack Cisco for coming back just now. She and Trace had been on five dates and he clearly wanted more. She liked him very much, more than any other man she’d dated in … well, ever.

What wasn’t to like? He was a good conversationalist, he cared about her opinions, he was reliable and safe and spent his days helping other people. Everyone in town liked Trace and his brother Taft, who served as the town’s fire chief.

Easton had nursed secret hopes that maybe she could fall for him. She had been trying, had given him far more of a chance than anyone else she had dated.

Wasn’t it just like Cisco to blow back into town just when she was working so hard to forget him with someone else?

She sighed. “Actually, I’m glad I ran into you. I’m afraid I have to back out of our plans for Friday. I’m so sorry. I was really looking forward to it.”

He looked gratifyingly disappointed. “No problem. We can always reschedule. There will be other movies and it’s no big deal to cancel the dinner reservation in Jackson Hole. What’s going on? Everything okay?”

Not even close. For one crazy moment she wanted to cry at the quiet concern in his voice and his expression. For all his rugged masculinity, he was a nice person who genuinely cared about his community.

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