Sandra Steffen - Wes Stryker's Wrangled Wife

Figuring they were all probably in church, Wes followed the instructions Annabell recited in her feeble-sounding voice and left a message. He took a minute to start the coffee, then donned his sheepskin jacket and his favorite cowboy hat. At the last minute, he went in search of the cellular phone. Tucking it into his pocket just in case Annabell returned his call any time soon, he headed outside to feed and water the horses.

Maybe he’d hook the trailer up to his truck and haul Stomper and the sleigh into-town in a little while. He was in the process of imagining Jayne’s reaction to such an old-fashioned activity when he lowered his right foot to the first step.

Whoosh.

He was airborne. His arms flailed, his feet flew out from under him. He landed on the icy ground five steps below, in less time than it had taken High Kicker to buck him off that time down in Santa Fe. He was gasping for breath and in too much pain to be dead, so the fall couldn’t have killed him. He couldn’t tell if he’d damaged the ribs that had started to heal, and his knee was aching pretty badly again, but it was the searing pain in his left shoulder that kept him very still. Damn. He’d dislocated it again.

Clutching his shoulder with both hands, he picked up one boot, gritted his teeth and tried to roll onto his side. His foot slid on the ice, his bad knee crashing onto the hard surface so fast he saw stars. He tried rolling the other way, but he almost passed out from the pain slicing through his shoulder. He tried several other maneuvers. The results were the same.

He should have known his father wouldn’t have had the downspout fixed, thereby routing the rainwater to a less hazardous spot. From the look of the place and the back taxes that had to be paid, it was obvious that his father hadn’t taken care of much of anything these past several years. It looked as if it was up to him to make the place operational again. First, he had to figure out a way to get up.

Think, Stryker, think.

He considered whistling for Stomper, but Wes had closed the stall door himself yesterday, and although Stomper could finagle an apple or a carrot out of anybody’s pocket, he wouldn’t be able to unlatch the stall. It was fifteen miles to town, two miles to his nearest neighbor. It was also Christmas morning, and not too many people would be out and about, and if they were, they wouldn’t be driving past this old place on Old Stump Road.

Wes was breathing easier and thinking clearly. A lot of good it did him. Between the ice and the pain, he was stuck on his back, staring at a sky as dull as the old steel sink in his kitchen, cold seeping into his coat and jeans as he tried to decide how to keep from freezing to death. His fingers were already starting to tingle. He slid them into his pockets, paused. What the—

He took a careful breath and he almost smiled.

Lo and behold, the cellular phone.

Chapter Two

“Look, Alex! A huck! And a doctor’s kit. Can you tell Aunt Jayne thank you?”

“Tanks, Aun‘ie Jayne. Aun’ie Jayne!”

“Jayne?”

“Sis, are you all right?”

“What?” Jayne came out of her musings with a start, only to find Louetta, Burke and Alex staring at her from the living room floor where wrapping paper and ribbons were strewn everywhere.

“Alex said thanks,” Burke said, watching her closely.

“Oh, you’re very welcome, Alex.”

Alex went back to his new truck, but Burke and Louetta continued looking at her strangely. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered Jayne. People looked at her strangely all the time, but Burke and Louetta looked concerned, and that made Jayne uneasy.

“You were a thousand miles away,” Burke said, handing Alex another package.

Jayne pulled a face.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, obviously reluctant to let the subject drop.

“My mind wandered, that’s all.”

“Were you daydreaming or reminiscing?” Louetta asked in that quiet, knowing way she had.

Unwilling to admit just how close Louetta had come to the truth, Jayne stifled a yawn and gestured to the two-year-old, who was tearing into another package with obvious glee. The ploy worked: Burke’s and Louetta’s attention strayed to Alex and then met over the top of his dark, little head. Louetta was wearing a pale pink robe she’d bought especially for her new husband, and although Burke had pulled on a cable-knit sweater and a pair of navy chinos, they were obviously having a difficult time keeping their hands off each other. They’d been married less than a day, which made the open longing in their expressions perfectly understandable.

Jayne was happy for them, but she felt restless. She had last night, too. She’d slept with a pillow over her head to muffle the constant sigh of the wind. She yawned again because she hadn’t slept well, and she couldn’t blame it entirely on the wind.

This was just great. She hadn’t had an honest-to-goodness dream in over three years, and then out of the blue, last night’s sleep had been filled with hazy, erotic images of spurs and lassos and hair four shades of brown. One of her closest friends back in Seattle happened to be a therapist, and would have been intrigued, although what Jayne had been doing to that pillow upon awakening might have made the by-the-book therapist’s blue blood turn as bronze as the naked chest in her dreams.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought as warmth inched through her body. It wasn’t as if she’d actually done any of the things she’d dreamed she was doing. Er, that is, she hadn’t really slid a rope around Wes Stryker’s shoulders and drawn him to her, hand-over-hand, and she certainly hadn’t...

She jerked her attention back to the present and caught Burke looking at her again. She didn’t want him to worry. After all the agony he and Louetta had both suffered these past two and a half years they’d been apart, they deserved every bit of happiness they were experiencing.

Although she and Burke didn’t share many physical characteristics, other than their dark hair, their stubborn streaks were evenly matched. She’d planned to spend Christmas morning in her room, but he’d insisted, in no uncertain terms, that nobody was going to open a package until Jayne had joined them at the tree. So she’d pulled a brush through her short hair and quickly pulled on the first skirt and sweater she’d come to in the tiny closet. She’d joined Burke, Louetta and Alex for the Christmas-morning chaos, watching from a distance, in the room, but not too close to the tight little circle the new family was quickly forming.

She tried not to recall all the Christmases she’d spent just outside the warm glow of real family. Strangely, another kind of warm glow kept filtering into her mind.

The phone rang in the kitchen, bringing Jayne back to reality with a jolt. She was on her feet, relieved to have something constructive to do, and was halfway to the kitchen before the second ring. Grabbing the receiver, she said, “Dr. Kincaid’s residence.”

For a moment there was only silence, and then a deep, husky voice reached her ear through the phone line. “It just dawned on me that this is exactly the way you sounded in my dreams last night. Breathless and full of restless energy.”

Her ear tingled, and she felt a strange fluttering sensation where her heart used to be before it had twirled down into her stomach. “Who is this?” She knew, but Wes didn’t need to know that.

“I’m hurt.”

“I’ll bet”

“No, really. I’m hurt. I fell.”

“Oh, my God. I’ll get Burke.”

“No. Jayne. Wait. I was a little afraid I’d freeze to death, but the sound of your voice is working wonders in that department.”

She smelled a rat. Turning her back on the intimate little scene in the next room, she said, “What’s going on, Stryker?”

“I need you to come out to the ranch and help me up.”

“Excuse me?”

He chuckled. “You sound very suspicious and very sexy, and for the record, I don’t need help for what you’re thinking.”

“You couldn’t possibly know what I’m thinking.”

“Wanna bet?”

“It’s all in your mind.”

“It was all in my dreams last night. You were in my dreams last night.”

She wished he would stop mentioning dreams. “What do you really want, Wes?”

“That’s a question I wouldn’t mind discussing at great length, but for now, I slipped on some ice. I didn’t know the snow had turned to sleet over night. You could say I discovered it the hard way. Anyway, I’m stuck on my back like a turtle. My shoulder’s dislocated, and the ice, my bad knee and the ribs I busted a few months back have rendered me immobile for the time being.”

Jayne’s mind reeled. “Dammit, Wes, why didn’t you say so? Burke! Come quick!”

She could hear Wes protesting as she handed the phone to her brother. “It’s Wes Stryker. It seems he’s fallen. We should call an ambulance.”

Burke took the phone. After a few pointed questions and a series of Uh-huhs and I sees, he covered the mouthpiece with one hand and spoke softly to Jayne. “He says he doesn’t need an ambulance, and I believe him.”

“But...”

Burke shrugged. “I know it sounds strange, but most of the ranchers and cowboys I’ve treated out here can diagnose their conditions as well as I can. Often the examination is just a technicality. Wes says all he needs is a helping hand getting to his feet. He’d like that someone to be you.”

Jayne glanced at Louetta as if to ask if the cowboy was for real and if he could be trusted. At Louetta’s small nod, Jayne shook her head. “I don’t believe this.” Yanking the phone out of her brother’s hand, she said, “If I find candlesticks and a table set for two, you’re dead meat, Stryker.”

When his deep, throaty chuckle reached her ear, she muttered something very unladylike, slammed the phone down and reached for her keys, sputtering under her breath that he was going to get her help, all right. And then he was going to get a piece of her mind.

Jayne hated country roads. Given a choice, she’d take a five-lane freeway during rush-hour traffic over these curving back roads that were chock-full of chatter bumps and potholes. Burke had wanted to drive her to Wes’s place, but she’d wanted to come alone. For reasons she preferred not to explore, she’d needed to escape the intimate atmosphere in her brother’s house on Custer Street.

She glanced at her car phone, turned the defrosoer up a notch and blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. Who in their right mind would set up a medical practice on Custer Street, anyway? Custer died, big-time, didn’t he? The names of some of the roads she’d taken this morning weren’t much better, but it was the layer of ice covering them that made them truly treacherous, which was why the fifteen-mile trek out to the Double S Ranch had already taken thirty-five minutes. Although it seemed more like forever, Jayne spent the time contemplating what she would say if this was all a hoax and what she would do if it wasn’t.

Her fingers cramped from squeezing the steering wheel so hard; her eyes burned from squinting into the sun that had started to shine halfway into the trip. Thankful to have been born with a good sense of direction, she followed the course Louetta had recited, passing sheds and piles of rocks that served as landmarks. It was a relief when she finally found Old Stump Road. Within minutes she pulled into a driveway, her tires sliding to a stop. It required a conscious effort to peel her fingers off the steering wheel. Honestly, if Wes wasn’t at least half-dead, he was going to be sorry.