He looked a little stunned.
“What? You don’t think I know what goes on behind closed doors at that place? Trav is my brother, for Pete’s sake. He disappears…sometimes for days. For that matter, so do you and the others. And isn’t it coincidental that shortly after you all pop up again, world or local headlines report on some heinous crime being thwarted, or some country being saved from a disastrous coup by some radical extremist group?”
She laughed at the pained and panicked expression on his face.
“Oh, don’t look so shell-shocked, Ry. Your secrets are safe. Case in point, Natalie. I know some-thing’s up with her and the baby. And I know you guys are knee-deep in it, trying to bring down whatever chased her to Texas. I hope you succeed. I love her like a sister, and little Autumn…well, she owns me heart and soul. I want them safe. I want that hunted look erased from Natalie’s eyes.”
“Carrie…” He said her name with such a preemptive wariness, she actually took pity on him.
“Yeah, okay, fine. You guys don’t really save nations or damsels in distress. You aren’t secretly investigating the horrible things that happened to Natalie. I got it. It’s your story, you can tell it any way you want to. But if you were…I know you would get to the bottom of it.
“In the meantime—” she held up a hand when he would have cut her off “—I don’t have anything to do with Natalie’s dilemma…which means I don’t need protection. And since I don’t, what I do and who I do it with is really none of your business.”
It could have been, she thought with more than a pinch of regret. But it’s not and you’re the one who wants it that way.
Something had replaced the shock in his expression. He looked a little sad…there might even have been a little regret in his eyes. It didn’t matter. She could no longer afford to care. But damn him, the next words out of his mouth made her want to.
“You will always be my business, sweetie.” He touched a hand to her cheek, and then, as if realizing what he’d done, let it fall. “Just…just be careful, okay?”
Then he reached out again, as if he couldn’t help himself, and cupped her nape with his broad hand. He drew her toward him, smelling of leather and sage and a little of horses when he leaned down and pressed his lips against her forehead. “’Night, Carrie-bear. Lock up behind me.”
She was still standing there, rooted to the spot, her heart making one final, futile dive when his truck’s engine fired and he drove away.
“Goodbye, Ryan,” she whispered to the empty street, knowing she was finally saying goodbye to the hope she’d fostered for fourteen years.
She went to bed a little while later, pushing Ryan further and further out of her mind, more determined than ever to get on with her life. But who was she going to get on with her life with?
“And wasn’t that an interesting sentence?” she asked herself aloud with a roll of her eyes.
Speaking of eye rolling… She ran through a list of likely candidates for the position of Mr. Right. It was a very short list. And with good reason. Travis grilled every prospective boyfriend until they were as charred as a well-done T-bone.
Oh, she knew her brother meant well. He didn’t mean to send every boyfriend she’d ever had running for their lives rather than toughing it out and actually taking a stab at a relationship with her—but he did. Aside from Ryan, Trav was the main reason she was still single and resenting the fact that she was a ripe twenty-four and still a virgin.
“Well, you’ve taken the protector role too seriously for too long, brother mine,” she murmured as she rolled over, punched her pillow and snuggled deeper into the covers. She was no longer the ten-year-old little girl, lost and confused and missing her mom and dad. She was a woman now—at least in years. In experience, however, she was as green as meadow grass.
But not for much longer. Tonight had really, truly, once and for all cinched it. She was ready to make the transition to wild oats. Since Ry was not going to be the man to guide her around that exciting corner, she was just going to have to find someone else who would.
There had to be someone who wasn’t intimidated by her brother. Someone who hadn’t grown up around here wouldn’t know enough to be afraid of Travis. Someone new in town.
Someone like Dr. Nathan Beldon.
It just kept coming back to him.
Yeah. She could settle for a doctor.
Settle.
She pulled in a deep breath, let it out. It probably didn’t say much about her strength of character that she was considering settling for any man who didn’t run from Travis. It also pretty much told the tale that she wasn’t evolved, in the feminist sense.
“Not everyone is cut out to be a mover and a shaker or a corporate ball breaker,” she muttered, and flipped over onto her back again. “No crime in that.”
She made a difference in her own way. She liked her volunteer work at the library with her friend Stephanie Firth, and her work at the burn clinic. She also loved organizing fund-raisers. But what she really enjoyed was the time she spent at the day-care center.
She loved kids. Short ones, shy ones, snotty-nosed ones, even the ones that bit. And she wanted kids of her own—with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Or at least with a man who was willing to spend his life with her.
And then, of course, there was that other little thing. That virgin thing. She was so tired of celibacy. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. If Nathan Beldon ended up being the one to show her, maybe he could also be the one she could potentially start a life and raise her babies with.
And to hell with what Trav or Ryan said.
“I thought we had this settled, bud.” Trav Whelan clasped a hand on Ry’s shoulder the next afternoon as they cozied up to the bar in the Cattleman’s Club. His expression was filled with stymied disappointment. “Don’t back out on me now.”
Ry grimaced and scratched his ear. And came up blank. This conversation was not going the way he’d planned it. He’d had his arguments lined up like spit-and-polished soldiers. Put one of the other guys—any of the other guys involved with the situation—in charge of looking out for Carrie until this mystery surrounding Natalie Perez and her baby was solved. Ry was a lover, not a fighter, right? Yeah…he’d been in on some of the covert missions the Cattleman’s Club members sometimes found themselves diving into feet first for the greater good, but there were much better men for this particular job.
Trav, however, didn’t see it that way and didn’t plan on taking no for an answer. And he was doing a damn fine job of guilting Ry into forgetting all the valid reasons why it was a bad idea for him to be the one to ride herd on Carrie.
“You are my man,” Trav continued with a come-on, step-up-to-the-plate smile. “You have always been my man. Hell, Ry, you’ve been around long enough to know I can’t take a chance on some opportunistic SOB who might try to take advantage of her. You’re the only one I can turn to…and I can’t keep an eye on her. Not until this is over.”
Torn between the need to wrangle a way out of certain disaster and his loyalty to Trav, Ry let out a long sigh while Trav settled in to draw a little more blood.
“I’m a daddy. A daddy,” Trav repeated as if he still couldn’t believe his good fortune, “and the lady in my life… Ry, you know both Natalie and the baby are still at risk.”
Yeah, Ryan knew. So, evidently, did Carrie. He was still chewing on that little bit of news. He was still a little staggered by her conjectures. She’d been dead-on right. About a lot of things. The Texas Cattleman’s Club