Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade

backed out of Carly’s driveway only to pull into the one next door.

      “Short trip,” Bax McDermot observed with a laugh as he watched the move.

      Annoyance struck Carly for the second time as she caught sight of the big man’s gaze following her friend.

      She really did need sleep, she decided. Lack of it was making her cranky.

      “We might as well go in,” she urged, taking her first steps on the crutches.

      But heading across the lawn was a tactical error, and by the third uncoordinated three-legged hobble she set one of the crutches in a hole and everything went into a careen.

      Bax McDermot lunged for her, catching her just short of falling with both of those big hands on her waist.

      “Steady,” he advised.

      But even though he’d accomplished just that, something about the warm feel of his hands sent things inside her reeling.

      “Sorry,” she apologized, feeling like an idiot. “I haven’t had much practice on these things.”

      “They work better on solid surfaces.”

      Before she had any inkling of what he was going to do, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the porch on long, sturdy strides, setting her down near one of the posts so she could hang on to it for balance.

      The whole trip took only a few seconds and yet that close contact had knocked her for even more of a loop.

      So much so that it took her a moment of hard work to regain herself and realize he was introducing his daughter.

      “This is Evie Lee.”

      “Evie Lee Lewis,” the little girl corrected.

      “Evie Lee McDermot is what’s on her birth certificate,” Bax explained. “She tacked on the Lewis herself a few months ago. I can’t tell you why or where she got it.”

      “Everybody should have three first names,” Evie Lee added. “To tell them apart from everybody else.”

      “Makes sense to me,” Carly agreed, seizing the distraction of the child.

      “Why don’t you run and get the crutches?” Bax suggested to his daughter.

      Evie Lee did just that, dragging them behind her on her return trip.

      She was a tiny little thing with blond hair and a face that was the impish image of her father’s, complete with beautiful green eyes that Carly knew would break some hearts down the line.

      She thanked Evie Lee when she took the crutches from her and was all too aware of Evie Lee’s father keeping his hands at the ready to catch her again when she turned and made her way to the front door on them.

      “It isn’t locked,” she informed him when they’d reached it and he seemed to be waiting for her to produce a key. “No reason to lock doors in Elk Creek. It isn’t a high-crime area, so nobody bothers for the most part.”

      “Nice,” he commented as he opened the old-fashioned screen and then the heavy oak panel with the leaded glass oval in its center.

      Carly hobbled through ahead of him, stopping in the entryway at the foot of the stairs that led to the upper level. “We’re all too tired for the tour, so I’ll just give you directions, if that’s okay.”

      “Fine.”

      “The master bedroom is the first one at the top of the steps. I thought Evie Lee might like the one beside it. That was my sister’s and it’s still all done up for a little girl. I got them both ready for you yesterday, so there’s clean sheets on the beds and empty drawers for your things. The bathroom is down the hall a ways, along with the linen closet and the other bedrooms. Down here, you can see the kitchen at the end of this hall. That’s the living room—” she nodded over her right shoulder toward the room they could see from where they all stood “—and the dining room is beyond it, connected to the kitchen. There’s another bathroom and the den that you get to from under the stairs.”

      “All we really need for right now are beds.”

      “Me, too. The cottage is just across the back patio. That’s where I’ll be if you need me,” she said, pivoting on the crutches to face that direction.

      “Can I help you get there?” he asked.

      “No. I’m fine. Really,” she insisted, adding, “Sleep well,” just before heading down the hall on her own.

      She could feel him watching her the whole way, and she was glad when she finally got far enough into the kitchen to be out of his line of vision.

      But somehow that didn’t take away the lingering sense of those eyes on her and the inexplicable feeling of heat that they’d caused.

      All part of the weird side effects of a sleepless night, she told herself.

      But still she hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in keeping her agreement to let Bax McDermot move in before she’d actually moved out.

      Because sleep-deprived or not, something inside her was sitting up and taking notice of too many things about the man.

      And that didn’t have any place at all in her plans.

      Chapter Two

      For a split second when Bax first woke up he thought he was back in the days of his residency when it wasn’t unusual to work a twenty-four-hour shift and catch forty winks in any empty bed he could find, at any time of day he could manage it.

      Then he remembered that he was long past that particular portion of his life and he searched his memory until he recalled that he was in Elk Creek, Wyoming, in the bed in one of the rooms in the house he’d rented.

      Carly Winters’s house.

      A wave of satisfaction washed through him.

      He was just so damn glad to be out of the city.

      He was a small-town boy at heart. Always had been. Except that the small town he’d grown up in had been in Texas rather than in Wyoming.

      It had been exciting to leave that small town and go to medical school, exciting to practice medicine in the hub of that same university since then. But he’d had a change of heart over the past couple of years. A change of heart that had made him want all he’d left behind. For himself. And for Evie Lee. Especially for Evie Lee.

      He felt as if his daughter had gotten short shrift in the parent department so far in her young life. His wife had died on the delivery table, leaving Evie Lee semiorphaned right from the get-go. And Bax knew he hadn’t been the best of dads since then.

      He’d thrown himself into his work to escape a grief that had seemed unbearable any other way, building up one of the largest medical practices in Denver. That had meant sixty- and seventy-hour workweeks, being on call most nights and weekends, and generally putting fatherhood second.

      It had meant leaving Evie Lee in the care of a string of live-in nannies. Not all of whom had treated her well.

      He wasn’t proud of any of that.

      But he was going to rectify it.

      Here and now, he thought as he opened his eyes to glance at the clock on the bedside table.

      Three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and a new life had begun for both him and Evie Lee. He’d make sure of it.

      Bax yawned, stretched, then clasped his hands behind his head and had a look around the room that had been predesignated his.

      The bed was a fair-size four-poster. At the foot of it was a television on a stand against the facing wall. A tall, five-drawer dresser was to the right of the bed. And a door that no doubt led to a closet was to the left.

      The whole room was painted a serene shade