The Loneliest Cowboy. Pamela Macaluso

to relieve the internal pressure causing his arousal.

      That damned dream again!

      People spoke of a second childhood, maybe he was suffering from a second round of adolescence. The hell of it was that teenage boys only needed privacy and a confiscated magazine to find relief.

      He closed his eyes, pretending he had a chance of falling asleep. Instead of dwelling on the dream, his mind chose to torture him with memories of kissing Skye last night.

      Without a doubt, it was the most explosive first kiss he’d ever been part of. There was usually a tentativeness, a testing at the beginning of a kiss...especially a first kiss. Skye had gone off like dynamite. Once again he wondered if she had some kind of hidden agenda, something she wanted from him.

      But she hadn’t been the one waiting for him to come along in the parking lot...

      True, but the way she’d returned his kiss might have been her way of taking advantage of the situation and trying to use it to further her own plans. But she hadn’t made any move to follow up on the kiss. Not even a promise of more to come. In fact, she’d looked as surprised as he’d felt. Of course that might be part of her game, reeling him in slow.

      He would be wise to see they didn’t cross paths again.

      Go ahead, be wise, his libido taunted him. And unless you want to wake up in pain again, you’d better stop sleeping on your stomach.

      “Mommy, you’re hugging too tight.” Dawn’s sentence ended with a squeak.

      Skye loosened her hold and tucked her daughter’s sleep-tousled hair behind the little girl’s ears. “Sorry. How’d you sleep last night?”

      “Okay.” Dawn scooted out of Skye’s arms, off the bed and over to the window. “Are the cowboys around here real cowboys like my daddy or pretend cowboys like the ones who visit our ranch?”

      Usually, Skye would remind Dawn that the Bar K Dude Ranch wasn’t theirs, it was only where Skye worked. But with Dawn bringing up Clint after Skye had spent most of yesterday thinking about him and the rest of it thinking about the kiss they’d shared, she decided to let the inaccuracy pass.

      Skye sent up a silent prayer that after getting a short simple answer, Dawn would drop the subject of Clint. “Most of them are real cowboys.”

      “Do any of them know my daddy?”

      A lot of them work for your daddy. The words flashed into her mind. She bit on her tongue to keep them from slipping out.

      “I think so.”

      “Could I maybe get to meet him, like I’m maybe going to meet Granpa?”

      Skye took a deep breath and grabbed for the small loophole Dawn had opened for her. “That reminds me...Grandma called last night at the coffee shop. Grandpa is awake now and they’re going to fly him to San Antonio this afternoon. Grandma will be coming home sometime this morning and she’s looking forward to meeting you.”

      “Granpa, too?”

      “No, he’s going to fly straight from one hospital to the other in a helicopter.” Skye got out of bed, holding her hand toward Dawn. “How ’bout if we surprise Grandma with a batch of blueberry pancakes?”

      

      Later that afternoon, Skye loaded her mother’s suitcase into the trunk of her car and got ready to drive her back to the hospital. After lunch, Dawn had gone to Skye’s sister Alice’s house to play with her three children, so there would be just the two of them in the car.

      Skye walked into the house and found her mother hanging up the phone.

      “There’s been a change in plans,” Marge Williamson said.

      Skye felt as though she’d swallowed a rock. “Is Daddy all right?”

      “He’s the same, but they’ve had another patient come into the emergency room with a hand injury and Doc wants him to see a microsurgeon as soon as possible, so they’re sending him to San Antonio in the helicopter with your father. But Doc also managed to find me another way to the city. Wasn’t that sweet of him?”