Christmas On The Silver Horn Ranch. Stella Bagwell

      He parked the truck on a flat space of ground and waited for the cattle to gather nearby. By now fat flakes of snow were splattering against the windshield and dusting the backs of the black cattle. It had been years since Bowie had seen snow and experienced cold weather. He’d almost forgotten the hardship it placed on the livestock and the men who cared for them.

      After Rafe had tossed blocks of hay to the cattle, he climbed back into the warm cab and held his gloved hands toward the vents on the dashboard.

      “Sorry I can’t help,” Bowie told him. “I might not be much of a rancher, but I do know how to spread hay.”

      “You know how to do more than spread hay,” Rafe said. “Remember when we were kids and we found that cow down by the river? She was trying to calve and was in really bad shape.”

      “Yeah. I remember. I argued with you that there wasn’t enough time to go back to the ranch and get help. We pulled the calf ourselves.”

      “And everything turned out good,” Rafe said with a wry grin. “I was fifteen and you were only ten. But you had more guts than I did, little brother. If you hadn’t been there with me, I would have lit out for the ranch.”

      “Dad didn’t call it guts. He called it being reckless,” Bowie reminded him.

      “Yeah, but he was happy.” He pointed to the heifers. “How do they look to you?”

      “Good. Except for those two standing over at the edge. They’re not eating and their ears are drooped. They look a little sick to me.”

      Grinning, Rafe was about to reach over and slap Bowie’s shoulder when he suddenly remembered his injuries and pulled back his hand. “Just what I expected. You haven’t forgotten a thing about being a cowboy. Welcome home, Bowie.”

      Bowie started to remind him that he was only going to be home for a few weeks, but the smile on Rafe’s face was such a happy one, he just didn’t have the heart to ruin the moment.

      Rafe, and everyone else in the family, would learn soon enough that he was heading back to the hotshot crew just as soon as his body had returned to working order.

      * * *

      Ava was still working the emergency room at Tahoe General when her friend and fellow nurse, Paige Winters, entered the sheeted cubicle where Ava was adjusting an IV on an elderly female patient suffering with flu symptoms.

      “Are you nearly finished here?” Paige asked.

      Ava glanced around at the redheaded nurse dressed in navy-blue scrubs. She was a tall, slender woman with a face dominated by a pair of clear gray eyes. Normally there was a perpetual smile on her face, but at the moment her lips were pressed together in a frustrated line.

      “Yes, this patient is being admitted. Why? You need help with something?”

      Paige jerked her thumb toward the opposite end of the room. “An unruly male. He slipped on an icy sidewalk and cut his head. He thinks he’s dying and demands the doctor see him this instant.”

      “Dr. Sherman is busy with a cardiac incident right now. And Dr. Garza is tending to a toddler with whooping cough. The patient will just have to wait his turn.”

      “I wish you’d tell him that.”

      “You can’t?” Ava asked her.

      Paige cast her a pleading smile. “I’m not nearly as good with a naughty man as you are.”

      That was because she didn’t think of them as men. She thought of them as people. Except for the one she’d met this morning, Ava thought. Bowie was so potent she’d not been able to think of him as anything but a tough hunk of man.

      “All right. I’ll deal with him.”

      After hanging the patient’s chart on the end of the bed, Ava left the cubicle with Paige following close on her heels. When the two of them entered the compartment with the head injury, she found a young man sitting on the side of the narrow examining table holding a huge cotton pad to the side of his head. He was dressed in a sports jacket and tie. The knot at his throat was askew and blood splattered the toes of his wing tips.

      “What the hell kind of place is this anyway?” he yelled the moment Ava stepped up to him. “I’m bleeding all over the place and nobody cares!”

      Ava glanced over to see Paige rolling her eyes.

      “Other than taking his vitals, Mr. Dobson here refused to let me touch him,” Paige explained. “He’d rather keep bleeding.”

      “I came here to have my head treated by a doctor!” he practically shouted. “If I’d wanted a nurse to take care of me I’d have driven over to my grandma’s house.”

      “Is your grandma a nurse?” Paige asked.

      “No. But she’d know a damned sight more than you two. All I’ve seen you two do is carry clipboards around in circles.”

      “See,” Paige said to Ava. “He’s a real sweetheart.”

      Ava gave him a wide, phony smile. “This is an emergency room, Mr. Dobson. The most critical patients come first. If you don’t want to wait your turn to see the doctor, then perhaps you’d better let your grandma take care of you. Just try not to bleed all over the floor as you leave. I don’t want any of the nurses slipping and falling because of you.”

      While the man spluttered with outrage, Ava urged her coworker out of the cubicle. “I hope you wrote intoxicated on his chart,” she said under her breath.

      Paige frowned. “I didn’t notice alcohol. But now that you mention it, his eyes are pretty glassy. You don’t think that’s a result of banging his head?”

      “Trust me. He’s belted back a few. And he isn’t going anywhere. He’s too much of a wimp.”

      “Okay. You’ve been a nurse a lot longer than me. I’ll make a notation on his chart. Thanks, Ava.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I need to go check on another patient. I’ll see you in the locker room in thirty minutes.”

      Ava looked at her with surprise. “Thirty minutes? Is it time for the shift change already?”

      Paige grinned. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

      The past nine hours of Ava’s evening shift in the ER had passed in a blur. The half hour she’d spent in Bowie’s bedroom this morning had felt like a whole day and then some. Maybe if she’d gone at the job of treating the firefighter like any other patient, the time with him would’ve spun by. But Bowie Calhoun wasn’t just any other patient. He was not like any man she’d met before.

      * * *

      A half hour later, in the nurses’ locker room, the two women were changing into street clothes.

      “So you want to go get a drink or something to eat?” Paige asked as she slipped on a heavy coat. “I’m starving.”

      Sitting on a wooden bench, Ava pulled a pair of knee-high boots over her jeans. “Not tonight. It will be one o’clock before I get home and climb into bed. And I need to be out at the Silver Horn by ten.”

      “Oh. I’d forgotten about you taking on that extra job.” The redhead wrapped a long knit scarf around her neck. “Have you taken a look outside? It’s been snowing for the past two hours. You might not be able to drive out to the ranch in the morning.”

      That might be a relief, Ava thought. Or would it? If she didn’t see Bowie in the morning, she’d think about him for the rest of the day. On the other hand, everything might be different in the morning, she thought hopefully. She might take one look at the hunky ex-marine and not feel anything at all, except the need to care for a patient.

      “If the highways are treacherous, then I’m to call and someone from the ranch will come pick me up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drive me out there.”

      Paige