Christmas with the Rancher: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means. Diana Palmer

had to bite his lip to keep from saying something.

      Maddie was out in the yard with her garbage can lid. This time Pumpkin had gotten out of the pen when she was looking. He’d jumped a seven-foot-high fence. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’d never have believed it.

      “Pumpkin, you fool!” she yelled at him. “Why can’t you stay where I put you? Get back in there!”

      But he ran around her. This time he wasn’t even trying to spur her. He ran toward the road. It was his favorite place, for some reason, despite the heat that made the ribbon of black asphalt hotter than a frying pan.

      “You come back here!” she yelled.

      Just as she started after him, Odalie’s foot hit the accelerator pedal too hard, Cort called out, Odalie looked at him instead of the road…

      Maddie heard screaming. She was numb. She opened her eyes and there was Cort, his face contorted with horror. Beside him, Odalie was screaming and crying.

      “Just lie still,” Cort said hoarsely. “The ambulance is on the way. Just lie still, baby.”

      “I hit her, I hit her!” Odalie screamed. “I didn’t see her until it was too late! I hit her!”

      “Odalie, you have to calm down. You’re not helping!” Cort snapped at her. “Find something to cover her. Hurry!”

      “Yes…there’s a blanket…in the backseat, isn’t there…?”

      Odalie fetched it with cold, shaking hands. She drew it over Maddie’s prone body. There was blood. So much blood. She felt as if she were going to faint, or throw up. Then she saw Maddie’s face and tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh, Maddie,” she sobbed, “I’m so sorry!”

      “Find something to prop her head, in case her spine is injured,” Cort gritted. He was terrified. He brushed back Maddie’s blond hair, listened to her ragged breathing, saw her face go even paler. “Please hurry!” he groaned.

      There wasn’t anything. Odalie put her beautiful white leather purse on one side of Maddie’s head without a single word, knowing it would ruin the leather and not caring at all. She put her knit overblouse on the other, crumpled up. She knelt in the dirt road beside Maddie and sat down, tears in her eyes. She touched Maddie’s arm. “Help is coming,” she whispered brokenly. “You hold on, Maddie. Hold on!”

      Maddie couldn’t believe it. Her worst enemy was sitting beside her in a vision of a horrifically expensive pink silk dress that was going to be absolutely ruined, and apparently didn’t mind at all.

      She tried to speak. “Pum… Pumpkin?” she rasped.

      Cort looked past her and grimaced. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

      Maddie started to cry, great heaving sobs.

      “We’ll get you another rooster,” Cort said at once. “I’ll train him to attack me. Anything. You just have to…hold on, baby,” he pleaded. “Hold on!”

      She couldn’t breathe. “Hurts,” she whispered as sensation rushed back in and she began to shudder.

      Cort was in hell. There was no other word that would express what he felt as he saw her lying there in bloody clothing, maybe dying, and he couldn’t do one damned thing to help her. He was sick to his soul.

      He brushed back her hair, trying to remember anything else, anything that would help her until the ambulance arrived.

      “Call them again!” Odalie said firmly.

      He did. The operator assured them that the ambulance was almost there. She began asking questions, which Cort did his best to answer.

      “Where’s your great-aunt?” he asked Maddie softly.

      “Store,” she choked out.

      “It’s okay, I’ll call her,” he said when she looked upset.

      Odalie had come out of her stupor and she was checking for injuries while Cort talked to the 911 operator. “I don’t see anything that looks dangerous, but I’m afraid to move her,” she said, ignoring the blood in her efforts to give aid. “There are some abrasions, pretty raw ones. Maddie, can you move your arms and legs?” she asked in a voice so tender that Maddie thought maybe she really was just dreaming all this.

      She moved. “Yes,” she said. “But…it hurts…”

      “Move your ankles.”

      “Okay.”

      Odalie looked at Cort with horror.

      “I moved…them,” Maddie said, wincing. “Hurts!”

      “Please, ask them to hurry,” Cort groaned into the phone.

      “No need,” Odalie said, noting the red-and-white vehicle that was speeding toward them.

      “No sirens?” Cort asked blankly.

      “They don’t run the sirens or lights unless they have to,” the operator explained kindly. “It scares people to death and can cause wrecks. They’ll use them to get the victim to the hospital, though, you bet,” she reassured him.

      “Thanks so much,” Cort said.

      “I hope she does well.”

      “Me, too,” he replied huskily and hung up.

      Odalie took one of the EMTs aside. “She can’t move her feet,” she whispered.

      He nodded. “We won’t let her know.”

      They went to the patient.

      Maddie wasn’t aware of anything after they loaded her into the ambulance on a backboard. They talked to someone on the radio and stuck a needle into her arm. She slept.

      When she woke again, she was in a hospital bed with two people hovering. Cort and Odalie. Odalie’s dress was dirty and bloodstained.

      “Your…beautiful dress,” Maddie whispered, wincing.

      Odalie went to the bed. She felt very strange. Her whole life she’d lived as if there was nobody else around. She’d never been in the position of nursing anybody—her parents and brother had never even sprained a hand. She’d been petted, spoiled, praised, but never depended upon.

      Now here was this woman, this enemy, whom her actions had placed almost at death’s door. And suddenly she was needed. Really needed.

      Maddie’s great-aunt had been called. She was in the waiting room, but in no condition to be let near the patient. The hospital staff had to calm her down, she was so terrified.

      They hadn’t told Maddie yet. When Sadie was calmer, they’d let her in to see the injured woman.

      “Your great-aunt is here, too,” Odalie said gently. “You’re going to be fine.”

      “Fine.” Maddie felt tears run down her cheeks. “So much…to be done at the ranch, and I’m stove up…!”

      “I’ll handle it,” Cort said firmly. “No worries there.”

      “Pumpkin,” she sobbed. “He was horrible. Just horrible. But I loved him.” She cried harder.

      Odalie leaned down and kissed her unkempt hair. “We’ll find you another horrible rooster. Honest.”

      Maddie sobbed. “You hate me.”

      “No,” Odalie said softly. “No, I don’t. And I’m so sorry that I put you in here. I was driving.” She bit her lip. “I wasn’t watching the road,” she said stiffly. “God, I’m sorry!”