Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade

without fanfare just then. The small enclave’s main street—Center Street—was still deserted as Deana drove all the way to where it circled the town square. She turned at the corner taken up by the old Molner Mansion that had been converted into the local medical facility and stopped at the first house behind it. Carly’s house. The house her mother had left to her after her father’s death, when her mother had decided to move in with Carly’s two maiden aunts.

      It was a moderate-size yellow clapboard farmhouse with a big front porch, a second level slightly smaller than the lower and a man and a little girl at the oval-glassed front door.

      “Looks like you have company,” Deana observed as she drove around the station wagon parked at the curb and pulled into the driveway.

      “He’s not supposed to be here until the middle of the morning,” Carly groaned.

      “Apparently he arrived ahead of schedule.”

      “And I’ll bet I’m a mess.”

      Deana reached over and flipped down the visor on the passenger’s side so Carly could get a glimpse of herself.

      Carly sat up straighter and saw the unruly ends of her straight, shoulder-length auburn hair sticking up every which way at her crown. To get it out of her face she’d twisted it into a knot at the back of her head and jammed a pencil through it.

      The blush she’d applied for the party was a thing of the past, although luckily her skin had retained enough color of its own not to leave her looking sickly. Her mauve lipstick was history, too. Her mascara was still in place on longish lashes over topaz-colored eyes, but on the whole she knew she was the worse for wear.

      “Not much I can do about it now,” she muttered to her reflection as Deana put the idling car in park and got out.

      “If you need Carly Winters, I have her right here,” Deana called to the people on the porch. “Just give her a minute.”

      Then Deana opened the rear door and went around to the trunk for Carly’s crutches while Carly slid to the end of the seat to wait for them.

      “Hi,” she said feebly to her guests.

      Both the man and the little girl, who looked to be about five or six, had moved from the door to stand at the railing that edged the porch with turned spindles.

      The man raised one large hand to acknowledge her greeting.

      “Wow,” Deana said under her breath as she returned with the crutches, nodding over her shoulder only enough to let Carly know the exclamation was a commentary on the man himself.

      As if Carly wouldn’t have guessed.

      He was tall, no less than six-two, and he looked much more like a muscled, ranch-rugged cowboy than the town’s new doctor she assumed him to be.

      His hair was a pale, golden brown he wore short all over. His face had the distinctive McDermot lean angles and rawboned beauty Carly knew only too well since his brothers were residents of Elk Creek. His nose was long and thin and perfectly sculpted. His jaw was square and strong. And his lips were thin, kind and slightly sardonic all at once, not to mention way, way more sexy than Carly wanted to notice.

      “Need some help?” he asked when he noticed Carly’s dilemma, coming off the porch on long, thick legs that were bowed just enough to look as if they’d spent more time straddling a saddle than standing at an examining table.

      He wore faded jeans that rode low on narrow hips, and a plain white T-shirt that stretched tight across broad shoulders, powerful pectorals and bulging biceps that made Carly’s stomach do a little flip-flop when she got a closer glimpse of them as he joined her and Deana.

      “I think I can manage,” Carly said, trying to remember what she’d been taught at the hospital about maneuvering the crutches when her brain was really in a haze due to the man’s head-to-toe staggeringly masculine glory.

      “You must be Baxter McDermot,” she said feebly on her way onto the crutches.

      “Bax,” he amended.

      “Doctor McDermot,” Deana said with a hint of flirting in her tone that, for some reason, rubbed Carly wrong.

      In spite of it she said, “I’m Carly Winters and this is Deana Carlson.”

      “I apologize for showing up so early,” he said after a confirming nod of his handsome head. “We were in a motel for the night with World War III going on in the room next to us. We finally gave up tryin’ to sleep and figured we might as well finish the trip and catch a few winks when we got here.”

      “Sure. Of course. There’s just been a little setback on this end,” Carly said, leaning her weight on the crutches and honing in on gorgeous sea-foam green eyes that stamped him a McDermot without a doubt.

      “You aren’t leaving town and don’t want to hand your house over to us,” he guessed with a glance down at her bandaged ankle.

      “I’m afraid I had an accident last night and I’m going to have to put off leaving until I’m healed up.”

      “It’s okay. We can stay out at the ranch,” he offered congenially.

      It might have been better if he’d been nasty about it. If he’d reminded her that they had a contract in the form of the lease that guaranteed she would turn the house over to him today.

      Instead, he couldn’t have been nicer about it, offering to go to the ranch he and his brothers and sister now owned after having taken it over from their grandfather.

      The trouble was, Carly knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do or he wouldn’t have rented her house in the first place. He’d arranged for the lease because he’d wanted to be closer to the medical facility where he would work—one of the same purposes the house had served for her father when he’d been the town doctor. And there was Bax McDermot’s daughter, too. He was determined to be near her so he’d be available to her during the daytime.

      Carly knew all this because the real estate agent who had arranged the rental agreement had explained it to her. And now she felt bad that her change of plans had complicated his. She didn’t have to be told that if he had to stay out at the McDermot ranch, he’d be pulled in two directions. Not to mention that he wouldn’t have this precious time before he actually began seeing patients to get himself and his daughter settled into the house.

      He was being such a good sport about it, it just made her feel all the more guilty.

      “Listen,” she said. “A deal is a deal and according to ours the house is yours as of today. There’s a guest cottage just behind it that my dad sometimes used as a makeshift hospital. I could stay there until I’m healed enough to leave and you can have the house. It’ll just mean sharing the kitchen, but it will also give me a chance to show you around properly and teach you the workings of the place.”

      “I don’t want to put you out. Maybe I could take the cottage,” he offered.

      “It’s only big enough for one. Besides, I don’t mind. It’ll actually be easier for me to get around without having to use the stairs in the main house. And it will only be for a little while. As soon as I’m back on two feet I’m leaving. But in the meantime, things won’t have to be messed up for you.”

      He seemed to study her for a sign that she meant what she said.

      She aided the cause by adding, “Really, I don’t mind.”

      He finally conceded. “If you’re sure…”

      “I am.”

      “Okay, then. Great,” he agreed with a slight shrug of broad shoulders and a smile that put dimples in both cheeks and made Carly’s head go light.

      Not that her reaction had anything to do with him, she told herself in a hurry. She was just overly tired.

      “Do you need me?” Deana asked.

      Only in that