Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade

      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 of beige, with the woodworking all stained oak. Crisp tieback white curtains bordered the two large windows on either side of the television, with scalloped shades pulled down to the sills of both.

      The room was comfortable. Functional. Charmingly old-fashioned.

      He liked it.

      And he wondered if this had been Carly Winters’s own room.

      Probably not, he decided. It didn’t smell the way she did.

      Not that it smelled anything but clean. But he sort of wished it had that faintly lingering scent of honey and almonds that he’d caught a whiff of when he’d carried her to the porch. It was a nice smell.

      A nice smell to go with a nice-looking lady, he thought.

      Sure, she’d shown the wear and tear of a long night in an emergency room. But despite that, she was still a head-turner.

      Besides smelling great, her hair was so smooth and silky and shiny, it had made him want to yank that pencil out of it and watch the tresses drift like layers of silk down around her face.

      A face that glowed with flawless, satiny skin.

      She had a rosebud of a mouth that was pink and perfect and much too appealing even without lipstick. She also had a cute, perky nose that was dotted with only a few pale freckles he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been so close.

      Artfully arched eyebrows and long, thick lashes accentuated stunning, unusual eyes, too. Brown eyes, but shot through with golden streaks that made them the color of topaz. Sparkling topaz.

      Her body hadn’t been anything to ignore, either. She was on the small side, weighing next to nothing when he’d lifted her. But petite stature or not, when she’d put her arm around his shoulder to help bear some of the burden, he’d felt a more than adequate breast press enticingly into his shoulder.

      Oh yeah, it was all nice. Very nice…

      And strange that he should remember everything about her so vividly.

      Particularly when the other woman he’d met that morning was just a vague blur in his mind. He wasn’t even sure he’d recognize the other woman again if he met her on the street, and for the life of him he couldn’t recall her name.

      Yet every detail of Carly Winters was right there in his mind’s eye.

      Making him stare up at the ceiling with a smile on his face…

      Cut it out, he told himself.

      But that was easier said than done.

      In fact, it was damn difficult to get her out of his thoughts, he discovered when he tried.

      Maybe it was just that he was in her house, in a room that might have been hers. In a bed she might have slept in…

      The idea of that stirred even more uninvited responses inside him, and he wondered where the hell it was all coming from.

      But wherever this reaction was coming from, he put a concerted effort into chasing it away, reminding himself that he hadn’t moved to Elk Creek to think…or feel…things like he was thinking and feeling at that moment. It just wasn’t in his game plan.

      He’d come to the small town to concentrate on practicing medicine and to raise his daughter hands-on, full-time, which was why it had been so important to live a stone’s throw from where he worked. And he wasn’t interested in trying to add a woman to the picture. He’d already made that mistake once, and he wasn’t going to make it again.

      But not even the reminder of his second marriage, which was the worst thing he’d ever done in his life and in Evie Lee’s, not even his determination to conquer those thoughts of Carly helped to get the image of her out of his head. Or stopped those stirred-up feelings that went with them.

      “Must be the house,” he muttered, convincing himself that the place was somehow infused with the essence of her, and that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about her, remembering how she’d looked, smelled, felt in his arms.

      But as soon as she was gone and he and Evie Lee had settled in and taken over the place, all that would be different. The house would be theirs and Carly Winters would only be a faint memory.

      He was sure of it.

      He just wondered how long it would take for her to be well enough to leave.

      And that was when he realized he hadn’t even asked what was wrong with her or what kind of an accident she’d had.

      “Some good doctor you are,” he chastised himself.

      But he was a good doctor. Ordinarily. In fact, he’d been named Doctor of the Year for the past four years running. Yet meeting Carly Winters had thrown him off-kilter.

      Oh yeah, something very strange was going on, all right.

      But strange or not, topaz eyes or not, honey-scented hair or not, it didn’t matter. Before long Carly Winters would be gone and he was going to be the best damn doctor Elk Creek had ever had. And, more importantly, the best damn dad Evie Lee could possibly have.

      And that was that.

      Except that even as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress his first thought was whether Carly was up and about yet.

      And if their paths might cross again anytime soon…

      Carly might have slept longer if not for the quiet humming that was coming from beside her bed.

      There was no real tune to it and it was terribly off-key, so she knew from the start that it wasn’t coming from the clock radio on the nightstand. And since no one had any reason to be in the cottage at all, let alone while she slept, the sound brought her abruptly awake.

      Her eyes opened to the sight of the youngest of her new tenants sitting patiently on the dated, barrel-backed chair that was against the wall to the left of the bed, facing it.

      Evie Lee was dressed just as she’d been when Carly had first seen her on the porch—short pink overalls and a white T-shirt dotted with rosebuds. But her wavy blond hair was matted and standing up on one side as if that were the side she’d slept on and hadn’t bothered to brush or comb since getting up.

      If Carly had to bet on it, she’d wager that Evie Lee had woken up and come exploring without her father’s knowledge. He was probably still asleep. Or at least thought his daughter was.

      “Hi,” the little girl said when she saw Carly’s eyes open.

      “Hi.”

      “I got tired of sleepin’ and I came to visit you. Is that okay?”

      “You can visit me any time at all,” Carly answered.

      Evie Lee glanced around. “I like this place. It’s like a big playhouse.”

      That was true enough. The cottage was one large room—with the exception of a separate bathroom. Only the furniture divided the open space into sections. A double bed, the antique oak nightstand and the visitor’s chair Evie Lee was occupying made up the bedroom. A round, pedestaled café table with two cane-backed chairs and a wet bar were the dining area. A pale-blue plaid love seat, matching overstuffed chair and a television comprised the living room, although the TV was positioned so that it could be seen from anywhere in the room.

      The cottage had a history as a guest house and also as a sometimes hospital room where her father had put up patients he’d wanted to keep a close eye on.

      It was pleasant and airy, though,