Wild Horse Springs. Jodi Thomas

but I never stepped foot in a park.” He could feel her unbuttoning his shirt. Her hand moved in, gently gliding across his ribs. “I put in a few years as a Texas Ranger.”

      When he gasped for air, she hesitated, then whispered, “One broken rib.” A moment later she added, “Two.”

      He forced slow long breaths as he felt the cold night air pressing against his bare chest. Her hand crossed over his bruised skin, stopping at the scars he’d collected that night at the Rio Grande. The night he bled into the mud. The night he first heard the devils hiding in the shadows.

      She lifted the light. “Bullet wounds?” she questioned more to herself than him. “You’ve been hurt bad before, Ranger Winslow.”

      “Yeah,” he said as he took back control of his mind and made light of a gunfight that almost ended his life. “I was fighting outlaws along the Rio Grande. I swear it seemed like that battle was almost two hundred years ago. Back when Captain Hays ordered his men to cross the river with guns blazing. We went across just like that, only chasing drug runners and not cattle rustlers like they did back then. But we were breaking the law not to cross just the same.”

      He closed his eyes and saw his three friends. They’d gone through training together and were as close as brothers. They wanted to fight for right. They thought they were invincible that night on the border, just like Captain Hays’s men must have believed.

      Only those rangers had won the battle. They all returned to Texas. Cody had carried his best friend back across the water that night three years ago, but Hobbs hadn’t made it. He’d died in the shallow water a few feet from Cody. Fletcher took two bullets, but helped Gomez back across. Both men died.

      “I’ve heard of that story about the famous Captain Hays.” She brought him back from a battle that had haunted him every night for three years. “Legend is that not one ranger was shot. They rode across the Rio screaming and firing. The bandits thought there were a hundred of them coming. But, cowboy, if you rode with Hays, that’d make you a ghost tonight, and you feel like flesh and blood to me. Today’s rangers are not allowed to cross.”

      Her hand was moving over his chest lightly, caressing now, calming him, letting him know that she was near. He relaxed and wished they were somewhere warm.

      “You’re going to make it, Winslow. I have a feeling you’re too tough to die easy.” The lights of a helicopter circled above them.

      He didn’t want to think about dying or being hurt. He pushed the ghosts who always followed him aside and focused on her. “If I live, how about we get together and talk sometime? Any woman who has six kids, can handle injuries in the dark and recognizes bullet wounds is bound to be interesting.”

      She laughed. “You got yourself a date, Cody.”