One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher. Diana Palmer

freedom by making trouble for Cappie again.

      Dr. Rydel took her to a carnival Friday night. She was shocked not only at the invitation, but at the choice of outings.

      “You like carnivals?” she’d exclaimed.

      “Sure! I love the rides and cotton candy.” He’d smiled with reminiscence. “My grandmother used to save her egg money to take me to any carnival that came through Jacobsville when I was a kid. She’d even go on the rides with me. I get tickled even now when I hear somebody talk about grandmothers who bake cookies and knit and sit in rocking chairs. My grandmother was a newspaper reporter. She was a real firecracker.”

      She was remembering the conversation as they walked down the sawdust-covered aisles between booths where carnies were enticing customers to pitch pennies or throw baseballs to win prizes.

      “What are you brooding about?” he teased.

      She looked up, laughing. “Sorry. I was remembering what you said about your grandmother. Did you spend a lot of time with her?”

      His face closed up.

      “Sorry,” she said again, flushing. “I shouldn’t have asked something so personal.”

      He stopped in the aisle and looked down at her, enjoying the glow of her skin against the pale yellow sweater she was wearing with jeans, her blond hair long and soft around her shoulders.

      His big, lean hand went to her hair and toyed with it, sending sweet chills down her spine when he moved a step closer. “She raised me,” he said quietly. “My mother and father never got along. They separated two or three times a year, and then fought about who got to keep me. My mother loved me, but my father only wanted me to spite her.” His face hardened. “When I made him mad, he took it out on my pets. He shot one of my dogs when I talked back to him. He wouldn’t let me take the dog to a veterinarian, and I couldn’t save it. That’s why I decided to become a vet.”

      “I did wonder,” she confessed. “You talk about your mother, but never about your father. Or your stepfather.” Her hands went to his shirtfront. She could feel the warm muscle and hair under the soft cotton.

      He sighed. His hand covered one of hers, smoothing over her fingernails. “My stepfather thought that being a vet was a sissy profession, and he said so, frequently. He didn’t like animals, either.”

      “Some sissy profession,” she scoffed. “I guess he never had to wrestle down a sick steer that weighed several hundred pounds.”

      He chuckled. “No, he never did. We got along somewhat. But I don’t miss seeing him. I had hard feelings against him for a long time, for letting my mother get so sick that medical science couldn’t save her. But sometimes we blame people when it’s just fate that bad things happen. Remember the old saying, ‘man proposes and God disposes’? It’s pretty much true.”

      “Ah, you advocate being a leaf on the river, grasshopper,” she said in a heavily accented tone.

      “You lunatic,” he laughed, but he bent and kissed her nose. “Yes. I do advocate being a leaf on the river. Sometimes you have to trust that things will work out the way they’re meant to, not the way you want them to.”

      “Why do you hate women?”

      His eyebrows arched.

      “Everybody knows that you do. You even told me so.” She flushed a little as she remembered when he’d told her so; the first time he’d kissed her.

      “Remember that, do you?” he teased softly. “You don’t know a lot about kissing,” he added.

      She moved restlessly. “I don’t get in much practice.”

      “Oh, I think I can help you with that,” he said in a deep, husky tone. “And for the record, I don’t hate you.”

      “Thank you very much,” she said demurely, and peered up at him through her lashes.

      He bent slowly to her mouth. “You’re very welcome,” he whispered. His lips teased just above hers, coaxing her to lift her chin, so that he had better access to her mouth.

      Before he could kiss her, a deep voice mused from behind him, “Lewd behavior in public will get you arrested.”

      “Kilraven,” Bentley groaned, turning to face the man. “What are you doing here?”

      Kilraven, in full uniform, grinned at the discomfort in their faces as he moved closer and lowered his voice. “I’m investigating possible cotton candy fraud.”

      “Excuse me?” Cappie said.

      “I’m going to taste the cotton candy, and the candy apples, and make sure they’re not using illegal counterfeit sugar.”

      They both stared at him as if he’d gone mad.

      He shrugged. “I’m really off duty, I just haven’t gone home to change. I like carnivals,” he added, laughing. “Jon, my brother, and I used to go to them when we were kids. It brings back happy memories.”

      “They have a sharpshooting target,” Bentley told him.

      “I don’t waste my unbelievable talent on games,” Kilraven scoffed.

      “I am in awe of your modesty,” Bentley said.

      “Why, thank you,” Kilraven replied. “I consider it one of my best traits, and I do have quite a few of them.” He peered past them. Winnie Sinclair, in jeans and a pretty pink sweater and matching denim jacket, was walking around the penny-pitching booth with her brother, Boone Sinclair, and his wife, Cappie’s coworker, Keely. Kilraven looked decidedly uneasy. “I’ll see you around,” he added.

      But instead of going to the cotton candy booth, he turned on his heel and walked right out of the carnival.

      “How odd,” Cappie murmured, watching him leave.

      “Not so odd,” Bentley replied. His eyes were on Winnie Sinclair, who’d just seen Kilraven glare in her direction and then walk away. She looked devastated. “Winnie Sinclair is sweet on him,” he explained, “and he’s even a worse woman hater than I am.”

      Cappie followed his glance. Keely smiled and waved. She waved back. Winnie Sinclair smiled wanly, and turned back to the booth. “Poor thing,” she murmured. “She’s so rich, and so unhappy.”

      “Money doesn’t make you happy,” Bentley pointed out.

      “Well, the lack of it can make you pretty miserable,” she said absently.

      His hand reached down and locked into hers, bringing her surprised eyes back up to meet his.

      She was hesitant, because Keely was grinning in their direction.

      “I don’t care about public opinion,” Bentley pointed out, “and she wouldn’t dare tease me in my own practice,” he added with a grin.

      Cappie laughed. “Okay. I won’t care, either.”

      His strong fingers linked with hers, while he held her gaze. “I can’t remember the last time I smiled so much,” he said. “I like being with you, Cappie.”

      She smiled. “I like being with you, too.”

      They were still smiling at each other when two running children bumped into them and broke the spell.

      Bentley drove her home, but he didn’t move to open the door after he cut off the lights and the engine. He unfastened her seat belt, and his own, and pulled her across the seat and into his lap. Before she could speak, his mouth was hard on hers, grinding into it, and his fingers were lazily searching under the soft hem of her sweater.

      She wanted to protest. It was too soon. But he found the hooks on her bra and loosened them with one quick motion of his hand. Then he found soft flesh and teased around it with such expertise that she squirmed backward to give him access.

      “Too