One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher. Diana Palmer

you win the British Open? You don’t even play tennis!”

      “Don’t confuse me with a bunch of irrelevant facts.” He sank back into his pillows and grimaced. “Besides, the pain is going to kill me long before they find any miraculous surgical techniques.” He closed his eyes with a long sigh. “One day without pain,” he said quietly. “Just one day. I’d do almost anything for it.”

      She knew, as many other people didn’t, that chronic pain brought on a kind of depression that was pervasive and dangerous. Even the drugs he took for pain only took the edge off. Nothing they’d ever given him had stopped it.

      “What you need is a nice chocolate milkshake and some evil, fattening, over-salted French fries and a cholesterol-dripping hamburger,” she said.

      He made a tortured face. “Go ahead, torment me!”

      She grinned. “I overpaid the hardware bill and got sent a ten dollar refund,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I’ll go to the bank, cash it and we’ll eat out tonight!”

      “You beauty!” he exclaimed.

      She curtsied. “I’ll be back before you know it.” She glanced at her watch. “Oops, better hurry or the bank will be closed!”

      She grabbed her old denim jacket and her purse and ran out the door.

      The ancient car was temperamental. It had over two hundred thousand miles on it, and it looked like a piece of junk. She coaxed it into life and grimaced as she read the gas gauge. She had a fourth of a tank left. Well, it was only a five-minute drive to Jacobsville from Comanche Wells. She’d have enough to get her to work and back for one more day. Then she’d worry about gas. The ten-dollar check would have come in handy for that, but Kell needed cheering up more. These spells of depression were very bad for him, and they were becoming more frequent. She’d have done anything to keep him optimistic. Even walking to work.

      She cashed the check with two minutes to spare before the bank closed. Then she drove to the local fast-food joint and ordered burgers and fries and milkshakes. She paid for them—had five cents left over—and pulled out into the road. Then two things went wrong at once. The engine quit and a car flew out of a side road and right into the passenger side of her car.

      She sat, shaking, amid the ruins of her car, with chocolate milkshake all over her jeans and jacket, and pieces of hamburgers on the dirty floorboard. It was quite an impact. She couldn’t move for a minute. She sat, staring at the dash, wondering how she’d manage without a car, because her insurance only covered liability. She had nothing that would even pay to repair the car, if it could be repaired.

      She turned her head in slow motion and looked at the car that had hit her. The driver got out, staggering. He laughed. That explained why he’d shot through a stop sign without braking. He leaned against his ruined fender and laughed some more.

      Cappie wondered if he had insurance. She also wondered if she didn’t have a tire iron that she could get to, before the police came to save the man.

      Her car door was jerked open. She looked up into a pair of steely ice-blue eyes.

      “Are you all right?” he asked.

      She blinked. Dr. Rydel. She wondered where he’d come from.

      “Cappie, are you all right?” he repeated. His voice was very soft, nothing like the glitter in those pale eyes.

      “I think so,” she said. Time seemed to have slowed to a stop. She couldn’t get her sluggish brain to work. “I was taking hamburgers and shakes home to Kell,” she said. “He was so depressed. I thought it would cheer him up. I was worried about spending the money on treats instead of gas.” She laughed dully. “I guess I won’t need to worry about gas, now,” she added, looking around at the damage.

      “You’re lucky you weren’t in one of the newer little cars. You’d be dead.”

      She looked toward the other driver. “Dr. Rydel, do you have a tire tool I could borrow?” she asked conversationally.

      He saw where she was looking. “You don’t want to upset the police, Cappie.”

      “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

      Before he could reply, a Jacobsville police car roared up, lights flashing, and stopped. Obviously somebody in the fast-food place had called them.

      Officer Kilraven climbed out of the police car and headed right for Cappie.

      “Oh, good, it’s him,” Cappie said. “He’ll scare the other driver to death.”

      Kilraven bent down on Cappie’s side of the car. “You okay? Need an ambulance?”

      “Heavens, no,” she said quickly. As if she could afford to pay for that! “I’m fine. Just shaken up.” She nodded toward the giggling driver who’d hit her. “Dr. Rydel won’t loan me a tire iron, so could you shoot that man in the foot for me, please? I don’t even have collision insurance and it wasn’t my fault. I’ll be walking to work on account of him.”

      “I can’t shoot him,” Kilraven said with a twinkle in his silver eyes. “But if he tries to hit me, I’ll take him to detention in the trunk of my car. Okay?”

      She brightened. “Okay!”

      He straightened and said something to Dr. Rydel. A minute later, he marched over to the drunk man, smelled his breath, made a face and asked him to perform a sobriety test, which the subject refused. That would mean a blood test at the hospital, which Kilraven was fairly certain the man would fail. He told him he was under arrest and cuffed him. Cappie vaguely heard him calling for a wrecker and backup.

      “A wrecker?” She groaned. “I can’t afford a wrecker.”

      “Just don’t worry about it right now. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

      He helped her out of the car. She retrieved her purse, wincing. “I hope he has a Texas-size hangover when he wakes up tomorrow,” she said coldly, watching Kilraven putting the prisoner in the back of his squad car. The man was still laughing.

      “Oh, I hope he gets pregnant,” Dr. Rydel mused, “and it’s twins.”

      She laughed huskily. “Even better. Thanks.”

      He put her into his big Land Rover. “Wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”

      She sat quietly, fascinated with the interior of the vehicle. It conjured up visions of the African veldt, of elephants and giraffes and wildebeest. She wished she could afford even a twenty-year-old version of this beast. She’d never have to worry about bad roads again.

      He was back shortly with a bag and a cup carrier. He put them in her lap. “Two hamburgers and fries and two chocolate shakes.”

      “How…?”

      “Well, it’s easier to tell when you’re wearing parts of them,” he pointed out, indicating chocolate milk stains and mustard and catsup and pieces of food all over her clothes. “Fasten your seat belt.”

      She did. “I’ll pay you back,” she said firmly.

      He grinned. “Whatever.”

      He started the engine and drove her out of town. “You’ll have to direct me. I don’t know where you live.”

      She named the road, and then the street. They didn’t talk. He pulled up in the front yard of the dinky little house, with its peeling paint and rickety steps and sagging eaves.

      He grimaced.

      “Hey, don’t knock it,” she said. “It’s got a pretty good roof and big rooms and it’s paid for. A distant cousin willed it to us.”

      “Nice of him. Do you have any other cousins?”

      “No. It’s just me and Kell.”

      “No other siblings?”

      She