Rancher's Covert Christmas

Erin scooted aside to allow the sobbing woman access to the ranch hand, though she hated the fact that the woman was clearly upsetting Dave again. She glanced at Zane, meaning to send him a silent message with her facial expression.

As if sensing her attention, Zane raised his head, his gaze clashing with hers. She indicated her concern over the woman’s effect on the patient with a twitch of her brow and quick side glance. Zane gave her the merest of nods, then put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Helen, calm down. Help is coming. Right now, we have to keep him comfortable and breathing deeply.”

“Dave,” Erin said, gaining the hand’s attention again. “With me. Inhale...” She demonstrated the technique again while Helen watched. “Can you keep him going?” she asked Helen and the young woman nodded, though her eyes spoke for her distress. Then to Dave, Erin said, “No hyperventilating, cowboy. Concentrate on your breathing.”

Dave gave a nod, his jaw clenched and his complexion a worrisome gray.

Having passed the distraction and deep breathing reins to Helen, Erin pushed to her feet and backed away from the huddle of bodies around Dave. She considered taking her luggage inside, but since she’d not yet officially been shown in to her accommodations at the guesthouse, that seemed presumptuous.

Besides, her curiosity was sparking.

The ranch has had a string of incidents, with evidence of sabotage that have hamstrung our operations, crippled us financially.

Her client’s words replayed in her head and his word choice stirred a disquiet in her gut as she glanced back at Dave. Though Josh’s back currently blocked her view of the ranch hand’s broken leg, the grisly image of Dave’s twisted shin was burned on her brain.

With a furtive glance toward the ranchers, she sidled over to the collapsed stepladder and studied the rails, the spreader, the bolts. What had happened to the ladder? A simple slip by the hand or something more sinister? She toed a bent piece of aluminum and searched the ground for the screws that should have attached the loose support bar to the legs of the ladder. Casting her gaze around her feet, she searched the ground for the failed bit of hardware. Finding a rusted screw lying in two pieces beneath the branches of the spruce tree, she stooped to gather the bits. Then hesitated.

If this did prove to be sabotage and not just the failure of an ancient screw, she should leave the evidence untainted for the police. She straightened and backed away from the ladder, but slid her phone back out of her pocket.

With another glance behind her to make sure her actions were not being watched, she quickly snapped a few pictures of the fallen ladder and the rusty pieces of the broken screw. Repocketing her phone, she edged back toward the injured cowboy, making mental notes about who was present and their reactions to the incident. She would be having a private meeting with her client tonight, and she already had something to report.

Seeing that she’d left the cluster, Zane stood and approached her.

“Hardly the welcome to the ranch I’d have planned.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and drew his mouth into a grim line.

“And not one I’d have expected. I’m sure this isn’t the kind of excitement McCall Adventure Ranch had in mind for customers.” She placed a hand over her chest. “My heart is still thumping.” And it bumped even harder when Zane stepped closer, his gaze intense.

“Thank you for your help. I’m not sure I’d have known what to do if he’d passed out or...” He waved a hand, his thought unfinished as he cut a glance back toward the injured man. A frown dented his brow and he started unbuttoning his coat. He shrugged out of the fleece-lined jacket and walked over to drape it around Helen’s shoulders. Helen turned a pixie-like, tearstained face up to his and gave him a brief smile of thanks. Zane’s gentlemanly gesture touched Erin.

“So chivalry isn’t dead,” she said to him as he returned.

He gave her a brief puzzled look, then shrugged his actions off. “She needed a coat. I gave her mine. No biggie.”

But to Erin his thoughtfulness was telling, as was his modesty. She’d learned through her work, through her life-changing moments, that people can say who they are until they are blue in the face. But actions were the real evidence of character. This was why she typically avoided pre-researching people. She didn’t want preconceived notions to jade her observations of people in action. Body language. How they reacted to questions and events...

Zane divided a concerned look between her and the fallen hand. Clearly he was torn between his duty as host and his friend’s well-being. Rubbing his hands on his jeans, he started toward her suitcases. “Anyway...let me get you settled—”

The distant wail of a siren reached them, yanking his attention toward the highway and the Double M’s long gravel driveway.

She put a hand on his arm. “You go meet the ambulance. I can see myself in.”

“I—”

“Zane.” She squeezed harder on his wrist and could feel the steady thump of his pulse under her fingers. A jolt of something hot and unnerving skittered from his skin through her fingers and throughout her body when his eyes connected with hers. She’d have to get over her unsettling fascination with his breathtaking eyes if she was going to keep her head as she worked with him in the coming days. She paused a beat, regaining her composure, before she slanted a half grin toward him and bent to gather her luggage for herself. “Go on. I’ve got this.”

She turned and headed for the guesthouse door.

“Erin.” The sexy timbre of his voice slid over her like a lover’s caress. She stopped. Faced him, trying to pretend his voice didn’t weaken her knees.

He reached into his pocket, then extended his hand to her. As he walked closer, gravel and ice crunched under his boots. “You’ll need this.”

A silver key winked in the sunlight at her. “Oh,” she muttered as she lifted it from his callused palm. “Thanks.” The metal was still warm from being nestled in his pocket near his body heat.

He ducked his head in a nod, and the corner of his mouth tugged in a strained smile. “Let me know if I can do anything to help you get settled.”

With an appreciative nod, Erin let herself in the guesthouse and left her bags in the first bedroom down the hall. Moving to the front window, she parted the curtains, allowing her to keep watch for the arrival of the emergency vehicles. Would the police come? Or was the incident being viewed as accidental by the ranch staff?

If she made too much of an issue about the broken ladder, she’d call unwanted attention to herself, raise questions. Instead she pulled out her phone and texted her client, Zane’s father. He needed to know what had happened and that she advised he have the police look at the scene before it was disturbed. Within seconds of her text, her phone chimed with Michael McCall’s reply that he was on his way to the scene.

Erin pocketed her phone and returned to her suitcases to hang up a few clothes, set out her toiletries and plug her laptop in to charge, all the while wishing she were still out in the yard helping, observing. She needed to maintain her cover, but for such a tragic incident to happen within minutes of her arrival...

She just couldn’t believe it was coincidence. Her gut told her it was no accident. She thought hard about exactly what had happened prior to the ladder collapse. Who had been present? What had transpired? She’d met Brady Summers, Zane’s brother-in-law. And the foreman, also last name Summers. Some relation to Brady? Zane hadn’t said, but she’d wager so. Hadn’t he called Brady “son” when he’d requested his help with the sick calf?

She replayed that scene in her mind’s eye. Brady had put off the foreman at first. That would indicate no preconception about the state of the ladder. And Dave had climbed right on. To his detriment. Josh and Zane had been involved with greeting her. She couldn’t fairly make an assessment there. Had she not arrived when she did, would one of them have been climbing the faulty ladder? And was all this speculation just that? Seeing trouble and misconduct where none existed? The ladder was clearly old. Rusted in more places than the screws. Maybe the worn-out equipment was just an accident waiting to happen and Dave had drawn the short straw.

The wail of approaching emergency vehicles and rumble of engines drew her back to the window. An older man with black hair like Zane’s had joined the men standing around Dave. Michael McCall? As the vehicles pulled up, the older man walked over to an attractive brown-haired woman of approximately the same age and wrapped her in a comforting hug. Zane’s mother?

Erin didn’t linger in the guesthouse any longer. While getting in the way during an emergency would be bad form for a visiting travel writer, she really wanted to have a firsthand, up-close view of the proceedings. A sheriff’s department SUV was among the arriving vehicles, and she really wanted to observe the handling of the incident, since Michael’s chief reason for hiring her was his discontent with the way the local law enforcement had essentially shrugged off previous incidents of vandalism on the ranch. Or so Michael felt. Maybe there had truly been little the sheriff could do, too little evidence to make an arrest. Michael didn’t buy that reasoning and that scenario seemed sketchy to Erin, as well. How hard had they tried to find the person sabotaging the Double M?

Snagging her coat off the back of the communal area’s couch where she’d discarded it minutes ago, Erin headed back outside. She kept to the perimeter of the gathered crowd, edging closer to the site of the broken ladder.

Initial efforts of the first responders were, understandably, getting Dave stabilized and into the ambulance. Zane approached one of the sheriff’s deputies and pointed to the fallen ladder, spread his hands, shook his head. Oh, to be a fly on the...deputy’s hat?

Erin rolled her eyes at her broken idiom and noticed presumably Michael break away from presumably his wife to join Zane’s conversation with the deputy. Michael’s jaw was taut. When the deputy said something with a lift of his shoulder, Michael’s eyes hardened, and he made an angry gesture toward the rubble of the ladder.

Zane placed a hand on presumably his father’s shoulder and said something that was answered with a head shake and grim, tight-lipped expression from the older man. The older woman joined them and apparently encouraged Michael to step aside. “Let Zane handle it, honey,” Erin overheard the woman say, then garbled words and “...your blood pressure.”

She read on his lips the curse word that Michael loosed as Zane and the deputy stepped aside and his wife guided him away. As the older couple stepped to the edge of the crowd, Michael’s gaze drifted to Erin and stopped. He tensed, then softened his facial expression and gave her a tiny nod of acknowledgment. His wife noticed, and Erin saw the woman’s lips say, Who’s that?

Michael turned toward his wife to reply, and whatever he said had the woman towing him over to Erin, a warm smile of greeting on her lips. “Are you Erin Palmer, the writer?”

Erin stuck out her hand to the woman. “I am.”

“Melissa and Michael McCall. So nice to meet you.” Rather than shake her hand, Melissa folded Erin’s hand between her gloved palms and squeezed. “I’m so sorry that your welcome has been spoiled by this terrible accident.”

“No apologies, please. I’m just so sorry this happened. How is Dave?”

“Shocky,” Michael said, offering his hand.

Melissa dropped Erin’s fingers so that she could greet the patriarch of the family.

“But the EMT assures us he’ll be fine.” Erin gave the older man’s hand a firm shake as he continued. “Glad to meet you, Ms. Palmer. Zane says you were quite helpful in calming the patient earlier. Some sort of yoga breathing?”

She shrugged. “Mostly common sense. He needed not to hyperventilate, which was where he was headed, so I got him to refocus his thoughts and breathe deeper.”

“Don’t be modest, dear. That was a good thing you did. We thank you. Dave is like family to us.” Melissa patted Erin’s sleeve, and the maternal gesture flowed through Erin like warm honey. She immediately liked the woman, whose kind eyes and generous smile spoke of a gentle soul.

“Melissa and Michael McCall...” she said, tipping her head with a grin tugging her lips. “How very alliterative.”