Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier

“The puppy takes after his father,” Lisa said defensively. He did, she mused. His father belonged to Tom Walker, and the mostly German shepherd dog, Moose, was a local legend. This pup was from the first litter he’d sired—without Tom’s knowledge or permission. “But he’s going to be a lot of protection, so I guess it’s a trade-off. How much is this?”

Bonnie told her, waited while she wrote the check, accepted it and processed it. “Here you go,” she told the customer. She glanced down at the other woman’s flat stomach. “When are you due?”

“Eight months and two weeks,” Lisa said quietly, wincing as she recalled that her husband, away from home and working undercover, had been killed the very night after she’d conceived, if Dr. Lou Coltrain had his numbers right. And when had Lou ever missed a due date? He was uncanny at predicting births.

“You’ve got that Mason man helping you with the ranch.” Bonnie interrupted her thoughts. “You shouldn’t need a dog with him there. Can’t he protect you?”

“He only comes on the weekends,” Lisa replied.

Bonnie frowned. “Luke Craig sent him out there, didn’t he? But he said the man was supposed to spend every night in the bunkhouse!”

“He visits his girlfriend most nights,” Lisa said irritably. “And better her than me! He doesn’t bathe!”

Bonnie burst out laughing. “Well, there’s one bright side to it. If he isn’t staying nights, you only have to pay him for the weekends…Lisa,” she added when she saw the guilty expression on the other woman’s face, “you aren’t still paying him for the whole week?”

Lisa flushed. “Don’t,” she said huskily.

“Sorry.” Bonnie handed her a receipt. “It’s just I hate the way you let people take advantage of you, that’s all. There are so many rotten people in the world, and you’re a walking, talking benevolence society.”

“Rotten people aren’t born, they’re made,” Lisa told her. “He isn’t a bad man, he just didn’t have a proper upbringing.”

“Oh, good God!” Cy said harshly, glaring at her, having kept his mouth shut as long as possible without imploding. The woman’s compassion hit him on a raw spot and made him furious.

Lisa’s eyes were brown, big and wide and soft through the plastic frames of her glasses. “Excuse me?”

“Are you for real?” he asked curtly. “Listen, people dig their own graves and they climb into them. Nothing excuses cruelty.”

“You tell her!” Bonnie said, agreeing.

Lisa recognized her taciturn neighbor from a previous encounter, long ago. He’d come right up to her when she’d been pitching hay over the fence to her cattle one day and told her outright that she should leave heavy work to her husband. Walt hadn’t liked that comment, not at all. It had only been a few days after he’d let her do the same thing while he flirted with a pretty blond parcel delivery employee. Worse, Walt thought that Lisa had encouraged Cy’s interference somehow and they’d had a fight—not the first in their very brief marriage. She didn’t like the tall man and her expression told him so. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she pointed out. “You don’t know anything about my business.”

His eyebrows rose half an inch. “I know that you overpay the hired help.” He looked pointedly at her flat belly. “And that you’re the last person who should be looked upon as a walking benevolence society.”

“Hear, hear!” Joanne said again from behind Bonnie.

Lisa glared at her. “You can be quiet,” she said.

“Let your erstwhile employee go,” he told her. “I’ll send one of my men over to spend nights in the bunkhouse. Bonnie’s right about one thing, you don’t need to be by yourself after dark in such a remote place.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said, glowering at him.

“Yes, you do. Your husband wouldn’t have liked having you try to run that ranch alone,” he added quietly, even though he didn’t mean it, and he hoped that his distaste for the late Walt Monroe didn’t show. He still recalled watching Lisa heft a huge bale of hay while her husband stood not ten paces away flirting with a pretty blond woman. It was a miracle she hadn’t miscarried, the way she hefted heavy things around. He wondered if she even knew the chance she was taking…

She was looking at him with different eyes now. The concern touched her despite her hostility. She sighed. “I guess you’re right,” she said softly. “He wouldn’t have.”

He hated the way that softness made him feel. He’d lost so much. Everything. He wouldn’t admit, even to himself, how it felt to have those dark eyes look at him with tenderness. He swallowed down the ache in his throat.

She let her gaze fall to his arm, the one that had just been stitched, and her soft gasp was audible. “You’ve been hurt!”

“Two prescriptions, Mr. Parks,” Bonnie said with a grin, holding up a prescription sack. She bent to pick up the package, a strand of her short blond hair falling around her pretty bespectacled face. “And Dr. Coltrain said that if you don’t take this pain medication, he’ll have me flogged,” she added impishly.

“We can’t have that, I guess,” Cy murmured dryly.

“Glad you agree.” She accepted his credit card as Lisa turned to go.

“You drive into town?” Cy asked the widow.

“Uh, well, no, the car’s got a broken water pump,” she confessed. “I rode in with old Mr. Murdock.”

“He’ll be at the lodge meeting until midnight,” he pointed out.

“Just until nine. I thought I’d go to the library and wait.”

“You need your rest,” Cy said curtly. “No sense in waiting until bedtime for a ride. I’ll drive you home. It’s on my way.”

“Go with him,” Bonnie said firmly as she waited for Cy to put his credit card back into his wallet and sign the ticket. “Don’t argue,” she added when Lisa opened her mouth. “I’ll phone the lodge and tell Mr. Murdock you got a ride.”

“Were you ever in the army?” Cy asked the young woman with a rare twinkle in his green eyes.

She grinned. “Nope. But it’s their loss.”

“Amen,” he said.

“Mr. Parks…” Lisa began, trying to escape.

Cy took her arm, nodded to Bonnie and herded Lisa out of the pharmacy onto the street where his big red Ford Expedition was parked. On the way they ran into the second pharmacist, a dark-eyed woman with equally dark hair.

“Hi, Nancy!” Lisa said with a grin.

Nancy gave a gamine smile. “Don’t tell me, the line’s two miles long already.”

“Three. Want to go home with me?” Lisa asked.

Nancy sighed. “Don’t I wish. See you!”

Nancy went on toward the pharmacy and Lisa turned back to let Cy open the door of the Expedition for her. “Imagine you with a red vehicle,” she said dryly. “I would have expected black.”

“It was the only one they had in stock and I was in a hurry. Here.” He helped her up into the huge vehicle.

“Gosh,” she murmured as he got in beside her, “you could kill an elephant with this thing.”

“It’s out of season for elephants.” He scowled as she fumbled with the seat belt. “That’s hard to buckle on the passenger side. Here, like this…” He leaned close to her and fastened it with finesse despite his damaged left hand and arm. It required a closeness he hadn’t had with a woman since his wife and son died in the fire. He noticed that Lisa’s eyes were a very soft dark brown and that her complexion was delicious. She had a firm, rounded little chin and a pretty mouth. Her ears were tiny. He wondered what that mass of dark gold hair looked like at night when she took the hairpins out, and his own curiosity made him angry. With compressed lips, he fastened the seat belt and moved away to buckle his own in place.

Lisa was relieved when he leaned back. He made her nervous when he was that close. Odd, that reaction, she thought, when she’d been married for two months. She should be used to men. Of course, her late husband hadn’t been that interested in her body. He didn’t seem to enjoy sleeping with her, and he was always in such a rush that she really didn’t feel any of the things women were supposed to feel. She recalled that he’d married her on the rebound from the woman he really wanted, and the only thing about Lisa that really appealed to him had been her father’s ranch. He’d had great ideas about starting an empire, but it was only a pipe dream. A dead dream, now. She stared out at the small town as they drove through it on the way out to their respective ranches.

“Do you have anyone managing the ranch for you?” he asked when they were on the lonely highway heading out of town.

“Can’t afford anyone,” she said wistfully. “Walt had big plans for the place, but there was never enough money to fulfill them. He borrowed on his salary and his life insurance policy to buy the steers, but he didn’t look far enough ahead to see the drought coming. I guess he didn’t realize that buying winter feed for those steers would put us in the hole.” She shook her head. “I did so want his plans to work out,” she said wistfully. “If they had, he was going to give up undercover work and come home to be a rancher.” Her eyes were sad. “He was only thirty years old.”