One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher: Tough to Tame / Carrying the Rancher's Heir / One Dance with the Cowboy

“Optimist,” she accused.

“Hey, without hope, what have we got?” He looked around with a grimace. “Unpainted walls, cracks in the paint, a car with two hundred thousand miles on it and a leaky roof.”

“Oh, darn,” she muttered, following his eyes to the yellow spot on the ceiling. “I’ll bet another one of those stupid nails worked its way out of the tin. I wish we could have afforded a shingle roof.”

“Well, tin is cheaper, and it looks nice.”

She looked at him meaningfully.

“It’s cheap, anyway,” he persisted. “Don’t you like the sound of rain on a tin roof? Just listen. It’s like music.”

It was like a tin drum, she pointed out, but he just laughed.

She smiled. “I guess you’re right. It’s better not to wish we had more than we do. We’ll get by, Kell,” she assured him. “We always do.”

“At least we’re in it together,” he agreed. “But you should think about the military home.”

“After I’m dead and buried, you can go into a home,” she assured him. “For now, you just eat your soup and hush.”

He smiled tenderly. “Okay.”

She smiled back. He was the nicest big brother in the whole world, and she wasn’t abandoning him while there was a breath in her body.

It had stopped raining when she got to work the next morning. She was glad. She hadn’t wanted to get out of bed at all. There was something magical about lying in the bed with rain coming down, all safe and cozy and warm. But she wanted to keep her job. She couldn’t do both.

She was putting her raincoat in the closet when a long arm presented itself over her shoulder and deposited a bigger raincoat there.

“Hang that up for me, please,” Dr. Rydel said gruffly.

“Yes, sir.”

She fumbled it onto a hanger. When she closed the door and turned, he was still standing there.

“Is something wrong, sir?” she asked formally.

He was frowning. “No.”

But he looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She knew how that felt, because she loved her brother and she couldn’t help him. Her soft gray eyes looked up into his pale blue ones. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” she ventured.

A laugh escaped his tight control. “What the hell would you know about lemons, at your age?” he asked.

“It isn’t the age, Dr. Rydel,” she said. “It’s the mileage. If I were a car, they’d have to decorate me with solid gold accessories just to get me off the lot.”

His eyes softened, just a little. “I suppose I’d be in a junkyard.”

She laughed, quickly controlling it. “Sorry.”

“Why?”

“You’re sort of hard to talk to,” she confessed.

He drew in a long breath. Just for a minute, he looked oddly vulnerable. “I’m not used to people. I deal with them in the practice, but I live alone. I have most of my life.” He frowned. “Your brother lives with you, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t he work?”

She tightened up. “He was overseas covering a war and a bomb exploded nearby. He caught shrapnel in the spine and they can’t operate. He’s paralyzed from the waist down.”

He grimaced. “That’s a hell of a way to end up in a wheelchair.”

“Tell me about it,” she agreed quietly. “He was in the military for years, but he got tired of dragging me all over the world, so he mustered out and got a job working for this magazine. He said it would mean he wouldn’t be gone so much.” She sighed. “I guess he wasn’t, but he’s in a lot of pain and they can’t do much for it.” She looked up at him. “It’s hard to watch.”

For an instant, some fellow feeling flared in his eyes. “Yes. It’s easier to hurt yourself than to watch someone you love battle pain.” His face softened as he looked down at her. “You take care of him.”

She smiled. “Yes. Well, as much as he’ll let me, anyway. He took care of me from the age of ten, when our parents died in a wreck. He wants me to let him go into some sort of military home, but I’ll never do that.”

He looked very thoughtful. And sad. He looked as if he badly needed someone to talk to, but he had nobody. She knew the feeling.

“Life is hard,” she said gently.

“Then you die,” he added, and managed a smile. “Back to work, Miss Drake.” He hesitated. “Your name, Cappie. What’s it short for?”

She hesitated. She bit her lower lip.

“Come on,” he coaxed.

She drew in a breath. “Capella,” she said.

His eyebrows shot up. “The star?”

She laughed, delighted. Most people had no idea what it meant. “Yes.”

“One of your parents was an astronomy buff,” he guessed.

“No. My mother was an astronomer, and my father was an astrophysicist,” she corrected, beaming. “He worked for NASA for a while.”

He pursed his lips. “Brainy people.”

“Don’t worry, it didn’t rub off on me. Kell got all that talent. In fact, he’s writing a book, an adventure novel.” She smiled. “I just know it’s going to be a blockbuster. He’ll rake in the money, and then we won’t have to worry about money for medicine and health care.”

“Health care.” He harrumphed. “It’s a joke. People going without food to buy pills, without clothes to afford gas, having to choose between essentials and no help anywhere to change things.”

She was surprised at his attitude. Most people seemed to think that health care was available to everybody. Actually she could only afford basic coverage for herself. If she ever had a major medical emergency, she’d have to beg for help from the state. She hoped she could even get it. It still amazed her that Kell’s employers hadn’t offered him health care benefits. “We don’t live in a perfect society,” she agreed.

“No. Nowhere near it.”

She wanted to ask him why he was so outspoken on the issue, which hit home for her, too. But before she could overcome her shyness, the phones were suddenly ringing off the hook and three new four-legged patients walked in the door with their owners. One of them, a big Boxer, made a beeline for a small poodle whose owner had let it come in without a lead.

“Grab him!” Cappie called, diving after the Boxer.

Dr. Rydel followed her, gripping the Boxer’s lead firmly. He pulled up on it just enough to establish control, and held it so that the dog’s head was erect. “Down, sir!” he said in a commanding tone. “Sit!”