Dalton's Undoing

“Oh, you are a pretty girl. Yes you are,” Morgan cooed, rubbing noses with the puppy. Jenny felt a pang. Her daughter adored animals of all shapes and sizes and used to constantly beg for a dog or cat of her own, until her pulmonologist in Seattle recommended against it.

“What kind of dog is she?” Cole asked, his first words since they’d arrived at the ranch.

“Australian shepherd. I bought her and her brother at a horse auction in Boise last month. I only meant to buy one for a birthday present for my mother but I couldn’t resist Lucy.”

“You have sheep, too?” Morgan asked.

“Uh, no.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But they work cattle, too, and I figured she can help me when I’m training a horse for cutting.”

“Cutting what?” Morgan asked.

“Cutting cattle. That’s a term for picking an individual cow or calf out of a herd. A well-trained cutting horse will do all the work for a cowboy. He just has to point out which cow he wants and the horse will separate him out of the rest of the cows.”

“Wow! Can your horses do that?”

Instead of being put off my Morgan’s relentless questions, Seth seemed charmed by her daughter. “Some of them,” he said. “Sometime when you come out I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Cool!”

He grinned at Morgan’s enthusiasm and Jenny could swear she felt her blasted knees wobble. Oh, the man was dangerous. Entirely too sexy for his own good. She had to get out of there before she dissolved into a brainless puddle of hormones.

“Morgan, you and I had better go. Cole and Mr. Dalton have work to do.”

She was pleasantly surprised when Morgan didn’t kick up a fuss but followed her out of the barn into the cool November sunshine. Only as they approached the SUV did Jenny pick up on the reason for her daughter’s unusual docility.

In just a few seconds, Morgan had turned pale, her breathing wheezy and labored.

She should have expected it from the combination of animal dander, hay and excitement, but the swiftness of the asthma flare-up took her by surprise.

Still, Jenny had learned from grim experience never to go anywhere unprepared. She yanked the door open and lunged for her purse on the floor by the driver’s seat. Inside was Morgan’s spare inhaler and she quickly, efficiently puffed the medicine into the chamber and handed it to Morgan, then set her on the passenger seat while she drew the medicine into her lungs.

Morgan had that familiar panicky look in her eyes and Jenny spoke softly to calm her, the same nonsense words she always used.

She forgot all about Seth Dalton until he leaned past her into the SUV, big and disconcertingly masculine.

“That’s it, honey,” Seth said, keeping his own voice low and soothing. “Concentrate on the breathing and all the good air going into your lungs. You’re doing great.”

After a moment, the rescue medication did its work and the color started to return to her features. The panic in her eyes slowly gave way to the beginnings of relief and Jenny’s heart twisted with pain for her child’s trials and the courage Morgan wielded against them.

“Better?” Seth asked after a moment.

The girl nodded and Seth was grateful to see the flare-up seemed to be under control. “I’d tell you to go on back into the barn where it’s warmer,” he said to Jenny, “but I suspect the hay or the puppy triggered the attack, didn’t they?”

Her eyes widened as if surprised he knew anything about asthma. He didn’t tell her he could have written the damn book on it.

“That’s what I thought,” Jenny said. She was starting to lose her tight, in-control look, he saw, and now just looked like a worried mother. “I should have realized they might.”

“Why don’t we take her into the house over there for a minute until she feels better? This cold can’t be the greatest for her lungs.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but Morgan coughed just then and her mother nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Seth scooped the girl into his arms easily, and headed for the house with Jenny and Cole following behind him. Morgan still breathed shallowly, her little chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to ease the horrible breathlessness he remembered all too well.

“I hate having asthma,” she whispered, her voice far too bitter for a little girl.

He recognized the bitterness, too. He knew just what it felt like to be ten and trapped with a body that didn’t work like he wanted it to. He had wanted to be a junior buckaroo rodeo champion, wanted to climb the Tetons by the time he was twelve, wanted to be the star pitcher on the Little League baseball team. Instead, he’d been small and weak and spent far too much time breathing into a lousy tube.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he answered. “The worst is the one time you forget to take your inhaler somewhere and of course you suddenly you get hit by a flare-up.”

She blinked at him and he was struck by how sweet it was to have a child look at him with such trust. “You have it, too?”

He nodded. “I don’t have attacks very often now, maybe once or twice a year and they’re usually pretty mild. When I was your age, though, it was a different story.”

He set her down on his leather sofa and grabbed a blanket for her.

She couldn’t seem to get over the fact that he knew what she was going through. “But you’re big! You ride horses and everything.”

“You can ride horses, too. You just have to watch for your triggers, like I do, and do your best to manage things. When I was a kid, they didn’t have some of the newer maintenance meds they have now and we had a tough time finding the best treatment for me but eventually we did. You probably know you never grow out of asthma, but lots of times the symptoms decrease a lot when you get older. That’s what happened to me.”

“You probably weren’t afraid like I am when I have an attack. Cole says I’m a big wussy.”

Jenny looked pained by the admission and Seth sent the boy a pointed look. At least Cole had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I was just kidding,” the kid mumbled. He needed a serious attitude adjustment, Seth thought, wondering if he’d been such a punk when he’d gone through his rebellious teens.

“I can’t think of anything scarier than not being able to breathe,” Seth told Morgan. “People who haven’t been through it don’t quite understand what it’s like, do they? Like you’re trapped underwater and somebody’s got two fists around your lungs and is squeezing them tight so you can only take a tiny breath at a time.”

Morgan nodded her agreement. “I always feel like I’m trapped under a big heavy blanket.”

“What’s your peak flow?”

She told him and he nodded. “Mine was pretty close to that when I was about your age.” He paused and saw the conversation was starting to tire her. “Can I get you a glass of water or some juice?”

She nodded, closing her eyes, and he rose and went into the kitchen to find a glass. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when Jenny followed him.

“Thank you.” She gave him a quiet smile and he felt an odd little tug in his chest.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said as he poured a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator.

“You were very kind to her and I appreciate your sharing your own condition with her. It’s great for Morgan to talk to adults who have managed to move past their childhood asthma and go on to live successful lives. Thank you,” she said again, following it up this time with another small, hesitant smile.

He studied that smile, the way it highlighted the lushness of a mouth that seemed incongruous with her buttoned-down appearance.

What was it about her? She wasn’t gorgeous in a Miss Rodeo Idaho kind of way. Not tall and curvy with a brilliant smile and eyes that knew just how to reel a man in.

She was small and compact, probably no bigger than five foot three. He supposed he’d call her cute, with that red-gold hair and her green eyes and the little ski jump of a nose.

Seth couldn’t say he had a particular favorite type of woman—he was willing to admit he loved them all—but he usually gravitated toward the kind of women who hung out at the Bandito. The kind in tight jeans and tighter shirts, with big breasts and hungry smiles.