And The Winner--Weds!

The woman joyfully kissed the animal on its wet black nose. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her.” The little dog nearly knocked off the woman’s glasses in its effusive expression of delight. “Where did you find my angel?”

“Wandering around in the middle of the street,” Frannie said.

“Oh, dear! I’m glad she wasn’t hit by a car. I don’t know what I’d do without my Snooky-Wook’ems!”

Austin fixed her with a stern look. “You’d better keep her on a leash, then. Frannie risked her life to save your dog.”

“Oh, my! Oh, I’m so sorry!” The woman’s gray eyes were round and earnest behind her thick trifocals. “I left Snooky in my car while I ran into the drugstore to get my heart medicine. I put the window down so she wouldn’t get hot, and well, she must have jumped right out.” The woman held the little dog up to her face and spoke in a high-pitched, babyish voice. “You were a naughty girl, weren’t you, Snook’ems? You gave Mommy quite a scare.”

“Scared me pretty good, too,” Frannie said dryly.

They weren’t the only ones, Austin thought. His heart had nearly jumped out of his chest when he’d seen a woman—Frannie—dive in front of that car.

“I don’t know how to thank you, dear.” The woman kissed the dog again, then turned to Frannie. She peered over the top of her thick lenses. “It just goes to show, you can’t judge a person by the way they look. I never knew you punk rockers cared about animals. “

“Punk rocker?” Frannie’s eyes were shocked. “ I’m not a punk rocker!”

Austin leaned toward the old woman conspiratorially. “She’s very sensitive about her skin condition. I keep telling her its nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone can pick up a fungal condition.”

The old woman’s eyes flew wide. “You mean, that’s fungus? Is it contagious?”

Austin nodded somberly. “I’m afraid so. The only antidote is to cover your entire body in peanut butter for twenty-four hours immediately after exposure.”

“Oh, dear!”

“I suggest that you and Snooky go right home and get started.”

Wearing a look of horror, the woman hurried down the sidewalk, clutching the little dog to her ample chest.

Frannie convulsed in a fit of laughter. It took her a minute to regain her ability to speak. “You’re as naughty as Snook’ems,” she finally gasped.

Austin grinned. “Served the old biddy right.”

She grinned at him, her smile so warm and bright he practically reached for his sun glasses. A jolt of attraction zapped through him despite her green face.

He cleared his throat, disconcerted. “Let’s take a look at your knee.” He gestured to a wooden bench under the green-and-white-striped drug store awning. Frannie sat down, lifted the cape and pulled up the long tan skirt of her gabardine suit to reveal long slender calves.

Her right knee was scraped and bleeding. Austin felt a rush of empathy. “You sit right there, and I’ll go get my first-aid kit.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He could feel Frannie’s eyes on him as he sprinted across the street. Opening the door of his black pickup, he pulled out a box from under the seat, then strode back across the street.

She looked so ridiculous, sitting on that wooden bench in that ridiculous cape, with that goofy green face and those enormous eyeglasses. Something inside of him went warm and oddly mushy.

“Are you okay?” He squatted in front of her and opened the box.

“Yes. But you might as well go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’re thinking. That it was stupid of me to run out in the street like that.”

Austin pulled out a cotton pad and squirted it with disinfectant. “Why do you think that’s what I’m thinking?”

“Because it was stupid. I acted before I thought. But that little dog looked so scared and helpless, and that car was coming so fast. I knew if I was going to try to help it, I had to act fast.”

“Well, I gotta say, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“I did?”

Austin nodded. “I was just coming out of the automotive store when I saw you flying across the street. You looked like Batman, swooping into the street in that cape.”

He was glad to see that he’d made her grin.

“I didn’t see the dog at first, but I heard you yell, and I saw the Jag speeding toward you. When I saw you take a tumble right in front of it, well, my heart was in my throat.”

“It was?”

“Dang right. No one knows better than me the damage an automobile can inflict on the human body.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not usually so reckless.”

Something about the chagrin on her green face made him smile. “Hey, I said you scared me. I didn’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

Her hazel eyes fixed on him in a way that made him forget all about her green face.

“Come to think of it, I have done the same thing,” Austin found himself saying. “I nearly got trampled by a stallion once, trying to get a sick colt out of a herd back when I was breaking horses.”

“You used to break horses?”

He grinned. “Well, it’s debatable who got broken more, the horses or me.” He set the bottle of disinfectant on the sidewalk and lifted the soaked pad. “This is likely to sting, but I need to clean the wound.”

“Okay.”

He dabbed at her left knee. She bit her lip, but didn’t cry out. Once again he felt that odd, mushy feeling.

“Did you work with horses here in Montana?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Among other places. My father never stayed in one place for long.”

“Because of his job?”

Austin gave wry smile. “Not really. Because of his lifestyle.”

Frannie tilted her head quizzically, and looked at him, really looked at him, in a way he hadn’t been looked at in a long time. She wasn’t just looking at him; she seemed to be really seeing him.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Austin lifted his shoulders. “He didn’t want to put down any roots, didn’t want to get attached to anyone or anything.” Including me, Austin thought bitterly.