A Measure Of Love

Damn! They had the first herd of the year to move up to the high pastures. He couldn’t afford the costly time out to take care of the woman himself. “All right, tell him to stay put. I’ll take her back to the ranch myself. What about Millie?”

Pete dipped his head, his dark chocolate eyes mirroring his worry. “Said she’d call the doctor and prepare a room for the little lady.”

“Good. Come on down and give me a hand,” he ordered.

Pinto Pete was only five feet nine inches in height, but he was wiry and amazingly agile for his sixty-five years. The old mustang wrangler had joined the Triple K forty years before and had stayed ever since. He watched as his boss jerked off his hat and then pulled off the huge poncho, leaving himself to be soaked by the rain.

“You want her in that?” he guessed.

Rafe nodded, settling the hat back on his head. The late-April temperature was in the forties, the rain cold and bone-chilling. “Yeah, I’ve got to ride with her for two miles. I can’t have her getting pneumonia on top of whatever else is wrong with her. Here, help me, and I’ll put this over her.”

Pinto Pete squeezed in between Rafe and the car door to lend a hand.

They managed to get the poncho over her head, but it snagged on the bun at the base of her neck. Jerking off one deerskin glove, Rafe leaned across her and fumbled with an array of bobby pins. Her feminine scent assailed his nostrils, and automatically he inhaled it. The almost forgotten perfume of a woman’s body unconsciously pleased him, and he pulled the remaining pins out of her hair more gently.

“Okay, let me pull her clear,” he said to Pete.

Rafe braced his shoulder against the frame of the car door as he slid his arms beneath her, taking care not to snap her neck back and possibly cause her more injury. The fact that she hadn’t awakened in the past ten minutes bothered him. A bump on the head was one thing–a concussion another. Usually, if a person was knocked out, they could be expected to wake up in five or ten minutes.

After some jockeying, Pinto Pete lifted the woman back into Rafe’s rain-soaked arms after he had mounted. At least she would remain reasonably dry. Something old and hurting wrenched free in Rafe’s chest when her long blond mane fell starkly across the slippery black surface of the poncho as her head came to rest against his chest. He made sure she was comfortably situated across the saddle, and he kept both arms around her. He guided his gray gelding down through the pine with pressure from his legs. Like all good ranch horses, the animal had a long, swift walk. Rafe didn’t dare go any faster for fear of hurting the woman even more. He tried to protect her face, which was nuzzled beneath his chin, from the rain. Her blond hair quickly became soaked by the rain, lying in vivid goldenrod colored sheets across the poncho. Rafe had never seen anyone with hair that unusual blond before, and he was transfixed by it.

The ride took a good twenty minutes, and he tried to ignore how good it felt to have a woman in his arms again. How long had it been? Then he snapped the lid shut on those memories that still burned in his heart like a painful branding iron. Pete had stuffed her black leather purse into one of the saddlebags. He’d find out who she was in a while. What was she doing out here? Had she gotten lost on the back roads of the Rockies? Was she looking for directions on how to escape the mountains and get back to civilization? A bare hint of a smile tipped one corner of his mouth as he gazed down at her. His initial anger had abated, and he studied her curiously. Maybe it was the soft fullness of her parted lips that made him feel less antagonistic toward what she had done. Maybe it was the thick mane of blond hair she had tried to capture into a bun that made him a little more inclined to ease up on her stupidity. He wasn’t sure. She looked like a city girl, with her fancy tailored suit, black heels and hair tamed into a sophisticated style.

Too bad, Rafe thought, his blue eyes glittering. His hands tightened against the slippery poncho, keeping her balanced as he guided his horse between the barns and to the back porch of the ranch house. He saw Millie, the housekeeper, come flying out to the enclosed screened porch, and a ranch hand, Carl Cramer, came to help.

Rafe lowered the woman into Carl’s waiting arms and then dismounted. The rain was easing. That figured, Rafe thought with irony. He took the woman back into his arms and mounted the wooden stairs onto the porch. Millie’s plump face was pinched with worry as she opened the door to the house.

“What happened, Rafe?” she asked, waddling quickly through the kitchen and down the hall.

“Car accident,” he muttered, his boots squishing with each step he took across the polished brick floor of the kitchen. “She came over the hill like a grand-prix racer, saw us and then took to the hill. Ended up in some pine.”

Millie clucked sympathetically, hurrying as fast as she could make her sixty-year-old body move as they went down the darkened hall. “Doc Miller is on his way. But you know what the weather and roads are like. He said it’d be at least an hour. Said to treat her for shock and a possible concussion, from the description Pinto gave me.”

Rafe slowed his stride, frowning. He’d hoped Millie had given the woman the guest room. Instead she swung the door open to another bedroom: the one that hadn’t been used since Mary Ann’s death.

“Can’t use the guest room,” Millie said, as if reading his mind and the objections he was going to voice. She hurried over to the bed. “I’m busy spring-cleaning it.”

“I see.” Rafe had given orders that this room never be used again; it hurt too much to be in the room because of the memories it dredged up. Swallowing hard against the past that still haunted him, he gently laid the woman on the bed, took off his drenched hat and let it drop to the highly polished cedar floor. He glanced up at Millie. “Can you handle her by yourself?” There wasn’t another female around to help the old housekeeper.

Millie’s face puckered. “Of course I can’t, Rafe! Now don’t go giving me that moon-eyed look! You’ve seen a woman before. Land’s sakes! Come on, help me get her out of this poncho.”

Properly chastised, Rafe took the poncho off her. And then Millie found the woman’s clothes were damp despite all he had tried to do to protect her from the wet weather.

“We’ll have to undress her,” Millie muttered. “I can’t put her to bed like this. She’ll catch her death of cold.”

“I’d like to paddle her,” he growled.

“You ought to be thankin’ her for not hitting you! Now stop your growling like an old grizzly.”

Rafe helped Millie gently remove the wool blazer, then the pale peach blouse. They left her full-length slip on, and Rafe was momentarily transfixed by the sight of her slender, gently contoured body outlined by the ivory silk.

“She’s built like an Arab,” Rafe muttered, picking her up while Millie pulled back the bedding. He laid her on the mattress, and the housekeeper tucked in the crisp sheet and covers around her.

Millie raised one eyebrow. “Is that a compliment or an insult, Rafe? You’re just like your daddy, always comparing women to horses. I swear.”

“It was a compliment,” he said, bending down to retrieve his hat.

The housekeeper leaned over and studied the lump on the woman’s head. “Well,” she said sternly, “you’d better hope she’s tough like an Arabian, Rafe Kincaid. This isn’t good; she should be waking up.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Millie examined the bluish-purple lump that was now the size of a hen’s egg. “What if this is serious? Doc Miller ain’t gonna be able to do much for her here at the ranch.”

He walked to the door and then hesitated. “Then I’ll take her and the doctor down to Denver by helicopter. There’s no place closer.” Grimly Rafe turned, thinking that his day was turning into nothing but mud. “I’m going to get her purse. Pete put it in the saddlebag. Maybe we can find out who she is and contact her family. I’ll be in the study after I get some dry clothes on, if you need me.”

* * *

Rafe sat at the huge cherry-wood desk, the stained-glass Tiffany lamp near his elbow providing the necessary light in the dark paneled library and study. Her purse was small and dainty, like her. He felt a twinge of guilt as he rummaged through the contents, locating and pulling out the slender leather billfold. Unsnapping it, he found her driver’s license, made out to Jessica Scott. His brows drew down as he read her address: Washington D.C. He’d just gotten rid of a BLM guy two weeks earlier from the same damn city. Was he cursed with people from D.C.? Rubbing his jaw, he studied the plastic license. She couldn’t be a government official; she looked too young and…fresh.

He set aside the license and rummaged through the rest of the contents: a social security card, a YWCA membership and a Visa card were all that were enclosed. Rafe glanced again at the license, offhandedly noticing her birthdate. Surprise flickered in his dark blue eyes. She couldn’t be twenty-eight! She barely looked twenty-three.

Intrigued, he slowly went through the pictures on the other side of the wallet. The first one was of a much older woman, probably in her seventies, bound to a wheelchair with a colorful afghan across her lap, smiling. Must be her grandmother, Rafe thought. The second photo was obviously cut from a magazine. Jessie was turning out to be quite a surprise. In the magazine photo was a picture of a rare medicine hat mustang running free. Did she own the horse? Or did she know who owned it? He lifted his head, peering out through the gloom toward the hallway. Jessie Scott. Interesting…

* * *

Jessie heard rain drumming in a staccato beat around her. She moved her head slightly, but the pain kept banging away inside her brain. She heard the faint movement of cloth against nylon and then softened footsteps gradually fading away. Forcing open her eyes to mere slits, she became aware of the smell of her damp hair, of the warmth surrounding her and the muted light pouring in through large-paned windows to the right of the bed. Bed…she was in a bed. She pulled her hand from beneath the heavy goosedown quilt and touched her brow.

“Ouch!” She winced as she carefully felt around the lump on the side of her head. The light hurt her eyes, making them water. The effort to lift her hand drained what little returning strength she had, and she dropped her arm across her stomach, trying to think, to remember.

The sound of heavy, steady footfalls snagged her groggy awareness, and she looked toward the opened door. An older woman slipped quietly through it, and then a man. He was much younger than the woman, and powerfully built. Jessie’s eyes widened as they both approached her bed. Despite the toll of agony it took for her to speak, she said, “What happened? Where am I?”

Rafe placed his hands on his narrow hips, studying her. “You don’t remember? You damn near hit me and my herd of cattle up on the road earlier.” He hadn’t meant for his words to come out quite so clipped, and he saw hurt register immediately in her wan features.

Millie glared across the bed at Rafe as she moved to Jessie’s side. “Don’t pay him no mind. I’m Millie Martin, the housekeeper. Now, we want you to just stay quiet until Doc Miller arrives. You took a nasty bump on the head in that car accident.” She reached out and patted Jessie’s cool hand.

Jessie remained staring up at the rancher. She was too groggy to sort out the impressions he was making on her. His features were so weathered by the seasons that he looked as if he were hewn from rock. Deep crow’s-feet at the corners of his intensely dark blue eyes told her that he squinted a great deal. His forehead was broad and lined, as if he frowned more than he smiled. Jessie noticed that his nose, which had once been clean-lined and aquiline, had several bumps on it, indicating he’d broken it more than just a few times. Harsh lines bracketed his mouth, but the corners curled softly upward. His full, flat lower lip gentled his rugged features, yet didn’t deny the stubbornness of his jutting chin.

Rafe relented a little, pleased that she had fearlessly met his gaze and not shrank back from him. “You’re at the Triple K, Jessie Scott. I’m the owner, Rafe Kincaid. Do you remember what happened?”

Jessie gripped the edge of the bedcovers that were draped across her shoulders. “Oh, no….” she croaked as the entire sequence of events came back to her. Heat swept up through her cheeks, and she shut her eyes tightly. She had nearly killed the man who was standing in front of her, the man she had come to see. This was his ranch, and his bed. And she was in a lot of trouble. What about the car? And how had she gotten here…?

She tried desperately to sort out her priorities. Her knuckles whitened against the quilt as she struggled to think clearly. Finally she opened her eyes and forced herself to look at him. “A-are you okay? I mean…I could have killed you….”

A slight hint of a smile shadowed his mouth as he heard her concern, not for herself, but for him. “I’m fine.”

“A-and your horse?”

“The horse will survive. More importantly, how are you feeling?”