Outlaw Hartes: The Valentine Two-Step / Cassidy Harte And The Comeback Kid

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What was that all about? Matt wondered as he followed the city vet out of the brightly decorated classroom into the hall. Why did Miz McKenzie act like he’d up and slapped her when all he wanted to do was shake her hand? Come to think of it, she’d behaved the same way when he came in a month earlier for parent-teacher conferences.

She and Ellie Webster ought to just form a club, since it was obvious the lady vet wasn’t crazy about him, either. Matt Harte Haters of America.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it before they reached the outside door of the school. The vet gave him a funny look when he opened the door for her, but she said nothing, just moved past him. Before he could stop himself, he caught a whiff of her hair as her coat brushed his arm. It smelled clean and fresh, kind of like that heavenly lemon cream pie they served over at the diner.

He had absolutely no business sniffing the city vet’s hair, Matt reminded himself harshly. Or noticing the way those freckles trailed across that little nose of hers like the Big Dipper or how the fluorescent lights inside the school had turned that sweet-smelling hair a fiery red, like an August sunset after an afternoon of thunderstorms.

He pushed the unwanted thoughts away and followed Ellie Webster out into the frigid night. An icy wind slapped at them, and he hunched his shoulders inside his lined denim coat.

It was much colder than normal for mid-November. The sky hung heavy and ugly overhead, and the twilight had that expectant hush it took on right before a big storm. Looked like they were in for a nasty one. He dug already cold fingers into his pockets.

When he drove into town earlier, the weatherman on the radio had said to expect at least a foot of snow. Just what he needed. With that Arctic Express chugging down out of Canada, they were sure to have below-zero temperatures tonight. Add to that the windchill and he’d be up the whole damn night just trying to keep his cattle alive.

The city vet seemed to read his mind. “By the looks of that storm, I imagine we’ll both have a busy night.”

“You, too?”

“I do still have a few patients.”

He’d never paid much mind to what a vet did when the weather was nasty. Or what a vet did any other time, for that matter. They showed up at his place, did what he needed them to do, then moved on to their next appointment.

He tried to imagine her muscling an ornery cow into a pen and came up completely blank. Hell, she looked hardly big enough to wrestle a day-old calf. He’d had the same thought the first day he met her, back in August when she rode into town with her little girl and all that attitude.

She barely came up to his chin, and her wrists were delicate and bony, like a kitten that had been too long without food. Why would a scrawny city girl from California want to come out to the wilds of Wyoming and wrestle cattle? He couldn’t even begin to guess.

There were only two vehicles in the school parking lot, the brand spankin’ new dually crew cab he drove off the lot last week and her battered old Ford truck. He knew it was hers by the magnetized sign on the side reading Salt River Veterinary Clinic.

Miz McKenzie must have walked, since the little house she rented from Bob Jimenez was just a couple blocks from the school. Maybe he ought to offer her a ride home. It was too damn cold to be walking very far tonight.

Before he could turn around and go back into the school to make the offer, he saw Ellie Webster pull her keys out of her pocket and fight to open her truck door for several seconds without success.

“Can I help you there, ma’am?” he finally asked.

She grunted as she worked the key. “The lock seems to be stuck….”

Wasn’t that just like a city girl to go to all the trouble to lock the door of a rusty old pickup nobody would want to steal anyway? “You know, most of us around here don’t lock our vehicles. Not much need.”

She gave him a scorcher of a look. “And most of you think karaoke is a girl you went to high school with.”

His mouth twitched, but he refused to let himself smile. Instead, he yanked off a glove and stuck his bare thumb over the lock.

In the pale lavender twilight, she watched him with a confused frown. “What are you doing?”

“Just trying to warm up your lock. I imagine it’s frozen and that’s why you can’t get the key to turn. I guess you don’t have much trouble with that kind of thing in California, do you?”

“Not much, no. I guess it’s another exciting feature unique to Wyoming. Like jackalopes and perpetual road construction.”

“When we’ve had a cold wet rain like we did this afternoon, moisture can get down in the lock. After the sun goes down, it doesn’t take long to freeze.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“There. That ought to do it.” He pulled his hand away and took the key from her, then shoved it into the lock. The mechanism slid apart now like a knife through soft wax, and he couldn’t resist pulling the door open for her with an exaggerated flourish.

She gave him a disgruntled look then climbed into her pickup. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He shoved his hand into his lined pocket, grateful for the cozy warmth. “Next time you might want to think twice before you lock your door so it doesn’t happen again. Nobody’s going to steal anything around here.”

She didn’t look like she appreciated his advice. “You do things your way, I’ll do things mine, Harte.”

She turned the key, and the truck started with a smooth purr that defied its dilapidated exterior. “If you decide you’re man enough to help me with this stupid carnival, I suppose we’ll have to start organizing it soon.”

His attention snagged on the first part of her sentence. “If I’m man enough?” he growled.

She grinned at him, her silvery-green eyes sparkling, and he fought hard to ignore the kick of awareness in his stomach. “Do you think you’ve got the guts to go through with this?”

“It’s not a matter of guts,” he snapped. “It’s a matter of having the time to waste putting together some silly carnival.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m a very busy man, Dr. Webster.”

It was apparently exactly the wrong thing to say. Her grin slid away, and she stiffened like a coil of frozen rope, slicing him to pieces with a glare. “And I have nothing better to do than sit around cutting out pink and white hearts to decorate the school gymnasium with, right? That’s what you think, isn’t it? Lord knows, I don’t have much of a practice thanks to you and all the other stubborn old men around here.”

He set his jaw. He wasn’t going to get into this with her standing out here in the school parking lot while the windchill dipped down into single digits. “That’s not what I meant,” he muttered.

“I know exactly what you meant. I know just what you think of me, Mr. Harte.”

He sincerely doubted it. Did she know he thought about her a lot more than he damn well knew he ought to and that he couldn’t get her green eyes or her sassy little mouth out of his mind?

“Our daughters want us to do this,” she said. “I don’t know what little scheme they’re cooking up—and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want to know—but it seems to be important to Dylan, and that’s enough for me. Let me know what you decide.”

She closed the door, barely missing his fingers, then shoved the truck into gear and spun out of the parking lot, leaving him in a cloud of exhaust.

Chapter 2

Matt drove his pickup under the arch proclaiming Diamond Harte Ranch—Choice Simmentals and Quarter Horses with a carved version of the brand that had belonged to the Harte family for four generations.

He paused for just a moment like he always did to savor the view before him. The rolling, sage-covered hills, the neat row of fence line stretching out as far as the eye could see, the barns and outbuildings with their vivid red paint contrasting so boldly with the snow.

And standing guard over it all at the end of the long gravel drive was the weathered log and stone house his grandfather had built—with the sprawling addition he had helped his father construct the year he turned twelve.

Home.

He loved it fiercely, from the birthing sheds to the maze of pens to the row of Douglas fir lining the drive.

He knew every single inch of its twenty thousand acres, as well as the names and bloodlines of each of the three dozen cutting horses on the ranch and the medical history of all six hundred of the ranch’s cattle.