His Hired Bride

The notion dragged her spirits lower. The idea of having to move to town and take an office job was traumatic. Aside from losing touch with the ranch life she’d loved and had grown up with, she’d no longer have either a reason or the opportunity to see Hoyt, though that was probably for the best. At twenty-six, the only thing more pitiful than being doomed to achieve “old maid” status in another few years or less, was to hang around a man she could never have.

The sound of Hoyt’s heavy bootsteps pounding steadily through the big ranch house startled her and she automatically glanced at the clock. The fact that Hoyt had apparently come back to the house early today wasn’t a good sign, not when he was still so riled and cranky. Because his bad mood had grown worse this past week, Eadie had taken greater pains to stay out of his way. She’d hoped to make her escape before he came back to the house, but his sudden arrival thwarted her plan.

From the bedroom end of the house opposite the wing the office was located in, she heard him thunder, “Eadie? I need you in here! Now!”

The order was as angry as she’d ever heard, and Eadie hurriedly finished stacking the handful of letters with their envelopes on his desk blotter to rush out of the room. Hoyt never leveled his bullish temper on her, though he often treated her to a blustery verbal account of the reason for his choler. She suspected he did that because she always listened calmly, and her very calmness seemed to cool him off by the time he was done letting off steam.

And of course, once he finished, he usually saw reason and quickly got over his aggravation. That was one of the things that made her forgive those times when his temper rose high: when he cooled off, Hoyt was truly mellow, and he didn’t hold grudges.

The problem in the aftermath of his breakup with the beautiful Celeste was that he’d fumed around for weeks now, and as far as she knew, he’d not spoken more than a handful of choice words on the subject. Most of what she knew had come from gossip. Which was why she’d guessed that his male pride had somehow been soundly assaulted. And why he wasn’t showing signs of letting go of a bit of his anger over it anytime soon.

She’d barely made it down the hall and halfway across the big living room before he bellowed out another, “Eadie—get in here!”

She sprinted the rest of the way across the living room to the hall, suddenly shaky because she sensed something new about his anger this time.

As she slowed to rush into what had to be the master bedroom, her shaking increased. She’d never been in the private areas of Hoyt’s home, and his bedroom was the most private. And intimate. She had only a moment to note the dark luster of the wide headboard of his massive bed before she reached the open door of the master bath and rounded the corner.

The moment she saw him, Eadie realized that for the rest of her life, she’d always feel this same wild excitement and rush of happiness at the mere sight of the man.

Hoyt was so big and broad-shouldered, his powerful, work-hardened body the very zenith of masculinity. His larger-than-life presence made the large bathroom feel about a foot wide. Beneath the black Stetson he still wore, his hair was dark and overlong, and his face was almost too rugged and harsh to be considered handsome, though it was.

And she adored him. Truly and simply, Eadie adored everything about Hoyt Donovan, though she’d never in a million years confess that to him or to anyone else. She’d taken brutal pains to make sure she never showed it.

The glittering black gaze that missed so little when it wasn’t dazzled blind by female beauty, arrowed straight to her heat-flushed face and impacted her startled blue gaze with enough force to make her eyelashes give an involuntary spasm.

“It’s about time,” he growled. “I coulda bled to death in here.”

Alarmed, Eadie’s wide gaze dropped to the side of his ripped and bloodied chambray shirt as he turned, then pulled the shirttail out of his jeans and held it up to display the oozing slice in the hard flesh beneath.

Eadie’s gasp was overridden by his clipped, “Hurts like a son-of-a-gun.”

His remark was far less profane than it might have been if he’d been talking to one of his men, but Eadie barely noticed as she stepped close for a better look.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“Medical stuff’s in the cabinet right there.” He nodded toward a panel of the wide mirror that spanned the long counter. “Clean me up an’ slap on a patch.”

Hoyt’s voice was loud in the crowded space. His frustration was in the terse order, but the volume of his voice was anger. None of it made much of an impression on Eadie because she knew instantly that his frustration was with the injury and his anger was at himself for being injured in the first place.

“It needs stitches,” she said as she quickly washed her hands, hastily dried them, then rummaged briefly in the cabinet he’d indicated to find antiseptic and sterile gauze pads.

“You too squeamish to do it?”

The demand was a bit more crabby than angry, and they both knew she was anything but squeamish. Eadie opened the peroxide, then tore open a few of the sterile pad packs to dampen them. She turned toward him to brush the pads gently around the gash to clear away the blood, and answered.

“There’s a big difference between cowhide and your hide.”

“Stitches are stitches. If you can sew up a cow, you can sew me up.”

Eadie let herself smile faintly to acknowledge how ridiculous that was. “Not the same thing,” she murmured as she continued to work.

“How come?” Now his big voice had gentled a bit more as if his temper was already cooling.

Eadie glanced up to make eye contact. “Your hide’s thicker.”

As she’d hoped, he’d liked that. The lingering anger in his gaze abruptly softened to a glitter. The stern line of his mouth curved slightly. “Do tell.”

Eadie looked back down at her work, thrilled, flustered, but confident it wouldn’t show. She’d had years of practice keeping her face blank, even when Hoyt got that dangerously sexy look that made her ache for him. She knew that sexy look wasn’t aimed at her for any special reason. It was just the man’s natural state, and nothing to take personally. She directed them both back to the business at hand.

“Let me finish here and cover it, then I’ll call the doctor and find someone to drive you to town.”

“I’ll drive myself,” he growled, and Eadie wasn’t surprised. As long as Hoyt was conscious and on his feet, she wouldn’t think of arguing with his macho declaration. He’d consider the suggestion polite, but arguing with him about it would somehow put his manhood in question.

“Suit yourself.”

The silence as she gently worked suddenly seemed odd somehow. There was a tension to it, but the tension could only be hers. After all, taking care of Hoyt like this was a tiny spark of heaven. And that was not only ridiculous, but evidence of how pitiful she was.

Helping Hoyt with paperwork was one thing, but cleaning the small wound on his side seemed intensely personal, at least for her. She was tingling all over and her insides were fluttery. And oh, oh, she loved even a flimsy excuse to stand so close to him, and she couldn’t get enough of the smell of leather and sunshine and man.

Meanwhile Hoyt wouldn’t even notice the smell of her bargain shampoo. He wouldn’t be any more affected by her touch than he would have been if someone had absently brushed against his arm in a crowd. Though she knew that, the longer this small bit of first aid went on, the more intense the tingles and flutters became.

She couldn’t help it. Touching him, even like this, was about as good as it got for her. And Hoyt’s skin was not tougher than cowhide. It was hot and firm on his side, surprisingly silky, and the steely muscle and bone beneath were rocklike. Eadie suddenly felt a primitive feminine craving to touch more of him.

“How come your hands are shakin’?”

The blunt question made her heart jump and Eadie felt her face go a scorching red. She tried to cover it with a faked hint of irritation.

“You stomped in bellowing for me like a crazed bull. And since cleaning this has got to hurt, I keep thinking you’ll bellow again.”

“That all it is?” There was something edgy in his stark question, as if her trembling hands had somehow put him on alert and made him suspicious of her.

Which seemed like nonsense until it dawned on her why he’d go on the alert. Considering Hoyt’s taste for beautiful women, even a faint hint that sexless, Plain-Jane Eadie Webb might be getting a bit excited over this was sure to be a horrifying notion for a lady-killer like Hoyt.

Hurt by the idea, Eadie tried to finish quickly. If he’d suspected enough of her feelings to hint so fast that he was repelled, then it was time to counter his impression by rushing this. The doctor would insist on doing a more thorough job anyway, but for now it was clean enough to cover for the ride to town. At least the bleeding had almost stopped.

Eadie tossed the last wad of soiled gauze pads into the sink, then reached for three of the larger gauze packs to tear them open. In moments, she had the big squares pressed against his side and took his hand to lift it to hold the pads in place so she could tape them.

But taking Hoyt’s big, callused hand was like taking hold of the live end of a broken powerline, and Eadie couldn’t tell if her reflex was to yank her hand away or to hold on tighter. When she guided his fingers into place over the gauze pad and let go, her racing heart slowed a good ten beats per second. As desperate to deny the snapping charge she’d just gotten as she was to get this over with, she briskly tore off strips of tape to anchor the pad to Hoyt’s skin.

When she finished, she took an extra second to press a ripple of tape more securely against him. Only she had to know that the ripple was no ripple, but was instead an overwhelming need to touch Hoyt one last, daringly insane time. In the normal course of her life, there’d been few opportunities to ever touch him, and she was certain this time was destined to be the last.

Eadie reached for a small dark green towel and handed it to him. “Take this along, in case it starts oozing.”

She gingerly reached for the corners of the soiled gauze pads and bent to get out the small garbage can from beneath the sink. She transferred the squares to the trash before she put it back under the sink and let the door close. She’d just turned on the hot water tap to wash her hands and squirt some liquid soap from the ceramic dispenser into her palm before it dawned on her that Hoyt was still standing close by, not moving away as she’d expected.

Eadie sneaked a peek into the mirror to confirm what she could already see in her peripheral vision. Hoyt was staring solemnly at her, watching her every move. Her gaze dropped back down while she briskly washed her hands, splashed a bit of water against the bowl of the sink to rinse away any spots, then turned off the faucets and stepped away to dry her hands.

She’d not wanted to allow herself to read something ominous in Hoyt’s profile as he’d stared at her, because the fact that he was staring at her couldn’t be good. Though her instinct was to get out of his sight as soon as possible, she tried to sound cool about it.