The Doctor's Cowboy

“I see your sad puppy eyes, you adorable rascal.”

“I don’t envy the man who ends up falling for you,” Owen said as he sauntered toward her. “He’ll never beat out ol’ Roscoe here.”

Chloe scratched between Roscoe’s ears again. He enjoyed that more than anything. “What’s not to love? He adores me, doesn’t talk back, isn’t demanding.”

Owen leaned against the edge of the porch, and she could tell he wanted to say something else.

“What is it?”

“Thought you should know that scuttlebutt around town is that you’re Verona Charles’s next project.”

She sighed and stared out toward the road. “That woman needs to find her own man and maybe she’d stop poking around in everyone else’s love lives.”

“You’ve got a love life?”

Chloe snarled at him. “Be careful. I’ll sic Roscoe on you.”

Owen laughed. “I’m shaking.”

“Go on, Roscoe. Get him. Use his arm as a chew toy.”

“I think you could wrap my arm in bacon and these two still wouldn’t rouse themselves to attack.”

As if to prove his point, Roscoe let out a doggy sigh and closed his eyes as if about to take a nap while using her leg as a pillow.

Chloe shook her head at the dog. “Well, I guess I have to look elsewhere for my knight in shining armor.”

“From what I hear, you already have. Maybe silver spurs instead of shining armor.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes at her little brother. “Owen Brody, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop believing town gossip.”

Owen whistled. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

“Owen,” she said, warning in her voice.

He held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m backing off.”

Chloe continued to sit outside after her brother followed their father inside. If people were already pairing up her and Wyatt based on her just trying to be friendly, how long before Wyatt got wind of it? And when he did, how was she supposed to face him without letting it show that she didn’t mind as much as she should?

* * *

WYATT WATCHED THE minutes tick by on the clock, wondering when Chloe would be by to do her hospital rounds. If the other riders could see him now, laid up like an invalid and with nothing to look forward to beyond a visit from a doctor, no doubt they’d think him pathetic. Even the single guys on the circuit had someone—a girlfriend, brother, sister, best friend...parents. Most of the time, his lack of family didn’t bother him. It was just the way things were. He had friends, but they were out on the circuit somewhere, heading to the next event and another batch of points.

He heard Chloe’s voice from somewhere nearby, and his pulse jumped. Chances were if he’d met her in any other situation, he wouldn’t be so fixated on her. Yes, she was pretty, but it wasn’t as if she were the first pretty woman he’d ever seen. She was more like a lifeline to sanity than anything else, one he’d been denied the past two days.

Forty-eight hours of mind-destroying boredom. He’d read every one of the magazines she’d brought him cover to cover, even the Cosmopolitan, a fact he would never admit to anyone. That was boredom. In the wee hours when he couldn’t sleep anymore, he’d finished the last puzzle in the crossword book, and he’d only had to cheat a handful of times.

But if Chloe was just a way to keep from being bored, why did he get more excited to see her than anyone else who traipsed into his room? Sure, he talked to everyone from the nurses to the gal who mopped the floors. But Chloe, for some reason, was different. Maybe it was nothing more than hers was the first face he’d seen when he’d awakened in the emergency room.

He really needed to stop being so damn philosophical.

“So, I hear you’ve been contrary the past couple of days,” Chloe said as she breezed into his room with a scolding expression on her face.

“I deny that accusation.”

“So you haven’t been pestering the nurses to let you get up and saunter around the hospital?”

“I thought doctors liked to get patients up and out of bed as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible. We’d prefer not to risk undoing the work we’ve done. Trust me, you don’t want to reinjure yourself. I’m sure it hurt enough the first time around.”

“Fine,” he said, unable to hide his frustration. “Then the least you can do is to play that game of Scrabble with me.” He gestured toward the board on the rolling table that belonged to the still-empty second bed, where he’d already played the word wander for twenty points.

“Where did that come from?”

“Your friend Sophie.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Of course it did.”

What was that about? “Am I missing something?”

She waved away his question and walked toward the Scrabble board. “Well, that seems appropriate.”

“What does?”

She pointed toward the tiles. “Wander. Sort of describes your life, doesn’t it?”

He knew she didn’t mean anything negative by it, but for some reason he suddenly felt as if his life didn’t have a lot of meaning. That was odd since he enjoyed what he did. Wasn’t that all anyone could ask for from a career, to enjoy it?

Chloe didn’t wait for an answer, but instead selected her tiles from the bag, quickly rearranged them then played her word. She rolled the table toward him so he could see.

He barked a laugh, one that hurt a little less than it had before. “Ornery?”

“I wonder why that word came to mind.”

He looked up at her and was struck anew by how pretty she was with those bright eyes, soft-looking skin and a smile always at the ready even when she was being serious.

“Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t be doing the same thing if our roles were reversed? You don’t strike me as a woman who does idle very well.”

She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Who knew cowboys were such good judges of character?”

“Have to be able to peg a bull’s attitude.”

“You’re comparing me to a bull?”

He thought he’d made a huge tactical error until the edge of her mouth twitched. “Bullheaded, maybe.”

She feigned offense with a dramatic gasp. “Pot, meet kettle.”