The Wolf And The Dove
Linda Turner
Dr. Lucas Greywolf had carved a life for himself in Wyoming, tending to the needs of his people–untilRachel Fortune arrived.Her outsider's ways annoyed him. Her delectable body aroused him. And althoughLucas sensed he should avoid this troublesome woman, a passion neither could deny drove them together, and soon he discovered that Rachel would bear his child. Lucas knew he couldn't force this willful woman to become his wife, yet how he wanted her to truly surrender herself–body and soul–to their love….
Kate Fortune’s Journal Entry
It’s been so difficult staying behind the scenes and having to play dead while my family needs me.
I almost missed the birth of my granddaughter Caroline’s little baby. But luckily my faithful friend Sterling helped me sneak into the nursery. What a precious bundle of joy! I’m so relieved that mother and baby are doing fine.
I’m also keeping a close eye on my granddaughter Rachel—I mean “Rocky.” She was never like her glamorous twin, Allie. Rocky was always a tomboy, downplaying her looks, though she is quite a lovely girl. I’ve always encouraged and nurtured her adventurous spirit, which is why I left her my airplanes. Now she can finally have her own business and do what she loves best—flying. I just know she’s going to soar in the wilds of Wyoming. Now, if only she could meet Mr. Right….
A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader,
I grew up with two brothers and a sister and an extended family of uncles and an aunt who were close enough in age to be siblings. So, being part of a large, involved family is as natural to me as breathing. We played and argued and watched out for each other as children, and nothing’s really changed now that we’re all adults—though we do argue a lot less! Naturally, I was thrilled when I was asked to write a book for the FORTUNE’S CHILDREN series.
Writing Rocky’s story turned out to be an added bonus because she and Allie are identical twins, and I, too, have an identical twin sister—Brenda. We’re best friends and always have been. And yes, we still get asked if we’re twins whenever we go out in public together. People will probably still be asking us that when we’re eighty!
I also found Kate Fortune to be a fascinating character. I, too, had strong, spunky grandmothers who knew what they wanted out of life and went after it. One even joined the circus with my grandfather and traveled all over the country back in the thirties and forties. Neither of them ever flew off to the jungles of South America by themselves, but they might have if they’d been given the chance.
I hope you like The Wolf and the Dove. I loved working with the other authors and, like you, look forward to reading their books on the Fortune Family. Enjoy!
The Wolf and the Dove
Linda Turner
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my twin sister, Brenda Murray—
my best friend and partner in crime
who was there from the beginning
LINDA TURNER
always knew she was going to be a writer—with the wonderful characters in her family, how could she be anything else? Her grandfather snuck her and her twin sister into a circus tent when she was eight, and her parents never came across a road they didn’t want to explore. Consequently, life has always been a series of adventures to be savored to the fullest, which is why she worked for the FBI, spent a summer at a Boy Scout camp as a cook and longs to see the Pyramids in Egypt.
Meet the Fortunes—three generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealed…and passionate new romances are ignited.
RACHEL “ROCKY” FORTUNE: The spirited beauty thrives on risks, so she ventures to the wilderness of Wyoming to start her own search-and-rescue business. But is she brave enough to take a chance on love?
LUKE GREYWOLF: The dedicated Native American doctor harbors a tragic secret and vows never to love again. But passionate Rachel arouses feelings too long denied….
MONICA MALONE: The legendary movie star is obsessed with revenge. She’ll use seduction and blackmail to get her share of the Fortune empire…at any cost.
ADAM FORTUNE: Former military officer. He could keep order in the ranks, but he couldn’t control his kids! Can this handsome single dad learn some lessons in fatherhood—and love?
LIZ JONES—CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Fellow gossips, here’s the latest dirt on the Fortunes:
That darling Caroline and her sexy scientist husband announced the birth of their first child! Who would’ve thought this green-card marriage would end so joyously?
And Kyle reunited with an old flame and discovered he had a love child. I can’t believe this city slicker is settling down on the Wyoming ranch for good. Ugh! All that dirt and grime…but of course I wouldn’t mind a roll in the hay with a rugged cowboy!
But there’s no gossip juicier than the scandalous break-up of Jake and Erica. Already my sources have spotted that louse with another woman. Poor Erica! If I were her, I’d go straight to the La Dee Da Spa, run up those credit cards at chic boutiques and forget all about that gorgeous hunk…. No wallowing in self-pity for me!
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a feeling something big is about to happen with those unpredictable Fortunes….
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
One
With his usual enthusiasm, Michael Hawk gave Dr. Luke Greywolf a fierce hug, then ran out of the examining room as fast as his injured leg would allow, his attention jumping to the toy he would pick out at the nurses’ station before he left with his mother. A muscle clenching in his square jaw, Luke watched the five-year-old awkwardly make his way down the hall and swore, long and fierce. The boy needed a good orthopedic surgeon and surgery to correct a break that hadn’t healed properly six months ago, but he wasn’t likely to get either. His father was a day laborer, and what money there was went for food and clothes, not health insurance. Surgery, however necessary, was a luxury that was out of reach.
“Don’t beat yourself up over this,” Mary Littlejohn, his nurse, said quietly from behind him. “You’re doing all you can.”
“It’s not enough,” he said flatly, turning away to wash his hands. “That kid’s going to live with a limp the rest of his life, and it doesn’t have to be that way, dammit. If I could get him to Jeremy Stevens in Jackson—”
Mary cut in with the bluntness of a longtime friend. “But you can’t. His parents are proud—they won’t take handouts. And you’re already helping more people than you can afford to.”
“Don’t start,” he growled.
He might as well have saved his breath. Old enough to be his mother, Mary had been speaking her mind from the first day she came to work for him, three years ago, when he opened the clinic. “Somebody has to say something, and I’m just the person to do it. I know you came home to help people, but you’ve got to be sensible about it, Greywolf. Half the patients you see never carry through on their promise to pay, and you just let it go. That’s no way to run a business. You’ve got your own bills to pay.”
“I’m making it,” he said shortly. There was no way he was going to hound people who could barely put groceries on the table for the money for shots for their kids. “Who’s next?”
“Jane Birdsong,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Then old man Thompson, Bill Parsons, Abigail Wilson, and Rachel Fortune.”
Reaching for the Birdsong chart, Luke threw her a sharp glance of surprise. “Fortune? As in one of old lady Kate’s brood?”
Mary’s faded blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “The one and only. If I remember correctly, this one belongs to Jake…one of the twins, I think.”
“And she’s here to see me?”
Chuckling at his suspicious tone, she nodded. “So she says. Word must have gotten out what a good doctor you are.”
He snorted at that. “Get real, Mary. We’re talking about the Fortunes, remember? The stinking-rich ones who hang out with the Kennedys and Rockefellers? The old lady had enough money to buy every major hospital in the country—somehow I can’t see her granddaughter going to a rural clinic for medical care unless she was dying. Did she look sick?”
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “I’d have given my eye teeth to look that sick at her age. Want me to show her in?”
Curious, Luke nodded. “Room three,” he began, only to stop short, scowling. What the hell was he doing? He had sick patients in the waiting room, poor people who would wait without complaint for as long as it took to see him. Rachel Fortune couldn’t just waltz in like she owned the place and cut to the head of the line because he couldn’t imagine what she wanted with him and her family had more money than God.
“Forget that,” he growled. “She can wait her turn just like everyone else. Show Mr. Thompson into three.”
“You’re the boss,” Mary said with a shrug, and went to do his bidding.
When Rocky was shown into an examining room nearly two hours later, she stopped in surprise. “Oh, I’m not here for an exam,” she told the nurse hurriedly. “I have a business proposition to discuss with Dr. Greywolf. I know I should have called first, but I was afraid he’d be booked up and it’d be weeks before I could see him.”
“And you didn’t want to wait,” Mary guessed shrewdly, grinning.
Caught in the trap of the older woman’s friendly, knowing eyes, Rocky couldn’t help but laugh. “What can I say? I was born a month early, and I’ve been in a hurry ever since. Is it always this busy around here?”
Her blue eyes twinkling, Mary said, “Busy? Today’s a slow day. Most nights we’re lucky to get out of here by eight.” Taking a quick inventory to make sure everything in the room was as it should be, she motioned to the straight-backed chair positioned against the wall. “Have a seat. I hate to tell you this, but you’ve got another wait. Dr. Greywolf will get to you as soon as possible.”
Rocky thanked her, but as soon as the door shut quietly behind the nurse she realized there was no way she was going to be able to just sit there and wait. She was too nervous, too anxious, too excited. For four months now, ever since she’d inherited a helicopter and three single-engine planes from her grandmother, she’d been searching for the perfect locale to start her own flying service. She’d checked out everywhere from Estes Park to Jackson Hole to Vail, and in the end she’d found what she was looking for practically in the backyard of her grandmother’s Wyoming ranch.
Shaking her head over her own stupidity, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of Clear Springs sooner. It was a small town, rough and rugged and charmingly flavored with the old West, and she’d always loved it. Invitingly situated between the Ghost Mountains to the north and a Shoshone Indian reservation to the south, it drew a respectable number of tourists in the summer and its share of hunters and hikers in the fall and winter. And, incredibly, there were no pilots for hire in the area to take hunters into the mountains or fly search-and-rescue in case of an emergency. The situation couldn’t have been better if her grandmother had arranged things for her in heaven.
Which Kate just might have done, she admitted with a rueful flash of dimples. There hadn’t been much that Katherine Winfield Fortune hadn’t done or tried in life. She’d gone her own way, done her own thing, always with a style that was legendary. She was the one who’d taught Rocky to fly when she was sixteen, and if there was a way to pull strings from heaven, Kate would have found a way.
Memories swamped Rocky. She still found it hard to believe Kate was dead. How could a woman who was so full of spirit, of life, let death take her in a plane crash in some godforsaken jungle? Kate had been tougher than that, stronger. And too good a pilot to let a plane she was flying go down so easily. She would have fought like hell to keep it in the air; and then, when it became clear that wasn’t going to be possible, she would have found a way to land the thing. And she would have walked away, dammit. She should have.
Only she hadn’t.
Her throat tight, Rocky swallowed. Lord, she missed her. Kate had always understood her need for independence, her need to stand on her own two feet and cut herself free of the Fortune money, Fortune Cosmetics, Fortune expectations. And with her death, she’d given her the means to do that. Thanks to Kate, she had her planes, experience flying in the mountains, and the emergency medical training Kate had insisted she take when she got her commercial pilot’s license. She’d taken care of everything.
Except a landing field.
Her cousin Kyle, who had inherited her grandmother’s ranch, had graciously offered to let her use the facilities there, but Rocky’s stubborn pride had refused to let her accept. She’d grown up with advantages most people couldn’t even dream of, and it was time she proved she could stand on her own two feet. That meant no favors from family, no free business advice, nothing. She would either succeed or fail, all by herself.
Which meant she still needed an airstrip. And the only other private one in the area was owned by Luke Greywolf.
The place had once belonged to Douglas Aeronautics, and Luke had bought it for a song—not, according to the locals, because he planned to reopen the old flying service that had gone belly-up during the oil embargo of the seventies, but because the land was cheap and close to the reservation. He’d turned the largest building on the property into a clinic and hot-topped the parking lot, but other than that, he’d made few other changes. The hangar was still rusted and the runway pitted and unused, and that was what she wanted to talk to the good doctor about.
She’d heard he was a reasonable man, so she didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t do business together…except for the clinic sign out front. Made of wood and painted a dull gray, it would have been plain and unobtrusive if not for the face of a wolf that had been carved into the rough wood by a talented hand. She had a sinking feeling that that sign said a lot about Luke Greywolf. If he was anything like the wolf in his name and as protective of his territory, then making a deal with him wasn’t going to be quite as easy as she’d hoped.
She wasn’t Kate Fortune’s granddaughter for nothing, however. Kate had taught her that when a woman wanted something in a man’s world, she had to pull out all the stops, and that was just what she’d done. Turning toward the mirror on the wall by the small dressing area, she took a quick inventory of herself and grinned. Lord, she looked like Allie today! Of course, most of the world thought she looked like her twin sister every day, but she knew better. Oh, they were identical right down to their toes, but it was Allie who loved makeup and glamour and had been born with the style that made her the perfect choice as the model for Fortune Cosmetics.
And Rocky didn’t envy her one little bit. She would have hated the fuss and bother and never being able to step out in public without worrying about her mascara being smudged or her hair limp. But on a day when she needed everything going for her, Rocky decided with a chuckle, looking like her sister couldn’t hurt. Giving her image in the mirror one last critical glance, she nodded, satisfied. If Lucas Greywolf could turn down her proposal when she looked this good, then the man didn’t have any blood in his veins.
Luke made a few quick notes in Abigail Wilson’s file, his brows knitting as he stared down at comments he’d made after her previous visits. She was pregnant with her sixth child and couldn’t afford to feed the five she already had. She seemed cheerful enough, but she couldn’t hide the stress in her eyes. Like all the women on the reservation, she wanted more for her children but knew the odds were against them. The lucky ones scraped and fought and found a way out the first chance they got. The rest stayed and struggled just to exist. There was nothing else they could do.
Frustrated, irritated, he closed the file and handed it to Mary. “Rachel Fortune still here?”
She nodded. “Room one. And not one word of complaint out of her when I showed her in there. In fact, she apologized to me for stopping in without an appointment—said she needed to talk to you. I thought she’d be snooty, but she’s been real nice.”
Reserving judgment, Luke merely grunted. The lady had to want something real bad if she’d sat over two hours in a waiting room full of sick patients to see him when she wasn’t even sick. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s a regular princess,” he drawled, heading for the door. “It shouldn’t take long to find out what she wants. Show Christie Eagle and her mother into three and tell them I’ll be right with them.”
His rugged face set in grim lines, he strode down the hall to examining room one, going over in his head what he knew about the Fortune family. It wasn’t much. The old lady, Kate, had died recently in a plane crash, and from what he’d heard about her, she’d been one sharp cookie. She’d ruled the family empire with a firm hand, and if the falling price of Fortune Cosmetics stock was anything to go by, her absence was already being felt.
So what did Kate’s granddaughter want with him? he wondered with a frown. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Apart from her cousin Kyle, whom he occasionally saw in town, he wouldn’t know her or the rest of the clan if he passed them on the street. And that was just fine with him. Because of the family’s connection to the town, the local paper faithfully reported every tidbit of gossip about the clan, and by all accounts, the younger Fortunes were wild, willful, and spoiled, not to mention attracted to danger. Just last week, he’d read about Rachel’s exploits at a charity air show. She’d been performing stunts—stunts, for God’s sake!—when her plane nearly stalled. She’d managed to pull out of it, but she could have just as easily crashed and killed not only herself, but dozens of innocent people on the ground.
Luke had little use for that kind of irresponsibility. The whole bunch was too used to doing what they damn well pleased. They flew in to the ranch when they wanted to play cowboy and flew out again when they grew bored with the game. From what he could see, they’d never done a hard day’s work in their life.
Reaching the examining room where Rachel waited, he pushed the door open and soundlessly stepped inside to find her standing with her back to him, examining his diploma from medical school, which was framed and hanging on the far wall. Determined to keep this short and sweet, he said, “Ms. Fortune? I understand you wanted to talk to me—”
That was as far as he got. She turned then, a smile of welcome flirting with the edges of her mouth, and he felt the impact clear across the room. Stopping dead in his tracks, he would have sworn she knocked him out of his shoes. This was Rachel Fortune?
He’d expected her to be attractive—money and good looks just seemed to go hand in hand—and her grandmother had started one of the most successful cosmetic companies in the world. With good bone structure and skin, not to mention the right makeup, any woman could be reasonably pretty.
Pretty didn’t even begin to describe the woman before him, however. With her sculptured cheeks, slanting brows and large dark brown eyes, she could have stopped traffic in any city in the world, but here in Clear Springs, where the harsh winters dried the skin and added years to a woman’s face, she was as breathtaking and unexpected as a rose in the snow. And he couldn’t stop staring. Tall and slim, she was dressed for business in a somber black wool suit and stark white blouse, but the effect was ruined by the way the fit of the skirt emphasized her slender waist and the impossibly long length of her legs. And then there was her hair. Wine red, it fell in a soft, sweeping curve to her angled jaw, just begging for a man’s touch.
He’d always been a sucker for red hair.
The thought slipped up on him like a craving in the night, easing into his blood in a sudden flash of heat that caught him totally off guard. Stunned, he stiffened, guilt and resentment twisting in his gut. He hadn’t looked twice at a woman in the two years since Jan had died, and he didn’t plan to start now with someone like Lady Fortune here, who had the world at her feet. He only had to see the amusement glinting in those big brown eyes of hers to know that not only was she aware of the effect she had on men, she expected it. If that was what she was here for, she’d made a wasted trip.
“I’m Dr. Greywolf,” he said coolly. “What can I do for you, Ms. Fortune?”
Caught in his intense dark brown eyes, Rocky hesitated, her smile wavering and her heart, for no reason that she could understand, suddenly jumping crazily in her breast. Okay, she acknowledged, he was a good-looking man, if you liked the stony type. She didn’t. She liked a man who laughed easily, at himself and the world. That did not in any way, shape or form appear to describe Luke Greywolf.
There was no glint of humor in his nearly black eyes, no smile to relieve the lean, chiseled features of his square face. Tall and broad-shouldered in a white lab coat, his straight, inky-black hair cut conservatively short, he stood like a pine in the forest that didn’t bend, his proud Shoshone heritage stamped all over him. It was there in the width of his brow, the granite-hard set of his jaw, his blade of a nose. And it was there in his eyes. Never taking his gaze from her, he watched her like a wary hawk that just dared her to make a wrong move.
It wasn’t, Rocky decided, swallowing to ease the sudden dryness in her throat, a look she particularly cared for. Her nerve endings bristling, she reminded herself that she didn’t have to like the man to do business with him, then gave him a smile that had, in the past, left more than one un-suspecting male panting. “Please…call me Rocky.”
Far from impressed, he arched a disbelieving brow. “Rocky Fortune? I thought your name was Rachel.”
“It is,” she said. “But I earned the nickname when I gave my brother a black eye when I was ten, and it just sort of stuck.” Crossing the room to him, she held out her hand and grinned. “I’ve still got a wicked left, but I haven’t punched anybody out in years. It’s nice to meet you, Doc. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Most people, upon hearing the story about her nickname, wanted to know what her brother had done to her to provoke her into punching his lights out, but Luke Greywolf only stared at her hand before reluctantly taking it in a quick shake that was over almost before it had begun. “I understand you wanted to talk to me,” he said curtly. “If this is about a contribution to one of the local charities—”
He hadn’t so much as moved, but Rocky could feel him mentally pushing her toward the door. “It isn’t,” she said quickly. “Actually, I have a business proposition for you.”
Luke couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said she wanted to buy him a Ferrari. Stepping farther into the room, he shut the door behind him, closing out the noise rolling down the hall from the waiting room. In the sudden silence, his brown eyes, dark with suspicion, met hers. “Is this some kind of joke? You can probably buy and sell me a hundred times over, Ms. Fortune. What kind of business could we possibly have in common?”
“You have an airfield that no one’s using,” she replied promptly. “I’d like to buy it.”
“Why?”
“Because I need it,” she said simply. “My grandmother left me a small fleet of planes and a helicopter, and I want to use them to start a flying service here in Clear Springs. You know, fly in hunters and skiers, that kind of thing. There’s not anything like that in this area. Everyone goes to Jackson, which is nearly a hundred miles away, not to mention on the other side of the mountains. That’s not only inconvenient, it’s a loss of revenue for the city. So surely you can see that there’s a need…”
Luke kept his gaze shuttered. He saw, all right. What he saw was that she needed his landing strip to fly in her rich friends to hunt and party. They’d throw their money around town, look down their noses at everyone, tear up the woods and the roads, then take home trophy elk and deer as if it were their God-given right.
Not if he had anything to say about it, he thought grimly. The muscles in his jaw bunching at the thought, he turned his back on her and opened the door to the hall. “The airfield’s not for sale. If that’s all you wanted to discuss, I have patients…”
Dismissing her as easily as if she were a door-to-door salesman, he patiently waited for her to precede him into the hall. Caught off guard, Rocky stood right where she was. He was turning her down! she thought in disbelief. No one had ever turned her down without doing her the courtesy of considering her offer, and she found, to her irritation, that she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one damn bit!
“Can’t we at least talk this out?” she persisted stubbornly. “I could come back at the end of the day.”
“What’s there to talk about?” His face as hard as the Rockies, he stood at the open doorway, clearly impatient for her to leave. “You want my airstrip to fly your rich friends in for the hunting season so they can all play big white hunter. Sorry, but I’m not interested.”
“Big white hunter?” she echoed in confusion. “You make it sound like I’m planning some kind of Jungle Jim party thing.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No! Oh, sure, I plan to hire out to hunters or anyone else who needs my services, but I have a lot more to offer than tour-guide services. I’m a licensed EMT, Dr. Greywolf,” she said proudly. “I’ve trained with one of the best search-and-rescue teams in the country and logged hundreds of hours flying in the mountains. This community needs that kind of emergency service. And I need an airfield.”
“Isn’t there one at your grandmother’s ranch?”
“That belongs to my cousin Kyle now. I want a place of my own.”
“Then you’ll have to find one somewhere else. Mine’s not for sale.”
He was so adamant, Rocky wanted to shake him. It wasn’t as if he were using the airstrip, she thought resentfully as the temper she’d inherited along with her red hair from her grandmother started to simmer. It was just sitting there going to pot. It would serve him right if she told him to just forget it. She could buy some land and build what she needed from scratch—but that would take time, dammit, and she wanted to get started now!
“All right,” she said abruptly, knowing when she was beating a dead horse. “You don’t want to sell. I can respect that. How about leasing it, then? Don’t say no,” she said quickly, before he could turn her down flat again. “Just think about it for now. The landing strip’s just sitting there, not earning you a penny. Maybe you don’t need the money personally, but you could always use it to make improvements here at the clinic.”
She saw resentment flicker in his eyes and wasn’t surprised. He was a proud man, but facts were facts. She’d had more than enough time to look around the place while she waited to talk to him, and it was obvious he was running the place on a shoestring. It was spotlessly clean, but the old building really needed some cosmetic work, work that could easily be paid for with the generous lease she was willing to pay.
Grabbing a piece of paper from her purse, she hurriedly jotted down her telephone number and address, then pushed it into his hand. “If you change your mind, just give me a call.”
She didn’t give him time to tell her hell would freeze over before he made that call. Stepping around him, her bearing as regal as a queen’s, she walked down the hall and turned the corner into the reception area. Staring after her, Luke crushed the slip of paper with her phone number in his fist and swore. “Brat,” he muttered, tossing the note into a nearby trash can. “Who the hell does she think she is? She’s got all the money in the world, and all she can think about is her damn airfield. If she thinks she’s got problems, let her talk to Michael Hawk. Or Abigail Wilson. They’re the ones who could use her money—”
“Which is why you should have at least considered what she had to say,” Mary retorted from the supply closet, which was conveniently located right next to examining room one. Making no apologies for the fact that she had blatantly eavesdropped, not only on his conversation with himself but also on his meeting with Rocky Fortune, she frowned at him disapprovingly. “It’s not like you’re using that airstrip. And the money you’d make on a lease would go a long way toward financing Michael Hawk’s operation.”
“His father won’t accept help, remember?”
“A handout, no. But Rocky was right—this place could use some work. You could hire Mr. Hawk to do it. That would save his pride, and Michael would still get his surgery.”
She had a point, Luke grudgingly admitted, one he hadn’t even considered. Damn! What the hell was wrong with him? He should have thought of Michael himself, but he’d been so busy drooling over the lady he couldn’t think straight. And then there was the money. She had it in spades, so she was used to getting what she wanted because she wanted it. And that had rubbed him the wrong way. So he’d cut off his nose to spite his face, just to bring her down a peg or two. Idiot!
“I’ll talk to her,” he said stiffly. “Later.”
“And you’ll apologize?”
He rolled his eyes, his lips twitching. Trust Mary to insist on a pound of flesh. “All right, I’ll apologize for being rude and obnoxious. Now can we get back to work? In case you’ve forgotten, we still got patients to see.”
“In a minute,” she said, and stepped into the first waiting room to retrieve the crumpled slip of paper he’d tossed in the trash. When she placed it in his hand and closed his fingers around it, she was grinning. “You can’t call her if you haven’t got her number.” Chuckling, she turned away to retrieve Christie Eagle’s chart.
The small fifty-year-old wood-frame house was showing serious signs of age. Even in the dark shadows of the night, Luke could see the peeling paint, the slightly uneven steps of the porch, the shutters that probably hadn’t hung straight in decades. Surprised, he braked to a stop at the curb and grabbed the wrinkled scrap of paper he’d tossed on the dash when he left the clinic a few minutes earlier. A quick glance at the address Rocky had scrawled there four hours earlier assured him he’d made no mistake. This was it—the place where Kate Fortune’s granddaughter was living.
It made no sense, he told himself as he approached the front steps. He didn’t know anything about the details of the old lady’s will, apart from what Rocky had told him, but it was a given that she wasn’t strapped for funds. She could, no doubt, afford the best that Clear Springs had to offer. So what was she doing living here?
Bothered more than he should have been by the question, he knocked briskly on the door, determined not to get caught up in the intriguing diversity that was Rocky Fortune. The lady had her quirks and the money to indulge them. He didn’t care what she did as long as she agreed to pay him a decent lease on the airfield.
Knocking again, he frowned when there was no answer. Someone was obviously home—he could see the lights through the covered windows, and the walls were practically vibrating from the country-and-western song being belted out on a radio inside. “What the hell?” he muttered, and tried the knob. It opened without a sound. Surprised, he scowled. Crazy girl, didn’t she know better than to leave her door unlocked at night? Clear Springs might not be much of a metropolis, but just like anywhere else, it had its fair share of crime.
Giving the door a slight nudge, he stepped cautiously inside and found himself in a small entrance hall. On the radio, a whiskey-voiced man was singing about a honky-tonk woman, but Luke hardly noticed. Through the arched doors that led to the living room he caught sight of Rocky, and he could do nothing but stare. This was, he knew, the same woman who’d come sashaying into his clinic earlier that afternoon, dressed to kill and flashing her money around. The expensive business suit, however, had been traded for paint-spattered jeans and a ragtag cotton shirt, her high heels for a pair of tennis shoes that looked as if they’d been through a war. Standing with her back to him, her wild red hair covered with a blue bandanna, she was painting the living room and singing her heart out, while her slim hips kept heart-stopping time to the beat of the music. Feeling like he’d been struck by lightning on a clear day, Luke stood as if turned to stone, while deep inside a hot pulse kept time with every sway of her hips.
Belting out the current number one country hit, Rocky turned to add paint to her dry roller pan—and nearly dropped it, stunned when she saw Luke Greywolf standing in the doorway. She should have laughed—she was a mess, with white paint in her hair and on her clothes and even under her fingernails, and her singing had often been compared to a cat’s screeching. But there was something in his eyes that wasn’t the least bit funny, and suddenly her chest seemed tight and breathing wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been before she spied him in the doorway.
Flustered, she hit the power switch to the radio. “Well, this is a surprise,” she said, too loudly, shattering the sudden silence. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this evening.”
“I knocked,” he said stiffly. “But the radio—”
“Was blaring,” she finished for him, grinning. “I have to crank it up to max when I sing, or I’d have every dog in the neighborhood howling at the moon.”
For a moment, she thought she saw a smile start to curl up the corners of his mouth, and she found herself waiting expectantly, her gaze fastened on his lips. But then his eyes fell to the roller and pan at her feet, the paint on her arms and clothes, and a confused anger hardened his face. Scowling at her, he growled, “Tell me something, lady. Just what the hell kind of game are you playing, anyway?”
Taken aback by the unexpected attack, Rocky blinked. “Game? What are you talking about?”
“This handyman routine,” he retorted, waving at the drop sheets and painting paraphernalia that littered the living room. “I didn’t think you people cut up your own meat, let alone knew how to yield a paintbrush.”
Outraged, Rocky gasped, her brown eyes narrowing dangerously. “Cut up our own meat?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Luke knew it the second the words left his mouth, and he wanted to kick himself. What was it about this woman that knocked him off kilter so easily? He’d never had a problem communicating with women before—he liked them, dammit! But there was something about Rocky Fortune that just seemed to rub him the wrong way.
Heat climbing up his throat, he quickly back-pedaled. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that your family is rolling in dough, and you’re probably not used to doing things for yourself—”
“Like tying my own shoelaces?”
Luke winced at the sweetly purred gibe. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Not on your life,” she retorted, beginning to enjoy herself. “So what can I do for you, Doc? You didn’t show up here just to insult me.”
She knew, dammit, why he was there—he could see the anticipation dancing in her eyes. And she was going to make him squirm. Amused in spite of himself, he swallowed his pride and admitted, “I’ve given it some thought and realized I may have rejected your offer to lease the airstrip too quickly. I thought maybe we could discuss terms.”
“Terms, huh?” she echoed, grinning. “I think I can manage that.” Whisking off the sheets covering the furniture, she motioned to him to take a seat in an overstuffed chair, then settled opposite him on a faded brocade coach. “Okay, Doc, the ball’s in your court. It’s your serve. Give it your best shot.”
He named a sum that he thought was more than fair, only to have her gasp as if he’d just insulted her. “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s highway robbery. Have you looked at the runway recently? And the hangar?”
She threw out a figure that was half the one he’d named, he countered, and the game began. With a skill Luke couldn’t help but admire, she held her ground and bartered like a horse trader, making no attempt to hide the fact that she was in her element. Later, it would bother him that he’d enjoyed himself so much, but when he rose to leave nearly an hour after he arrived, they had a deal.
Confident that he’d gotten the best of her, he solemnly shook hands with her, then couldn’t resist gigging her as she walked him to the door. “You drive a hard bargain, lady. But I would have taken less, you know.”
Unperturbed, she only grinned. “Really? That’s good to know, Doc. Because I would have paid more.” Her brown eyes sparkling, she laughed and shut the door in his face.
Two
The snow that had been falling all day had finally stopped, but the night was dark as pitch and cold as the devil. Flipping off the clinic lights, Lucas stepped outside and locked the front door, swearing under his breath as the wind seemed to cut right through his clothes. With a sharp jerk, he tugged the zipper of his down jacket as high as it would go, but it didn’t help. Nothing did when the temperature was dropping like a rock toward zero and a twenty-mile-an-hour wind was blowing fit to kill. Leaning into the gale, his shoulders hunched against the cold that snaked down the back of his neck, he hurried toward his Bronco at the far end of the clinic’s small parking lot and quickly climbed inside.
It wasn’t until he stuck the key in the ignition and started the motor and the heater, though, that he allowed himself to even glance toward the hangar that he’d leased to Rocky Fortune a week ago. A hulking shadow in the night on the far side of the runway, it was bathed in light, just as it had been every night that week. And for some gnawing reason that he couldn’t have explained, that irritated the hell out of him.
When he agreed to lease the place to her, he’d told himself the lady wasn’t going to be a problem. Because of the security deposit and first and last months’ rent she’d paid him, Michael Hawk had gotten his operation, and that was all he cared about. If that black pickup of hers was parked in front of the hangar when he got to work in the morning and was still there when he left at night, drawing his eye every time he stepped outside, he’d just learn to ignore it and her.
Yeah, yeah, he thought bitterly. Even on a bad-hair day, Rocky Fortune wasn’t the type of woman a man could easily ignore. And it was damn frustrating! What the hell was she doing in there, anyway? Didn’t she ever go home? And why did he care?
He didn’t, he told himself flatly. Not a lick. She had a lease—the place was hers to do with as she liked. She could move a cot in and sleep there for all he cared, as long as she left him alone. If he was curious, it was just because he couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there. When they struck their deal, he’d warned her the hangar had to be renovated before she could use it, but he had yet to see a work crew there. And he didn’t believe for a second that she was making the necessary improvements herself. Not a Fortune. She might have slapped a couple of coats of paint on the walls of that old house she was renting, but when it came to work, the hard, physical, dirty kind that got under your nails and stained your clothes and skin and left you bone-weary at the end of the day, she’d probably never done a smidgen of it in her spoiled little life.
His hands curling around the steering wheel, he glared at the hanger’s blazing lights and told himself that whatever Rocky was doing, it was none of his business. But when he put the Bronco in gear, he headed for the hangar instead of home, cursing himself all the way.
With a low moan, the wind whistled around the hangar, searching and finding a way in through the cracks and crevices of the old sliding metal door. In the corner, the heater was working overtime blowing, but it did little good against the chilly air that crept around her ankles. Shivering, Rocky tried to ignore it as she bent over the metal work-table she was sanding so that she could paint it in the morning, but her toes and fingers were nearly numb from the cold. She was, she decided, going to have to call it a night soon. Then, tomorrow, she was going to do something about that door. And get another heater—she could see right now that one just wasn’t going to be enough. The plumbing in the bathroom needed to be checked over, and then she’d have to see about getting someone out there to haul away all the rusty junk that had been left behind by the previous occupant. It had taken her most of the week to go through it all, salvaging what she could, then piling the discarded pieces neatly in a corner. But it couldn’t stay there—
Without warning, the outer door adjacent to the hangar’s small office suddenly flew open, sending a blast of icy wind rushing inside. Startled, her heart jumping into her throat, Rocky glanced up just in time to see Lucas Greywolf blow in with the wind.
Over the course of the past week, she’d spent every waking hour at the hangar and she hadn’t caught sight of the doc once, which was just fine with her. He’d made no secret of the fact that he didn’t approve of her, and that still galled her. Not that she cared what he thought of her, she was quick to assure herself. She had her own agenda and wasn’t looking for a man. Especially one who was so quick to look down that proud nose of his and find her lacking. That didn’t mean, however, that she’d forgotten how just the sight of him had made her stomach flutter.
Had he noticed? she wondered, and winced at the thought. She’d been expecting a middle-aged, paunchy doctor in a white lab coat, not a tall, lean hunk who could have just stepped out of one those sexy cigarette ads. If she’d been momentarily thrown for a loop, it was a natural enough reaction. He’d just caught her by surprise—that was all. The next time she ran into him, she’d promised herself, she wouldn’t bat an eye.
Well, here it is—the next time—Rocky, my girl, a voice drawled in her ear, and not only are you not batting an eye, you’re not breathing, either. Try not to drool, sweetie. It’s so tacky. And the good doctor just might get the mistaken impression that you’re interested. You’re not, are you?
Her heart stumbled. Of course she wasn’t! The last man she’d made the mistake of getting interested in had left a bruise on her heart that was only just now starting to heal. Greg Butler. Just the thought of him brought a bad taste to her mouth and put her off even looking at another man. If Lucas Greywolf caught her attention, it was only because she couldn’t figure him out. Every time she saw him, he was scowling, and tonight was no different. Did he never smile? Openly studying him, she watched him sweep his cowboy hat off and knock the snow from it and assured herself she wasn’t even close to drooling. Just because she wasn’t buying, however, didn’t mean she couldn’t window shop.
“Hey, Doc.” She greeted him easily as she reluctantly returned her attention to the rusty table she was sanding with a wire brush. “You picked a heck of a night to come calling. Sorry I can’t give you the guided tour, but I’ve sort of got my hands in this right now, and I want to finish before I close up shop for the night.”
If he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, Lucas would have never believed it. The oh-so-rich, born-with-a-gold-not-silver-spoon-in-her-mouth Ms. Fortune was actually working. Her face free of makeup, her worn jeans and faded college sweatshirt splattered with dirt and grime, she scrubbed at the metal table she was refinishing with a total disregard for the rust she was getting all over her. Her hands were stained with the stuff, splotches of it had settled on her cheeks and neck, and she even had it under her fingernails. Yet she still somehow managed to look beautiful. How the hell did she do it?
Disgusted with himself for even noticing, Lucas dragged his eyes away from her and glanced around in surprise. If the lady had done this all by herself in just a week, she’d really been hustling. She’d cleaned the place up, collected all the old motor parts in a pile in the corner, then scrubbed decades of grease from large patches of the cement floor. There was still a lot of work left to be done, but she’d made more of a dent than he’d expected, and he had to admit he was impressed. He hadn’t thought the lady had it in her.
As if reading his thoughts, she laughed softly. “Don’t look now, Doc, but your chin’s on the floor. What’s the matter? Did you think the spoiled little rich girl was too finicky to get her hands dirty?”
The teasing gibe struck home. Heat, brick red and uncomfortable, rose in a tide from his neck to his cheeks, making it impossible for him to deny the accusation. So he did the only thing a man with any integrity could—he looked her right in the eye and baldly told her exactly what he thought of her. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think you’d even know where to begin. But then again, spoiled little rich girls aren’t exactly my field of expertise.”
“So what is?”
He frowned. “What?”
“Your field of expertise,” she answered patiently, knowing she shouldn’t push the issue, but unable to drop it. Just what type of woman attracted a man like Lucas Greywolf? And why was that information suddenly so important to her? “And I’m not talking about medicine, Doc. You’re what—thirty? Thirty-two?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And well preserved for your advanced age,” she said teasingly. “Men like you, especially when they’ve got M.D. behind their names, don’t usually walk around loose. You must have to sweep the women off your front porch every night just to get inside your house.”
Something flickered in his eyes, something she couldn’t quite read before it was quickly shuttered behind a glint of amusement. “Yeah, life’s rough. So what do you want to know? How short or tall I like my women, and if you fit the mold?”
“No! Or course not!”
Flustered, she glanced away and inadvertently jerked her hand across a rough, jagged corner of the table she was sanding. The rusty edge, as sharp as a razor, cut right across the pad of her thumb, slicing it open. “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
Her teeth clenched tight to hold in the curses that rose to her tongue, Rocky pressed the wound against her middle, cradling the injured hand close. “Nothing,” she said tersely. “Just a scrape.”
“The hell it is. You’re white as a sheet.” Crossing the hanger in four swift strides, he reached for her hand. “Let me see, Rocky,” he said quietly. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re bleeding all over that dirty shirt of yours.”
She wanted to deny it, but anything that hurt this bad had to be bleeding like a stuck pig. Reluctantly letting him take her hand, she winced as he gently turned it over to expose the two-inch cut at the base of her thumb. Blood seeped from it, flooding her palm.
His expression grim, Lucas looked up from the wound to her ashen face. “You’re not going to pass out on me now, are you?”
She gave him a withering look that her grandmother would have been proud of. “A Fortune woman faint at the sight of a little blood? Kate would turn over in her grave. How bad is it?”
He probed gently, not wanting to hurt her, but knowing there was no avoiding it. “It’s in an awkward spot,” he finally announced, glancing back up at her with a frown. “Every time you move your thumb it’s going to break open if you don’t have it stitched. How long has it been since you’ve had a tetanus shot?”
Caught off guard, she blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe a couple of years. I can’t remember.”
“Then it’s probably been longer than you think. You’ll need another one.” Pulling a clean, neatly folded handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans, he wrapped it around her hand and stanched the flow of blood as best he could. Glancing around for her jacket, he found a forest-green down coat hanging on a hook near the door and helped her into it. “Come on, let’s go.” Hustling her out the door and into his Bronco, he quickly drove her over to the clinic.
Rocky protested that all the fuss wasn’t necessary—if he’d just give her the tetanus shot, she’d clean the wound herself and slap a butterfly bandage on it when she got home—but Lucas wasn’t listening. Ushering her into one of the examining rooms, he took her coat from her, settled her in a chair and collected the supplies he needed. All business, he took time only to wash his hands and make sure she wasn’t allergic to any medications before he pulled up a stool next to her and reached for her injured hand.
Over the course of the years, he’d lost track of the number of cuts and gashes he’d cleaned and stitched, and he could normally do it with his eyes closed. But his knees brushed hers, his concentration wavered, and suddenly nothing was as it should be. Her scent, subtle and spicy and damned provocative, reached out to him, teasing his senses, distracting him. Why hadn’t he noticed in the hangar how soft her skin was? How delicate her fingers were? With no trouble whatsoever, he could imagine those same fingers touching him, caressing him—
“Doc?”
Her husky query seemed to reach right inside him and pull him out of the fantasy that had come out of nowhere to swamp him in heat. Jerking his eyes up to hers, he found her watching him with an amused, puzzled frown. Swallowing a curse, he stiffened. “Yeah?”
“You’re looking at my hand like you’ve never seen one before. Is everything okay?”
Hell, no, it wasn’t okay, he almost snapped. How could it be when she was hurt and bleeding and all he could think of was how good she smelled? What the devil had she done to him? “Everything’s fine,” he growled. “Just peachy. Give me a second to clean this up, and you can get out of here.” And out of his life, he silently promised himself. Because just as soon as he had the lady patched up, he swore he wasn’t going anywhere near her again. Not if just touching her did this to him.
His face carved in harsh lines, he went to work and had the wound cleaned and stitched in no time. Her gaze carefully directed away from his handiwork, she stared at the far wall and chatted about the progress she was making at the hangar, the mechanic she had hired, who would start tomorrow, the coming of Christmas and the shopping she still had to do. He put seven stitches at the base of her thumb, bandaged the cut and gave her a tetanus shot after she rolled up her sleeve, and she didn’t so much as whimper.
What did you expect? a voice drawled in his head. She’s Fortune-tough, just like her grandmother.
Then she turned toward him, and he felt as if someone had punched him hard in the gut when he saw for the first time the tears welling in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, a crooked smile pushing up one corner of her mouth as she hastily swiped at her still-pale cheeks. “Don’t pay any attention to me,” she said thickly, laughing shakily. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Then why are you crying? Did I hurt you?”
“No! Oh, no,” she quickly assured him. “I’m just a lousy patient. I didn’t feel anything once you deadened it, but I could just imagine this needle going in and out—”
Turning slightly green, she swallowed and quickly abandoned that line of thought. Straightening her shoulders with a visible effort, she warned teasingly, “You realize, of course, that if you tell anybody I was bawling like a baby over a few stitches, I’ll be forced to deny it.”
Fighting a smile, he nodded, his expression deliberately solemn. “My lips are sealed.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her gaze immediately flew to his mouth, and suddenly the air between them was sparking with the kind of hushed expectancy that invariably proceeded an approaching storm. Giving in to impulse, to insanity, he reached for her and captured that beautiful face of hers in his hands, bringing her mouth to his.
The instant his lips settled over hers, he knew it had been too long since he’d kissed a woman, too long since he’d allowed himself to even think about needing one. He was in no shape to handle one like Rocky Fortune. Surprise held her motionless under his hands, but then her mouth softened under his and she was like heat lightning in a bottle…wild, hot, unpredictable. Too late, he realized that she had what it took to make a man sweat in the darkest, coldest part of the night.
The thought lodged in the back of his brain, throbbing like a railroad warning light, but he couldn’t focus on anything but the taste of her, the feel of her, the heat of her. God, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt any kind of female warmth. He just wanted to hold her and kiss her and not think about anything except how good it felt. With a groan that came from the depths of his soul, he slanted his mouth across hers and took the kiss deeper.
Dazed, boneless, clinging to him, Rocky tried to remember Greg and how he had hurt her, but the only image that came to mind was Lucas with his dark, wary eyes and rugged face. He kissed her with a desperation that stole her breath and set her pulse thrumming with a blind, lonely need that was as plaintive and heart-tugging as the call of a wolf on a cold winter night. Her head spinning, she frantically ordered herself to stop this madness right now, but in the dark, wet, hidden recesses of her mouth, his tongue wooed and cajoled and sweetly seduced. Shuddering, her hands climbing up his arms, she moaned and crowded closer, lost to everything but the pleasure drizzling through her like warm honey.
The second her injured hand molded itself to his shoulder, however, pain flared in her palm like a struck match, so hot she could practically smell the sulfur. Her cry muffled against his mouth, she jerked back, breathing hard, and stared at him in dismay. Dear God, what was she doing? This was Lucas Greywolf, her landlord, for heaven’s sake, the man who thought she was spoiled and pampered and walked around with her nose in the air and hundred-dollar bills hanging out of her pockets. He was arrogant and condescending and judgmental, and she’d kissed him! She had to be losing her mind.
Heat stealing into her cheeks, determined not to let him see how he had shaken her, she let out her breath in a huff and forced a cheeky grin. “Well. If that was an attempt to kiss it and make it better, you were more than a little off the mark, Doc.”
He was not amused. His jaw was as rigid as granite. “What it was was inexcusable. I wouldn’t blame you if you slapped my face.”
“C’mon, Doc, it was just a kiss.” She laughed with pretended nonchalance. “Don’t sweat it. And thanks for the stitch job. Don’t forget to send me a bill.” Grabbing her coat, she headed for the door, trying not to run.
Ten seconds later, the front door slammed, leaving behind a silence that was as cold and deep as the snow piling up outside. Standing flat-footed in the examining room where she’d left him, feeling as if he’d been run over by a truck, Lucas stared after her and started to swear.
Bustling into Lucas’s private office three days later, Mary caught him scowling out the window at the hangar in the distance and hurriedly bit back a smile. Lucas wasn’t normally a brooder, but he’d spent most of the day staring out the window—at the hangar—whenever there was a lull in patients. And she had a feeling his interest in the old place had nothing to do with planes.
Her eyes starting to dance with expectation, she laid the day’s mail on his desk, then said casually, “I’ve been going over the invitation list for the Christmas party, and it seems to be missing a few names.”
He turned, his scowl still in place. “Oh, yeah? Who?”
“Judge Ryan,” she replied promptly. “Since he bought the old Carson place, he’s practically a neighbor.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I should have thought of him myself. Go ahead and put him on the list.”
“What about Rocky Fortune?”
The look he shot her would have done one of his fierce Shoshone ancestors proud. Mary didn’t even blink. “What about her?”
“What about her?” Mary echoed, amused by his deliberate obtuseness. “Lucas, you’re leasing the hangar to her! Don’t you think it would be rude not to invite her to the only party you give all year?”
“Not at all,” he said curtly, his gut clenching just at the thought of seeing her again. He’d spent most of the night fighting off the memory of a kiss that never should have happened, and his obsession with her hadn’t improved with the light of day. Damn the woman, he could still taste her, still feel her against him—
Swearing under his breath, he picked up the mail Mary had brought in and blindly flipped through it. “It’s not like she’s a friend or anything. We have a business arrangement, nothing more.”
“But—”
“And she probably wouldn’t come, anyway. We don’t exactly run in the same circles, you know.”
“Then it won’t hurt to send her an invitation,” Mary said promptly, grinning. “Just as a courtesy.”
Tossing down the mail, he growled, “Don’t waste a stamp.”
Mary shrugged, as if to say that was fine with her, but there was a glint of mischief in her eye that Lucas would have immediately recognized if he had seen it. He didn’t. Deliberately turning toward the door, she quickly brought the subject back to work. “Elizabeth Crow’s here. She thinks she wrenched her back carrying in firewood. I’ll show her into room two.”
When she got the invitation in the mail, Rocky stared at it long and hard. There had to be a mistake. The doc might have kissed her until her toes curled, but she wasn’t fooling herself into thinking that he liked her. In fact, she seemed to have a talent for getting under his skin. He’d gone out of his way to avoid her ever since he’d kissed her. So why had he invited her to his Christmas party?
“What’s that?”
Glancing up from her confused thoughts, Rocky smiled at Charlie Short, her new mechanic. He’d been the first one to answer the ad she placed in the local paper, and she’d only had to talk to him five minutes to know that he was just the man she was looking for. As short as his name, wiry and pushing sixty, he was gruff and blunt and not shy about giving her advice when he thought she needed it. And what he didn’t know about planes wasn’t worth mentioning. Over the past two days, he’d gone over the fleet she’d inherited from her grandmother, and he had every engine purring like a kitten.
“Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “Just an invitation to Dr. Greywolf’s Christmas party next week.”
“Hey, great! I’ve heard about those parties of his—the food’s supposed to be something else. You’re going, aren’t you?”
Her heart took a dive just at the thought of getting anywhere near the man anytime soon. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to socialize with him, didn’t want to look into his eyes and think about a kiss that had haunted her sleep for the past five nights.
“It’s just one of those courtesy things,” she said stiffly, tossing the invitation in the trash. “I don’t think there’s much point in going.”
“Are you kidding?” Snatching up the invitation, he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Dammit, girl, where’s your head? Just about anyone who’s anyone in Clear Springs is going to be at that shindig. And you should be, too! You need to get out and mingle with the locals and let them know that you’re open and ready for business. This is a chance for some free advertising, for God’s sake! Take advantage of it.”
He had a point, one that Rocky would have given just about anything to deny. But she wasn’t Kate Fortune’s granddaughter for nothing. As much as she wanted to avoid Lucas like a bad case of the measles, she couldn’t let her own personal likes and dislikes interfere with sound business decisions.
“Oh, all right, all right,” she muttered. “I’ll go. If we can pick up some business, I guess it’ll be worth all the fuss.”
She didn’t plan to stay long, only as long as it took to put in an appearance, scout out the guests for hunters and guides who could possibly use her services and pass around her business card to anyone who happened to express an interest. But the second she stepped through the clinic’s front door, she knew she wasn’t going to get out of there anytime soon. The place was wall-to-wall people. Laughing and talking and nibbling on food that smelled absolutely fabulous, they were packed in shoulder to shoulder and could hardly move. And nobody seemed to care.
Mary Littlejohn, spying her hovering near the doorway, plowed her way through the bodies and greeted her like a long-lost daughter. “Rocky! I’m so glad you came! C’mon, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Not giving her time to do anything but sputter a greeting, Luke’s nurse hauled her through the crowd and stopped in front of a middle-aged man who was already deeply involved in a conversation with a woman Rocky recognized as the mayor. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said in an easy tone that was anything but regretful, “but I want you two to meet Rocky Fortune. Rocky, this is Mayor Whacker and Thomas Gustafson. I was telling them earlier about your new flying service, and they were very interested in it.”
“You’re one of Jake’s daughters,” Thomas said, pleased, as he shook her hand. “I can’t tell you how delighted I was when Mary told us you’d moved to Clear Springs to set up your business. I own the Black Bear Motel and get requests all the time from guests who just want to hire a small plane to fly them into the mountains for some trophy bighorns, and I have to send them to Jackson. This is great! Just great.”
Smiling, Mayor Louise Whacker agreed. “We’ve needed the services you’re providing for a long time, dear. Especially search-and-rescue. Your grandmother would be so proud of you.”
That started a conversation about Kate, and then the mayor spotted one of the town bigwigs that she insisted Rocky meet. Before Rocky quite realized it, she’d been there well over an hour and enjoyed every second of it. Then she spied Lucas towering head and shoulders over most of the crowd.
She’d known she’d have to speak to him, of course—she couldn’t just show up at his party and ignore the man—but she planned to keep it short and sweet, then get the heck out of there. What she didn’t plan was for her heart to stop in midbeat at the sight of him.
Damn the man, he had no right to look so good, she thought, shaken. Casually dressed in a white shirt and a red V-necked sweater that did incredible things for his broad shoulders, he was talking to a small, wizened man and laughing at something he had to bend his head to catch. Transfixed, Rocky could do nothing but stare. It was a sight that she knew would follow her into her dreams.
Still chuckling over Whitey Walker’s latest joke, Lucas felt the touch of eyes on him and glanced up, only to suck in a sharp breath at the sight of Rocky staring at him from across the room. He didn’t have to ask what she was doing there—Mary’s innocent smile when he found her in the crowd had told him all he needed to know. She’d invited her, in spite of his direct order not to.
“Pretty girl,” Whitey drawled, noting his sudden distraction. “That’s Kate’s granddaughter, isn’t it?”
Lucas nodded. “Yeah. One of Jake’s girls—Rachel.”
“The one they call Rocky,” the old man said knowingly. “She’s got the look of her grandmother. And all her spunk, from what I hear. Word is, she gave old Jake more than a few of those gray hairs of his. A regular daredevil she is. And she’s eyeing you like you’re the next best thing to sliced bread.” Grinning up at Lucas, his black eyes danced with mischief. “So what are you standing here humoring an old man for? Go talk to her, son.”
He didn’t want to go anywhere near her, but she was his guest, whether he wanted her to be or not, and his mama hadn’t raised him to be rude, especially not to a woman. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t run off.”
He’d be polite, make sure she was enjoying herself, then find an excuse to put some space between them for the rest of the evening, he promised himself as he started toward her. Considering the number of people he still had to speak to, that wouldn’t be hard to do.
Catching up with her, however, proved to be more difficult than he’d expected. He’d hardly taken three steps before one of his mothers-to-be latched on to him and worriedly confided that she thought she might be going into labor three months early. By the time he’d questioned her and determined that she was just being the tiniest bit paranoid, Rocky was nowhere in sight.
Scowling, he went looking for her, got waylaid by one of his elderly patients, then stopped by the police chief for a lengthy conversation about the pros and cons of lowering the speed zone in front of his clinic because of the amount of traffic that was always coming in and out of there. Impatient, he broke away as soon as he could manage with the excuse that he needed to check to see how the food was holding out. Finally, breaking through a group blocking the entrance to the waiting area, he caught up with Rocky near the front door, just as she pulled her coat from the coat rack.
Walking up behind, he took it from her before she even knew he was there. “Sneaking out, Ms. Fortune?” he taunted softly. “And without even a proper thank-you to your host. Tsk, tsk. What would your grandmother say?”
Startled, Rocky whirled with a gasp, her hand flying to the pulse that was suddenly thundering irritatingly at the base of her throat. What was it about this man that had her always off balance? He hadn’t even touched her, and her knees were already weak. It was downright embarrassing.
“I wasn’t sneaking,” she lied. “You were busy and I didn’t want to bother you. I was going to send you a note tomorrow telling you how much I enjoyed myself, but now I won’t have to do that.” Using the manners she’d been taught as a child, she said sweetly, “It was a wonderful party, Dr. Greywolf. Thank you for inviting me. Good night.”
She started to reach for her coat, but before she could take it from him, Mary appeared at the door to the waiting room, her smile wide and devilment dancing in her eyes. “Oh, good, I see you found it.”
Confused, Rocky looked around. “Found what? My coat? It wasn’t lost.”
“No, the mistletoe.” Mary laughed, nodding to a spot above their heads. “Go ahead, Lucas. Kiss her.”
Three
Mortified color staining her cheeks, Rocky should have said something flirty, then gotten the heck out of there. But her brain shut down and her heart started to pound and all she could think of was that first sizzling kiss he’d given her days ago. As flustered as a virgin, she instinctively took a step backward. “Oh, no! That’s not necessary—”
His dark eyes starting to twinkle, Lucas arched a brow at her. “What’s this? The fearless Rocky Fortune, unnerved by a tiny sprig of mistletoe?” he teased. “It’s just a little kiss between friends.”
She wanted to protest that they weren’t friends—how could they be when they seemed to continually rub each other the wrong way?—and she had a feeling there was no such thing as a little kiss where he was concerned. But before she could get the words out, he leaned down and brushed a kiss on her flushed cheek. She felt the fleeting warmth of his lips, a whisper of breath against her skin, and then he was stepping back, his grin crooked as he gauged her reaction.
“There. See? No harm done,” he assured her lightly as he held her coat out for her to slip into. “Where’d you park? I’ll walk you to your pickup.”
Her heartbeat still drumming in her ears, Rocky automatically turned her back on him and eased her arms into the sleeves. “I had to park in the street, but it’s not that far. Anyway, you don’t need to walk me out. You have guests.”
“Who won’t miss me for the few minutes it takes to see you to your truck,” he said firmly. Grabbing his own coat, he quickly tugged it on.
“He’s right, dear,” Mary said, adding her two cents. “You’re not used to Wyoming winters. It doesn’t take long for ice to build up. If you slipped and fell in the dark, it could be a while before anyone found you.”
Rocky could have pointed out that she’d dealt with ice and harsh winters in Minneapolis for years, but Lucas already had the door open and was waiting patiently for her to precede him. From the challenging glint in his eye, it was obvious that he was prepared to wait as long as necessary. “Oh, all right,” she said with a sigh. “But if you walk all your guests to their cars, you’re going to have frostbite before the night’s over.”
“I’m a doctor,” he reminded her, chuckling. “I know how to treat it. Let’s go.”
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