LITMIR.BIZ

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instant and now reminded her of aches she hadn’t known she had.

      “Nicholas?”

      The Dalton patriarch turned back to her aunt and took her hand. “Now don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll have you right as rain in no time. Trevor, have you called Beau yet?” he questioned with a stern glance at his nephew.

      Lyric was aware of Trevor’s gaze on her, of the tight set of his mouth, of the unwelcoming stance in his strong, lithe body. She felt terribly confused and disoriented.

      He turned away. “I’m doing it now.” He went into the kitchen. In a minute she heard his voice explaining the situation to the nephew who was a doctor.

      Lyric hadn’t met any of the Dalton family except Trevor, but she knew them all. Her aunt Fay had been a cousin and best friend to Milly Dalton, who had been married to Trevor’s uncle Nick. Milly had died in an automobile accident many years ago. Their daughter, Tink, had been taken from the scene of the accident and never found again.

      At least, that was what was assumed. The three-year-old had disappeared. She could have wandered away and died in the wilderness, but the sheriff had concluded the child had been abducted for some reason, because the child’s body had never been found.

      A tremor rushed over Lyric at the thought. One time a stranger had tried to grab her while she was on her way home from school in Austin, Texas.

      She’d screamed and kicked and bit the man as hard as she could, the way her father had taught her, and had gotten free. She’d been lucky. A schoolmate on the next block had been kidnapped later the same afternoon. A month went by before the body was found in a lonely section of woods. That summer Lyric’s parents had moved to the ranch her father had inherited from his dad.

      Another tremor ran down her body and lodged in her legs. Alarmed, she realized her knees were about to give way. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but…”

      The words were barely a whisper.

      She tried again. “I’m sorry, but…”

      “Catch her,” a voice said from far away as the room became dark and mysterious.

      Lyric blinked rapidly as strong arms closed around her. She knew these arms, this embrace.

      Pressing her face into the clean expanse of the white shirt, she inhaled deeply and was filled with the scent of masculine aftershave, fresh-as-the-outdoors laundry and something more—a faint aroma that she recognized somewhere deep inside her. Yes, she knew this man.

      She relaxed as he lifted her. She looped her arms around his shoulders and closed her eyes. Safe. She was safe. And home. Home at last.

      “Here,” Trevor said, putting Lyric on the leather sofa. “Lie still,” he ordered when she started to sit up. He removed the glasses from her face, then winced at the redness on each side of her nose and running down under her eyes. The air bag had hit her hard, he realized. He laid the glasses on the end table.

      A memory wafted into his mind—him removing her glasses, her laughing protests about not being able to see, his suggestion that she close her eyes, then the kisses…the hotter-than-molten-steel kisses, the fireworks that had gone off in his brain, stunning him with the force of the passion between them…and the feelings, the found-my-other-half joy of holding her….

      “Get some ice,” his uncle said. “Fay needs some on her face and knees.”

      “So does Lyric,” Trevor said.

      His throat closed after he said the name. Last fall he’d vowed never to say it again.

      He silently mouthed all the expletives he could remember while going to the kitchen and grabbing several first-aid ice bags from the freezer. The ranch always had a good supply of such items on hand for the occasional kick from a recalcitrant horse or stubborn cow.

      Along with dish towels and clothespins, he took the ice bags to the living room.

      “When will Beau be here?” his uncle asked.

      “He won’t. He and the midwife have a difficult delivery going on. Since nothing is broken or bleeding and they’re both coherent, he said to bring them to the clinic in the morning and he’d check them out.”

      “Mmm,” Uncle Nick said in his disapproving tone.

      Ignoring Lyric, who now sat upright and as prim as a spinster, Trevor ministered to her aunt, affixing two ice bags and dish towels to her knees with the clothespins and advising her to put the other on her face.

      Finished, he went to Lyric. “Put this on your nose,” he said, handing over the wrapped bag and noting the glasses were back in place. He couldn’t help but steal a glance at her left hand and the bare ring finger. Forcing his gaze to the task at hand, he knelt and, as careful as a doctor performing brain surgery, rolled up her pants.

      He winced when he saw the abraded skin of her knees and the blotches that indicated more extensive bruising than her aunt had suffered. As the driver, she’d had her seat closer to the dashboard so she could reach the brake pedal and accelerator. That meant she’d hit the dash harder.

      At five feet, five inches, she’d felt small and delicate in his arms. But curvy. For months after he’d come back to the ranch, he would wake from a sound sleep, clutching the pillow to his chest, and know he’d been dreaming about her, about the way she’d felt cuddled against him.

      However, he and Lyric had never slept together. She’d been engaged to another guy the whole time she’d been responding to his caresses.

      Mentally cursing, he forced the memory into the battered tin box of the past. He was over it now, over her and the wild emotion he’d thought was love. A cheating woman wasn’t on his list of most-wanted things.

      Quickly, he secured the ice packs on her knees and moved away from the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her body, the spicy scent of her powder and cologne.

      “Have you two had dinner?” Uncle Nick asked.

      “Yes,” Lyric answered.

      “No,” her aunt said at the same time. The older woman continued, “Lyric was so anxious to get here that she didn’t want to stop, so we had a salad at a fast-food place in Boise. That was hours ago. If I could bother you for some toast, that would be plenty for me.”

      “I recall that you like chocolate cake with ice cream,” Uncle Nick said, his eyes all soft and glowing.

      Lyric’s aunt removed the ice pack from her nose and grinned at the older man. “You don’t happen to have some of that, do you?”

      “Well, now, I reckon we do.” He rose from the matching chair next to the aunt’s with a big smile. “You ladies sit still. Trev and I will get it.”

      Trevor refrained from rolling his eyes at his uncle’s gallant manner. If the old man sparkled much more, they could wire him up to the light bulbs and save the cost of the electricity.

      He followed the other man into the kitchen and helped prepare the treat. Glancing at the freshly made cake and the homemade ice cream, he frowned, recalling the way his uncle had insisted on preparing the dessert, even though the Fourth of July had been last week, which was when they usually made ice cream, and this was Tuesday, July the eighth. Since none of the orphaned Dalton cousins that Uncle Nick had taken in and raised as his own were expected at the ranch—they were all busy with new wives and jobs and the like—he’d wondered at the reason for the unusual activity.

      Setting his jaw, he admitted he hadn’t suspected a thing, even though his uncle had made it plain he hadn’t wanted Trevor to head over to a neighboring ranch for a visit that evening.

      Glancing toward the living room, he said in a low voice, “You knew they were coming, didn’t you?”

      Uncle Nick nodded, busily spooning ice cream onto the saucers. “Fay and I have kept in touch for years, mostly cards at Christmas. She said she was restless and lonely this

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