LITMIR.BIZ

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      Joe moaned low in his throat. River squeezed his work-hard hands into fists.

      Mary continued, “The orthopods put her knee back together—torn Medial Meniscus, which is fairly common—but she’s in a J-brace and will be on crutches for at least five or six weeks, and then will need some pretty extensive rehab. And,” she added, sighing, “Dr. Hardy, chief of reconstructive surgery, sewed up the knife gash on her face. She’ll need follow-up plastic surgery, at least that’s what’s on Dr. Hardy’s postop notes, but at least she’s been put back together. It’s a miracle the knife didn’t hit any large blood vessels or nerves. Still, even though the cut wasn’t dangerously deep, it took over one hundred stitches to close her up again.”

      “Oh, God,” Joe said. “My baby. My beautiful, beautiful baby.”

      River clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. Sophie. Beautiful Sophie. Dragged into an alley. Mauled, beaten, cut, damn near killed. And for no reason, no reason at all. Just because a bastard high on drugs had gone berserk. Just because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now her entire life had been changed forever.

      “I think we’re prepared to see her now, ma’am,” River said, motioning for the nurse to step back so that he and Joe could enter Sophie’s room. “We promise not to disturb her.”

      “Certainly,” Mary agreed, then walked past them, back to the nurse’s station.

      “Ready, Joe?” River asked, a hand on his foster father’s back.

      “No,” Joe told him, his voice so low River had to lean close to hear him. “A parent is never ready to see his child lying in a hospital bed.” He lifted his head and took a deep breath. “But let’s do it.”

      River pushed open the door, let Joe precede him into the room, then followed after him. He didn’t want to see Sophie this way, injured, helpless. That was not how he had seen her when he’d first come to live at the ranch and she’d chased after him until he’d let down his guard and let her into his life. His Sophie, four years his junior, which had been such a huge gap when they were younger. The angry young man and the awkward, braces-on-her-teeth, skinned-knees, pigtailed, hero-worshiping kid.

      She’d driven him crazy, made him angry. Gotten under his skin. Wormed her way into his bruised, battered and wary heart.

      And then she’d grown up.

      Oh, God, she’d grown up.

      She’d talked him into escorting her to her high school senior prom. They’d danced, they’d talked about how she would leave the following morning to do an internship at Joe’s radio station in Dallas, before she began college in the fall.

      She’d kissed him. He’d kissed her back. Again and again and again. He’d held her, trying not to say the words that screamed inside his head: “Don’t go, don’t go. Stay with me, Sophie. Love me, Sophie.”

      The foster son of Joe Colton owed the man better than that. The half-breed son of a drunk owed Sophie more than that. So he’d pushed her away, out of his arms, out of his life. Coldly, almost brutally telling her to go away, to grow up.

      For the past nearly ten years they saw each other only at Colton family gatherings—which were only slightly less populated than some small countries. They acknowledged each other, but they’d never been alone together since that night.

      They weren’t alone now. Joe was standing on the other side of the bed, tears streaming down his face as he held his daughter’s limp hand.

      “She’s going to be fine, Joe,” River assured him, wincing at the sight of Sophie’s bruised and battered face, the bandages he could see peeking out above the slack neckline of the hospital gown. She looked as if she’d been dragged behind a runaway horse, her tender white skin scraped raw in spots, swollen and in livid shades of purple in others.

      The largest bandage covered the left side of her face. There were more than one hundred stitches beneath that bandage. Her knee would heal. He’d make sure of that, even if he had to carry her on his back until the ligaments and tendons grew strong again. The scrapes and bruises, the scratches, would heal.

      But her face? Sophie had never been vain, but she was young, only twenty-seven, and beautiful. How would she react to a scar on her face? A scar that reminded her, each and every time she looked in the mirror, of the terror she must have felt in that alley?

      The mugger hadn’t just hurt her physically. River feared that he might also have destroyed her confidence, badly scarred her in ways not so readily apparent. Robbed her of her freedom, her ability to walk down a street without fear.

      River ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair, rubbed at the back of his neck. His eyes sparkled with unshed tears that threatened to spill down over his lean, deeply tanned cheeks.

      On the bed, Sophie stirred slightly, moaned, seemed to be trying to open her eyes.

      “I…um…I’ll get the nurse,” River said quietly as Sophie’s eyes fluttered open for a second, then closed once more. “But I’ll give you and Sophie a couple minutes alone together before I do.”

      He turned on his heels and left the room, his worn cowboy boots barely making any noise against the tile floor. The door closed behind him and he stopped in the hallway, one denim-clad shoulder leaning against the wall, his right fist dug deep in his jean pocket as he used his left to rhythmically beat the cowboy hat against his thigh.

      River James looked like exactly who he was. A cowboy. A cowboy whose mother had been a full-blooded Native American, and whose father had been a white man. He had the thick black hair of his mother, the vivid green eyes of his father, and the disposition of a man most wouldn’t lightly try to cross. Tall, whipcord lean, well muscled, hardened by years in the saddle as well as his unhappy life until the day Joe and Meredith Colton had taken him in, wised him up and given him a reason to believe he was somebody.

      Until then, he’d been like a lone wolf. And once Sophie had gone out of his life, he’d reverted to that lone-wolf state. Complete unto himself. He didn’t need Sophie, he didn’t need anyone. At least that was what he’d been telling himself.

      He’d been lying to himself.

      It had been a long time since the thirty-one-year-old River James had felt helpless, defeated. It had not, however, been quite so long since he’d been angry. His temper had been his biggest problem when he’d come to Joe Colton’s house as a teenager, and even if that anger had turned into something closer to pride, it was never far from the surface—not where Sophie Colton was concerned.

      He’d been angry with her for pestering him. He’d been angry with her for growing up, for making him aware of her as more than his “sister.” He’d been angry with her when he’d kissed her, when she’d tasted so good and he’d wanted her so much.

      He’d been angry when she’d done the right thing and gone away, angry when she’d stayed away. Angry when she’d brought that idiot Chet Wallace to the ranch and announced that she was actually going to marry that grinning, three-piece suit—her engagement telling River that she didn’t want someone like him, but wanted someone who was his complete opposite.

      Now he was angry with her for lying in that hospital bed, looking so damn fragile, so damn beautiful, and for making him wake up, yet again, to the fact that he loved her.

      Had always loved her. Would always love her.

      Two

       J oe Colton leaned over his daughter’s bed and squeezed her hand. “Sophie? Sophie, honey? It’s Dad.”

      Sophie stirred slightly on the bed, winced, then opened her eyes. “Daddy?” she asked, her voice weak.

      Joe nodded, unable to speak. She hadn’t called him Daddy in years. Now he was “Dad,” sometimes, when she was being silly, “Senator.” But she was still his baby girl, and as she looked up at him, as her bruised bottom lip began to tremble, he would

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