Page 7 of Rough

The black sheep of the family returned.

And he was still the irresponsible playboy everyone thought he was. Plus, his wolf said his mate was human.

4

AUDREY

“It was the strangest thing,”I said, my eyes on the road.

While I didn’t have a fancy car with the in-dashboard phone setup, I did have a stand for my cell and the ability to use the speaker. I was thankful for it since I needed both hands on the steering wheel. The two-lane highway cut through the mountains and followed beside the river, and there were more twists and turns than straightaways. “I saw the accident, saw the wound. Hemothorax, possible ruptured spleen, blood loss.”

“I don’t know what half of that means, but it sounds bad,” Marina said. My sister, well, half-sister, was nine years younger and in college in California. She was no dummy, studying structural engineering, but medicine wasn’t her thing.

I frowned, slowed for a curve. “It explains the struggled inhales, the loss of BP. Hmm, maybe it was a spastic diaphragm,” I replied, thinking aloud. They were possibilities, but I’dseenthe accident, the aftermath.

“You said he was standing in the hallway when you ran into him, then walked right out. He had to have been less injured than you thought.”

“Isawthe accident,” I repeated. I’d tried to touch his injury, but he’d stopped my hand over his belly. I’d felt the heat of his skin, the hard ridges of his abdomen. What I hadn’t felt was a hole in his side. No, I didn’t usually get turned on by sucking chest wounds, but it seemed I clearly got all hot and bothered by feeling up a cocky cowboy’s torso.

It had been two days since the rodeo, and it was finally my day off. I’d thought about him asking me out, to give me a tour of Cooper Valley. I could’ve said yes, but I just didn’t want to tango with a cowboy who was so obviously a player, no matter how hot he was. Although I was sure he’d be well worth the tumble.

Since then, I’d been busy with patients and a whopping five births—and it wasn’t even the full moon—and I’d still thought about Boyd Wolf. I went over every moment of my care for him, from the moment I dropped to my knees in the dirt beside him until I watched his taut ass as he walked out of the hospital. I also thought about the fact that Ihadactually stared at his taut ass. That I thought his asswastaut.

It was. Same with his belly. How did I turn into a starry eyed thirteen-year-old having her first crush thinking about a guy non-stop? If it weren’t professional, I’d probably have doodled on patient charts little hearts with our names in them.

It was because I was worried about him and because I thought he was hot that I was in my car and driving to Wolf Ranch where he’d told me he would recover. I also may or may not have contacted the rodeo to make sure he hadn’t returned to work. Even if I had overestimated his injuries, he shouldn’t have been able to saunter out of the hospital like nothing hurt. Just to be safe, I’d told rodeo management explicitly that he wasn’t cleared for competition and shouldn’t be allowed to return until he had a full examination.

Preferably by me. Not because I was dying to see those washboard abs in person. Not at all.

“I want to know why you’re so bothered,” she said. “He wasn’t as injured as you thought. This is the first patient…” She cleared her throat. “Man…who you’ve ever thought about going to his house to check on. There’s more here.”

She might be my baby sister, but she wasn’t much of a baby. She knew me well enough to read into my actions. Dammit.

I sped up as the canyon ended and opened up into a wide prairie. I wasn’t more than twenty miles from Cooper Valley, but I’d never been on this side of the mountains before. The pines that dotted the rugged canyon disappeared. The land was almost flat, only slight undulations in the landscape. The river curved in the distance, trees lining the bank in spots making it picturesque.Thiswas the Montana of my fantasies. Open ranges. Big skies. Vast land and no people.

“Audrey.” She prompted me since I’d been quiet as I ogled the view. “Tell me about this hot cowboy.”

“I didn’t say he was hot,” I protested.

She laughed, the sound loud through my cell. “You didn’t have to. Please, I have no boyfriend, and there isn’t a guy in my program who’s even an option. They’re more into math equations than breasts. Let me live vicariously through you. What’s his name?”

“Boyd Wolf.”

She was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m doing a search for him because any guy who lights your fire must be… holy shit, woman. No wonder you’re driving to his house. Do you have sexy undies on?”

I gasped, then laughed. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

I did have on my nicest underwear, a bra and panty set that matched and wasn’t made of simple cotton. I also put on makeup, kept my hair down instead of up in a usual sloppy bun and had tried on three different outfits. All for Boyd Wolf. Maybe I really was crazy, putting effort into a guy who was sooooo wrong for me.

“He’s not badly injured, you found that out. He’s hot as hell, and you touched his abs. Don’t you want to touch the rest of him? I’m looking at his pictures online, and I want to lick him from stern to mast.”

I rolled my eyes and couldn’t help but smile. Marina was twenty-one and single. Someone eighty and married would find him hot.

“There’s just something weird about it,” I said. “I know what I saw, what I treated. I can’t explain it.”

It was as if there’d been magic involved. Sleight of hand where you saw a quarter in a hand and the next minute it was in a glass bottle. I saw his wounds. I saw the way he’d been able to hurry out of the hospital a short time later. It made no sense. I couldn’t let it go.

“What I want to know is why you’re thinking so much about this guy when you had Mr. Hot Rancher on the hook last week.”