Czytaj książkę: «Claimed By The Cowboy»

To Charles Griemsman, who occasionally lets me run completely wild with a story. Thank you for trusting me with your stories!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Extract

Copyright

One

“May I help you?”

Josh Calhoun whipped off his Hollister-Whitney trucker hat and beamed a grin at the receptionist. “I sure hope so,” he said, unconsciously letting his country accent bleed through a little more. He couldn’t help it. This was the first time he’d been back in Chicago in five years and so much had changed.

Once, he’d tried to hide his accent. He’d tried to blend in with the big city.

Not anymore.

“I’m looking for the Newport boys,” he went on, leaning his head toward the receptionist. Her eyes widened and he thought he saw a little bit of color come to her cheeks. He wasn’t flirting—not intentionally—but Sydney, God rest her soul, had said that this was just his way. His down-home charm was what had attracted her to him in the first place.

Damn it. He hadn’t been in Chicago proper for more than thirty minutes and he was already thinking about Sydney again.

He hated this town.

“I’m Josh Calhoun,” he went on. “They asked me to stop by.”

Which was the only reason he had bothered to come back to Chicago. Brooks, Graham and Carson Newport were old college friends, and all three men had called him recently—apparently, without the others knowing that they were making the same call. Brooks Newport had asked for Josh’s help in dealing with a rather stunning set of revelations about Sutton Winchester—Josh was still having trouble putting it all in order.

Apparently, Sutton Winchester was Carson’s father and for a couple of months, Brooks and Graham had suspected that maybe the old real estate baron was their father, as well. But the paternity results had been conclusive—Brooks and Graham didn’t share a father with Carson.

Ever since Sutton’s involvement with their mother, Cynthia, had come to light, the Newport boys had been locked in a fierce battle with Sutton’s daughters—Eve, Grace and Nora Winchester. As best Josh could gather from scrolling through the news stories on his phone, Sutton was on his deathbed.

The Winchester girls—particularly Eve—were not that happy to have a newly discovered brother who had strong opinions about staking his newfound inheritance claims. The rumors on the internet were flying fast and furious, and Josh had had trouble figuring out what was real and what were strategic PR leaks.

Brooks wanted Josh’s legal advice on how to make Sutton pay for getting his mother pregnant with Carson and leaving her high and dry. His twin brother, Graham, wanted Josh’s help in finding out who their father was, since it wasn’t actually Sutton. And Carson, the baby of the family, desperately wanted Josh to come help calm Brooks down.

Josh wasn’t sure he could actually do any of that. He was a former corporate lawyer and a dairy farmer. He negotiated with representatives and senators on legislation governing the dairy industry. He ran a multi-million-dollar dairy company. Sure, he had a reputation for being ruthless behind his good-time smile, but he wasn’t a miracle worker.

Not for a single second did he think that anyone named Winchester would so much as give him the time of day. What did Chicago real-estate moguls care what a guy who made ice cream for a living thought? But he had to try. He owed the Newport boys.

The receptionist turned her attention to her computer screen. “Ah, yes. I see. Sadly, none of them are available.” She looked up at Josh and he noticed that she had some dimples. “Brooks is in a private meeting and asked not to be disturbed. Graham is off-site, as is Carson.”

“Off-site?” Chicago wasn’t exactly a two-horse town. Off-site could mean anywhere. “Can you tell me where Graham and Carson are? They are expecting me.” Irritation snaked up the back of his neck. At their request, he’d sucked it up and braved coming back to Chicago for the first time since the funeral, and they weren’t even there to meet him?

The receptionist looked contrite. “I’m not at liberty to say where Graham is. However, Carson is on-site at the new children’s hospital that the Newports are funding and constructing. I’d be happy to give you directions to the work site or...” She batted her eyelashes at him as her dimples deepened. “You’re more than welcome to wait here.”

Just as he had over the course of the last five years whenever a pretty lady made eyes at him, Josh did a gut check and waited to see if he’d have a reaction. Any reaction.

But there was nothing. Nothing other than the simple observation that this was a pretty girl who was flirting with him. He felt no attraction, no desire. There was absolutely no interest.

He ignored the black loneliness that existed in place of temptation and slapped on one of his best smiles. “I do need to speak with Carson,” he said in his most apologetic tone. It wasn’t the receptionist’s fault that Josh was incapable of feeling anything.

The disappointment that crossed over her face was fleeting. “Let me get you those directions,” she said in a much more professional tone.

“Thank you kindly,” Josh said.

He was vastly out of his league and he knew it. He had vowed never to come back to Chicago, but there he was. The Newport boys were the only people on this earth who could’ve gotten him back inside city limits. They had been there for him at the hospital and at the funeral. In all likelihood, they’d probably saved his life. Not that Josh would ever tell anyone that, but when the people he cared for kept dying on him, it made it hard to put on a brave face and keep moving forward.

He was Josh Calhoun, heir to the Calhoun Creamery fortune and its current CEO. To the rest of the world, the fact that he had buried his parents and then his wife didn’t matter as much as being one of the most powerful dairy owners in the country.

Well, it mattered to him. Sydney mattered to him. And when she’d been taken away from him, the Newport boys had been there.

Brooks, Graham and Carson mattered to him. It was the only reason he was in this godforsaken city, because if something happened to any of them, well, it just might be the end of the world. His world.

“Here you go,” the receptionist said. It was a pity that Josh couldn’t work up any attraction for her, but he just couldn’t. “Shall I let Carson know that you’re on your way?”

“Much obliged,” Josh said, settling his hat on his head. “It’s been a while since I drove in the city—how long do you think it’ll take me to get there?”

The receptionist turned her attention back to her computer. After a few keystrokes, she said, “At this time of day, it shouldn’t take you more than forty minutes.”

Josh didn’t try to hide his groan. Back home in Cedar Point, Iowa, forty minutes would put him three towns over. Here, forty minutes on a good traffic day would take him all of three miles.

The dimples were back on the receptionist. “It could be worse—it’s only two in the afternoon.”

“I know.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed back out to his truck. It stuck out like a sore thumb there, parked among the sleek Jaguars and shiny sports cars of all sorts. But he’d had his truck since high school. It’d outlasted college, marriage and his wife’s death. He wasn’t about to get a new vehicle to meet someone else’s preconceived notions of what a multimillionaire business owner should drive.

Because, most days, Josh didn’t feel like a multimillionaire business owner. Most days he was up by four checking on the cattle in the milking operations of the Calhoun Creamery farm. He got crap on his boots and broke a sweat nearly every day. The only break he got was times like now. He’d been on his way home from Washington, DC, after meeting with a lobbyist for the National Dairy Council about what regulations they wanted to see included in the FDA’s new organic standards.

As the owner of one of the largest dairies in the country and the CEO of the Calhoun Creamery, Josh’s word carried some weight in those discussions. It was the only time he left the dairy farm.

Sighing heavily, Josh fired up the old truck and merged back into the hell that was Chicago traffic. He hoped the Newport boys appreciated the sacrifices he was making. And he was thankful that the traffic was just bad enough that he had to really pay attention. People in Iowa did not run lights like they did in Chicago. There, when the light turned red, people stopped. Here, when the light turned red, people sped up. He almost got rear-ended three separate times because he couldn’t make himself run the red.

Finally, the new children’s hospital work site came into view. It didn’t look much like a children’s hospital at this point—half of the exterior didn’t even have walls. Josh studied his directions and saw that the receptionist had made a note that he was to pull down a side street and park in the back. She was a good receptionist. He almost wished that he’d been able to feel something for her. If he was going to be stuck in Chicago, a little distraction could go a long way.

He parked in the construction zone and there, at least, his truck blended in a little better. Josh made himself a promise. He would only stay in Chicago as long as it took to help the Newport boys get some of their issues sorted out. The moment he stopped being useful, he was out of there.

He’d worked too damned hard for a sense of equilibrium after Sydney’s death. He knew better than to tempt fate again, and he simply did not have the mental energy to let himself fall into another deep depression.

If it were anyone but the Newports, he wouldn’t be there.

But he was already there. So he better get this over with.

* * *

“But you understand that he’s not dead yet,” Dr. Lucinda Wilde said, trying her very best to keep a grip on her temper. She rarely got mad at patients—it was a waste of time and emotional energy. “I can only prolong his life if he stays in the hospital, under constant care. You do see that?”

Carson Newport stood to the doctor’s left, his hands on his hips and a determined set to his eyes. On the doctor’s right, Eve Winchester was glaring at Lucinda, her arms crossed and her brow furrowed with anger. All around them, the sounds of construction filled the air—as did dust. So much dust. She was going to have to shower before she went on her rounds again.

Lucinda had to hope that the construction materials being used here at the new children’s hospital weren’t carcinogenic. She vastly preferred her own hospital, where everything was already hospital-sterile. And she was not happy about having to leave her patients to trek halfway across town to mediate yet another dispute between the Newports and the Winchesters about her patient, Sutton Winchester.

Lucinda sighed and pushed her glasses back up her nose. She would have a better chance convincing a pack of wild dogs than Sutton Winchester’s children that the scion of the Winchester fortune needed to stay in the hospital.

Never in her nine years as a practicing oncologist had she run into such a stubborn set of relatives. She adored her job and Chicago, but days like these had her muttering “city folk” to herself and longing for the wide-open spaces of Cedar Point, Iowa. Even cows were more reasonable than this.

“I understand that you’re not interested in doing your job,” Eve Winchester said in a tight voice.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Carson Newport snapped. “The good doctor is doing her job. No one lives forever—especially not bitter old men.”

Eve wheeled on Carson and most likely would have demolished him in a verbal barrage of slings and arrows, but a voice interrupted them. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Lucinda froze. Absolutely, completely froze as a voice out of her past floated up from out of nowhere and made her blood run hot and cold at the same time.

It couldn’t be. It simply wasn’t possible that she’d heard him. Not after all this time. Not right now, when she was barely keeping herself together in the face of one of her most challenging cases yet.

But then Carson turned and said, “Josh!”

And a little bit of Lucinda died because she wasn’t imagining this. She couldn’t be. Josh Calhoun himself had walked out of her nightmares and into her line of sight.

Oh, God. Her breath caught in her throat as Josh approached. He looked exactly the same as he had the last time she’d seen him. He was wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt. His longish brown hair stuck out around the base of his ratty-looking ball cap that looked exactly like the one he’d worn every single day back in school.

No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.

Josh Calhoun—a ghost from her past that she never wanted to face again—smiled widely at their small group.

Until his gaze landed on her.

Lucinda wasn’t surprised when that good-time grin of his died on the vine. After all, they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms when Lucinda had made an absolute fool of herself on the worst day of her life and Josh had turned her down flat.

They stared at each other and Lucinda was at least a little relieved that he was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

And then everything got worse. Because Josh Calhoun, the boy who’d shattered her already broken heart, lifted one corner of his mouth in what she knew all too well was his real smile.

Oh. Oh, my. Something about him had changed. He was a little taller and a heck of a lot more broad in the shoulders. His chin was sharper now and his eyes...

Josh Calhoun had grown up.

Lucinda did not allow herself to feel a rush of instant attraction. Lust had no place in her life. It was an inconvenient emotion at best, and she only had so much emotional energy to spare after spending her days as the head of the oncology department at Midwest Regional Medical Center. She couldn’t waste a bit of it, certainly not on the likes of Josh Calhoun, the last person she had allowed herself to lust over.

But watching Josh’s lips curve into that real smile instead of the big one he used when he was befriending every single person in the room? Lust hit her low and hard, and she wasn’t ready for it. She wasn’t ready for him. Not now, not ever.

But she refused to let any of that show. She didn’t suck in air, even though her lungs were burning. She didn’t allow her skin and circulatory system to betray her in any way. She didn’t even bat a single eyelash at him.

He was nothing to her. She didn’t need him; she didn’t want him, and she’d be damned if she let him know how much he’d hurt her back in high school.

Carson’s scowl broke into a wide smile as he said, “You made it!” Then he and Josh wrapped their arms around each other and performed a few manly thumps on each other’s back.

Lucinda couldn’t help but glance at Eve during this display of masculine affection. Eve was rolling her eyes.

“Man, I’m glad to see you,” Carson said to Josh. “Josh, this is Eve Winchester—it turns out that she’s my sister.”

“Stop telling people that,” Eve snapped.

Lucinda sighed heavily. She’d heard variations on this particular theme over and over again whenever it came time to make a decision about Sutton Winchester’s care. The Winchester daughters—Nora, Eve and Grace—refused to acknowledge that Carson was their half brother and did everything within their power to make sure that he did not have any say in family decisions.

But Carson Newport wasn’t exactly taking this decision lying down.

Just as he did every time Eve threw this insult in his face, Carson opened his mouth to retort that she didn’t have any choice in the situation. Lucinda knew the script by heart.

Josh didn’t. Instead, he cut Carson off with a warm smile and an extended hand. “Ms. Winchester, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m sorry that we can’t meet under better circumstances, but Carson has told me how impressed he is with how you’ve been handling all the new developments.”

Lucinda had no idea if this was a true statement or not. Maybe it didn’t matter. Josh’s words went off like a little bomb in the conversation, completely resetting the discourse.

She shouldn’t be surprised. Josh Calhoun had always been the peacemaker of their high school. He had a way of finding the common ground and making everyone happy.

Everyone except her.

“He...what?” Eve stared down at Josh’s outstretched hand. “Who are you?”

If Josh was insulted by this lack of manners, he didn’t show it. “Beg your pardon—I’m Josh Calhoun, of the Calhoun Creamery. I went to college with the Newport boys and I count them as some of my oldest friends. I understand that things have been challenging recently and I wanted to stop by and see if I could do anything to help.” As he said this last bit, his gaze shifted back to Lucinda.

Oh, come on—was he seriously including her in that statement? If that’s what he thought, he had another think coming.

But he was the Newports’ oldest friend? Figured. As if the Winchester/Newport feud wasn’t enough of a tangled web to be caught in, Josh Calhoun had to go and add another thread. A big, fat, complicated thread.

Carson jumped in, taking advantage of Eve’s stunned silence. “Josh, this is Dr. Lucinda Wilde. She’s the oncologist who’s overseeing Sutton’s care. If there’s one thing that Eve and I can agree on...” At this, Eve snorted. “It’s that Dr. Wilde has managed to stabilize our father. Without her, he would probably already be dead.”

“Dr. Lucinda Wilde,” Josh said, rolling each of the words off his tongue as if he was trying to figure out which part was the strangest. He leaned forward, his hand out. “Lucinda? And you’re an oncologist now? I should have guessed.”

She did not want to touch him. So she nodded her head and stuck her hands behind her back. “Josh. Sorry,” she added in a not-sorry voice. “Germs, you know.”

Eve and Carson shared a look. “Do you two know each other?” Carson asked.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to cop to knowing Josh. She didn’t want anyone in Chicago to know about their tangled past, and she absolutely didn’t want to be thinking about Josh Calhoun, past or present.

Sadly, it seemed as though she didn’t have much of a choice. “Yeah,” Josh said, letting his hand hang out there for a second before he lowered it back to his side. “Well, I knew Lucy Wilde.”

She shuddered at the sound of her name. She’d left Lucy Wilde behind when she’d left Iowa, and there was no going back. “We went to the same high school,” she explained to Carson and Eve. “But only for two years.” She shot a warning glare at Josh because if he took it upon himself to add to that simple truth, she might have to kick him somewhere very important.

He notched an eyebrow at her and something in his eyes changed, and she knew—knew—that he remembered exactly how things had gone down between them. Or not gone down, as the case may be. But, thankfully, all he said was “Yup.”

“I’m very happy for the high school reunion, but none of this brings us any closer to getting my father out of the hospital,” Eve Winchester snapped.

Josh—without looking away from her—asked, “Is that a possibility?”

Right. Lucinda had a purpose here that had nothing to do with Josh Calhoun or Lucy Wilde. She had ventured out to this dusty, half-finished work site to try to talk some sense into Carson and Eve because they were the most invested players in this family drama.

Not that that was saying a lot.

“It would be best for the patient if he remained in the oncology ward at Midwest,” Lucinda said as all three looked at her. “I want to keep him under my direct supervision, and there are several experimental treatments I would like to try—with his consent—that have the potential to increase his life expectancy. There are promising developments with low-dose naltrexone...”

“I don’t understand why these experimental treatments have to be done in the hospital,” Eve snapped, cutting Lucinda off. “Every day that he’s in a public space—and no, you can’t promise me that his privacy will be respected in that hospital—it becomes that much more likely that someone will access his records, take pictures of him while he’s incapacitated or bribe a nurse for information they can use against him in the court of public opinion.” She paused and shot daggers at Carson. “I want him home where I know that he’ll be protected and safe.”

Ah, so they were back on the script again. Josh looked to Lucinda for a reply, but she was unable to provide any other details of her patient’s medical condition to him. She was not about to break her Hippocratic oath for him.

Instead, it was Carson who answered. “We’ve been over this, Eve. He’s sick. He belongs in a hospital.” He turned to Josh. “He’s got inoperable lung cancer—years of smoking and hard living, I guess. It’s spread to his lymph nodes. Stage three.”

Josh had the decency to wince.

“But,” Eve said as she jumped back in, “he’s not going to die tomorrow.”

“You can’t just cut the cancer out?” Josh asked Lucinda.

She glared at him even harder. “I cannot share anything about my patient’s condition with a nonfamily member.”

Carson rolled his eyes at her. “As Dr. Wilde has explained to us, due to the original tumor’s location, she can’t perform surgery and traditional chemo, and radiation won’t be powerful enough to eradicate the malignant cells that have spread to the lymph system.”

Josh turned to Eve. “I’m so sorry to hear this,” he said in a gentle voice. “This must be hard for you and your sisters.”

Eve appeared stunned by this olive branch—and Lucinda appreciated someone short-circuiting the bickering.

Josh Calhoun was the same as he’d always been, that much was clear. This was what he did. She’d seen him talk down two guys in the middle of a fight so that, within minutes, they were all sharing a soda and laughing about good times or whatever it was men laughed about while one was wiping the other’s blood off his knuckles.

Once, she’d admired him for that. Okay, honestly—she’d more than admired him. She’d been fascinated by him. She’d never been much to look at, but Josh had never treated her like the know-it-all nerd everyone else did.

Well, almost everyone else. Josh’s best friend in high school, Gary, had asked her out after she’d verbally smacked down some bullies who were mocking Gary for being unable to lift his own backpack after a chemo treatment. And since no one else had ever even remotely looked at Lucy Wilde as someone they might like to go see a movie with—much less kiss—she’d said yes.

Lucinda shook her head out of the past. How long had it been since she’d allowed herself to think of Gary—or Josh? Years. It hadn’t been that hard. She’d been busy with her medical career and dealing with the likes of the Winchesters and Newports. And the Winchesters and Newports took all of her attention.

She had, of course, expressed her concerns to Sutton’s family—that was part and parcel of her job. She cared not only for her patients but their loved ones, as well. She’d had decades of helping people live and die—long before she’d become a doctor.

Long before she’d humiliated herself in front of Josh Calhoun.

But now that she thought of it, she couldn’t remember witnessing anyone else expressing their sympathies to any of the Winchester daughters. Certainly not Brooks Newport or his brothers. Carson’s grim acceptance of the situation had, until this moment, been as good as it got.

“Thank you,” Eve replied quietly. Then she turned her attention to Carson. “I’m not giving up on him. I just want what’s best for him and I don’t think being in the hospital is it.”

“What are the options?” Josh asked.

Why did he have to be here? Why did he have to be forging a peace between Eve and Carson?

Why did he have to be reminding her of things she’d tried so desperately to forget?

It was Carson who answered for her. “Eve and her sisters—our sisters—think it would be best to take him home. I’m not comfortable pulling him out of the hospital.” He stared at Eve. “We have questions and I want him to live long enough to get some answers out of him.”

It was blisteringly clear who the “we” was—Carson and his brothers.

Lucinda wanted to massage her throbbing temples.

Eve glared at him. “What you think doesn’t matter. He’s not really your father. You don’t know him and you don’t love him like I do—like my sisters do.” Her gaze swung back to Lucinda and she looked more determined than ever, which was saying something. “Money is no object. I can have a private medical facility that meets your specifications set up at his estate in a matter of days. I want him out of the hospital and safely at home. And if you won’t help move him,” she threatened, “I will find a doctor who can.”