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Chapter One

“What’s that saying? Life is what happens when you have other plans? I guess that applies to you, Carly.”

“No doubt about it,” Carly Winters agreed from the back seat of her best friend’s car where she sat sideways so her foot could be elevated.

But Deana’s comment from behind the wheel was a whole lot more lighthearted than Carly’s dejected confirmation. Deana had never been happy about Carly’s plans to travel so any interference was welcome to her.

“This hasn’t canceled my trip, though. It’s just postponed it a little,” Carly felt inclined to clarify so her friend didn’t think otherwise. “The doctors at the emergency room said I’d be as good as new in a few weeks. And then I’m off like a rocket.”

Deana didn’t say anything to that. She just turned up the radio and made it seem as if she were paying attention to her driving, as if she had confidence in more of life happening to thwart Carly’s plans.

Carly sighed away the feeling of frustration that those thwarted plans left her with—a feeling she was more familiar with than she wanted to be—and laid her head against the seat.

The sun was just rising on the June day she’d been certain would finally be her swan song to Elk Creek, the small Wyoming town where she’d been born, raised and lived almost all of her thirty-two years. Most of which she’d spent thinking—dreaming—about being somewhere else.

But she wasn’t headed away from Elk Creek. She was headed back to it after spending the night in a Cheyenne hospital emergency room, having her ankle X-rayed.

Luckily she hadn’t broken any bones. That could have cost her six weeks in a cast. As it was, her ankle was sprained, the tendons and ligaments were torn, but it was wrapped in an Ace bandage and she’d be able to get around on crutches. And even though it hurt like crazy, she was sure it would heal quicker than a broken ankle would have. Which meant all the sooner that she’d be able to go off on her grand adventure.

Better late than never.

She still couldn’t believe it had happened, though. At her going-away party, no less.

The whole thing had been a comedy of errors. There she was, saying goodbye to friends, neighbors and relatives, ready to go home to bed for the last time in Elk Creek, when her sister, Hope, had gone into sudden, hard labor. Their mother had gotten so flustered that in her hurry to reach Hope she’d caught her heel in the hem of her dress. Carly had seen her mother’s predicament, dived to catch her and fallen herself, twisting her own ankle to an unhealthy angle while her mother had barely stumbled.

The end result was that Hope had been taken to the medical facility where Tallie Shanahan—the town nurse and midwife—had delivered a healthy baby boy to go with Hope’s other three sons, and Deana had taken Carly to the hospital in Cheyenne. Not only had Tallie had her hands full, but she’d been afraid the ankle was broken, requiring the care of a physician—a commodity Elk Creek had been without for some time.

“Maybe this is a sign that you shouldn’t go,” Deana said from the front seat over the music, letting Carly know her friend was still thinking about her leaving even if Deana tried not to show it.

“It’s just a minor setback,” Carly countered.

And she meant it, too.

Because nothing—nothing—was going to keep her from doing what she’d wanted to do her whole life. Well, since she was seven anyway and her great-aunt Laddy had paid her family a visit and brought photographs of Laddy’s travels all over the world.

Carly had studied those pictures until they were burned into her brain, daydreaming over them, wishing she was seeing the sights in person. Somehow, from that day on, Elk Creek had seemed like small potatoes on the banquet table of the world. And she’d made it her goal to get out into that world and feast on it all herself.

Not that that goal had been easy to reach or it wouldn’t have taken her so long to get to it.

First, there had been getting her teaching degree in the nearest college where she and Deana could attend economically by staying with Deana’s aunt during the process. Once that was accomplished, Carly had returned to Elk Creek to work and save her traveling money. And then, of course, there had been her involvement with Jeremy and the wrench he’d thrown into the works the past few years.

But now all of that was behind her. She’d saved enough money to last a year or maybe more if she was careful. She’d taken a leave of absence from her job. And if she could ever actually manage to get out of Elk Creek, she was going to see everything she’d ever wanted to see and then pick her favorite city to live in. Maybe not forever, but for long enough to give herself a taste of life outside the confines of her small hometown.

She was going to be a cosmopolitan woman.

By hook or by crook.

Even if it killed her.

“It’s not as if I’m moving away permanently,” she said with a low concentration of conviction, but wanting to console Deana nonetheless. “I just want to see some things. Do some things. Meet some new people. Live outside the fishbowl for a while. Who knows? A little time away and I’ll probably get homesick and come back. That’s why I only leased my house and why I didn’t out-and-out quit my job.”

“You won’t be back if the grass is as green as you think it is on the other side of the fence.”

“Well, even if it is—and it probably isn’t—you know it won’t make any difference between you and me. We’ll still talk all the time, and we can write letters and E-mails and there’s nothing in Elk Creek to stop you from coming to wherever I am.”

“It won’t be the same as living next door the way we always have.”

Carly knew that was true. She also knew she was going to miss Deana and the way things had been since Deana’s family had moved into the house right beside her own when they were both four years old. They’d been together through everything from first kisses to burying their fathers within three months of each other.

Carly’s leaving would mean no more seeing each other every day, sharing every detail of their lives. No more late-night binges on ice cream when one or the other of them couldn’t sleep and they padded across the lawn in pajamas and bare feet. No more consoling each other at the end of a bad date. No more double dates—good or bad. No more filling each other’s lonely hours with company. No more shared bowls of popcorn over tear-jerker movies on videotape to occupy empty Saturday nights. No more impromptu shopping trips or makeover sessions. No more battening down the hatches together in snowstorms. No more working together. No more just being there for each other when either of them needed it for any reason.

But Carly didn’t want to think about the downside of leaving town. Instead, she did what she’d been doing to keep herself from dwelling on it since she’d finally decided to do this two months ago: she thought about San Francisco and New York. About seeing Vermont in autumn splendor. About the Alaskan wilderness. About Hawaiian beaches. About London and Paris and Rome and Brussels and Athens and Vienna and Madrid.

About how much she’d always wanted to see it all for herself…

“I still wish you’d come with me,” Carly said because that was true, too. She’d tried as long as she’d known Deana to infuse her friend with her own enthusiasm for seeing the world. Short of meeting the man of her dreams on the Orient Express in the middle of her travels, the only other thing that would make the trip perfect would be if Deana had the same wanderlust and they could do it together.

But Carly could see Deana shaking her head even now.

“There isn’t anything I want that isn’t in Elk Creek.”

“Mr. Right,” Carly reminded.

“He’ll show up one of these days,” Deana said with certainty. “And when he does, I don’t want to be somewhere else looking at bridges or mountains or leaves or churches or ruins or pyramids.”

For as much as they were like two peas in a pod, this was the one area where they differed—Deana was a hometown girl through and through.

And Carly wasn’t.

Or at least Carly didn’t want to be.

They headed into Elk Creek without fanfare just then. The small enclave’s main street—Center Street—was still deserted as Deana drove all the way to where it circled the town square. She turned at the corner taken up by the old Molner Mansion that had been converted into the local medical facility and stopped at the first house behind it. Carly’s house. The house her mother had left to her after her father’s death, when her mother had decided to move in with Carly’s two maiden aunts.

It was a moderate-size yellow clapboard farmhouse with a big front porch, a second level slightly smaller than the lower and a man and a little girl at the oval-glassed front door.

“Looks like you have company,” Deana observed as she drove around the station wagon parked at the curb and pulled into the driveway.

“He’s not supposed to be here until the middle of the morning,” Carly groaned.

“Apparently he arrived ahead of schedule.”

“And I’ll bet I’m a mess.”

Deana reached over and flipped down the visor on the passenger’s side so Carly could get a glimpse of herself.

Carly sat up straighter and saw the unruly ends of her straight, shoulder-length auburn hair sticking up every which way at her crown. To get it out of her face she’d twisted it into a knot at the back of her head and jammed a pencil through it.

The blush she’d applied for the party was a thing of the past, although luckily her skin had retained enough color of its own not to leave her looking sickly. Her mauve lipstick was history, too. Her mascara was still in place on longish lashes over topaz-colored eyes, but on the whole she knew she was the worse for wear.

“Not much I can do about it now,” she muttered to her reflection as Deana put the idling car in park and got out.

“If you need Carly Winters, I have her right here,” Deana called to the people on the porch. “Just give her a minute.”

Then Deana opened the rear door and went around to the trunk for Carly’s crutches while Carly slid to the end of the seat to wait for them.

“Hi,” she said feebly to her guests.

Both the man and the little girl, who looked to be about five or six, had moved from the door to stand at the railing that edged the porch with turned spindles.

The man raised one large hand to acknowledge her greeting.

“Wow,” Deana said under her breath as she returned with the crutches, nodding over her shoulder only enough to let Carly know the exclamation was a commentary on the man himself.

As if Carly wouldn’t have guessed.

He was tall, no less than six-two, and he looked much more like a muscled, ranch-rugged cowboy than the town’s new doctor she assumed him to be.

His hair was a pale, golden brown he wore short all over. His face had the distinctive McDermot lean angles and rawboned beauty Carly knew only too well since his brothers were residents of Elk Creek. His nose was long and thin and perfectly sculpted. His jaw was square and strong. And his lips were thin, kind and slightly sardonic all at once, not to mention way, way more sexy than Carly wanted to notice.

“Need some help?” he asked when he noticed Carly’s dilemma, coming off the porch on long, thick legs that were bowed just enough to look as if they’d spent more time straddling a saddle than standing at an examining table.

He wore faded jeans that rode low on narrow hips, and a plain white T-shirt that stretched tight across broad shoulders, powerful pectorals and bulging biceps that made Carly’s stomach do a little flip-flop when she got a closer glimpse of them as he joined her and Deana.

“I think I can manage,” Carly said, trying to remember what she’d been taught at the hospital about maneuvering the crutches when her brain was really in a haze due to the man’s head-to-toe staggeringly masculine glory.

“You must be Baxter McDermot,” she said feebly on her way onto the crutches.

“Bax,” he amended.

“Doctor McDermot,” Deana said with a hint of flirting in her tone that, for some reason, rubbed Carly wrong.

In spite of it she said, “I’m Carly Winters and this is Deana Carlson.”

“I apologize for showing up so early,” he said after a confirming nod of his handsome head. “We were in a motel for the night with World War III going on in the room next to us. We finally gave up tryin’ to sleep and figured we might as well finish the trip and catch a few winks when we got here.”

“Sure. Of course. There’s just been a little setback on this end,” Carly said, leaning her weight on the crutches and honing in on gorgeous sea-foam green eyes that stamped him a McDermot without a doubt.

“You aren’t leaving town and don’t want to hand your house over to us,” he guessed with a glance down at her bandaged ankle.

“I’m afraid I had an accident last night and I’m going to have to put off leaving until I’m healed up.”

“It’s okay. We can stay out at the ranch,” he offered congenially.

It might have been better if he’d been nasty about it. If he’d reminded her that they had a contract in the form of the lease that guaranteed she would turn the house over to him today.

Instead, he couldn’t have been nicer about it, offering to go to the ranch he and his brothers and sister now owned after having taken it over from their grandfather.

The trouble was, Carly knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do or he wouldn’t have rented her house in the first place. He’d arranged for the lease because he’d wanted to be closer to the medical facility where he would work—one of the same purposes the house had served for her father when he’d been the town doctor. And there was Bax McDermot’s daughter, too. He was determined to be near her so he’d be available to her during the daytime.

Carly knew all this because the real estate agent who had arranged the rental agreement had explained it to her. And now she felt bad that her change of plans had complicated his. She didn’t have to be told that if he had to stay out at the McDermot ranch, he’d be pulled in two directions. Not to mention that he wouldn’t have this precious time before he actually began seeing patients to get himself and his daughter settled into the house.

He was being such a good sport about it, it just made her feel all the more guilty.

“Listen,” she said. “A deal is a deal and according to ours the house is yours as of today. There’s a guest cottage just behind it that my dad sometimes used as a makeshift hospital. I could stay there until I’m healed enough to leave and you can have the house. It’ll just mean sharing the kitchen, but it will also give me a chance to show you around properly and teach you the workings of the place.”

“I don’t want to put you out. Maybe I could take the cottage,” he offered.

“It’s only big enough for one. Besides, I don’t mind. It’ll actually be easier for me to get around without having to use the stairs in the main house. And it will only be for a little while. As soon as I’m back on two feet I’m leaving. But in the meantime, things won’t have to be messed up for you.”

He seemed to study her for a sign that she meant what she said.

She aided the cause by adding, “Really, I don’t mind.”

He finally conceded. “If you’re sure…”

“I am.”

“Okay, then. Great,” he agreed with a slight shrug of broad shoulders and a smile that put dimples in both cheeks and made Carly’s head go light.

Not that her reaction had anything to do with him, she told herself in a hurry. She was just overly tired.

“Do you need me?” Deana asked.

Only in that moment did Carly remember her friend, and she was ashamed of herself for having been so focused on Bax McDermot that she’d forgotten her.

“I’m fine,” Carly assured too effusively. “Thanks for taking me to Cheyenne and everything else, Dee.”

“You’d do the same for me. At least if you were around,” her friend said pointedly. “I’ll check with you this afternoon. If you need me in the meantime, just holler.”

“Thanks,” Carly repeated as Deana closed the rear car door then got behind the wheel.

“Nice to meet you,” the new doctor said to Deana.

“You, too,” Deana answered just before she backed out of Carly’s driveway only to pull into the one next door.

“Short trip,” Bax McDermot observed with a laugh as he watched the move.

Annoyance struck Carly for the second time as she caught sight of the big man’s gaze following her friend.

She really did need sleep, she decided. Lack of it was making her cranky.

“We might as well go in,” she urged, taking her first steps on the crutches.

But heading across the lawn was a tactical error, and by the third uncoordinated three-legged hobble she set one of the crutches in a hole and everything went into a careen.

Bax McDermot lunged for her, catching her just short of falling with both of those big hands on her waist.

“Steady,” he advised.

But even though he’d accomplished just that, something about the warm feel of his hands sent things inside her reeling.

“Sorry,” she apologized, feeling like an idiot. “I haven’t had much practice on these things.”

“They work better on solid surfaces.”

Before she had any inkling of what he was going to do, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the porch on long, sturdy strides, setting her down near one of the posts so she could hang on to it for balance.

The whole trip took only a few seconds and yet that close contact had knocked her for even more of a loop.

So much so that it took her a moment of hard work to regain herself and realize he was introducing his daughter.

“This is Evie Lee.”

“Evie Lee Lewis,” the little girl corrected.

“Evie Lee McDermot is what’s on her birth certificate,” Bax explained. “She tacked on the Lewis herself a few months ago. I can’t tell you why or where she got it.”

“Everybody should have three first names,” Evie Lee added. “To tell them apart from everybody else.”

“Makes sense to me,” Carly agreed, seizing the distraction of the child.

“Why don’t you run and get the crutches?” Bax suggested to his daughter.

Evie Lee did just that, dragging them behind her on her return trip.

She was a tiny little thing with blond hair and a face that was the impish image of her father’s, complete with beautiful green eyes that Carly knew would break some hearts down the line.

She thanked Evie Lee when she took the crutches from her and was all too aware of Evie Lee’s father keeping his hands at the ready to catch her again when she turned and made her way to the front door on them.

“It isn’t locked,” she informed him when they’d reached it and he seemed to be waiting for her to produce a key. “No reason to lock doors in Elk Creek. It isn’t a high-crime area, so nobody bothers for the most part.”

“Nice,” he commented as he opened the old-fashioned screen and then the heavy oak panel with the leaded glass oval in its center.

Carly hobbled through ahead of him, stopping in the entryway at the foot of the stairs that led to the upper level. “We’re all too tired for the tour, so I’ll just give you directions, if that’s okay.”

“Fine.”

“The master bedroom is the first one at the top of the steps. I thought Evie Lee might like the one beside it. That was my sister’s and it’s still all done up for a little girl. I got them both ready for you yesterday, so there’s clean sheets on the beds and empty drawers for your things. The bathroom is down the hall a ways, along with the linen closet and the other bedrooms. Down here, you can see the kitchen at the end of this hall. That’s the living room—” she nodded over her right shoulder toward the room they could see from where they all stood “—and the dining room is beyond it, connected to the kitchen. There’s another bathroom and the den that you get to from under the stairs.”

“All we really need for right now are beds.”

“Me, too. The cottage is just across the back patio. That’s where I’ll be if you need me,” she said, pivoting on the crutches to face that direction.

“Can I help you get there?” he asked.

“No. I’m fine. Really,” she insisted, adding, “Sleep well,” just before heading down the hall on her own.

She could feel him watching her the whole way, and she was glad when she finally got far enough into the kitchen to be out of his line of vision.

But somehow that didn’t take away the lingering sense of those eyes on her and the inexplicable feeling of heat that they’d caused.

All part of the weird side effects of a sleepless night, she told herself.

But still she hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in keeping her agreement to let Bax McDermot move in before she’d actually moved out.

Because sleep-deprived or not, something inside her was sitting up and taking notice of too many things about the man.

And that didn’t have any place at all in her plans.