Raising Kane (Rough Riders #9)(2)

Kane jammed his hands in his gloves and patted his dog’s head before he climbed in his truck. He tried to focus on something—anything—besides his mounting worry on the drive to Sundance. Not only was Ginger Paulson a single mother, she was also her father’s caretaker, and she maintained a law practice.

Ginger. Just the mention of her name stirred something inside him. She’d captured his interest like no other woman he’d ever met. She redefined the term stacked—six feet of curves, curves and more curves. A red-haired, hazel-eyed beauty whose Amazonian size was only topped by her Amazonian intellect.

Too bad Ginger was way out of his league. And since she’d enrolled her son in the Little Buddies program, she was strictly off limits, which was a damn crying shame.

Out of loneliness and boredom, Kane had signed up as a volunteer for the Big Buddies/Little Buddies program, a program that paired young boys without a male influence with local male mentors. Once Kane had completed the training, he’d received his first Little Buddy. Problem was, the boy’s mother was looking for a husband for herself, not a mentor for her son. When Kane rebuffed her advances and requested the boy be removed from his mentoring, she’d claimed to the program director that Kane had hit on her, resulting in Kane almost getting kicked out of the program in his very first month. That’d chapped his ass. Big time.

No one had expected him to stick with the program. So he’d worked damn hard to prove he had what it takes to be a good example to young boys. He’d had hits and misses.

Then he was paired with Hayden Paulson.

It’d been a rocky start. The boy was painfully shy, small for his age and freakishly smart—none of those descriptions had ever been applied to Kane McKay. After the first month, Kane wondered if he and Hayden would ever find common ground. But Kane saw something special in Hayden and forged a mentorship based on friendship.

Over the course of the last two years, he’d managed to coax Hayden out of his shell. Hayden was more outgoing, more confident in his own interests, plus he was eager to try new experiences. One of Kane’s proudest moments came when the kid out-fished him on a camping trip. Spending time with the little boy with the big brain was the highlight of Kane’s week.

The bonus? Mama hung around whenever Kane showed up on their doorstep. And sometimes he lingered, chatting her up, trying like hell to charm her, while Hayden impatiently tugged at him to get a move on.

But damn. Ginger Paulson was something else. That amazingly hot body, that amazingly expressive face, those amazingly tasty lips. The woman had turned him inside out and upside down since he’d given into temptation and taken the kiss she’d offered.

How much farther would it’ve gone if he hadn’t done the right thing for once and backed off?

All the way.

Keep thinking about the hot mama and prove your indecent thoughts by showing up at the hospital with a hard-on.

Still…Ginger intrigued Kane on several levels. After she’d relocated from southern California to take over her dad’s law practice, she’d involved herself in the community, but she didn’t date. Ever. A fact he’d learned directly from her son. On occasion she whooped it up with Libby McKay and Dr. Monroe, but mostly she handled her family responsibilities and kept a low profile.

That’s where he and Ginger had boatloads in common. Wild Kane McKay, part of the infamous bad boy McKays, once the terror of four Wyoming counties with his boozing, brawling and babes, was no more. He’d foresworn the love ’em and leave ’em lifestyle after his cousin Colt had entered rehab. Since his twin brother Kade’s marriage, a matrimony epidemic had consumed most of his hell-raisin’ McKay cousins. Kane really had no one to party with anyway and surprisingly, he hadn’t missed it at all.

His late nights were few and far between unless he counted the poker games he hosted for his remaining single McKay cousins. Kane didn’t spend much time with Kade in their off-the-ranch hours.

Same went for his cousin Colt. Both men were married, with families. Sometimes Kane longed for the life they’d led at the Boars Nest. Not the nonstop partying, or the orgies, but the camaraderie they’d shared.

Everyone had grown up and moved on, it seemed.

Everyone but him.

Or so people thought.

Because he wasn’t married with two-point-five kids, the consensus, even among his own family members, was he didn’t want to grow up. But admitting his loneliness seemed f*cking pathetic, so he hadn’t done a damn thing to change those misperceptions.

The truck had warmed up by the time he’d reached Sundance. January was always miserable in the cattle business and in Wyoming in general. They’d positioned their calving season for early spring. Spring snowstorms were always a threat to the health of the cows and the calves, but he’d take wet and muddy over bone-chilling cold any day.



Kane parked in the nearly empty hospital parking lot. He entered through the front doors. After shaking the snow off his hat, he stood there like a dumbass, wondering what the hell to do next.


The blowsy blonde manning the information desk looked all of seventeen. But that didn’t stop her from offering him a lewd once-over and licking her shellacked lips. “Well, hello, cowboy. You lost? Or is something broken and needin’ some fixin’?”


“Neither. A…friend of mine was brought in a little while ago.”