Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(95)

“What are you doing in my house?”

The question was shrill and it pierced through the fog in his brain, the weird slowing of time.

“Bleeding,” he said.

“Oh.”

He looked up as best he could and saw a woman in a nightgown.

She was frilly.

Her dark hair was in a braid, and she was holding a teakettle like it might be a weapon. If it weren’t for the electric lights behind her, he’d have thought he’d gone back in time.

“I don’t want to hurt you, ma’am,” he said.

Ma’am.

He didn’t know where the hell that had come from, except some long-ago memory of his mother telling him to be polite and hold the door. Which was some weird past life stuff.

“I’m going to call...”

He shot up off the floor, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “No. Don’t call anyone.” He stumbled again and looked around the room.

Couch. There was a couch.

He pressed his hand against his side and walked to the couch, where he sank heavily onto the cushions and leaned to the side.

“Oh my gosh!” Gosh. Like she was a cartoon character.

“You got blood on my homework!”

He looked back at her. Well, she was fresh-faced, but he hadn’t thought fresh-faced enough she’d be in here doing homework.

“That’s a new one,” he said. “I always told the teacher the dog ate it.”

“I am the teacher,” she said, in a tone that was terse enough he believed it. “I have to call someone.”

“No,” he said, his tone fierce. “You call the cops, they’re going to arrest me. Or worse, take me to a hospital first, and if that happens I’m dead.”

“You are an outlaw.”

Well, she wasn’t far off. He had been. He hadn’t known better, not for most of his life. Then when he was twenty, his brother had taken over entirely for his father and things had... Taken a turn. It didn’t matter he’d been raised to look the other way over smuggling illegal goods, he couldn’t overlook violence. He knew that was wrong. There was no level of indoctrination about the Everett family and their long history of rebellion against the government to do business as they saw fit that would cover violence.

He’d gotten out. Gone into the rodeo. Made his own way.

Now, some twelve years later, Jake had crashed back into his life, bringing guns, violence and the law to his doorstep, culminating in tonight’s rain of bullshit.

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “My brother shot me.”

“He shot you.” Her brown eyes had gone round.

“Yes, and it’s starting to sting. And I’m losing a lot of blood. And you have to understand that my brother is a dangerous man.”

She looked over her shoulder. “I should close the door.”

He hadn’t realized it was still open.

She went over to it and closed it, locking it tight.

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Clayton said.

“How do you know?”

“I know how he thinks.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

“If I was in any position to hurt someone, I would have stayed and dealt with Jake.”

She seemed to be weighing that, as if it was reasonable.

“Okay. I have first aid training. You have to have it out here, and I teach kids.”

“You know what to do with a bullet wound?”

She laughed. She actually laughed. “I do. They trained me. Because...you never know out here. It’s the Wild West. I just didn’t think I’d end up with an actual outlaw in my house.”

“Lady,” he said, flipping his hat back off his head. “You have an overactive imagination.”

“Says the bullet-riddled man on my couch. Hang on...”

She swept out of the room and he looked up at the ceiling. What the hell was happening? Was he hallucinating? Why else would he have ended up in the house of an angel rather than dead in a rain-filled ditch.

The worry was that he was dreaming. That this was a dream. That she was a dream.

She returned a minute later. “Get your muddy boots off my couch.”

And without thinking, he swung his feet right down to the floor. He wasn’t dreaming. In his dreams the pretty angel wouldn’t be worried about his muddy boots.

She sat down on the edge of the couch, right by his head. “Can you... I... I can’t see where you’re hurt.”

He sat halfway up and started to shrug his coat off. Dammit all, he was wet and muddy and peeling the fabric off was tantamount to torture.

“I can’t,” he said, lying back, his brow covered in a cold sweat, his heart pounding hard.

This was lowering.

Clayton Everett had never said “I can’t” in all his life.

“I...” She breathed out hard, and then her hands went down to the bottom of his T-shirt and he...

Hell. His body responded.

Not with the enthusiasm it might have if he weren’t bleeding and in insurmountable pain, but it wasn’t neutral. Maybe because it knew it was dying.

So it was thinking it might as well have a few more jollies.

And she was...

Well, she was exceptionally pretty. So close like this, his vision—which was dark around the edges—honed right in on that. On her.