The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(112)

It might feel like it was sometimes. It might feel like looking at this place was the same as opening a vein and letting all her hopes and dreams run red and free.

But it was land.

He was a human being.

Even if he was the human being who left her angrier, hotter, more stirred up and just plain trembly.

She hadn’t realized quite how tense she was until her little cabin came into view, and then her shoulders relaxed immeasurably.

She just didn’t like driving with him in the bed of the truck like that. It was unnerving.

She got as close to the front door as she could, and felt a little bit exhausted and sweaty staring at his inert form in the back of the truck, still on the board.

She could get him down there, to the front door, but it was just going to be a little bit of a trick. She eased her shoulders upward and rolled them, then grabbed the end of the board, doing her best to lower it gently down to the ground, getting him out much the same way as she had gotten him in. And then she… Well, she dragged him. Up the front steps, slowly, methodically, careful not to jostle him.

She got him into the front room of the house and looked around. Then she took all the cushions off the couch and laid them down on the floor. She unstrapped him from the gurney and rolled him onto the cushions.

He groaned.

Well, at least there was a sign of life.

His clothes were soaking wet, but she was not stripping him naked. No. She had lines, and they were definitely around stripping Chance Carson naked.

Her heart bumped up into her throat.

Well. Dreams weren’t anything to get too worked up about. Granted, her grandmother would disagree.

But that didn’t matter. Juniper didn’t put any stock in them. And the fact that she had dreamed a time or two about what it might be like to rip Chance Carson’s clothes from his body at the end of an invigorating argument was… It was immaterial. She didn’t think about it consciously. She didn’t marinate on it or anything. It was her subconscious mixing up its passions. That was all.

She opened one of his eyes and shined a flashlight in it, then the other. “You are concussed,” she said. “Sorry, my friend.” She was going to have to observe him. Well, someone would.

She could take him down to the hospital…

Suddenly, a hard, masculine hand shot up and grabbed her around the wrist. “What’s going on?”

His voice was rusty and hard. And she was…

On fire.

Her heart was racing, her skin suffused with heat. He had never…touched her before. In a panic, she pulled away and he released his hold, but the impression of his hand on her skin still remained.

“I…”

“Where am I?”

“You’re at my house. I found you in a field. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know what happened,” he said.

“You don’t know what happened?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Right. Okay. You don’t know what happened.”

“Yes,” he said.

“That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happened. Can you see all right?” She put her finger off to his left, then his right, and watched as he tracked the movement. “That seems to be fine.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“No double vision?”

“No,” he said.

“You definitely hit your head,” she said.

“Right,” he said.

“I’m just trying to figure out how serious it is.”

“You a doctor?”

“No. I’m an EMT…” He knew that. Chance Carson knew that she was an EMT. Everybody did. “Do you know who I am?”

“No. Should I?”

Oh. Well. Holy crap. Chance Carson didn’t know who she was.

“Juniper,” she said slowly. “Juniper Sohappy.”

“Name doesn’t mean anything to me. Sorry.”

“What’s your name?”

His brow creased. “You know… I don’t know.”

He didn’t know his name? Juniper couldn’t wrap her head around that. He could be lying, of course. Though, to what end she didn’t know, but how could you ever know with a Carson?

Wasn’t her whole family history a testament to that?

If he was lying, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of tricking her. She…

She stopped herself just as she was about to open her mouth.

If he was lying, it might be funny to go along with it, see how long it took him to reveal himself.

And if he wasn’t?

She thought back to the humiliation of when he’d had her working his land. Of every insult over the years, of everything.

She was going to keep an eye on him tonight, make sure he didn’t lapse off and die of his head injury. And she was more than qualified to do it. She also knew if he really was suffering from some temporary memory loss from the fall he’d taken, it would resolve quickly enough and you weren’t supposed to go heaping facts on people while their mind sorted things out.

What would it hurt if she taught him a little some-thing in the meantime?

“You don’t remember your name?” she pressed.

“No,” he said, his eyes blank, and she looked hard to see if he was being genuine. “I don’t remember anything.”