Rough (Wolf Ranch 1)

“I’ll take good care of myself. As long as you promise me you won’t go out with Abe. He’s not the man for you.”

“Wait!” she called, but I’d already turned and started jogging as swiftly as I could down the hallway. As soon as I turned the corner, I broke into a run and got the fuck out of there as quickly as possible.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What had I been thinking? Yeah, I wanted the hot little doc, but I couldn’t have her now. There was no fucking way I could even see her again. The secret would be out. I couldn’t expose what I was or the pack. Rob would be pissed.

All I could hope was that she didn’t realize the extent of healing that had taken place, that I was somehow just a hard-headed bull rider who hated hospitals and that she’d let me go without further inquiry. That I wanted just that. Except… that was a goddamn lie.

She knew who I was. Knew about Wolf Ranch. I’d mentioned where I was from earlier in the arena. I was far from anonymous. If she was as smart as I figured, there was no way she’d take what she’d seen as the end.

No fucking way. She’d come after me. My wolf howled at that. Perhaps that was the only reason why I wasn’t running back inside, finding the nearest empty hospital room and fucking her until she had no doubt she was mine and mine alone.

That was the stupidest thing of all. If she showed up at the ranch, I was going to have to explain to Rob—hell, not just Rob but the entire fucking pack—exactly how badly I fucked this up because my wolf was saying Dr. Audrey Ames was my mate.

Yeah, total fucking mess.

As usual.

The black sheep of the family returned.

And he was still the irresponsible playboy everyone thought he was. Plus, his wolf said his mate was human.

4

AUDREY

“It was the strangest thing,” I said, my eyes on the road.

While I didn’t have a fancy car with the in-dashboard phone setup, I did have a stand for my cell and the ability to use the speaker. I was thankful for it since I needed both hands on the steering wheel. The two-lane highway cut through the mountains and followed beside the river, and there were more twists and turns than straightaways. “I saw the accident, saw the wound. Hemothorax, possible ruptured spleen, blood loss.”

“I don’t know what half of that means, but it sounds bad,” Marina said. My sister, well, half-sister, was nine years younger and in college in California. She was no dummy, studying structural engineering, but medicine wasn’t her thing.

I frowned, slowed for a curve. “It explains the struggled inhales, the loss of BP. Hmm, maybe it was a spastic diaphragm,” I replied, thinking aloud. They were possibilities, but I’d seen the accident, the aftermath.

“You said he was standing in the hallway when you ran into him, then walked right out. He had to have been less injured than you thought.”

“I saw the accident,” I repeated. I’d tried to touch his injury, but he’d stopped my hand over his belly. I’d felt the heat of his skin, the hard ridges of his abdomen. What I hadn’t felt was a hole in his side. No, I didn’t usually get turned on by sucking chest wounds, but it seemed I clearly got all hot and bothered by feeling up a cocky cowboy’s torso.

It had been two days since the rodeo, and it was finally my day off. I’d thought about him asking me out, to give me a tour of Cooper Valley. I could’ve said yes, but I just didn’t want to tango with a cowboy who was so obviously a player, no matter how hot he was. Although I was sure he’d be well worth the tumble.

Since then, I’d been busy with patients and a whopping five births—and it wasn’t even the full moon—and I’d still thought about Boyd Wolf. I went over every moment of my care for him, from the moment I dropped to my knees in the dirt beside him until I watched his taut ass as he walked out of the hospital. I also thought about the fact that I had actually stared at his taut ass. That I thought his ass was taut.

It was. Same with his belly. How did I turn into a starry eyed thirteen-year-old having her first crush thinking about a guy non-stop? If it weren’t professional, I’d probably have doodled on patient charts little hearts with our names in them.

It was because I was worried about him and because I thought he was hot that I was in my car and driving to Wolf Ranch where he’d told me he would recover. I also may or may not have contacted the rodeo to make sure he hadn’t returned to work. Even if I had overestimated his injuries, he shouldn’t have been able to saunter out of the hospital like nothing hurt. Just to be safe, I’d told rodeo management explicitly that he wasn’t cleared for competition and shouldn’t be allowed to return until he had a full examination.