The Troublemaker

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Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

He was the very image of the Wild West, backlit by the setting sun, walking across the field that led directly to her house. He was wearing a black cowboy hat and a T-shirt that emphasized his broad shoulders; waist narrow and hips lean. His jaw square, his nose straight like a blade and his mouth set in a firm, uncompromising manner.

Lachlan McCloud was the epitome of a cowboy. She was proud to call him her best friend. He was loyal; he was—in spite of questionable behavior at times—an extremely good man, even if sometimes you had to look down deep to see it.

He was…

He was bleeding.

Charity sighed.

She had lost track of the amount of times that she had stitched Lachlan McCloud back together.

“I’ll just get my kit, then,” she muttered, digging around for it.

Not that there was any other reason Lachlan would be coming by unannounced. Usually now she went to his house for cards or for dinner; he didn’t come here. Not since her dad had died.

She found her medical bag and opened up the front door, propping her hip against the door frame, holding the bag aloft.

He stopped. “How did you know?”

“I recognize your I cut myself open and need to be sewn back together walk.”

“I have a…need to be sewn back together walk?”

“You do,” she said, nodding.

“Thank you kindly.”

She lived just on the other side of the property line from McCloud’s Landing. One of the ranches that made up the vast spread that was Four Corners Ranch.

Thirty thousand acres, divided by four, amongst the original founding families.

Her father had been the large-animal vet in town and for the surrounding areas for years. With a mobile unit and all the supplies—granted, they were antiquated.

Charity had taken over a couple of years ago.

Her dad had always understood animals better than he did people. He’d told her people simply didn’t speak his language, or he didn’t speak theirs, but it didn’t really matter which.

Charity had known how to speak her dad’s language. He liked chamomile tea and All Creatures Great and Small. Masterpiece Theatreand movies made in the 1950s. Argyle socks—which she also loved—and cardigans. Again, something she loved, too.

He’d smoked a pipe and read from the paper every morning. He liked to do the crossword.

And just last month, he’d died. Without him the house seemed colder, emptier and just a whole lot less.

It was another reason she was thankful for Lachlan.

But then they’d both had a lot of changes recently. It wasn’t just her. It wasn’t just the loss of her father.

Lachlan was the last McCloud standing.

His brothers, resolute bachelors all—at least at one time—were now settled and having children. His brother Brody was an instant father, since he had just married Elizabeth, a single mother who had come to work at the equestrian center on McCloud’s Landing a couple of months back.

But Lachlan was Lachlan. And if the changes had thrown him off, he certainly didn’t show it.

He was still his hard-drinking, risk-taking, womanizing self.

But he’d always been that way. It was one reason she’d been so immediately drawn to him when they’d first met. He was nothing like her.

He was something so separate from her, something so different than she could ever be, that sometimes being friends with him was like being friends with someone from a totally different culture.

Sometimes she went with him and observed his native customs. She’d gone to Smokey’s Tavern with the group of McClouds quite a few times, but she’d always found it noisy and the booze smelled bad. It gave her a headache.

And she didn’t dance.

Lachlan had women fighting to dance with him, and she thought it was such a funny thing. Watching those women compete for his attention, for just a few moments of his time. They would probably never see him again.

She would see him again the next day and the day after that, and the day after that.

“What did you do?” she asked, looking at the nasty gash.

“I had a little run-in with some barbed wire.”

He was at the door now, filling up the space. He did that. He wasn’t the kind of person you could ignore. And given that she was the kind of person all too easy to ignore, she admired that about him.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” he said, grinning.

She’d seen him turn that grin on women in the bar and they fell apart. She’d always been proud of herself for not behaving that way.

“I wish we could, Lachlan. But you insist on choosing violence.”

“Every day.”

“You could stop being in a fight with the world,” she pointed out.

“I could. But you know the thing about that is it sounds boring.”

“Well… A bored Lachlan McCloud is not anything I want to see.” She jerked her head back toward the living room. “Come on in.”

He did, and the air seemed to rush right out of her lungs as he entered the small, homey sitting room in her little house.

She still had everything of her father’s sitting out, like he might come back any day.

His science-fiction novels and his medical journals. His field guides to different animals and the crocheted afghan that he had sat with, draped over his lap, in his burnt orange recliner, when at the end of his days he hadn’t been able to do much.

She had been a very late-in-life surprise for her father.

She’d been born when he was in his fifties. And he had raised her alone, because that had been the agreement, so the story went. Amicable and easy. Which made sense. Because her father had been like that. Steady and calm. A nice man. Old-fashioned. But then… He had been in his eighties when he’d passed. He wasn’t really old-fashioned so much as of his time.

He’d homeschooled her, brought her on all his veterinary calls. Her life had been simple. And it had been good.

She’d had her dad. And then… She’d had Lachlan.

And there was no reason at all that suddenly this room should feel tiny with Lachlan standing in it. Because he had been in here any number of times.

Especially in the end, visiting her dad and talking to him about baseball.

She sometimes thought her dad was the closest thing that Lachlan had to a father figure. His own dad had been a monster.

Of course, the unfairness of that was that Lachlan’s dad was still alive out there somewhere. While her sweet dad was gone.

“It’s quiet in here,” Lachlan said, picking up on her train of thought.

“It would’ve been quiet in here if dad was alive. Until you two started shouting about sports.” She grinned just thinking about it. “You do know how to get him riled up.” Then her smile fell slightly. “Did. You did know.”

“I could still rile him up, I bet. But I don’t know that we want séance levels of trouble.”

She laughed, because she knew the joke came from a place of affection, and that was something she prized about her relationship with Lachlan. They just knew each other.

She hadn’t really known anyone but adults before she’d met Lachlan. She’d known the people they’d done veterinary work for; she’d known the old men her dad had sat outside and smoked pipes with on summer evenings.

Lachlan had been her first friend.

He was her only friend. Still.

He’d taught her sarcasm. He’d introduced her to pop culture.

He’d once given her a sip of beer when she’d been eighteen.

He’d laughed at the face she’d made.

“I do not want that level of trouble. I also don’t want your level of trouble,” she said. “But here you are. Sit down and bite on something.”

“I don’t need to bite on anything to get a few stitches, Charity. Settle down. I know what I’m about.”

“You can’t flinch, Lachlan, and sometimes you’re a bad patient. So brace yourself.”

“You could numb me.”

“I could,” she said. “But I’m not just letting you use all my supplies. I’m stitching you for no cost.”

“Considering you normally stitch up horses, you should pay me to let you do this.”

“Please. Working on animals is more complicated than working on people. People all have the same set of organs right in the same places. Animals… It’s all arranged differently. I have to know way more to take care of animals.”

“Yes. I’ve heard the lecture before.”

“But you’ve never taken it on board.”

“All right,” he said, resting his hand on the coffee table in front of her and revealing the big gash in his forearm.

She winced.

“Hardass doctor, wincing at this old thing,” he said.

“It’s different when it’s on a person,” she said.

Except it really was different when it was on him. Because he was hers.

He was special.

Seeing him injured in any capacity made her heart feel raw, even if she’d seen it a hundred times.

“All right, Doc.”

“Okay,” she said.

She took her curved needle out of her kit, along with the thread, and she poked it right through his skin.

He growled.

“I told you,” she said.

She thought back to how they’d met. He’d been bruised and battered, and in bad need of medical attention.

His had been the first set of stitches she’d ever given.

She swallowed hard.

He winced and shifted when she pushed her needle through his skin again.

“I can’t guarantee you that you’re not going to have a scar,” she said, her tone filled with warning.

“Just one to add to my collection of many.”

“Yes. You’re very tough.”

“Oh, hell, sweetheart, I know that.”

“Don’t sweetheart me.” He called every woman sweetheart. And she didn’t like being lumped together with all that. She liked theirthings. Baseball and jokes about séances and Doc. “How is everything going at the facility?”

She had a hands-on role in the veterinary care of the animals at the new therapy center on McCloud’s Landing. But everything had taken a backseat when her dad had declined, then passed. She was working her way back up to it all, but it was slow.

“It’s going well. Of course, I am tripping over all the happy couples. Tag and Nelly, Alaina and Gus, Hunter and Elsie, Brody and Elizabeth. It’s ridiculous. It’s like a Disney cartoon where it’s spring and all the animals are hooking up and having babies.”

“The domesticity must appall you,” she said. But she wasn’t even really joking.

She continued to work slowly on the stitches, taking her time and trying to get them small and straight to leave the least amount of damage, because whatever he said about scars, she was determined to stitch her friend back together as neatly as possible.

“I’m glad they’re happy,” she said.

“Yeah. Me, too. It’s a good thing. It’s a damn good thing.”

But he sounded a bit gruff and a bit not like himself. She had to wonder if all the changes were getting to him. It was tough to tell with Lachlan, because his whole thing was to put on a brave face and pretend that things were all right.

He’d tried that when they’d first met.

She had been playing in the woods. By herself. She was always by herself. Even though she’d been sixteen, she’d been a young sixteen. She’d never really gotten to be around other children. So she was both vastly older and vastly younger in many different ways. She liked to wander the woods and imagine herself in a fairy tale. That she might encounter Prince Charming out there.

Then one day she’d been walking down a path, and there he’d been. Tall and rangy—even at fifteen—with messy brown hair and bright blue eyes.

But he’d been hurt.

Suddenly, he’d put his hand on his ribs and gone down onto his knees.

She could still remember the way she’d run over to him.

*

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said, looking up at her, his lip split, a cut over his eye bleeding profusely.

“That’s a lie,” she said.

“Yeah.” He wheezed out a cough. “No shit.”

She’d never heard anyone say that word in real life before. Just overheard in movies and read in books.

Her father was against swearing. He thought that it was vulgar and common. He said that people ought to have more imagination than that.

“That is shocking language,” she said.

“Shocking language… Okay. Look, you can just… Head on out. Don’t worry about me. This is hardly the first time I’ve had my ribs broken.”

He winced again.

“You need stitches,” she said, looking at his forehead.

“I’m not going to be able to get them.”

“Why not?”

“No insurance. Anyway, my dad’s not gonna pay for me to go to the doctor.”

“I… I can help,” she said.

She could only hope that her dad was still at home.

He had a call to go out on later, but there was a chance he hadn’t left yet.

“Can you stand up?”

“I can try.”

She found herself taking hold of his hand, which was big and rough and masculine in comparison to hers.

Like he was a different thing altogether.

She’d seen the boys on the ranch from a distance before, but she’d never met one of them.

He might even be a man, he was so tall already.

He made her feel very small. Suddenly, her heart gave a great jump, like she’d been frightened. He made her feel like a rabbit, standing in front of a fox, and she couldn’t say why.

But he wasn’t a fox. And she wasn’t a rabbit.

He was just a boy who needed help.

“Lean on me,” she said.

He looked down at her. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a tiny little thing.”

“I’m sturdy,” she said. “Come on.”

“All right.”

He put his arm around her, and the two of them walked back to the house. Her father was gone. But his bag was still there.

“I’ve watched my dad do this a lot of times. I think I can do it.”

“Your dad’s a doctor?”

The best thing would be to lie. It was to make him feel better, not for nefarious reasons. It wasn’t really a lie. But of course what this boy meant was a doctor for humans…and she was going to let him believe it.

“Yes. I’ve been on lots of calls with him. I can do this.”

“Good.”

She found a topical numbing cream in the bag and gingerly applied it around the wound on his forehead.

His breath hissed through his teeth.

She waited a few minutes before she taking out a needle and thread. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, his teeth gritted.

But when she finished, he looked up at her and smiled.

“Thanks, Doc.”

*

She looked down at the stitches she was giving now.

“That ought to do it,” she said.

“Thanks. Hey, Doc,” he said and he lifted his head up so that they were practically sharing the same air.

His face was so close to hers; close enough she could see the bristles of his stubble, the blue of his eyes, that they were a darker ring of blue around the outside, and lighter toward the center.

What is happening?

Her throat felt scratchy, and her heart felt…sore.

“Yes?” It came out a near whisper.

“I need a favor.”

“What?”

“I need you to reform me.”

 

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