More Than A Cowboy

“I always had a weakness for a woman with a guilty conscience.”

“Oh!” Tess spun around. Her horse spooked and stepped sideways.

In the shadows below the cliff Adam slouched in the saddle of his black mare. His smile gleamed like the Cheshire cat’s. “What brings you over my way?”

“I’m just out for my afternoon ride,” she said casually, leaning down to pat his bloodhound. “And what are you doing up here? Lose a cow?”

“I’m looking for rustlers, trespassers—or anybody who speaks English instead of Dog. You know there’s a toll for using this trail, don’t you?”

Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat. How did Adam do this to her with just a look? “Th-there is?”

“Yep. You have to come to my cabin and let me make supper for you. And you have to say something besides ‘woof’ while I cook it.”

“I…don’t know if that’s such a…good idea.”

“Goodness never even crossed my mind,” he assured her huskily. “Still, that’s the forfeit and it’s got to be paid.”

This was crazy. At best, Adam Dubois would complicate her life, which was complicated enough already.

And at worst?

His grin was wicked. Welcoming. She wondered how he’d kiss.

Dear Reader,

Well, here you have it, the sixth book in my series about the imaginary town of Trueheart, Colorado, and its surrounding ranches. You may remember Tess Tankersly from The Wildcatter. Last time we looked in on her, she was a mischievous twelve-year-old. A passionate bird-watcher and horse lover, Tess was barely starting to discover that most fascinating beast of all—man.

Thirteen years later (as time is measured in Trueheart), Tess is ready to meet her own alpha male. Not that she’s precisely looking, you understand. Tess has a couple of woebegone lynx on her hands—and one short summer in the high country to help these endearingly big-footed cats learn to survive in the wild. But can Tess survive the attentions of a mysterious, maddening cowboy named Adam Dubois?

You might also recall Adam from True Heart. He was the line camp cowboy whom rancher Tripp McGraw saw as dangerous competition in his courtship of Kaley Cotter. Now Adam’s back, and it turns out he’s much more than a smiling Cajun cowboy. He’s a moonlighting detective, with a mystery to solve and an elusive woman to chase.

So there are hearts for the capture and the game is afoot. Hope you enjoy it!

Peggy Nicholson

More Than a Cowboy

Peggy Nicholson

This one’s for Amy Mower the cat-lady

and her surly half-pint lynx

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

CHAPTER ONE

“OH, SWEETIE! Oh, baby! Oh, you poor thing!” Tess Tankersly crouched before the pen and laced her fingers through the metal mesh. “How could they do this to you?”

The furry shape huddled at the far end of the cage didn’t open its eyes. Lying in a filthy nest of shredded newspaper, the big cat looked dead at first glance. Its ribs and shoulder blades and hipbones stood out starkly below the matted pelt.

Was it even breathing? Tess drew her nails along the mesh—and was rewarded with the faintest quiver of one black-tasseled ear. “You don’t belong in there,” she crooned to the animal. “Locked away from the sunshine. No snow to run through. No trees to climb. This isn’t right! Not right at all.”

She sat back on her heels and looked up at the hand-lettered sign wired to the top of the home-built cage.

Danger! Look, but don’t touch!

Canadian Lynx. Killer of the North Country!

“Yeah, right. Bunny rabbits, beware.” Tess leaned forward again to peer through the wire.

A free spirit of the forest and mountains imprisoned in a box so small it could barely turn around! Tess doubted the lynx could have stood upright in there.

But was it even well enough to stand? Tess had grown up on a ranch. She knew a sick animal when she saw one—the harsh coat, the hunched misery.

She had never been able to bear cruelty to animals. Hated to see wild things caged. Normally you couldn’t have dragged her to a roadside petting zoo, for fear of sights just like this. But one of her pickup’s tires had gone flat a few miles back toward Albuquerque. Although she’d changed to her spare, with two hundred miles to go between her and home, and a forecast of a late-spring snowstorm for this evening, she’d thought it wiser to stop and have the flat repaired at the first gas station she came to.

Killing time till the mechanic could get to her job, she’d made the mistake of following the signs that beckoned from across the two-lane country highway. Hazeltine’s World-Famous Petting Zoo promised

Adorable, Exotic Animals!

Thrilling Beasts and Hideous Reptiles!

Hug the Llamas and Hold the Rabbits!

There wasn’t a child in all of New Mexico who would’ve allowed his hapless parents to drive past that sign without stopping. And even at twenty-five, Tess still had a child’s delight in animals. Growing up far from the nearest town, she’d had more friends with four legs than two. So she’d paid her dollar admission and entered the dimly lit, dingy concrete-block building that housed Hazeltine’s zoo.

And past the not-so-huggable llamas—llamas bored enough to spit—then the pen of black-and-white goats who begged for treats and nibbled at the hem of her jacket… Beyond three cages of resigned rabbits and a cracked aquarium housing a surly bull snake mislabeled as a Deadly Diamondback Rattlesnake! she’d come at last to this…this outrage.

She gazed around, angry words leaping to her lips as the proprietor shuffled up behind her. “This cage is too small. And your lynx, Mr. Hazeltine, just look at him! He’s sick.”

“She. Ol’Zelda’s just taking a catnap, missy. She don’t get lively till sunset.”

“No, sir, I’m sure she’s ill. See how her eyes are running? And her nose? And clearly she hasn’t been eating. I’m a wildlife biologist, and believe me, you’ve got a sick animal here. She needs a vet.”

Bristles rasped as he rubbed his weathered jaw. “Well, maybe she has a cold. She’ll get over it, same way we all do. Sniffle and wait.”

Or she wouldn’t. Maybe Zelda had no reason to live, if this smelly box was all life offered. She hadn’t been made for this. “Do you even have a license to keep wild animals?”

“Hey, hey, if you’re going to start ragging on me, maybe you should take your money back and get on outta here. I do the best I can. And Zelda there’d be a lady’s coat if it wasn’t for me. Bought her off a fur farm up in South Dakota last year. She’s got nothin’ to complain about. Only one complainin’ is you.”

Tess stood, wove her fingers together and clenched them till they ached. Temper. She had a hot one at the best of times, and when she saw things like this— She swallowed a swift retort. Probably Hazeltine was doing the best he could. But whether he was or not, the point here was to save all that ragged, desperate beauty before it slipped away.

That was the whole point of her life, trying to save the creatures that ought to be saved.

“I’m sorry. I’m glad you took her away from a fur farm. How anybody could—”

But that was another wonder, for another day. How much money would she have left after paying for the tire? Eighty dollars? Maybe ninety and change? Somehow Tess didn’t think Hazeltine’s World-Famous Petting Zoo accepted credit cards, and it must be miles to the nearest ATM. The cat needed hope and help now—right now. She thrust a hand into her coat pocket and gripped her wallet. “Considering that she’s sick and she needs a vet, would you sell her to me? I’m headed up past Santa Fe. I’m sure I could find a doctor there to look at her.”

Hazeltine scratched his jaw again, and his squinty little eyes slid away over the surrounding pens. “Hadn’t rightly thought ’bout lettin’ her go. Zelda’s the star attraction, you know. Kids like to be scared of something.”

“You’ve still got that magnificent rattler,” Tess wheedled. “And truly, I don’t think you’ll have Zelda much longer without a doctor. And vet bills for an exotic cat can’t be cheap.”

He grunted wry agreement and bent to look down into the cage. Blew out a disgusted breath and straightened. “Reckon I could take two hundred for her. Cash.”

“I…could do that.” The mechanic across the road had admired the elaborate stainless-steel rack system on the back of her pickup, a gift from her father at Christmas. Surely she could cut some sort of deal, if she offered it to him cheap? “I’ll take her! Umm, please.”

Hazeltine’s smile shifted from wary to gotcha. “Then there’s the cage. Lotta work and material went into buildin’ that cage. You wanna buy that, too?”

THE NEW ORLEANS Police Department health plan didn’t allow for private hospital rooms. As soon as they’d determined that Detective Adam Dubois meant to go on living, they’d moved him from the blessed isolation of Intensive Care down to a double room on a post-surgical ward.

If Adam hadn’t been sworn to uphold the law, protecting and serving civilians everywhere, no matter how undeserving, he’d have thrown his roommate out their fourth-floor window. Him and his television that yammered from lights-on till lights-off beyond the curtain that Adam had insisted on drawing. Him with his non-stop snoring that sounded like a chainsaw with water in the gas tank—Gasp, wheeze, rumble, snort-rumble-grumble!

Adam gave himself one more day of this nonsense, then he was out of here, even if he had to crawl.

Clutching a pillow over his face with his good arm, teeth gritted and muscles tensed, he didn’t hear his visitor arrive. When a finger tapped his wrist, Adam jolted half-upright, then swore at the pain. “Crap! How many times do I have to tell you not to wake me?”

But when he dragged the pillow down, he wasn’t glaring up at Nurse Thibodaux, with her sexy smiles and her offers of backrubs. Or Nurse Curry with her prune mouth and her ready syringes. “Gabe! What are you—?”

But the answer was obvious. Adam and his cousin had always been close, as close as two grown men could be who lived a thousand miles and a world apart. If Gabe was the one who’d been shot, nothing would’ve kept Adam from his bedside. “Who told you?”

“Hospital contacted me—or contacted my answering machine. Sorry I couldn’t make it sooner. I was up in the San Juans, snow-tracking lynx. Didn’t get the message for almost a week.”

Right, he’d listed Gabe Monahan as his next of kin on the insurance forms. There was nobody closer, legally or emotionally. Still. “You didn’t need to…” His voice had roughened and his eyes stung. Damn! His emotions had been up and down, all over the map, since the shoot-out. He swallowed audibly and swung his head toward the curtain, while tactful Gabe busied himself with pulling up a chair and settling in.

“Sure, but it was a good excuse for a break,” he said, his words discounting the worry in his eyes as he looked Adam over, then studied all the damnable devices he was hooked up to—monitors, IV lines and worse gizmos. “Figured I’d drop by and pay my respects, then chow down on crawfish at Mam’ Louisa’s before heading back to snow country.” He leaned closer and scowled at Adam’s chest. “They’ve sure got you gift-wrapped. What’s below all the bandages?”

By now Adam had learned better than to shrug. “Coupla busted ribs.” He’d taken a few kicks there, before he’d rolled far enough away to draw his gun. “Cracked collar-bone—bullet clipped it.” The same bullet that had collapsed his right lung.

“Nurse at the desk said you almost bled out, that was why all the intensive care. Took ’bout five quarts to top you up, she said?”

Adam shifted irritably. His life was his own to control. And information about it was strictly his to dispense or withhold, and generally he withheld. But let a pack of bossy women start giving a man sponge baths, and next thing you knew, they’d figure he was theirs to gossip about. “I wasn’t counting. Took a hit in my thigh, that was the bad one. Grazed an artery.”

“Ouch!” Gabe winced in sympathy.

“Oh, could’ve been worse. I must’ve straddled that bullet. Two inches higher and an inch right, and I’d be singing the lonesome blues, falsetto.”

“You always had the devil’s own luck.”

Which was a ludicrous statement, on the face of it. Adam was the cousin who’d lost his alcoholic father to a car wreck when he was twelve, then lost his mother a year later when she collapsed under the burden of grief and double shifts as a barmaid, trying to support them. Gabe was the cousin who’d grown up surrounded by a large and loving family on a southwest Colorado ranch. He’d been nurtured by a stay-at-home mom during the same years that Adam had passed through a grim series of foster homes, skipping school to run with the toughest street gang in the city.

Adam’s luck had turned around when his mother’s brother—Gabe’s father—had discovered his whereabouts and his situation. From age fifteen to eighteen, he’d lived with Gabe’s family, learned to cowboy, and relearned what it was to be loved by good, caring people. Another year and it would’ve been too late. He’d seen enough lost kids in his job to know how close he himself had come to the edge. So, yes, he supposed he did have his share of luck. “At least at poker,” he admitted wryly.

“And women.”

Short-term scoring, sure, he did all right, but the long-term win? His one time at bat—with Alice—he’d struck out big time. Swung for the bleachers and fallen flat on his face.

He started to shrug, then caught himself. “What can I say? Women are crazy for badges. And uniforms. Can’t tell you how I hated giving mine up when I moved into Homicide. Was a real heartbreaker trade-off.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re hurting.” The cousins grinned at each other till embarrassment set in, and Gabe glanced down. He plucked at the sheet hem. “So…when do they let you out of here?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“That’s not what the nurse—”

“Tomorrow, or I start tossing TVs.” He hooked a thumb toward the racket beyond the curtain.

“Ah.” Gabe nodded understanding. “Okay, but after that? I suppose they’ll be giving you some recuperation time?”

“More than I’ll want.” Being a homicide detective wasn’t simply a job, it was a calling. Maybe if he’d had a woman or a family to distract him—but then, how could a good cop allow himself to be distracted?

The cases were endless and they were fascinating, and they tended to eat a man up. You might stagger home wired yet exhausted, night after night, but your job counted for something. You felt it made a difference.

Feeling like that, you didn’t tend to set it aside at the end of your shift, or switch your focus to the things that mattered to civilians. Because what hobby could be half as meaningful? What sport could give a man the same rush as going eyeball-to-eyeball with a gunman? What woman could compete with the adrenaline high of a righteous arrest?

Which was why so many detectives lived wistfully single in spite of themselves.

“That’s what I figured. So I was wondering…” Gabe still fingered the sheet. “Maybe once you’re back on your feet, you’d consider helping me out?”

Adam cocked his head. Gabe, the golden boy, needed his help? Gabe, who’d always had his ducks in a row, be they feminine, academic or professional. “Sure, but with what?”

“You know I’ve been working on the lynx reintroduction project? For four years now.”

“Big spotted cats, with goofy clown feet and Mr. Spock ears,” Adam remembered. “Bringing ’em back to Colorado.” Gabe had explained his mission with enthusiasm several Christmases back, when the project was just getting off the ground. He was a conservation biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, DOW for short. A few years ago, the DOW had concluded that lynx had become an exceedingly endangered species in Colorado—there were maybe two left in the state, as far as anyone knew—and it was time to save the critters from extinction.

In spite of the howls of protest from the cattlemen and sheepmen and skiers, they’d imported a hundred or more of the big cats from Canada and Alaska. Then they’d freed them in the San Juan Mountains, the wildest, roughest region of the southern Rockies, hoping they’d go forth and multiply. “You brought in the fleabags at a thousand a pop, I think you told me. So?”

Gabe turned up his hands and showed them empty. “So then…where are they?”

CHAPTER TWO

“WILL SHE LIVE?” Standing across the exam table from the veterinarian, Tess cupped one of Zelda’s outsize paws between both her hands.

Dr. Liza Waltz glanced up from the sedated lynx, then down again at the thermometer she held. Her sandy brows drew together. “I don’t know yet. Three degrees above normal.” She set the thermometer briskly aside and returned with a stethoscope.

Tess stroked silky gray, black and buff-brindled fur and watched anxiously as the examination proceeded. Waltz was supposed to be the best vet for exotic cats in Santa Fe. After each of four phone calls to local vets had brought up the woman’s name, Tess had driven straight to her office. The vet had interrupted a scheduled appointment to walk out to Tess’s pickup. She’d peered into the cage in the truck bed, which Tess had covered with a tarp against the wind, sworn under her breath, then run back for sedatives and a noose pole to control the cat.

Zelda had been too weak to fight the injection. Within minutes Waltz had her on the table, and now Tess bit her bottom lip as she waited for a verdict.

The vet muttered something to herself and removed the stethoscope from her ears. “Not good,” she allowed, fixing Tess with accusing gray eyes. “How long has she been this way?”

“I don’t know.” Tess explained how she’d acquired the lynx, and from whom. “Hazeltine mentioned there’d been a second lynx, a male, who shared Zelda’s cage.”

“Two in a cage that size!”

“Exactly. He bought them from the same fur farm last year. I asked him what had happened to the male, and he hemmed and hawed, then told me he’d sold him a few days ago to somebody who needed a barn cat. But frankly, I think he was lying. My guess is the male died, and it suddenly occurred to Hazeltine that I might back out on the deal if I thought Zelda was that sick. So he spun me a feel-good story instead.”

Waltz growled something under her breath as she switched her attention to the cat’s belly. Her gaze grew distant while her fingers gently kneaded and squeezed.

“Checking for pregnancy?”

“Right, although she’d have to be four or five weeks along for me to feel kittens. Or for an ultrasound to show them. Is there any chance she could have been bred in the past week or two?”

Tess turned up her palms. “I suppose anything’s possible. But given the size of their cage, and that the male was removed recently, and that he may have been ill—”

“Seems unlikely,” the vet agreed. “Malnourished as she is, it’d be a miracle if she could conceive, even if she were bred. So…” She patted the lynx’s shoulder, then turned to a refrigerator in the corner. She stood, considering vials for a moment, then chose one and reached for a syringe. “I’ll have to culture her saliva to be sure, but we’re going to assume it’s not simply viral pneumonia—that by now she’s got bacterial complications. We’ll see if a bolus of antibiotics can knock it back while I’m waiting for the results.

“Meanwhile she’s dehydrated and underfed, so I’ll run an IV line. Give her saline and glucose for now. Tubal feeding by tomorrow if she isn’t eating.” Her left hand probed delicately across a gaunt gray haunch, then she set the needle, injected its contents and glanced up at Tess. “If I can save her, this isn’t going to be a cheap fix. She’s badly run down.”

Tess grimaced in agreement. And there was no way she could go to her father for help on this one. Ben Tankersly might have more money than God, but like most cattlemen, he wasn’t fond of predators. He’d tell her the only good lynx was a dead one, and he had his own stuffed specimen in his office to underline the point.

But Tess had worked each summer through college, and socked every spare penny away. Like both her older sisters, she’d learned early that if she didn’t want to dance to her domineering father’s tunes, she had to pay her own piper. “I can handle it.”

Waltz pried open the lynx’s jaws and bent close to study her curving fangs. Gently she lifted the gums aside to reveal the back teeth. “All intact. That’s something, anyway. So what did you pay for her, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Pretty steep for a half-dead cat.”

“Now ask me what he wanted for the cage,” Tess suggested, straight-faced, then added as the vet raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Five hundred.”

As they burst out laughing, she realized that here was somebody who might become a friend. They clearly shared the same passion for animals. Though the vet was inches shorter than Tess’s slender five-foot-seven, she had a combative bounce and an intensity that made her seem much larger. Tess suspected she couldn’t have picked a better ally to help her save this cat.

“Slick,” Liza Waltz agreed, when she could speak.

“Very slick. I was tempted to say, ‘keep your crummy ol’ cage,’ but then I took another look at Zelda’s fashion accessories.” Tess pressed a thumb gently against the center pad of the cat’s forepaw. Saber-sharp claws flexed into view, then retracted as she released the pressure. “And I thought…mmm…well, yeah. Maybe I don’t want her riding in my cab, till we’ve gotten to know one another better.”

“I should probably tell you this after you’ve paid my bill, not before, but…even if I can save her, if you’re thinking you’ve bought yourself a thirty-pound lap cat, you’d better think again. Lynx make rotten pets.”

“No, she’s a wild animal. I understand that.”

But Waltz had already launched into a passionate lecture that she’d obviously made before. “If I had a dollar for every bozo who thought he wanted a lion or a tiger or an ocelot for a pet! I mean, sure, it’s a wonderful fantasy—I wanted a cheetah when I was ten. But reality’s quite another thing. For instance, this kitty…” She paused to smooth her hand across the lynx’s soft tawny and cream-colored belly. “Once she gets her strength back, she’ll be able to clear twenty-four feet in a single bound. Now picture that in your living room.

“And will she scratch the furniture? Oh, baby—we’re talking shreds! Ribbons! She’ll go through a couch a week if you give her the run of your place.

“And as for spraying…male or female, spayed or unspayed, exotic felines mark their territory—and you—and everything else they can find to anoint. And we’re talking buckets.”

“Euuuw! No, I’m not up for that.”

“But I can’t tell you how many people are—till they try to live with a wild cat. Then once they do figure it out, they come crying to me or the zoo or the pound or a big cat sanctuary, because although they love their pet, they just can’t keep it. So naturally, they want to find a loving, happy home. But…”

“But?” Tess fingered a black-tasseled ear. Yes, she could see how someone could fall in love with the idea of owning a lynx.