Page 9 of Waiting in Wyoming

“He wanted the inn. Probably looking for Marin.” Brandt and her older sister were very close friends. Marin said he’d become her blood brother or something the day they had nearly died together. Meyra barely suppressed a shiver at the memories.

“He’s lucky you found him. He was by the back garden entrance?”

“Yes, near the pond.” The garden was almost four acres of landscaping. Then it met a very steep slope down. There was a small canyon back there, where the land once owned by MorrisPreston met the land owned by Meyra’s family and the inn and a small sliver of the boundary owned by Fletcher Tyler and a tiny bit that was state land.

Well, Morris Preston’s land was Brandt’s now. There were three small hiking paths and an old bridge, too. It went over what they called their canyon, where a small creek ran between the properties. They kept it repaired—some guests liked to explore a little. He must have crawled over that bridge to get to the inn tonight. She shivered and just couldn’t stop.

She just wanted him to be okay.

“Very lucky. Stay close in case I have any more questions.”

“I’m going to stay until he wakes up, and they say he is going to be okay. I don’t really want him to be alone.” She had already changed out of her wet, muddy clothes. Dixie had loaned her some things from her own locker. She was staying right where she was at; Meyra wasn’t leaving him there alone. She just wasn’t.

Joel nodded. “Let me know if you need a ride home, too.”

Meyra would deal with getting home when she had to. If nothing else, she would just call home. Someone would come get her. But she wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t feel right to leave Brandt here alone.

She’dknownsomething was wrong tonight. She just had. She couldn’t explain it, but she just had. And she wasn’t leaving until she saw him for herself.

6

Brandt suspectedhe knew exactly where he was before he opened his eyes. The sounds of the hospital were distinctive. And he’d been in this place before. Or at least one just like it.

Every damned joint in his body hurt. But he remembered what had happened before. And he was ready to go hunting—as soon as breathing didn’t hurt.

Someone came in. He looked up.

A blond nurse stood there. “Hello, handsome. Glad to see you are back with us.”

She had those same distinctive green eyes as the woman he loved. “Dixie. Your cousin was there?”

He remembered Meyra. The woman he adored.

All he’d been able to think about when he’d been putting one damned foot in front of the other was getting to her. To seeing her one more time.

He’d always want one more day with her.

“Which one?” Dixie was one of the Talley girls, beautiful women who ran the town inn and the diner and had every mortal man under eighty drooling whenever they smiled.

The town talked about Talleys.

This one was definitely no exception.

But he wanted the sweetest one for his own.

He had a plan to make that happen.

But first, he had to work on getting his ass out of this bed.

“Meyra. I remember her being there. I think. I may have been hallucinating. I remember thinking I just needed to make it to the inn, going over that damned bridge into the back garden. And then she was there.”

“She found you. You were very lucky, actually. She heard you from the back porch somehow. She was taking out the trash.”

“Did she see the ba—guys on my tail? I think they shot at me.” With silencers. The idea that Meyra might be a witness chilled him to the bone. He wasn’t going to be worth much here on his back. “Can you get my phone for me, sweetness?”

Not that his phone had done much good before. There hadn’t been a single bar of signal last night. Cell service in Masterson was spotty at best. He was ordering a satellite phone first thing in the morning.

“If you smile pretty.”

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