Sun Kissed

  Toward the front of the crowd, Tucker paused to call fairground security, a number he had programmed into speed dial three days ago, when he’d begun his volunteer stint during Rodeo Days. The phone rang several times and was still ringing when the horse abuser let loose with a roar of anger and doubled his free hand into a fist. Uh-oh.

  With a growing sense of urgency, Tucker broke the connection and punched in the speed-dial code again, thinking maybe he’d misdialed the first time. Not. The phone droned monotonously. While Tucker waited for an answer, he kept his gaze locked on the trio near the horse trailer. The man appeared to be intoxicated. Each time he wagged his fist in Tinkerbell’s face, he swayed on his feet and nearly lost his balance.

  “I’m not moving,” Tucker heard the woman say. “If you mean to strike this animal again, you’ll go through me to do it.”

  What? Tucker couldn’t believe he’d heard her right. She didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, and the drunk was built like a grizzly bear. The man responded with a shove that sent her staggering back against the gelding.

  Decision time. This situation was fast getting out of hand. Tucker didn’t believe in taking the law into his own hands; he truly didn’t. But more deeply ingrained in him were the principles his father had taught him, including the steadfast rule that a man should never get physically aggressive with a woman. There were no exceptions, period, and it went against the Coulter creed to stand aside while another man transgressed.

  “Here.” Tucker thrust the phone at a stranger beside him. “Dial three for fairground security.”

  The man glanced stupidly at the apparatus in his hand. “Three?”

  “For fairground security,” Tucker repeated. “Get some one over here ASAP. If no one answers, dial nine-one-one, tell the dispatcher exactly where we are, and get a car here as fast as you can.”

  Turning sideways to avoid jostling a woman with an infant in her arms, Tucker shouldered his way through the remaining cluster of people. “Excuse me, excuse me.” He squeezed past an elderly woman. “I’m a vet. Can you let me through, please?”

  A collective gasp rose from the crowd, and Tucker heard a woman cry out, “Oh, my God, he hit her! Somebody do something!”

  Tucker strained to see over the bobbing heads in front of him. Icy disbelief coursed through him. Tinkerbell was bent forward at the waist, one hand cupping her cheek. Even as Tucker watched, the drunk jerked her hat off her head, taking some of her hair along with it.

  Something in Tucker’s brain short-circuited. One second, his thought processes were sequential and reasonable. The next, his head filled with white static, a haze of red filmed his vision, and he let loose with a snarl of outrage.

  From that instant forward, everything seemed to happen in a blur. Dropping his satchel, he plowed through the remaining obstacles to reach the clearing. Then, with a flying leap, he covered the distance to the loading ramp and tackled the older man at the knees. The next thing Tucker knew, he was rolling in the sawdust with his adversary, the other man on top of him one second, under him the next.

  The bastard was heavy. But Tucker, blessed with his father’s tall stature and generous breadth of shoulder, was no featherweight himself. Working daily with large animals had also kept him fit. No contest, he thought grimly as he rolled to the top and quickly straddled his flabby, out-of-shape opponent. It was high time this guy learned, Coulter style, how not to treat a lady.

  Only Tucker forgot the whip handle. From out of nowhere it came at his face. He heard a loud pop, similar to that of a champagne cork ejecting under pressure; then a burst of pain surged up his nose and exploded through his brain.

  In a dizzying spin, the earth changed places with the sky. Tucker heard an odd sound, like air gushing from a balloon, and dimly realized the noise came from him. Stars, spots. He couldn’t see anything.

  Crossing his forearms over his face, he rolled onto his knees, ducked his head, and tried frantically to regain his senses so he might protect himself. Something sharp connected with his ribs, knocking the breath out of him, followed by another tearing pain, and then another. In some distant part of his mind, he realized the older man had regained his feet and was kicking him.

  “Stop it!” he heard Tinkerbell scream. “Stop it! Oh, God, oh, God, somebody help me! He’s going to kill him!”

  Tucker tensed for another blow. Sweet Christ. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Where were his brothers when he needed them? This time the man’s boot caught Tucker in the abs. He had to get up. Somehow he had to clear his head, regain his feet, and fight back.

  Blinking, he managed to focus his vision enough to see splotches of sunlight and swirling expanses of sawdust. As he staggered erect, he realized he wasn’t that badly hurt—yet. All he needed was to get in one solid punch. Then it would all be over.

  In his spinning vision, Tucker saw Tinkerbell advancing on the other man. He wanted to yell at her to stay back, that he didn’t need a half-pint female to rescue him, but his tongue wouldn’t respond to the commands from his brain. To his horrified amazement, she lengthened her last three strides for momentum and followed through with the pointed toe of her riding boot, executing a drop-kick that would have done any kickboxer proud. Bull’s-eye. With a grunt of pain, the drunk crashed to his knees, cupped his hands over his crotch, and started retching.

  The lady—stupidly, Tucker took measure of her height and confirmed that the top of her raven head barely reached his shoulder—dusted her hands on the legs of her jeans. “I asked you to stop,” she told the drunk thinly. “It’s your own fault I had to kick you. Why wouldn’t you just stop?”

  Dizziness sent Tucker staggering sideways. Small but surprisingly strong hands grasped his arm. He looked down. The pale oval of her face came clear and then went blurry again. Large, pretty brown eyes and a wild tangle of black curls swam in his vision.

  “Are you all right?”

  Tucker tried to answer, but his tongue still wouldn’t work. Damn. He’d been rescued by a pixie. Now he was glad his brothers weren’t there. They would never let him live this down. Oh, man. He wasn’t feeling so good. His head hurt like a son of a bitch, and his stomach was lurching.

  The horse chose that moment to wheel and run. People screamed, grabbed their children, and scattered to get out of the frightened animal’s way. As the sound of retreating hooves faded, an eerie quiet blanketed the area.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked again.

  To Tucker, the question seemed to come from a great distance, and it wasn’t one he could readily answer. The whole front of his face throbbed, for one, and it felt as if his nose had been shoved into his brain.

  Soft fingertips plucked at his wrist. “Move your hand so I can see.”

  Tucker hadn’t realized he was holding his nose. He dropped his arm. She gently touched his cheek, making him wince.

  “It’s broken, I’m afraid. I am so sorry about this. I can’t even think what to say.”

  Tucker could think of plenty, but nothing fit for mixed company. He couldn’t believe this. His nose was broken? And even worse, a lady no bigger than a minute had felt it necessary to leap into the fray to save him. How humiliating was that? He stood six feet, four inches tall in his stocking feet, weighed in at two-twenty stark naked, and had taken first place in state wrestling bouts throughout high school and college. He should have rescued her, not the other way around.

  His head was starting to clear, and he felt a little steadier on his feet. The throbbing had given way to a strange numbness, similar to when a dentist injected too much Novocain. Shock, he guessed—Mother Nature’s remedy for pain. He saw it in his patients all the time.

  He took stock of the woman’s injuries. An angry red mark flagged her right cheekbone, and the delicate hollow under one eye was starting to swell. He shot the drunk a searing glare. The no-account bastard still huddled on his knees, his upper body convulsing each time he gagged. Tucker hoped he choked on his gonads.
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  He drew his gaze back to the woman. “I’m fine,” he managed to say. “I’m more worried about you.”

  She gingerly prodded her cheekbone. “It’s nothing an ice pack won’t fix. Thank you for jumping in to help me. I was dialing nine-one-one when he knocked the phone from my hand.” With a lift of one shoulder, she flashed a regretful smile and then began scanning the sawdust-strewn ground nearby. “Heaven knows where it landed.”

  Tucker felt a little better now, but he wasn’t quite ready to sift through sawdust to help her look. He was checking out his nose when the stranger in possession of his cell phone approached.

  Hand extended to return the device, the man said, “I never got through to fairground security, so I called the sheriff’s department. Someone should be here shortly.”

  “Good.” Tucker hooked a thumb toward the drunk as he took the phone. “He’ll recover in a minute. I’d rather let a deputy deal with him.”

  “I hear you,” the man replied. “Sorry I didn’t help you out. I’ve got a bad back.”

  “It’s good you stayed out of it then.” Tucker scanned the crowd that had gathered to watch the excitement and saw several other men. In his opinion, there wasn’t one of them worth the powder it would take to blow him to hell. “Thanks for calling the authorities for me.”

  “No problem. Least I could do.”

  Just then Tucker heard a low growl. He spun around to see the drunk lumbering to his feet. Before Tucker could move, the man charged at the woman, who’d turned her back on him in search of her phone. It took Tucker an instant to react, and in that instant the man tackled her from behind. She went down hard in a face-first sprawl, her lower legs manacled by strong, thick arms. When she tried to rise to her knees, she was knocked flat again by an elbow jab to her spine.

  Tucker launched himself at the drunk again. Upon impact, they both went rolling, much as they had before, only this time momentum broke them apart before they came to a stop. The drunk staggered to his feet just as Tucker did, and they met halfway in a teeth-jarring body slam. He couldn’t believe this guy had attacked a woman, not once but twice.

  The whip handle was attached to the older man’s wrist by several wraps of a leather thong, making it impossible for Tucker to dispense with the weapon. His only recourse was to duck his head against his opponent’s beefy shoulder to protect his face and deliver uppercut jabs to the man’s belly. With each punch, the drunk fell back a step, carrying Tucker along with him until they reached the horse trailer.

  Having a barrier behind his adversary suited Tucker’s purposes just fine. The stomach blows would have more impact against a solid surface. At some point the whip handle connected with Tucker’s right ear. Pain momentarily paralyzed him, but he quickly regained his senses.

  Finally the rain of blows to Tucker’s shoulder stopped, and he felt the other man’s body sliding toward the ground. Releasing his hold, Tucker stepped back. The drunk plopped rump-first on the sawdust, the whip handle lying uselessly beside him.

  “You’ll go to jail for this piece of work,” he slurred.

  “If I do, it’ll be worth it,” Tucker flung back. “Where I come from, manhandling a woman doesn’t fly.”

  The drunk called the lady a filthy name. Tucker was tempted to knock his teeth down his throat. He settled for kicking sawdust in his face. Then he turned away to check on the woman.

  She was sitting up but still looked dazed. Tucker hunkered beside her. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked and swatted sawdust from her hair. “I think so. He knocked the breath out of me.”

  Tucker thrust out a hand to help her up. She studied his outstretched fingers for a moment. Then she glanced up to search his gaze before placing her hand in his. Tucker got the oddest feeling—like maybe she was afraid of him or something. And then the moment passed.

  After allowing him to pull her to her feet, she laughed shakily and dusted off her jeans. “That’ll teach me, I guess. Never kick a guy where it hurts and then turn your back on him.”

  Tucker couldn’t see the humor. The arrival of a bubble top saved him from having to reply. He turned to watch a pencil-thin deputy in a khaki uniform push through the crowd. His pocket badge flashed in the sunlight. A pair of green aviator sunglasses and the shadow cast by the bill of his cap made it difficult to make out his features. He strode swiftly toward the older man and bent to help him up.

  “Are you all right, sir? What in the Sam Hill happened here?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not all right!” The drunk jerked his arm from the deputy’s grasp. “They attacked me, and I’m pressing charges. I want them both arrested!”

  The officer sent Tucker a questioning look. “Is that so, sir?”

  Tucker opened his mouth to say the other man was lying, but that wasn’t precisely true. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he began.

  The deputy raised a staying hand. “Before we get into explanations, just answer the question. Did you or did you not attack this gentleman?”

  “The son of a bitch isn’t a gentleman,” Tucker shot back.

  Tucker’s temper had always been his downfall. He couldn’t remember exactly what he said after that, only that the woman jabbed him twice with her elbow, signaling him to shut up.

  The next thing he knew, he was being read his Miranda rights and escorted to a patrol car.

  Chapter Two

  Cuffed and stuffed. In Tucker’s profession, having a bad day was commonplace. He had been kicked by horses, waded through polluted ponds to reach mired patients, fallen face first in fresh cow manure, gotten his arm stuck in the vaginal passage of a bovine, and had once even been trampled by panicked pigs. With over four years of veterinary practice behind him, he had experienced just about every pitfall of the profession and usually laughed about it later.

  But arrested? He couldn’t frigging believe it. With the help of two fellow officers who arrived shortly after he did, the skinny deputy had handcuffed both Tucker and the drunk, shoved them into the backseats of different patrol cars, and was now taking Tinkerbell’s statement while his colleagues spoke with people in the crowd.

  At least the woman was getting a chance to tell her side, Tucker reasoned. It was a cut-and-dried situation, the drunk clearly in the wrong. Once the deputy heard the story, he would apologize, turn Tucker loose, and haul the intoxicated instigator off to jail.

  Not. Watching through the rear passenger window, Tucker saw the woman put her hands behind her back and turn to allow the deputy to handcuff her. Incredulous fury had Tucker’s blood throbbing in his temples again. She was getting hauled in, too? Why? It made absolutely no sense. She’d tried to help a defenseless animal, and this was the treatment she received?

  To Tucker’s surprise, the woman was led toward the vehicle he sat in. The deputy opened the opposite rear door, cupped a hand over the top of her head, and pushed down as she swung onto the seat beside Tucker.

  “I can’t believe they’re sticking you in here with me,” he said. “Is this normal procedure?”

  She shifted her hips to avoid getting bumped by the door as it was slammed closed. Even in his agitated state, Tucker couldn’t help but notice the attractive curve of those hips and how they nipped in at her slender waist. Snug, faded jeans had never looked so good.

  “I have no idea of normal procedure. I’ve never been arrested before.” She leaned forward to get her arms positioned comfortably behind her, then settled back with a sigh. “I think it’s more a matter of necessity. The third deputy has to go on another call, and that’ll leave them with only two cars. From the sound of it, Rodeo Days has them hopping.”

  Tucker felt no sympathy for the law enforcement officers. “You shouldn’t even be here. The bastard hit you first. Everything that happened afterward was completely his fault.”

  “True,” she agreed, “but it’s my word against his. My stars, what is that smell?”

  “I think the last passenger got sick back here. They tried to
clean up the mess, but it still stinks in this heat. What do you mean, it’s your word against his? What about all the witnesses?”

  She let her head fall back against the seat. “Not everyone in the crowd saw exactly the same thing.”

  Tucker peered out his side window at the deputy, now powwowing with his colleagues and taking notes in a little black book. Glancing back at her, Tucker asked, “How could they not see the same thing?”

  “It’s a phenomenon that often occurs with witnesses,” she explained. “One person says a perpetrator was tall, another that he was short. You see it all the time on television.”

  “That’s fiction,” Tucker bit out. “This is reality, and our bacon is on the plate.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry,” she said softly. “If not for me, you never would have gotten mixed up in this.”

  Tucker strained his wrists against the metal bands. Popeye without his emergency can of spinach flashed through his mind. “I’m angry, yes, but not at you. I just can’t believe this. The bastard belted you square in the face.”

  She cut him an apologetic glance. “I know, but some people didn’t see that part.”

  “What did they see, for Pete’s sake?”

  “You tackling him from behind and me kicking him.”

  “Well, damn.” Tucker wanted very badly to ram his fist into something. “If this isn’t a hell of a mess.”

  A wan smile touched her mouth. “A few people told it straight. But overall, the deputies got conflicting stories. When they can’t get to the truth, I guess the policy is to arrest everyone and sort it out later.”

  “Fantastic.” Tucker’s temper fizzled out, replaced with resigned acceptance. He’d been arrested only once before, when he was attending university—an underage-drinking charge that had ultimately been dropped when he’d proved he was twenty-one. Nevertheless, he could still remember how long it had taken for him to be released. When you dealt with law enforcement from the wrong side of a cell door, there was always tons of red tape. “I can think of better ways to spend my afternoon.”