Make Me Yours, Cowboy (Cowboys of Elks Ridge, Montana #3)

Chapter One

Aurelie Gardinier stripped off her gloves and smiled.

“He’s beautiful and healthy, Kelly, and you look like you’re healing nicely. Have you picked a name yet?” she asked her patient. If she could bottle the wistful longing in her patient’s smile as she gazed down at her new son, she’d pull from that feeling every day. It was pure magic.

Banberry, Montana, was great in so many ways, but rural healthcare would always come up lacking, which was part of why she was so excited to get the clinic up and running.

Maybe then, she’d catch more of the high that practicing medicine and helping patients gave her, and they’d be able to treat more of the cases that were usually sent to Helena or Bozeman.

“We’re naming him Noel, after his grandfather.”

“It’s lovely. Ring if you need anything, but get some rest. Life is going to go pretty quick now that he’s joined you and Micah on the outside.”

Kelly smiled, her eyes tired. Sleep was definitely needed, but Aurelie understood that so was time to appreciate this moment. Rest would come eventually.

Out in the hall, Aurelie turned her cell back on, and it sprang to life. Three chimes in as many seconds; she’d missed out on something. As she glanced over the messages, she sighed. Or rather, it looked like she’d missed three somethings.

The first text made her tachycardic.

“We need to talk. Your visa was delayed, which means no more shifts until we work it out.”

Great. So much for an easy start to her week after her trip to Bozeman for training on the new ultrasound machines for the clinic.

“Dad’s out. I wouldn’t worry about him but wanted you to know. Be safe, Sis.”

She closed her eyes and wished the same for her brother.

Her dad was a low-level gangster by American standards, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous when he was desperate.

And now that he was out of prison—a sentencing Aurelie and her brother had helped make happen by turning state’s witnesses—he was desperate and probably pissed. Not a good combination.

A second text came in from her brother before she could reply.

“And because I know you’re probably saying, ‘You, too,’ lemme remind you who held his ground last time. We got this. Don’t even THINK about coming home to help. Love ya.”

She still had one text, this one from her best friend and colleague at the hospital, Paige Connors.

They’d met when Paige had come to Aurelie’s islands to work in their rural hospital for a year, and they’d become fast friends.

When Aurelie’s mother got sick, Paige helped her care for her, cementing Paige as family.

When her mom had finally passed away, Aurelie had come here, to Montana, to heal with her best friend by her side.

No one was as surprised as her that she did more than heal. She thrived and had a life here unlike she’d ever imagined in Turks and Caicos.

Now, though, a text from Paige was as infrequent as good news in the delivery room. This shouldn’t rile her as much as it did, but still, worry tickled her skin.

What else could possibly have come up while I was in the delivery room?

Her imagination’s answer terrified Aurelie, so she switched tacks.

Please let her be okay. Let us be okay.

She swiped the text open and sighed with relief. Heat built behind her eyes.

“Can you still watch Maddie this week? We’re in desperate need of a night away.”

“Of course,” she shot back. “I’ve been looking forward to it. You guys have any plans? I heard there’s a new steakhouse in Bozeman that is making waves.”

Three blinking dots. Aurelie held her breath as she waited for the reply. This was as close as she and Paige had come to talking recently, and she missed it.

The dots disappeared and didn’t return. Aurelie tucked her phone away.

She and Paige had drifted in the past few months, but Aurelie couldn’t blame it on anything other than the ebb and flow of life.

If life in the islands had taught her anything, it was that the seas followed a rhythm and pattern, and humans weren’t that different.

Paige was a new mom, and it was only right that she turn inward to her family for restoration and to build this new phase of her life.

It did, however, beg the question, when would that phase start for Aurelie?

“Aurelie, can you meet me in Trauma One?” Fran, the head charge nurse, was waving people in all directions.

She reminded Aurelie of ground control at an airport, directing traffic to and fro.

Banberry Memorial Hospital would be chaos without Fran at the helm.

“Brown’s ruptured placenta is bleeding, and Doc is in surgery. ”

Aurelie sprang into action, grabbing gloves and her tablet. As a nurse practitioner, she was often called to assist when a doctor couldn’t be reached, at least until it became clear that they’d need to life-flight a patient to the city.

“Hi, Mrs. Brown,” Aurelie said, taking the woman’s hand and squeezing it. “What’s going on with you today?”

Holding Nichole Brown’s hand was a way to connect with the patient, to calm her, but also a way to bypass the numbers on the machines that beeped and trilled obnoxiously, and check the patient’s pulse the old-fashioned way.

The technology in Banberry might not be up to snuff—at least until the state-of-the-art birthing center was installed in the clinic—but Aurelie’s training made up for that with inherent knowledge med students didn’t seem to have anymore.

What good did all the training on tech do when they couldn’t assess real-world symptoms?

“Seems…” Nichole took a sharp breath.

Aurelie had never had children, but she knew the rapid uptick of Nichole’s pulse was due to discomfort. Her pulse-ox dipped to 89. Damn.

“Seems like Genevieve wants to come early.”

“I love the name,” Aurelie said as she placed an oxygen mask on her patient. It was getting close to needing to call for a life flight or get OB down here, stat. “Is it a family name?”

“No, it’s from one of my…my favorite—” Nichole hissed and doubled over. Aurelie hit the call button in the room. Fran was there in seconds.

“We need Dr. Warwick. This will have to be a cesarean.”

“Noooo,” Nichole wailed. “Please. I have a birth plan. Mike can’t get off the ranch until tonight. Can I…”

Her cries faded as her blood pressure plummeted.

“Dammit,” Aurelie muttered. “We’re going to lose them both.”

“The doctor is in surgery for a breech birth. She’ll be an hour still. What do you want to do, Aury?”

Aury bit her lip, hating the only option she had. But it had to be made. “There’s no time to wait. Call the life flight.”

Aurelie kept Nichole’s meds and vitals regulated, but she wasn’t cleared to perform cesareans, especially not alone.

“Okay, we’ve got a helicopter on site. Let’s wheel her out.”

Aurelie and Fran wheeled the gurney to the helipad, where medics took over. After Nicole was stable and airborne, Aurelie sighed with relief, but it was tinged with frustration.

They couldn’t keep doing this. They needed to keep these women here; their families depended on it.

Look at Nichole Brown. Her husband couldn’t even be called off the ranch for an early birth, and now he’d be expected to travel to Bozeman to see his wife and child as they recovered?

If they made the flight without decompensating.

The bottom line was that things weren’t working as they should. Something had to give.

Aurelie’s phone felt heavy in her pocket. The news about her visa and her father added to that sense of being off-balance, but hopefully, neither would become an issue.

“Ooof. Anytime you ladies wanna get that clinic up and running is fine with me. It’ll be nice to have some place local to send these moms,” Fran said when the copter had headed east. “If for no other reason than I can’t imagine how hard it’s gotta be for the local ranchers to travel to the city to be with their spouses if anything goes wrong. ”

“You’re not kidding. I was just thinking the same thing.” Just that week alone, they’d transported three moms. And Nichole made four. “We’re just waiting on the last bit of funding from the investors, then we can break ground. And it’ll be a quick six months of building, or so they tell us.”

Fran shook her head. “You ladies are doing God’s work, that’s for sure. But I wish He made it a little easier for y’all.”

Aurelie did, too.

She, Sophie, Analise, and Paige—whom Sophie had dubbed the “Fab Four”—were responsible for bringing the clinic to life, thanks to Sophie’s law practice that had fronted a majority of the costs.

The rest came from investors and grants, meaning they’d be solvent for at least a few years without worrying about finances and could just focus on healthcare and healing.

The clinic would be combined with a shelter for women and children seeking safety after leaving a traumatic home or space, too.

Just the thought of the good they could do made Aurelie giddy.

It wasn’t just the philanthropic part of the project that inspired Aurelie, either.

No, it was knowing she was working with three other strong women—four, if they included the auto shop owner, Steve’s wife, Jackie, whom they’d hired to manage the front desk when the center opened—and they all had a unique part to play.

Steve was Brad’s best friend, and his quick engagement to Jackie had made the woman immediate family.

She glanced over the edge of the helipad at the lime green buds on the trees and let the morning wash over her.

Some of the news she’d received was good.

She was still part of the Connors family, at least when they needed some relief, which was fine by Aurelie.

No one loved Maddie outside her immediate family like Aurelie did.

Doting on her goddaughter was as easy as breathing.

The other bits of news were less than awesome, but they couldn’t get Aurelie down, not when she had an uninterrupted evening with her goddaughter ahead of her.