A Cowboy’s Claim (The Skyes of Heart Falls #3)

Chapter 1

The knock came sharp and fast, loud enough to rattle the glass on the clinic’s front door.

Sydney rolled her eyes. The sign on the outside of the Heart Falls Health Clinic door clearly read Closed. Typical Monday chaos. Probably someone wanting stitches or a refill without an appointment—

When the second knock came—harder, more impatient—she huffed and marched to the door, yanking it open with all the grace of a sleep-deprived ER nurse.

“What—?” She froze.

“Lovely to see you, too.” Her grandfather strode inside as if he owned the place.

Which, in a manner of speaking, he kind of did.

“Grandpa. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Last-minute decision,” he said, already sweeping his gaze around the lobby. “Had a layover in Calgary and figured I’d stop in to check on things.”

Sydney stepped back and folded her arms, watching him with wary affection.

He was taller than her—though that wasn’t hard, considering she barely reached five foot four.

His auburn hair had faded to silver at the temples, but his eyes, like hers, were a striking silvery blue, sharp as ever.

The way he held himself—straight spine, chin lifted slightly—was a familiar echo of her own posture.

Nathaniel Jones had always been the family force of nature. The brains. The legacy. The financier of her clinic and the author of the invisible rulebook Sydney had lived under for the past thirteen years—whether she’d wanted to or not.

Grandpa Nate’s brows winged skyward. “Did you forget what I look like?”

“I video chat with Grandma nearly every week,” she said, dry as toast. “But you’re never in the frame, so forgive me for checking to see if you’re still as handsome as ever.”

He frowned. “Please. You’re usually the only one of my five grandchildren who I can count on not being a bootlicker.”

“I wasn’t complimenting you, sir. I was calculating what percentage of your genes I inherited. Because damn, I’m going to be gorgeous when I’m old.”

That earned her a rare guffaw, and when he stepped forward to pull her into a hug, his grip was tight and real.

“You truly are the best of the bunch.”

“The most like you, you mean.”

“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” he agreed.

They stood in the quiet for a moment before he cleared his throat and scanned the space again.

“I remember this place is small. Won’t take long for you to show me around.”

“You reviewed the blueprints and financed the reno three years ago, and you’ve visited twice a year since. I’d think you remember more than the square footage.”

Still, she led him through the clinic. Two exam rooms. A staff area. Lab, receiving, waiting room. The only recent updates were a couple of new chairs and a narrow sterilization enclave Petra had helped her design last winter.

In the second exam room, Grandpa Nate lingered long enough for her to wonder if he was trying to make her squirm. Not that she had a thing to worry about—she kept her nose clean when it came to anything involving the clinic.

Sydney kept her expression bland and her spine straight. It was just his annoying way.

Finally, he looped back to the front and settled into the comfiest chair in the waiting area as if he planned to stay.

“Your clinic’s only open three and a half days a week,” he said, gaze level. “Even so, your salary is meager.”

“This is a financial check, then?” Sydney asked. She kept her tone level, knowing full well she owed her ability to run the clinic at all to his backing.

“Call it curiosity,” he said. “My assistant, Jeremy—you remember him—tells me that with less than full-time hours, your expenditures remain high. Explain.”

“I run the clinic days with support staff. The other days, I do relief shifts at the hospital in Diamond Valley or I make house calls. It’s what this community needs.”

“I’ve always agreed that your talents are best used outside of a lab.” He tapped the arm of his chair. “But I also expect you to keep growing. A practice in the city, eventually. Something scalable. Prestigious.”

Here we go again.

“I like working with people,” Sydney said with deliberate coolness, “in a place that needs me. Being in Heart Falls is not a stepping stone. It’s my job.”

He watched her for a long moment. “And no distractions, I trust?”

There it was. The line drawn in invisible ink.

Her grandfather was rich enough to be odd, she supposed, and until now, his generosity had always worked in her favour. The money he threw her way allowed her to run the clinic how she wanted and the only rule was she had to keep her career first and foremost.

No entanglements. No serious relationships.

Nothing that might pull her off course. Which had been a fine thing when she was twenty-three.

Now at twenty-nine?

“I haven’t forgotten,” she said quietly.

“Good.” He stood and adjusted his coat. “You’re too valuable to get sidetracked. I didn’t invest in you so some man could mess up your path.”

It might already be too late. She offered a polite smile. “You’d be the first to know if I lost my focus.”

Satisfied—or at least pretending to be—he stood and adjusted his jacket. “I won’t keep you. Just wanted to see you.”

“Good to see you, too.” Sydney tucked her hands in the pockets of her scrubs top. If he went by rote, he’d give her a few final bits of advice, then be out the door in under two minutes. Which Sydney was immensely grateful for this visit.

She wasn’t sure how good her poker face was.

He had a hand on the doorknob when he turned back. “One more thing. I know of a doctor who needs a change of scenery. Fully qualified. She’ll be a good fit here. Jeremy’s handling the paperwork. She starts Tuesday.”

Sydney blinked. “You’re adding another doctor?”

“And doubling your salary. It’s overdue.

” He didn’t wait for her reaction. “You can put more into investments if you’d like.

Jeremy can deal with that if you want, but I didn’t set you up here to suffer for your work.

You have an outstanding mind, and you deserve the chance to shine in your career.

If right now you feel house visits should be your priority instead of working the clinic, that’s your choice.

But progress means not sitting back and letting life happen. Take control. Be in charge.”

Frustration flared. He did this every single time. Told her to be a take-charge and decisive person, and then he waltzed in and took over. Even though the financial freedom he’d given her was a gift beyond measure, the reins were getting tight. “Grandpa, I’m happy with—”

“No, this isn’t a conversation, it’s a reminder,” he returned.

“You’re a brilliant, talented woman who I’ll support to the fullest so that your light never gets dimmed.

You deserve the best,” Grandpa Nate said, resting a hand on her shoulder, speaking now like a wise, gentle guide.

“That’s why I suggest you shouldn’t get distracted by emotional entanglements.

They’ll dim your light faster than anything. ”

Sydney nodded, because that was the expected response. Inside, though, something twisted.

Maybe involvement wasn’t a distraction. Maybe it was connection.

But she wasn’t ready to argue. Not yet. But the rules? They were already bending.

Grandpa Nate hugged her tightly, and within the two minutes she’d predicted, he was gone.

She shut the door behind him and leaned on it for a long moment, breathing deeply. As she had with increasing frequency over the years, Sydney wondered if her grandfather truly knew what brilliance looked like.

Her grandfather’s words echoed in her ears, but she shoved them aside with effort. It was Monday. There were surfaces to sterilize and lies to tell her best friends.

She was slowly shuffling around the clinic when Petra burst in, holding a box of supplies and wearing a wicked grin.

“Did you tie Declan to the bed?” her best-friend-number-one demanded.

Sydney blinked as the question triggered a flood of vivid mental pictures—all of which involved the delicious cowboy, Declan Skye. Broad shoulders. Firm pecs. Powder-grey eyes that reminded her of storms over the mountains. A mouth that should’ve come with a warning label.

The man she’d left in bed just over an hour ago, looking very well used and very well satisfied. Which, to be fair, had been the goal.

But the fact that she and Declan had been setting fire to his sheets for nearly a year was still a secret. Not even Petra and Tansy, her two closest friends, had pieced it together yet—though Sydney was starting to wonder how much longer that would last.

Guilt over having lied so blatantly to her grandfather was such a faint wisp, Sydney almost felt guilty for the lack of it.

“He’s so damn stubborn,” Petra continued breezily, pushing into the first exam room and dropping a box of medical supplies on the counter. “Trust me, we all agree that tying him down is probably the only way to get him to rest after that knock to the head.”

Oh. Right. The head injury.

Sydney’s face heated. Of course, Petra was talking about Declan’s head injury, not the, uh, other things Sydney might’ve been up to with him this morning.

They were having fun. Great, no-strings fun.

Declan had been clear from the start that he wasn’t looking for anything long term because he was still grieving his first wife.

And Sydney? She had the rules. She had a clinic to run—and a career that only existed thanks to that one very specific condition.

No entanglements?

Grandpa Nate did not need to know how flexible that line had become.

Sydney leaned back on the counter and cleared her throat. “Declan is stubborn, I’ll give you that. But he knows better than to push it when his doctor”—she tapped her chest—”and both his brothers are on his case.”

“Jinx is the worst,” Petra said with pride. “You’d think she was the boss of us all. Yesterday at her birthday dinner she rearranged the entire table to reduce Declan’s movement and Tansy’s stress on the leg cast.”