4. Rescued
FOUR
Rescued
SAGE
As the barn dance closed down, all I wanted was to curl up in my bed and forget this night had happened. Pretend I didn’t meet a dashing cowboy named Carter who knew a thing or two about plants. But Jake’s voice cut through everything, rushing toward me.
“Sage, there you are!” The ranch hand’s panicked tone caught me immediately, in all seriousness, with Ivy and Poppy already at his side. My stomach dropped.
“It’s Daisy and Knox,” Ivy cried.
I linked hands with her. “What happened?”
“Trevor Brewster happened. He was holding his own rally tonight for his election campaign across the county. But then he wasn’t.” Jake continued grimly, shaking his head. “He showed up here instead. He grabbed Daisy. Knox found them. There was a struggle. Knox took a gunshot to the shoulder.”
“What the—?” None of this made sense to me. Trevor? Gun? “But I just saw Daisy and Knox earlier. They were dancing, and finally together.”
Jake put his arm around my shoulders. “It all happened so fast. The sheriff’s men have him in custody now. But Daisy and Knox are on their way to the hospital in Lewistown in an ambulance. We need to go.”
He spurred us into action. A million questions surfaced. But none of them mattered, not the election, or anything I’d been thinking about all night. Definitely not a certain ghosting cowboy.
Only my sisters, and getting to Daisy as fast as we could.
Hours later, the lights of Lewiston’s hospital faded behind me as I headed home. My tired mind and body moved on instinct, steering and shifting, totally numb along the stretches of quiet highway and the occasional glow of a distant porch light.
Poppy dozed off in the passenger seat. It had been a long night.
I replayed everything in fragments, from seeing Daisy and Knox happy at the dance to hours later with her crying in the hospital waiting room. We had prayed there together while Knox underwent emergency surgery to repair his shoulder from the gunshot wound.
Daisy broke down in our arms, finally letting go of years of turmoil that had been eating her alive. I still couldn’t believe the horror of finding out the truth she had never admitted to us before—how Trevor Brewster had been stalking Daisy for years.
At some point tonight, he’d kidnapped her, but Knox found them and saved her. Thank God. I owed that man an enormous hug after he recovered from the surgery.
How could this be our lives right now? Hadn’t my sisters and I endured enough over the years?
After the surgery, the doctor had urged us to go home and get some rest and return tomorrow to see Knox. Of course, Daisy refused to leave, and she practically shoved us out the door.
That was her, taking on all the weight of it so we wouldn’t have to. Eventually, Colt took Ivy to their cabin at the ODRR to rest for the night. Poppy and I left, too.
I pulled into the driveway and shook Poppy’s knee to wake up. “We’re here. Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me?”
She stretched and yawned. “My friends are expecting me. Before we head back to campus tomorrow, they’ll drop me by the hospital to see Knox first and check on Daisy.”
“They’ll be okay, you know? They have to be, now that she’s realized what he means to her.” We squeezed hands, and she got out.
Then it was just me, left with my thoughts as I headed toward town. My headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the narrow stretch ahead of me. Driving in a daze, I jolted and slowed when a shape came into view on the side of the road. A deer? A bear?
No—a human walking.
“What in the world?” My brows pulled together as the figure came into clearer focus.
I chuckled at first—poor soul—until my headlights fully caught him. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing nothing but tight white Calvin boxers and boots.
My mouth went dry. The man had absolutely no business looking that good half-naked on a frosty Montana road.
He stuck his thumb out. I shook my head. No way would I pick up a stranger, no matter how perfect an ass he had. But my headlights caught his face just as I passed him, recognition hitting me instantly.
“Carter?” I hit the brakes hard, my pulse kicking up.
Tonight hadn’t finished surprising me yet. The same man who’d made my stomach flutter with plant puns and then vanished like smoke was now standing vulnerable on the roadside. Anger and concern tangled up inside me, but so did something intriguing I couldn’t name yet.
I threw my door open and climbed out. “You have got to be kidding me. What the hell happened to you?” My eyes made one very involuntary sweep from his face to his boots. I was not proud of the stop in the middle, where I quickly counted a six-pack.
“S-s-age…?” His teeth were chattering too hard for a coherent answer. Up close, his skin had gone past cold dangerously to blue, and actually alarmed me. His arms hugged tight to his chest like he could keep the warmth in through sheer stubbornness.
“Get in the car.” I hooked my hand around the thick part of his bicep, his skin like ice.
I guided him to the passenger side and folded him in, which was challenging because he was about a foot taller than my vehicle was built for.
I shrugged off my coat and dropped it over his lap like a blanket.
It was three sizes too big on me, which meant on him it didn’t cover entirely, but it was all I had.
I climbed back behind the wheel and pulled onto the road, cranking the heat.
For a mile or two, neither of us spoke. The heater roared. His chattering teeth slowed. He thawed out beside me in the small, warm space as I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.
“Are you okay?” I finally managed. “Do you need a doctor?”
“I’ll be fine.” His voice was back, a little rough around the edges. He leaned against the headrest and did his best impression of casual.
“Mind telling me what happened to you?”
“It was, uh, just… with some of the ranch guys. An initiation thing. They wanted to take the new guy out for a proper drink. We went to a biker bar.”
I let that sit for a moment. “A biker bar?”
“Yeah, but we got into a bit of a disagreement with some locals. The next thing I know, I’m being left on the side of the road and they’ve taken my phone, my wallet, everything.” He shifted, and I caught the small wince he tried to swallow. Ribs, probably. “Things escalated quickly.”
“You should report this to the police.”
“No!” He huffed a quiet laugh that didn’t quite convince me. “No, really, t’s nothing. The bikers didn’t like my accent or my face, hard to say.”
“Hm.” I flicked a look at him and then back at the road. Something about the story didn’t sit right. “And the ranch hands you arrived with? They just left you out there?”
Ranch hands loved to pull pranks, but on a chilly night like this they didn’t strip a man down and leave him on a county highway just for fun. Not Ash’s crew.
“Not them. We got separated. The locals carried me away from them. It got chaotic.”
“Chaotic,” I repeated.
“Very.”
I pressed my lips together. “I will absolutely have words with those boys the next time I’m at the ranch. Initiation? What were they thinking?”
His head snapped to me like I’d surprised him—and for a second the charming-stranger performance dropped, and there was just a man sitting in my passenger seat, cold and tired and a little thrown.
“Please don’t do that,” he begged. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be if you chewed them out for this? I’d never hear the end of it.
There’s a bro-code for pranks. I just have to take it and think of a way to get back at them.
We can keep this between us, can’t we? Please, Sage-with-the-pretty-lavender-scent? ”
His charm came back then, voice warm and deliberate, his hand resting on the back of my seat, thumb tracing a slow circle on my shoulder that sent sparks racing down my spine.
“Do not even try to be cute with me right now.” I shook my head.
“I’m asking nicely.”
“No, you’re very smooth. There’s a difference.”
He laughed. “Is it working?”
I said nothing. Because yes, him mostly naked in my car seat trying to butter me up was absolutely working.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he grinned. Cockiness was a good look for him.
“You’ll take that as a maybe,“ I purred. “Conditional on you telling me right now—are you actually okay? Honestly.”
“Honestly?” He hesitated. “I’ve been better. I’ve also been a lot worse.”
I knew nothing about this man except that he’d appeared at a barn dance and practically made me forget my name before vanishing entirely. But something about him grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.
“After tonight, I don’t think I could smell lavender ever again without thinking of you.” He reached up, resting his hand on the back of my seat, his thumb circling lightly on my shoulder.
A thrill worked down my spine, but I kept my expression where it needed to be. Pretending he had no effect on me whatsoever.
He eventually grew quiet. I glanced over.
His eyes were closed, head hanging down.
The coat had slid off his lap. His legs stretched out, knees wide, one muscular thigh brushing dangerously close to my hand on the gear shifter.
I licked my lips, eyes drifting up to the edge of those tight boxers before I caught myself.
“Get a grip, Sage.” It had been far too long since I’d been touched by a man who actually interested me. I reached over and pulled my coat back up without waking him.
Lavender, he’d said.
God help me, but this cowboy might be my undoing—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be saved.