A Holiday to Remember. Helen Myers R.

used peroxide to clean the areas again. “The wounds don’t look very old.”

      “July Fourth.”

      “Should you even be out of the hospital yet? Your cross-country trek doesn’t seem to have been the wisest idea.”

      “Tell the chief that he makes a mean breakfast.”

      Taking the strong hint, Alana stopped asking questions. Mack could tell she had performed first aid before and had a gentle touch. No doubt she’d made his father’s last days more bearable; he certainly enjoyed her ministrations. He let himself imagine her fingers moving elsewhere, until his body told him that he was asking for trouble.

      “I didn’t mean that you had to go mute on me.”

      “You grouse just like Uncle Duke. Your wish is my command, master,” she added, bending to coo near his ear.

      Mack decided she could probably do good-cop-bad-cop all by her lonesome and make it sexy. “Everything all right at the station?”

      “Yep,” she replied, once again the girl next door. “You were the highlight of our shift. Well, Ed thought he could catch a suspicious vehicle probably transporting drugs through town, but he had to pass the call to the state police once they left our jurisdiction.”

      That tidbit of information had Mack’s fantasy of kissing her again go up in smoke. “Do you get a lot of that?”

      “Worried for me, gyrene? Or are you just trying to keep me from asking why your seven-week-old wounds are reopening?”

      “Why don’t you sit on my lap and we’ll discuss it?”

      “I may be tempted, but I’m not easy.” Finished with her task, she threw the mangled bandages into the trash canister near the back door. Then she went to wash her hands at the sink. When she was done, she poured Mack a mug of coffee and brought it to the table, then sat down beside him. “I’m going to do something I rarely do and that’s ask a favor. Please let Eberardo know soon that he can stay on.”

      Mack planned to anyway, not just because things looked well tended, but because he suspected he wouldn’t be here to see to things himself. But Alana’s request brought out the devil’s advocate in him. “Because?”

      “These are challenging times. He was born in the U.S., but not everyone treats him as though he was—especially now that Fred is gone. They wouldn’t dare do it before. Add to that, he hasn’t been lucky in love. His fiancée left him for his best friend. He’s finally in a relationship with a nurse at the hospital, who seems to have her head straight on her shoulders. It would be great if he could stay close to her in order to see if things work out between them.”

      “I’ll bow to your experienced judgment, how’s that? After all, you are the heir-in-waiting.”

      Alana cast him a droll look, then carried his empty plate to the sink. When she returned with the coffeepot, Mack lifted his mug for a refill.

      “What does your uncle say about you coming over here?”

      “He thinks I’m working on Tanker.”

      “I thought in the pictures I’ve seen that he turned gray prematurely,” Mack mused.

      With a sigh, Alana admitted, “Yeah, that and the perpetual frown between his eyebrows is mostly me.”

      “Knowing that, I’d think you’d have pity on the poor guy.”

      “I would if I could shut off my mind.” She shrugged. “Doctors wrote prescriptions, but their ideas about solutions just turned me into a zombie.”

      Mack would have liked to hear more, but she rose, signaling that she was ready to leave. “If Tanker is a dog,” he said to delay her, “your grocery bill must be something else.”

      “It’s worse than that, he’s my horse. Seventeen hands of black Westphalian beauty.” At Mack’s confused expression, she explained, “That’s how horses are measured. You take its height from hooves to withers and divide those inches by four, which is the size of a palm. In other words, he’s five-six. He eats like a pregnant sow, too, but he’s family. Fortunately for him—and us—our second business is cattle. So I help out Eberardo when he needs a hand with your stock and he helps with ours. I hope you won’t mind it staying that way. Well, at least until you get competent with the cattle yourself.”

      “I may not be around long enough to achieve that.” He nodded to the groceries. “What do I owe you for those?”

      “Your presence,” she replied. “Stay, Mack. Last Call is your birthright. Fred spent his life turning it into what it is and ached for you to do more than accept it. He hoped that someday you would embrace it.”

      She sounded so earnest. Hell, Mack thought, she looked close to crying. He had to do something before he took her into his arms and made promises he shouldn’t. “I told you, I don’t know anything about ranching. And the truth is, I’m not sure that I want to learn. All I know is soldiering.”