Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) by Amelia Rose Page A

awake.” She started to rise up off the bed and turn to the door but Casey grabbed her once again, the intensity in the gesture frightening her more than anything she’d seen since coming west.
                  “NO! Tell me what happened!” Casey roared. Miranda stared, not sure she should say anything else when Casey was so upset.
                  “He was shot. In the back.”
                  In a blinding flash, Casey remembered. He remembered seeing Jack’s face leaning over his, and hearing the gunshot that must have been Thomas’ death blow. He remembered the laughter just before everything went dark.
                  “Jack. Jack shot him,” Casey whispered. Miranda leaned closer, telling him to repeat himself. “Jack was there, he shot Thomas. He’d argued with me just that morning and made some kind of a threat and when I fell, Jack leaned over me and laughed. I heard it, he shot Thomas.”
                  “Unfortunately, that’s not the explanation Jack has given. He claims Thomas made some inappropriate remark to you that morning, and that you lured him away from the group with the excuse of cutting off the pack of coyotes, but that you used that as a way to get Thomas alone instead, and that you shot him in the back.”
                  “No, that’s not true. Jack wasn’t even with us when we set out to chase down the pack. How would he even know? Except he was there, waiting. He shot Thomas, and I can prove it. Where are my clothes?”
                  “They’re over here, where I…”
                  “Where you what?”
                  “Never mind.”
                  “Where you undressed me?” Casey asked sarcastically, fully realizing for the first time that he was covered only by the bed quilt.
                  “Someone had to,” Miranda answered primly, answering Casey’s sarcasm with her own. “It seems that mending broken cowboys who fall off their horses is also on the list of things I was ‘hired’ to do around here, besides breed, of course.”
                  “Go to my belt and bring me my gun. I shot two coyotes. That means there should still be four cartridges in the cylinder.” Miranda crossed the room and fished out the gun Carey had carefully replaced in Casey’s belt holster before carrying him over on his own horse back to the house. She carried it with one tiny finger looped through the trigger guard, wanting as much distance as possible between her and the deadly device. Casey took it from her hand and spun open the cylinder, counting out the four bullets that remained. He breathed a sigh of relief.
                  “See? All four. And I bet the mangy bodies of those two coyotes are still out there on the creek bed, if the buzzards haven’t cleaned the whole mess away by now. I knew there was no way I shot Thomas. That poor man…” With the situation resolved, at least in his mind, Casey had a chance to mourn the loss of an eager, energetic cowboy, gone for good because of one horrid monster’s need for revenge. “You have to fetch my father. We have to tell him what happened before Jack skips the ranch and heads out.”
                  “I believe you,” Miranda said. “I’ll let your father know you need to speak with him. But for now, you have to rest. You’ve got more thread than skin on your face, and you lost enough blood through the cut to the back of your head to sink a small ship. It took me a few hours just to get all your skin back where it goes.”
                  Casey reached up and touched the stitch work, pulling his fingers back as pain shot out from around the cut. “You stitched this? Are you kidding me? Who let you take a needle to my head?”
                  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. And it’s quite nice needlework, if I do say