Free In the Cowboy's Bed (Pleasure Ridge Ranch) by Ava Flynn Page A

glad you enjoyed it."
    "Did you?"
    He looked a little surprised by her question, but then he visibly relaxed. "I did. I haven’t been over here in a long time."
    As they popped over a hill, Justin cursed and hit his brakes. Debris from a wreck littered the road, and he guided the truck through it and pulled into a dirt road that led into a pasture. With another curse, he unbuckled his seatbelt and hurried back toward where a small car and an SUV sat tangled together halfway into a ditch.
    Erin slid out of the truck and followed him. She arrived in time to hear him taking charge, calming freaked-out drivers and passengers, assessing the situation.
    "Do you feel any numbness?" he asked the driver of the car. "Any tingling sensations?"
    As she watched, she realized there was an entire Justin she didn’t know. He obviously had some sort of medical training. Maybe EMT training. If he’d grown up on a ranch in some rural part of Wyoming, that would have come in handy.
    When the ambulance arrived, Justin gave the EMTs the rundown of what he’d learned. When he finally stepped away, he ran his hand over his face. That’s when she noticed he looked a little shaky. She stepped close to him and took his hand.
    "Are you okay?" she asked.
    He nodded, but he was quiet all the way back to the ranch. He obviously tried to shake off whatever was bothering him by smiling and attempting to pull her close for a kiss. But she gently eluded him and guided him to the porch swing. He sat beside her.
    "Tell me what’s wrong," she said.
    He shook his head. "You didn’t pay to hear my problems."
    "I didn’t pay for any of this. My friends did. But I believe the policy is whatever I want. And I want to talk about whatever it was about that wreck today that caused that haunted look on your face."
    "I’m sorry," he said.
    She took his hand and squeezed until his gaze met hers. "You don’t have to be sorry. And you don’t have to put on a mask for me."
    He shifted his gaze out toward the setting sun. "I used to be a doctor, an oncologist in San Francisco. But about two and a half years ago, my wife died of ovarian cancer."
    "Oh, I’m so sorry."
    "I blamed myself for not knowing soon enough to help her. I couldn’t face going to work anymore after that. All I wanted was to escape, to find some way that I didn’t have to remember anymore. But there was enough survival instinct left that I didn’t want to destroy myself with drugs or alcohol either."
    Erin’s heart broke for him. "So you came here."
    He nodded. "I remembered a patient of mine telling me about it. She had terminal cancer and had never been married. Never even really had a serious boyfriend. So she came here for a week, and she said it was the best thing she’d ever done. She knew some people thought it was wrong, but it made her feel alive and happy, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. I...I thought maybe if I buried myself in a stream of women who were there only for a few days and then gone, I could forget Sara and what happened. And for a while it seemed to work."
    "What changed?"
    He hesitated for a long moment before turning his head toward her and answering. "I met you. For the first time in two years, I’d met someone who made me feel alive." He squeezed her hand. "But don’t worry. I know you’re leaving. You have a life to get back to."
    Erin lifted her hand to his face. "Maybe you do, too. It wasn’t your fault, and I’m sure Sara knew that."
    Later that night, they curled into bed together and made love slowly, tenderly. Erin’s heart swelled as she realized that this time, they were making love. It wasn’t fucking, and it wasn’t even sex. It was truly making love because she’d grown to care about this man. How in the world was she going to be able to go home and forget him and the way he’d made her feel?
    * * * *
    On her last day at Pleasure Ridge, Erin woke up early and left Justin a note that she was going out but would be back by lunch. Her