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honey.”
    “Yeah, yeah. I know.” Becca offered a faltering smile that fell away as quickly as it appeared.
    Thane leaned down and squatted next to mother and daughter. Pinning Becca with his steady gaze, he asked, “Think you can ride?”
    Becca, expression wary, nodded slowly as she sized him up. “Probably.”
    “Good.” Balancing on one knee, he instructed her to sling an arm around his neck. As she did, he reached under her legs with one arm and clasped the other around her back. “Hang on.” As if she weighed nothing, he lifted Becca off the ground and carried her, wrapped in the blanket, to the pinto. There was a part of Maggie that didn’t want anything to do with Thane Walker, that objected to his touching her daughter, a part of him that made her nervous as hell, but she bit her tongue and reminded herself that, even if he was here for some ulterior motive, he had helped her locate Becca. And that, as they said, was worth something.
    More gently than Maggie thought him capable of, he helped Becca onto the pinto’s back. She let out a yelp as she settled into the saddle, sucked in her breath. Barkley, hidden in the shadows, snarled, and the horses shifted nervously.
    “Okay?” Thane asked, once she was astride.
    “I…I think so.” But she was pale as death.
    “Good. Hold on to the saddle horn.” He placed her hands over the leather knob. “And let me know if you get woozy. I don’t want you falling off.”
    “I won’t.” Bravely she tossed her hair from her eyes.
    “Becca, are you sure you can handle this?” Maggie asked.
    “Have to.” She stiffened her thin shoulders.
    Thane patted the pinto’s thick neck, but looked up at Maggie’s daughter. “Let me know when you need to rest.”
    “I will,” Becca promised.
    “I’ll hold you to it.” Using the pale beam of his flashlight as his guide, Thane started leading the pinto down the hill. Astride the buckskin, Maggie followed slowly behind and sent up a thankful prayer that her daughter was safe.
    It didn’t matter that Thane Walker was involved.
    Or so she tried to convince herself.
     
    “She’ll live.” The doctor, a petite woman in a lab coat three sizes too large and a name tag that read “Penny Cranston, M.D.,” gazed at Maggie over the tops of half glasses that threatened to slide off her short, straight nose. “The ankle’s sprained, but not too badly and I looked at the X-rays. Nothing broken that I can see. However, just to be on the side of caution, I’ll send them to a specialist in case I missed something.”
    “Thanks.” Maggie was relieved. She’d driven over an hour to an all-night clinic in Lewiston only to discover that Becca, though bruised and scraped, her pride wounded as badly as anything else, would be fine. In the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights, Becca looked small and pale, her eyes wide, the scratches on her skin red but not deep. The dirt had been washed from her face and hands, and, all in all, aside from the knot turning blue around her ankle, she seemed fine.
    “Now.” Dr. Cranston trained her eyes on her patient again. “You need to use crutches for a few days, maybe a week or two, until you’re out of pain. I’ll give you a prescription for the first couple of days, and I want you to rest, elevate the foot, and ice it for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
    “So, no school, right?” Becca asked eagerly.
    “Wellll…I think you can make it back to class. Maybe not for a couple of days, but then I think you’ll be able to go back.” She winked at Becca, who rolled her eyes theatrically and, with Maggie’s help, hobbled back to the old Jeep, another source of irritation to Becca, who didn’t understand why they had to trade in a perfectly good BMW for a dilapidated, rugged vehicle with four-wheel drive and a dented right fender. But then Becca didn’t understand about an expensive lease as opposed to a vehicle that, though battered, was paid for.
    Once they were in the