Читать книгу Not Just a Cowboy - Caro Carson - Страница 9

Chapter Three

Darkness came, and Luke was glad that a strong breeze from the ocean came with it. Cutting vehicles loose from downed trees had been grueling in the motionless air the storm had left behind. When the order came to stand down, Luke was glad for that, too. He considered himself to be in good shape, working on the ranch day in and day out, but wielding an ax for hour after hour had been back-breaking, plain and simple.

The one thing he would have been most glad of, however, never came. Patricia never appeared, not in a flustered way, not in a collected way, not in any way. Whatever the beautiful personnel director was up to, she wasn’t up to it in his part of the relief center. But since impatient Zach wanted his damned glove back, Luke was going to have to go and get it.

Determined to make the best of it, Luke had hit the portable showers when the fire crew had their allotted time. He’d dug a clean T-shirt out of his gym bag and run a comb through his hair while it was still damp. Shaving was conveniently required of the firemen, since beards could interfere with the way a respirator mask sealed to the face. He’d been able to shave without drawing any attention to himself.

All he had to do was tell the guys to head off for chow without him, and then he could take a convenient detour that would lead him past Patricia’s tent on his way to supper in the mess tent. He’d listen for her voice, and if she was in, he’d go in to retrieve his glove. Damn, but he was looking forward to seeing her again.

He was so intent on reaching her tent that he nearly missed her voice when he heard it in a place he hadn’t expected. He stopped short outside the door marked “pharmacy,” a proper door with a lock, set into a wooden frame that was sealed to an inflatable tent, similar to the kind he knew were used for surgeries and such.

“The rules exist for a reason.” Smooth but unyielding, that was Patricia’s voice.

“I thought we were here to help these people,” another female voice answered, but this voice sounded more shrill and impatient. “These people have lost their houses. They’ve lost everything. If I can give them some free medicine, why shouldn’t I? When I went to Haiti, we gave everyone months’ worth of the drugs they needed.”

There was a beat of silence, then Patricia’s tone changed subtly to one of almost motherly concern. “It might help if you keep in mind that this isn’t Haiti. Half of the homes in this town were vacant vacation homes, second homes for people who can well afford their own medicine. You don’t need to give them a month’s worth, just a few days until the town’s regular pharmacies re-open.”

“Then I don’t see what the big deal is.” The other woman, in response to Patricia’s gentle concern, sounded like a pouting teenager. “Nitroglycerin is cheap, anyway.”

“It’s not the cost, it’s the scarcity. I had to send someone almost all the way to Victoria to get more. He was gone for nearly four hours. He used gallons of gasoline that can’t be replaced because the pumps aren’t running yet because the electricity isn’t running yet.”

Luke nearly grinned when he heard that steel slip back into Patricia’s voice. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head back to look up at the stars. She was right about the electricity being out, of course. When an entire town’s streetlights were doused, the stars became brilliant. When all traffic stopped, the crash of the ocean surf could be heard blocks away.

It should be easy to set the right mood to explore a little physical chemistry, and he realized now he’d been hoping to find Patricia—and Zach’s glove—alone. It would have been better if he could have waited until she’d had the time and the desire, or at least the curiosity, to come and find him. But since he needed to get that glove, he’d half hoped she’d be happy to see him walk back into her tent tonight. He’d forgotten something important: Patricia was still working. Still working and still the boss.

He should get to the mess tent. He could stop by the admin tent an hour from now, or three, and he knew she’d be there, working. There was no need to wait for her right now.

Yet he lingered, and listened, and admired the way she stayed cool, alternating between logical and sympathetic until the other woman was apologizing for the trouble she hadn’t realized she’d caused, and Patricia was granting her a second—or what sounded more like a third—opportunity to prove she could be part of the Texas Rescue team.

The door opened and Patricia stepped out. As she turned back to listen to the other person, the generator-powered lights inside the tent illuminated Patricia’s flawless face, her cheekbones and elegant neck exposed with her pale hair still twisted up in that smooth style.

“The regular pharmacies will re-open, don’t forget. This isn’t Haiti. The buildings are damaged, but they didn’t disappear into a pile of rubble. If they had, I promise you, we’d be working under a different policy entirely.”

Luke hadn’t thought of Patricia as a high-strung filly, and damn Zach for putting the thought into his head, but now he could imagine a similarity. Patricia was no ranch workhorse, though. Once, after a livestock show in Dallas, Luke had been invited by a trainer to spend time in the Grand Prairie racetrack stables. He’d found the Thoroughbreds to be suspicious and nervous around strangers, requiring a lot of careful handling. But once they were brought out to the track, once that starting gate sprang open and they raced down their lanes, doing what they were born to do, those Thoroughbreds had been a sight to behold. Unforgettable.

He’d just listened to Patricia doing what she was born to do. She kept people at their jobs, working hard in hard conditions, serving a community. Whether it required her to revive a pair of unexpected firemen or turn around a pharmacy tech’s attitude, that’s what Patricia did to make her hospital run, and she did it well.

The unseen pharmacy girl was still apologizing. In the glow of the lights, Luke watched Patricia smile benevolently. “There’s no need to apologize further. I’m sure you’ll have no problems at all complying with the policy tomorrow, and I look forward to having you here on the team for the rest of the week. Good night.”

Patricia shut the door with a firm click. With his eyes already adjusted to the dark, Luke watched her polite, pleasant expression fade away, replaced by a frown and a shake of her head. She was angry. Perhaps disgusted with a worker who’d taken so much of her time. Without a glance at the brilliant stars, she headed down the row of tents toward her office space.

After a moment, Luke followed. He told himself he wasn’t spying on her. He had to pass her tent to get to the mess tent, anyway. But when she stopped, he stopped.

She didn’t go into her tent. She clutched her clipboard to her chest with one arm, looking for a moment like an insecure schoolgirl. Then she headed away from the tent complex, into the dark.

Luke followed, keeping his distance. When she stopped at a picnic table near a cluster of palm trees in the rear of the town hospital building, he hesitated. She obviously wanted to be alone. She sat on the bench, crossed her arms on the table, then rested her head on them.

The woman was not angry or disgusted. She was tired. Luke felt foolish for not realizing it sooner.

While she apparently caught a cat nap, he stood silently a short distance away. He didn’t want to wake her. He’d look like an idiot for having followed her away from the tents. On the other hand, he couldn’t leave her here, asleep and unprotected. Except for the starlight, it was pitch black. There’d been no looting in the storm-damaged town, but there were packs of displaced dogs forming among the wrecked homes, and—

Hell. He didn’t need wandering pets for an excuse. He wasn’t going to leave Patricia out here alone. Period.

He cleared his throat as he walked up behind her, not wanting to startle her, but she was dead to the world. He sat down beside her. She was sitting properly, knees together, facing the table like she’d fallen asleep saying grace over her dinner plate. He sat facing the opposite way, leaning back against the table and stretching his legs out. The wooden bench gave a little under his weight, disturbing her.

“Good evening, Miss Patricia.”

That startled her awake the rest of the way. Her head snapped up, and she blinked and glanced around, looking adorably disoriented for a woman who carried a clipboard everywhere she went. When she recognized him, her eyes opened wide.

“Oh.”

“It’s me. Luke Waterson. The firefighter who barged in on you today.”

“Yes, I remember you.” She looked at the watch on her wrist and frowned.

Luke figured she couldn’t read it in the faint light. “You’ve only been out a minute or two.”

She hit a button on her watch and it lit up. Of course. He should have known she’d be prepared. She touched her hair, using her fingertips to smooth one wayward strand back into place. She touched the corner of each eye with her pinky finger, then put both hands in her lap and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m awake. Did you need something?”

This was what her life was like, he realized. Everyone came to her when they needed something. She didn’t expect Luke to be there for any other reason. Did no one seek her out just to talk during a work shift? To play a game of cards in the shade when they were off duty? To share a meal?

He didn’t feel like smiling at the moment, but he did, anyway. She’d asked if he needed anything. “Nope. Nothing.”

She tilted her head and looked at him, those eyes that had opened so wide now narrowing skeptically. “Then what are you doing here?”

I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to feel you fall against me again.

His mother had always told him when in doubt, tell the truth, but he wasn’t going to tell Patricia that particular truth. He settled for a more boring—but true—explanation. “I left a work glove in your tent. I was coming to get it when I saw you walking off into the dark. I was worried about you, so I followed.”

“You were worried about me?” She gave a surprised bit of a chuckle, as if the idea were so outlandish it struck her funny. She got up from the table, then picked up her walkie-talkie and her clipboard, and held them to her chest.

Luke stood, too. As if he were handling a nervous Thoroughbred, he moved slowly. He stood a little too close, but unlike this afternoon, she didn’t back away.

He hadn’t imagined that chemistry. It was still there, in spades. Looking into her face by the light of the stars, he wanted to hold her again, deliberately this time. To kiss her lips, to satisfy a curiosity to know how she tasted.

But he wouldn’t. Standing this close, he could also see how tired she was, a woman who’d undoubtedly been handling one issue after another since the first storm warnings had put Texas Rescue on alert. A woman so tired, she’d fallen asleep while sitting at a wooden table.

“Let’s go back to the hospital,” he said, when he would rather have said a dozen different things.

He took the clipboard and the radio out of her hand, then offered her his arm. She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow immediately, and he suspected she did it without thinking. Her debutante ways and his cowboy etiquette meshed with ease for a second. Then she seemed to realize what she’d done and started to drop her hand.

He pressed her hand to his side with his arm. “It’s dark. This way you can catch me if I trip.”

“This way you can drag me down with you, more likely.” But she left her hand where it was as they walked in silence.

When he started to pass her office tent, she pulled him to a stop. “You need to get your glove.”

He turned to face her, and now it was easy to see every detail of her face in the light that glowed through the white walls of the hospital’s tents. She was so very beautiful, and so very tired.

“I thought that was what I needed when I first followed you out into the dark, but now I know I need something else much, much more.”

He moved an inch closer to her, and he felt her catch her breath as she held her ground. “What is that?” she whispered.

“I need to get you into bed. Now.”