Читать книгу Healing Hearts - Cheryl Wolverton - Страница 10

D rake couldn’t believe everything that had just happened in his short time in this strange household. He’d been going insane in the hospital. Between the looks from the doctors and the people who had come to visit and the worry from his brother, he’d been certain they were going to pray him right into a grave.

They had no hope for him. Each look they had given him had made him all the more determined to prove to them he could live. Live for what, he didn’t know. He had no idea. As badly torn up as he was from the barbed wire and the damage that bull had done to his head, Drake was certain he’d never be much good at anything again.

He’d had a cerebral hemorrhage, they’d told him, from all the damage. But that had been minor compared to what the bull had done to him. It was a miracle he’d lived, they told him. They couldn’t believe he was making progress at all, they’d say. The darkness that had settled on him from all of the negative comments and looks in the hospital had been nearly debilitating at times.

The only one who hadn’t been gloom and doom had been Dr. Susan McCade and her husband, called Dr. Hawk in affectionate terms by his wife. Dr. Susan would look in on Drake, it seemed, and know what to say. She made him smile. She’d been the only person in that forsaken place that had been able to do that. But this Stanridge woman had, in just a few short minutes, accomplished that and more. He felt alive again.

Liam tried to pretend as if nothing was the matter, that in no time Drake would be well. However, it was his fearful looks that he wasn’t suppose to see that made Drake feel like he was on death’s door.

When Liam had told him he wanted to move Drake to a house for recuperation and training, Drake had been in total disagreement. The way things had gone so far, he didn’t want to take any more advice that anyone might give him. After all, if Liam really thought he was going to die, just what type of place might those others suggest for Drake? The only thing that made him agree to try was that Dr. Susan McCade assured him she had made the arrangements and that his brother really was worried only like a little brother might be. Besides, he really couldn’t argue with someone who had access to the phone, truck and outside contacts like his brother did.

He supposed throwing the tray at that nurse when she’d brought him that latest batch of pills had been what had decided this move. But he was restless. He wanted to do more than they would allow.

He was over the pneumonia that had complicated things and was functioning again…somewhat. He was angry and frustrated that he could look at words and have no idea what they said, whereas a few months ago he could have read them. Now, they didn’t make the least bit of sense.

Drake wasn’t an idiot. And he hadn’t been kidding the first few times Liam had brought him something to read. He couldn’t understand it. He was determined to relearn how to read and write and especially how to walk again. Supposedly only the doctor, Liam and Drake knew what was going on here—that this woman had agreed not only to let him stay close to the hospital, but to teach him the rest of the time. It was humiliating. It had been, at least. Until the woman had peeked between her legs at him, the bird hanging on to her shoulder upside down, his beak grasping her hair like he was certain his life was over if he let go.

When she’d turned around, her face red, her cheeks flushing with her embarrassment and not even realizing that the bird was unraveling the lace around her shirt, he couldn’t help but laugh.

For that short time he’d forgotten he was an invalid, that he couldn’t read, that he looked like a cross between Frankenstein and Dracula.

For that short time he’d felt like a man again, noticing the shapely curve of the woman’s legs, the way her brown wavy hair bounced around her face as she had turned to face him. And the way those piercing blue eyes had studied him.

Then he’d realized she was staring at his scars. It’d all come painfully back to him.

And if his brother said one more thing about his condition he was going to get out of the chair and show him just who was still the boss.

Keeper indeed. The woman had a lot to learn, he thought sourly. Still, he couldn’t resist a crack about the golden little puppy. “I hope you don’t expect the lion king there to share my room with me.”

“Oh dear,” she said very low, so low he almost missed it. “No. Of course not. It’s been um, a busy morning. I have to…that is…you can sleep in the cook’s room and I’ll get this cleaned up and then we’ll move you in here later. How’s that?”

He watched her hurry over and shove the table out of the way, making room for his chair to slip through into the next room—the living room, from what he could see sitting where he was.

Drake heard Liam’s phone ring and heard him answer it, but he didn’t take his gaze off the woman’s attempts to put things right.

As she moved back and forth, shoving a chair here, moving a footstool there, he saw another cage past the door with something running around in it. The old wooden boards of the floor lacked a polish but were sturdy just the same and echoed her hurried steps loudly.

He heard his brother say something about calling the vet and then hang up. “Another cow sick. I have to go, Drake. I’ll call this evening and if you want I’ll find you somewhere a bit more sane.”

Tessa had slipped into the living room and continued shoving her furniture around, making sure he had room to get through. Watching her he slowly shook his head. “If I need a keeper, here is as good a place as any.”

Liam sighed. “It wasn’t meant like that, Drake. We’re all worried. You’ve recovered so quickly that if you go back out to the ranch I’m afraid—the doctors are afraid—you’ll have a relapse. Just consider this a halfway house of recovery.”

Drake nodded. “And I am going to recover, Liam.”

Liam hesitated. “Of course you are,” he finally said.

Drake clenched his fists. “God is in control,” he whispered.

Liam didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe in God. And Drake hadn’t told him that he thought he’d seen an angel as the bull had hit him. In that split second, his life had changed. In that moment he realized that God was real, that He did care. God had saved him from his past transgressions, had given him hope…and a new life.

Drake didn’t understand why but he did believe God had saved him from certain death.

“Why didn’t He save you from this then?” Liam asked quietly. Before Drake could reply, he added, “I’ve got to go.”

And that was that. Liam walked out on him.

“Oh!” Tessa said coming back. “He’s gone. Well, let’s go see the rest of the house, shall we? Kellie? Make yourself at home. I was going to put you in the main room but Hubert has made a mess of Mr. Slater’s room. So I’m going to put him in there, okay?”

“Sí, señorita,” she said, and started unloading dishes.

“Dishes?” Tessa asked, her voice rising a bit.

Kellie grinned. “I have my favorite dishes to cook with. I hope you do not mind I bring my own.”

Put that way, what could Tessa say? “Of course not. If anyone comes to the door while I’m settling Mr. Slater, would you please handle them?”

“Of course, Miss Stanridge.”

“Drake. How hard is that to remember?” he muttered to the woman as she started steering him through the quaint little house. The tapestry on the floor was thin with age, probably having come with the house, Drake thought, glancing at it as she wheeled him over it and past a rolltop desk.

The furniture looked old and worn in, comfortable, lived in, he thought, unlike the newer furniture they had in his house.

“Right now you’ll have to share the bathroom with the rest of us. It’s down this hall here. Under the stairs. My room is upstairs. The other room down this hall is the catchall room. Uninhabitable.”

He saw a toad, two turtles, a hamster and a lizard.

Yes, he thought, doing a double take of the monster that walked across the floor into the catchall room, which was certainly a lizard—of some sort. “You like animals,” he commented.

Tessa chuckled. “Oh, my yes. That’s my hobby. I collect them. Fix them up and eventually let them go, except for my pets.”

“Is the lizard a pet?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“Alfred? Oh, well, I baby-sit him. A trucker down the street—Mr. McHugh—he and his daughter truck together and when they’re gone they need someone to watch Alfred. It’s usually a couple of weeks a month. But Alfred is well behaved. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Just the dog?”

She chuckled. He liked the way the woman laughed. He’d never met Tessa Stanridge before. He didn’t have children. He’d been told she was one of the new teachers at their local elementary school. She and two others had come to Hill Creek in the last few years. The town was growing.

Hard to believe, but it was. More and more people were moving out here. Escaping the big city, he supposed. The one he used to fly to every couple of weeks.

Until his accident.

He liked the way the woman smelled, too. She didn’t smell like alcohol and soap or of sterile hospital equipment. She smelled fresh and…earthy. She swayed as she walked. She didn’t have that brisk walk like the one a nurse or doctor had.

She wasn’t all business.

She was pleasure.

The joy in her eyes, the way her cheeks turned pink, the way she stopped to say a word to each animal she passed, that soft gentle voice. It soothed him.

“Again, Mr. Sla—Drake, I have to apologize. I’m normally more organized….”