Читать книгу Date with a Cowboy: Iron Cowboy / In the Arms of the Rancher / At the Texan's Pleasure - Diana Palmer - Страница 9

It was all a blur to Sara. She was surprised that they’d prepped her for surgery and had her sign a consent form only minutes after she arrived at the hospital.

Dr. “Copper” Coltrain, the redheaded local surgeon, was already masked and gowned when they wheeled her in.

“Hi, Dr. Coltrain,” Sara said, her voice drowsy from the preop meds. “Are you going to carve me up?”

“Only your appendix, Sara,” he replied with a chuckle. “You won’t even miss it, I promise.”

“But it feels fine now.”

“I imagine so. That’s a very bad sign. It means it’s perforated.”

“What’s that?” she asked, while a capped, gowned and masked woman beside her put something in a syringe into the drip that led down to the needle in her arm.

“It’s something to make you comfortable,” came the reply. “Count backward from a hundred for me, will you?”

Sara smiled, sleepy. “Sure. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety …”

She came to in the recovery room, dazed and completely confused. She wanted to ask them what they’d done to her, but her lips wouldn’t work.

A nurse came in and checked her. “Awake, are we?” she asked pleasantly. “Good!”

“Did Dr. Coltrain take out my appendix?”

“Yes, dear,” the nurse replied.

Sara closed her eyes again and went back to sleep.

One of the great unsolved mysteries of small town life is how quickly word gets around if someone local is injured or killed. The process seems to consist largely of word of mouth. Someone who works at the hospital is related to someone who owns a small business, and phone traffic increases exponentially. Soon after the incident, it’s an open secret.

Exactly how Jared Cameron found out that Sara’s appendix had gone ballistic was never known. But he showed up about the time they’d moved Sara into a semiprivate room.

Tony Danzetta came with him and stood quietly outside the hospital room while Jared walked into it. The nurse who was making Sara comfortable and checking her vitals did a double take when she saw him and his companion.

“Don’t mind Tony,” Jared told her. “He goes everywhere with me.”

Sara peered at him past the nurse. “Don’t worry about it,” she told the nurse in a still-drowsy tone. “He’s not the only man who carries protection around with him.”

The nurse burst out laughing. So did Jared.

Sara closed her eyes and drifted off again.

The second time she awoke, it was to find Jared lounging in the chair beside her bed. He was wearing working clothes. He looked really good in denim, she considered through a mixture of drugs and pain. He was very handsome. She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until he raised both eyebrows.

“Sorry,” she apologized.

He smiled. “How do you feel?”

“I’m not sure how to put it into words.” She looked past him at Tony, still standing patiently outside her room. “I seem to have lost my appendix. Do you suppose you could send Tony the Dancer out to look for it?”

“It’s long gone by now. You’ll improve. While you’re improving, I’m taking you home with me.”

She blinked. “That will cause gossip.”

“It won’t matter to your friends and what your enemies think doesn’t matter to you. Or it shouldn’t.”

“Put that way,” she agreed, “I guess you’re right.”

“You can’t stay at your house alone, in this condition.”

“What about Morris?”

“Tony the Dancer drove over to your house and fed him on his way here,” he said carelessly. “He’ll look after your cat until you’re able to go home.”

She was too groggy to wonder how Tony had gotten inside her house. The EMTs had locked it. She moved and grimaced. “I didn’t realize that an appendix could kill you.”

“It can if it perforates. Those stomach pains you were having were probably a symptom of chronic appendicitis,” he said.

“I guess so. I never thought it might be dangerous. How long have you been here?”

“Since they took you in to surgery,” he said surprisingly. “Tony and I went out to supper until you were in recovery, then we sat in the waiting room until they put you in a room.”

Her eyelids felt heavy. “It was nice of you to come.”

“We’re each other’s family, remember?” he asked, and he didn’t smile. “I take responsibilities seriously.”

“Thanks,” she said weakly.

“Not necessary. Try to go back to sleep. The more rest you get, the faster you’ll heal.”

She stared at him a little drowsily. “Will you be here, when I wake up?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

She tried to smile, but she wasn’t able to get her lips to move. She fell back into the comfortable softness of sleep.

It hurt to move. She tried to turn over, and it felt as if her stomach was going to come apart. She groaned.

The big man who went around with the ogre came and stood over her. He had large dark eyes, and heavy black eyebrows. His dark, wavy hair was in a ponytail. He had an olive complexion. He was frowning.

“Do you need something for pain?” he asked in a voice like rumbling thunder.

Her eyes managed to focus. He looked foreign. But he had that Georgia drawl. Maybe he was of Italian heritage and raised in the South.

He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “I’m not Italian. I’m Cherokee.”

She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. The painkilling drugs seemed to be affecting her in odd ways. “You’re Mr. Danzetta,” she said. “I thought you were a hit man.”

He laughed out loud. “I prevent hits,” he replied. “I’m Tony. Nobody calls me Mr. Danzetta.” The frown was back. “It hurts, huh?”

“It does,” she managed weakly.

He touched the call button. A voice came over it. “May I help you?”

“This young lady could use something for pain,” he replied.

“I’ll be right there.”

Minutes later, a nurse came into the room, smiling. “Dr. Coltrain left orders so that you could have something for pain.”

“It feels like my body’s been cut in half,” Sara confessed.

“This will help you feel better,” she said, adding something to the drip that was feeding her fluids. “It will be automatic now.”

“Thanks,” Sara said, grimacing. “I sure never thought losing a tiny little thing like an appendix would hurt so much.”

“You were in bad shape when you came in,” she replied. She glanced at Tony the Dancer curiously. “Are you a relative?”

“Who, me? No. I work for Mr. Cameron.”

The nurse was confused. “Is he related to Miss Dobbs?”

Tony hesitated. “Sort of.”

“No, he’s not,” Sara murmured, smiling. “But Mr. Cameron doesn’t have any family left, and neither do I. So we said we’d take care of each other if one of us got sick.”

“The boss said that?” Tony asked, his dark eyebrows arching.

The nurse frowned. “How can you be deaf with ears like that?” she wondered.

Tony glared at her. “I am not deaf.”

“I should think not,” she agreed, paying deliberate attention to his large ears.

“Listen, I may have big ears, but you’ve got a big mouth,” he shot right back.

The pert little brunette gave him a gimlet stare. “The better to bite you with, my dear,” she drawled. “You’ve been warned.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him before she turned back to Sara. “If you need me, just call. I’m on until midnight.”

“Thanks,” Sara told her.

She winked, gave the bodyguard a glance and waltzed out of the room.

Tony made a rough sound in his throat. “My ears are not big,” he muttered.

Sara wouldn’t have dared disagree.

He glowered. “People are supposed to be nice to you in hospitals.”

“Only when you’re sick,” Sara told him, smiling. “Thanks, Tony,” she said as the pain began to diminish, just a little.

“No problem.”

“Where’s Mr. Cameron?”

“He had a phone call to return,” he said, and looked worried.

“Do you go everywhere with him?”

“Well, not everywhere,” he replied. “He gets antsy if I follow him into the restroom.”

“I never knew anybody who had a bodyguard,” she told him. She moved drowsily. “In fact, I never knew a bodyguard.”

“First time for everything,” he said, and he smiled.

She smiled back. He’d looked frightening the first time she saw him, standing beside Jared’s truck outside the bookstore. But now he was starting to resemble a big teddy bear. She closed her eyes and went to sleep, but not before she heard a soft, deep chuckle. She’d said it aloud.

Jared walked in with a scowl, pausing to stare at Sara, who was fast asleep. “Did they give her something for pain?” he asked Tony.

The big man nodded. He wasn’t smiling now. He looked both intelligent and dangerous. “Is something going on?”

Jared looked toward the door, paused to push it shut and put his cell phone away. “Max thinks they may have tracked me here.”

“That isn’t good,” Tony replied.

“We expected it,” Jared reminded him. “We’ll have to be extravigilant is all. I told the foreman to put a man with a rifle at the front gate and keep him there, even if he has to have catered meals.” He cursed under his breath. “I hate hiding out,” he said harshly. “If they’d let me do what I please, we could have handled this on our own, and more efficiently. They’re going to protect me to death!”

“Not here,” Tony said slowly. “You know they’re doing the best they can. Meanwhile, this is the best place to be.”

Jared let out a long breath. “It’s the waiting.”

Tony nodded. He glanced toward the bed. “What about her?” he asked. “She isn’t going to be in the line of fire, is she?”

The other man stuck his hands in his pockets and looked stern. “She hasn’t got anybody else.”

“Yes, but she has no idea what’s going on. She could become a target.”

Jared glared at him. “Then you’ll just have to call in a marker and get some backup, won’t you?”

Tony sighed. “I gave up a hot tub and HD TV to come down here.”

The glare got worse. “Don’t blame me. I was willing to come alone. Your boss decided I needed baby-sitting,” Jared said irritably.

“My boss was right,” Tony replied. He shrugged. “I guess I can live without the hot tub for a few weeks.”

Jared put a hand on his shoulder. “Sure you can. You need to reread Sun Tzu.”

“I can quote it verbatim,” Tony told him. “This isn’t my first job.”

Jared chuckled. “No. Of course it’s not.” He stared back at Sara. “We can’t let them hurt her.”

“We won’t,” Tony replied. “I promise.”

Jared relaxed a little. But just a little.

Sara woke up and it was dark again. She’d slept for a long time. She looked around curiously. She was alone, but there was a cowboy hat occupying the seat beside her bed. It looked familiar.

The door opened, and Harley Fowler walked in, carrying a foam cup of coffee. “You’re awake,” he exclaimed, smiling.

“Hi, Harley,” she replied, returning the smile. “Nice of you to come check up on me.”

“I had tonight free.”

“No date?” she asked with mock surprise as he moved his hat and sat down.

He chuckled. “Not tonight.”

“No exciting missions, either?” she teased, recalling that he’d helped some of the local mercs shut down a drug dealer two years before.

“Interesting that you should mention that,” he replied, his eyes twinkling. “We’ve had word that the drug cartel has reorganized again and been taken over by a new group. We don’t know who they are. But there’s some buzz that we may have trouble here before long.”

“That’s not encouraging,” she said.

“I know.” He sipped coffee. He looked somber. “Two DEA agents bought it on the border this week. Execution-style. Cobb’s fuming. My boss is calling in contacts for a confab.” His boss was Cy Parks, one of the small town’s retired professional soldiers.

Cobb was Alexander Cobb, a senior Houston DEA agent who lived in Jacobsville with his wife and sister.

“Does anybody know who the new people are?”

He shook his head. “We can’t find out anything. We think somebody’s gone undercover in the organization, but we can’t verify it. It’s unsettling to have drug dealers who’ll pop a cap on cops. They killed a reporter, too, and a member of the Border Patrol.”

She whistled softly. “They’re arrogant.”

He nodded. “Dangerous,” he said. “There’s something worse. They’re kidnapping rich Americans for ransom, to increase their cash flow reserves. They got an heiress last week. Her people are scrambling to meet the deadline, without knowing for sure if they’ll return her even so.”

She moved restlessly on the pillow. She was sore, but the pain was better. “Aren’t most kidnap victims killed in the first twenty-four hours?”

“I don’t know, honestly,” he said. “Cash Grier is working with the FBI, trying to get informants who might know something about the heiress.”

“Our police chief?” she asked.

He grinned. “Like a lot of our local citizens, he’s not quite what he seems.”

“Oh.”

He stretched. “Mr. Parks had me working on our tractor all day. I’m stiff. I guess I’m getting old.”

She laughed. “No, you aren’t, Harley.”

He leaned forward with the cup in both hands. “I heard you had a close call,” he said.

“I didn’t know I had an appendix until yesterday,” she said wistfully. “They brought me in by ambulance.”

“What about Morris?”

“Mr. Danzetta fed him for me,” she said complacently.

“Cameron’s bodyguard?” He looked strange.

“What is it?” she asked curiously.

“One of our cowboys was driving past your house last night and saw lights on inside. He knew you were here, so he called the sheriff’s department.”

“And?”

“When they got there, the lights were off, the doors were all locked and there was nobody around.”

She pursed her lips, wondering.

“Did you give the bodyguard a key?” he persisted.

She hesitated. “Well …”

Before she could speak, the door opened and Jared walked in. He stopped when he saw Harley and his eyes began to glitter.

Harley had great reflexes. He exercised them by getting out of the chair, wishing Sara well, promising to check on her later. He walked out with a nod to Cameron. He passed by Tony, who didn’t say a word.

“You had company,” Jared said quietly.

She wondered what he was thinking. His face gave little away. “Harley came to tell me about my house.”

He frowned. “What about your house?”

“He said one of the Parks cowboys saw lights on inside and knew I wasn’t there, so he called the sheriff,” she began. “But when the deputy got there, all the lights were out and nobody was anywhere around.”

He managed to look innocent. “How odd.”

He looked too innocent. She frowned. “I didn’t give Mr. Danzetta a key to my house, so how did he get in to feed Morris?”

He sat down in the chair beside the bed, looking thoughtful for a minute. “Tony has some, shall we say, unexpected skills.”

“Like breaking and entering?” she probed with a grin.

“This is a conversation we shouldn’t have right now,” he replied with a quiet smile.

Her eyebrows lifted. “Is he wanted by the law?” she asked, keeping her voice low so that Tony wouldn’t overhear her.

“Only in two countries,” he said absently. “Or was it three?”

She looked shocked.

He scowled at her. “I’m kidding!”

She relaxed. “Okay,” she said. “That’s a relief.”

Outside the door, a tall, dark-eyed man was chuckling silently.

“I talked to Dr. Coltrain,” Jared said. “He told me if you’re still improving like this, you can be released Monday.”

She grimaced. “I’ll miss work.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, gosh. Dee! I didn’t even phone her …!”

“I did,” Jared said lazily. “She’s coming to see you tonight.”

“Thanks,” she told him.

“She already knew, of course,” he added ruefully. “It’s amazing how gossip gets around here.”

“We’re a very small town,” she reminded him.

“You’re a very large family,” he contradicted. “I’ve never lived in a place where people knew so much about each other.”

She smiled. “I know. I love it here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

“Well, you’ll be living with me for a few days,” he replied, crossing his long legs. “My attorney’s coming down Monday, so we’ll be chaperoned. Less gossip.”

“Does your attorney come to stay?”

“Only when I have legal matters to discuss,” he said easily. “I’ve had the same attorney for two years.”

She was picturing a tall lawyer like Blake Kemp. Jared must be very well-to-do if he could get a live-in attorney, she was thinking.

“Don’t mention anything about Tony feeding your cat, okay?” he asked abruptly. “I don’t want the police asking any embarrassing questions. I need Tony.”

“Of course I won’t,” she agreed, but she couldn’t help wondering what all the secrecy was about.

“I can’t stay long tonight,” he said apologetically. “I’m trying to do business by phone, fax and modem, and it’s damned hard.”

Her eyes were curious. “Where do you live when you’re not here?”

He smiled. “That’s need-to-know. You don’t.”

“Well!” she exclaimed. “What a lot of cloak-and-dagger stuff!”

“You have no idea,” he replied absently.

The door opened. Tony came in, flipping his phone shut. “Max needs to talk to you again. It’s going to take a while.”

“We’ll go home.” He got up, pausing to smile down at Sara. “Get better. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Thanks,” she said.

He shrugged. “We’re family.”

He went out with Tony and closed the door behind him.

Max was not happy to learn that Jared was keeping company with some sick girl in the little hick town.

“You need your head read,” she muttered on the phone. “You’ve got enough problems without adding a penniless, clinging cowgirl to them.”

“She’s not a cowgirl,” he replied. “She sells books.”

“An egghead isn’t much better,” she scoffed. “They want you to come back out here and let them give you around-the-clock security.”

“We’ll never catch the perpetrators if we hide in a fortress,” he said. “And we’ve had this damned argument before!”

“Somebody’s getting testy,” she purred. “No pillow talk down there, I guess?”

“What do you want?” he interrupted.

She hesitated. “I wanted to tell you that they’ve tracked three men as far as San Antonio. We’re not sure if they’re connected to the other, or not, but they’re the right nationality.”

“What’s their cover?”

“How should I know?” she muttered.

“I pay you to know everything,” he countered.

“Oh, all right, I’ll ask questions. Honestly, Jared, you’re getting to be a grouch. What’s this girl doing to you?”

“Nothing,” he said tersely. “She’s just a friend.”

“You’re spending a lot of time at the hospital.”

“Neither of us has family,” he said absently. “We decided we’d look after each other if we got sick.”

The pause was heated. “You know I’d take care of you if you got sick! I’d have doctors and nurses all over the place.”

Of course she would, he thought. She’d hire people to care for him, but she wouldn’t do it herself. Max hated illness.

“I’m tired and I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“I’m flying down there Monday,” she told him. “I’ll bring some contracts for you to look over. Need anything from the big city?”

“Nothing at all. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay. Sleep well.”

“Sure.” He hung up. Max was possessive of him. He hadn’t noticed it before, and he didn’t like it. She was sleek, elegant, aggressive and intelligent. But she did nothing for him physically. He did have occasional liaisons, but never with Max. He hoped she wasn’t going to come down to Texas and upset things. He knew that she wasn’t going to like Sara. Not at all.

Monday morning, Sara was on the mend. Dee had come twice, on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, bearing baskets of flowers and magazines for Sara to read. She absolutely forbade her to come back to work until the end of the next week. That made Sara feel a little better. She knew Dee was shorthanded when she wasn’t there.

Jared had been back to visit, staying for a few minutes at a time, with Tony always in the background. She wondered why he needed a full-time bodyguard. He changed the subject every time she asked.

Dr. Coltrain released her after lunch. She was wheeled out to the hospital entrance, where Jared was waiting in the big black pickup truck. He bent and lifted her like a sack of flour, putting her gently into the passenger seat and belting her in.

She didn’t expect the sudden rush of breath that escaped her lips when he paused in the act of fastening the seat belt and looked straight into her eyes at point-blank range. She felt the world shift ten degrees. His eyes narrowed and dropped to her blouse.

It didn’t take an expert to realize that he saw her heartbeat shaking the fabric and knew that she was attracted to him.

“Well, well,” he murmured in a deep, sultry tone. And he smiled.