Читать книгу A Cowboy Christmas: Snowbound Christmas / Falling for the Christmas Cowboy - Linda Goodnight - Страница 15

Chapter Five

Cold rain battering her uncovered head, Kristen darted from the doctor’s office to the parking lot. Her run wasn’t her usual 10K pace, but with the boot officially gone, she’d be back up to speed in a few weeks.

Inside the car, she wiggled her foot. It seemed like a lifetime since she’d been able to wear a real shoe. Even though the shoes were nursing clogs, they were way better than the heavy boot.

She couldn’t wait to show Caleb. Greg, too, of course. And her family. They’d all be thrilled. Not just Caleb.

The fact that the cowboy was on her mind pretty much every waking moment gave her pause. They were spending a lot of time together. That was part of the reason. The other part was confusing. One moment, she thought he liked her. The next, he was backing away. She didn’t want to play the rejection game again.

They’d had a grand time on Caleb’s birthday, and the teasing had continued after another talk at the Oak Street Church two evenings ago. Underneath his reserve, Caleb was a great guy.

She started the car, cranked up the heat and the wipers. Slushy rain spit against her windshield. She frowned at it. Was that sleet? Or maybe snow? Tonight was Terri Bates’s baby shower. As one of the planners, she hoped they didn’t have to cancel. The cake was already made, the finger foods ordered and the guest list confirmed.

Her cell phone jingled. She fished it from her bag and answered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I’m just checking on you, sugar. The weather is supposed to get bad.”

“I know, but I still have patients to see.”

“How many?”

“Two who are essential. The others can be delayed or rescheduled if necessary. Right now, it’s only slushy rain.”

“Slushy rain brings freezing rain. The meteorologist is predicting a major ice storm. You know how dangerous that can be.”

Oklahoma ice storms were terrifying. Last year, six traffic fatalities occurred during a single-day event.

“Hopefully, the worst will hold off until after sundown when the temperature drops. By then, I’ll be safely home.” Making shower-cancelation calls to fifty people.

“Call or text when you get back to your apartment. You know I won’t relax or stop praying until you do.”

“Thanks, Mom. I appreciate the prayers, but don’t worry. I lived in the mountains long enough to know how to drive in bad weather.” Granted, Colorado mostly saw snow. No need to remind her mother of that.

“Remember the rules Dad taught you.”

Kristen smiled, but dutifully ticked off her dad’s ingrained instructions. “Drive slowly, especially on bridges and overpasses, and steer into a skid.”

“Preferably stay off the roads altogether. But if you do find yourself in an ice storm, stay wherever you are until it’s safe to drive or Dad comes to get you.”

“Will do, Mom. Thanks. I love you.” What would she do without her strong, supportive family?

“Be safe. I love you, too.”

She rang off and headed to her first patient, wipers flapping with the rhythm of the radio. The weather in Oklahoma was fickle. It might not do anything at all.

* * *

By the time she reached the Girard ranch, tension knotted Kristen’s shoulders. She leaned close to the windshield, squinting through the heavy, pounding onslaught of slushy rain.

“So much for hoping this would blow over,” she grumbled.

She prayed she’d be able to get Greg’s treatment in and get home before the storm strengthened.

As she parked her Honda, the front door of Caleb’s house opened and he stomped out. Head down, no coat, he jogged to the car and yanked the door open.

“Have you lost your mind?” He looked as dark and stormy as the skies.

Kristen stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you watch the weather? Turn around and go home right now while you can.”

“Your dad needs his treatment, as you well know.” He was starting to make her mad. “And I’m not leaving until he gets it.”

“That’s stupid. Pops wouldn’t want you to risk your life.” Fat drops of rain pummeled his head. She was tempted to do the same.

“I’m already here. And you aren’t well trained enough to do the treatment by yourself.” Hurt by his tone, she shoved her nursing bag into his gut and pushed past him to get out of the car. “Let’s do this, so I can get out of your way.”

She started up the rise, fueled by wounded annoyance and not caring if he remained out in the rain and cold until he turned into a Popsicle.

The silly notion cooled some of her anger. But she didn’t wait for him. She marched up on the porch, pushed open the wooden door and went right in, closing it behind her.

Take that, cowboy.

Before she could unwind her scarf, Caleb entered, dripping wet and puffing like a steam engine. He glared at her. She glared back. What was his problem? Was he already sick of her?

The collie rose from his spot by the fireplace and came to greet her. She rubbed his ears, trying to decide what to say to Caleb.

“I’ll get towels,” he said. From his expression, he’d probably strangle her with them. He plunked her nurse’s tote on a chair and left her alone with the dog.

“Grouch,” she said. Rip wagged his tail and looked sweet.

From the back of the house, an area she hadn’t seen, she heard male voices. One was quiet and soothing, the other hot and loud.

What was he so mad about?

She removed her coat and gloves, but they were wet, so she waited by the door. Rip waited with her, licking the moisture from her clogs.

Both Girard men entered the room together. Caleb didn’t look quite so thunderous. He’d dried off and his boots were missing.

He hadn’t even noticed that her boot was missing, too.

Pops took one look at her face and asked, “Did he bark at you?”

Kristen bent to pat the collie again. “No, he’s a sweet dog. He likes me.”

Pops snorted. “I meant Caleb.”

“Oh.” Her gaze flashed to the cowboy. “A little.”

“Don’t take it to heart. He fusses like an old hen because he’s worried about you. Does me that way all the time.”

“Pops.” Caleb shook his head and handed her a towel. “Warm from the drier.”

His tone was nicer.

“Thank you. This feels wonderful.”

She patted her face and hair, wiped off her coat and dabbed at her scrubs. Rip had taken care of her shoes. Caleb reached for her coat and she gave it to him. He hung it on the back of a chair close to the fire. Was that his form of an apology?

“Beastly out there, huh?” Pops said. “You want some coffee? You like cocoa better, don’t you? Caleb, make her some cocoa.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said. Caleb was grumpy enough. No use ordering him to make refreshments. He’d likely blow a fuse.

Naturally, the cowboy ignored her protest and went into the kitchen. She could see him from the open-concept living room, moving around, taking down the ingredients for hot chocolate. He opened the fridge. Took out milk. Clunked a pan against the metal burner.

Then, and only then, did he look at her, his expression unreadable. “Get going on Pops’s treatment, so you can get out of here.”

Okay. Fair enough. Like Pops said, he was concerned about the weather.

His motive might be good, but his delivery needed work.

“You need to be in on the instructions,” she said.

Caleb shot her a frosty look and turned off the burner with a heavy sigh. She ushered Pops into the bedroom, where he relaxed in his recliner while they went through the protocol. Caleb kept looking from the machine to the window and back again. Maybe he was afraid of storms?

When the machine was set to run for the next few hours, she handed Greg the remote and put a stack of magazines at his elbow. “Need anything else?”

“If I do, I’ll holler. Go on and have that cocoa.”

Caleb went ahead of her to the kitchen. The ingredients were in the pot. All he had to do was turn on the stove.

Kristen leaned a hip against the counter and faced him. The kitchen was small, and they were close.

She could see the outline of his whiskers, which had darkened with the day. Masculine. Attractive. She swallowed, looked down and watched his competent, cowboy hands as he prepared the hot drink. He worked without much thought, a man accustomed to caring for himself.

A frisson of pity surprised her. Caleb had cared for himself basically all his life. No mama or daddy to guide him the way she’d had. No one to call and make sure he was safe in a storm. No one to come to his rescue or kiss his boo-boos or listen to his dreams. Yet behind the gruff exterior, he’d become a good, steady man, fiercely loyal to the one person who’d treated him well. And Mom claimed he spent his Saturday mornings with a group of troubled teens, the way Pops had done for him.

A chunk of her heart melted.

He handed her a cup of steaming chocolate. A handful of mini marshmallows floated on top, the way she liked it.

She sipped, watching him over the top of her cup.

He sipped his, returning her stare.

Neither spoke for a long time.

Only the click of the dialysis monitors and Rip’s gentle snore broke the silence. It was a surprisingly comfortable silence. Eye to eye, sipping at the sweet liquid in the warm, cozy kitchen while, outside, winter tormented the earth.

When she sipped and came up with a marshmallow mustache, Caleb lips tilted. He handed her a paper towel. “I owe you an apology.”

“It’s okay.”

“Pops was right. I bark when I’m worried. It’s getting nasty outside.”

“The drive out here wasn’t too bad.”

“That’s changing rapidly.” He hitched his head toward the outdoors. “Look outside.”

Kristen set her cup on the counter and went to the double windows in the living room. Caleb followed, standing close enough that his leather-and-woods scent circled around her, heady.

“Oh, no.”

Sleet pounded the earth, already turning the yard white.

“That’s not snow.”

Snow, she could handle. “Do you think the roads are freezing over yet?”

“The ground was already frozen. Add freezing rain and then sleet and you’re looking at roads of solid ice.”

Tension sprang up in Kristen’s shoulders. Driving home in the dark in an ice storm could spell disaster.

* * *

Caleb had one nerve cell left and it was sparking like a broken highline.

Having Kristen here in his house day after day was both glorious and awful. He was like a puppy, eager to see her but terrified of being kicked.

The woman had a boyfriend. But ever since his talk with Pops, Caleb kept imagining Kristen in a lacy wedding gown.

Now here she was in the flesh, and he kept having the same vision. Only the wedding wasn’t for her and some rich doc. It was for him and her, followed rapidly by a breath-grabbing vision of her rocking his baby in a wooden rocker with a sweet Madonna smile on her lips.

He was going seriously nuts.

To add to his torment, curtains of sleet hammered his house and gave no sign of letting up.

To make one final check of the animals, he left the house, Rip at his side, while R2-D2 filtered Pops’s blood. He slipped a few times, almost fell. Once he went down but managed to grab the shed door and pull himself back to his feet. He went inside the small shed to test-fire the generator. Just in case.

He started back to the house, shocked at how much the conditions had deteriorated since he’d first come outside. Ice pellets sluiced down the collar of his coat. Sleet stung his cheeks. He shivered, moving as fast as he could without taking another tumble.

They were in for a doozy of an ice storm. He had to get Kristen home. Fast.

By the time Greg’s treatment was complete, the TV on the wall was warning motorists to stay off the roads.

“You need to get out of here,” he told Kristen.

She frowned at the windows. “That bad?”

“Vicious.”

He helped her gather her supplies, stewing, thinking. Was it safe for her to drive?

Greg had followed them into the living room. He stood at the front windows. “Looks too treacherous, Kristen. Maybe you ought to stay here until this settles down.”

Caleb’s heart slammed against his rib cage. Yes. No!

He wasn’t the sort of man who encroached on another man’s territory. Having Kristen under his roof any longer than it took to do the treatments would kill him...as in hammer him in the head dead. He’d implode like one of those buildings loaded with dynamite. Only the dynamite inside him was all the words he wanted to say, the love he wanted to share.

“I’ll make it.” Kristen wound the plaid scarf around her pretty neck. “It’s not that far into town.”

Four miles might as well be a thousand on wet ice.

“Maybe I should drive you.”

She gave him one of those insulted, I-am-woman looks and exited the house.

With more misgivings than a debutante in a pigpen, Caleb watched from the porch. Sleet swirled up in his face, pitted his cheeks. His eyes burned from the cold.

She’d walked less than two yards when her vinyl clogs slipped. Her arms windmilled.

Bolting from the porch in one leap, he skidded behind her in time to stick out his arms, but not in time to brace his legs.

Kristen fell back against him. He circled her waist. His boots slipped.

They went down. Hard.

All he could feel was the frozen ground, Kristen’s puffy coat and the freezing rain melting against his scalp.

He battled to a stand, somehow bringing her up with him. The ground was slicker than a used-car salesman. Any second, one of them could unbalance the other and down they’d go.

“Are you hurt?” He turned her to face him.

“No.”

“What about your leg...” He looked down, suddenly realizing what was different about her today. “Your boot is gone.”

She huffed. “Took you long enough to notice.”

Was he supposed to notice?

Holding on to his arm, Kristen started toward her Civic again. They slipped, almost went down again.

She was starting to make him mad. Barking mad, as in worried. “It’s idiotic to think you can drive in this.”

She turned his arm loose and slid the rest of the way to the vehicle, slamming into the side. Holding on to the ice-covered car, she turned her head, glaring. “Are you calling me an idiot?”

Caleb’s shoulders heaved. He slid in next to her, using the car as support. His breath puffed white fog. The freezing rain was giving him hypothermia.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t like the idea of you out by yourself in this kind of weather. If you wreck or run off in a ditch—”

“I have a cell phone.”

Irritating, independent woman. “But no one will be able to get to you. Be sensible and let me drive you home.”

“What makes you think you can drive any better than me?”

When had she become so unreasonable? “My truck is heavy, a three-quarter-ton four-wheel drive. We stand a better chance of actually getting to town in it than in your lightweight car.”

She considered for less than a second. “My dad would agree with you.”

“One sensible Andrews anyway,” he grumbled. “I’ll bring the truck around. Wait inside your car out of this weather.”

He made his way up the rise to the carport. Driving in this weather was madness. But Kristen wanted to go home, and he wanted her safe and sound and out of his house. He yelled in the back door to let Pops know where he was going, got in his truck and drove carefully out to the road.

He waited while Kristen locked her car—as if some fool would be out burglarizing cars tonight—then slid her way to his truck, where she slammed into the side. Laughing. The crazy woman was laughing.

Nothing was funny to him right now.

He’d get out and open her door, but the truck would probably slide off on its own. Not a happy thought.

Using the overhead handle, she pulled herself up and into the cab, taking care, he noted, to keep her weight off the formerly broken leg.

“If I wasn’t trying to get home, the icy ground would be fun.”

“You’re not a rancher.” He’d probably have three babies tonight, all of them in danger of freezing to death in this wet, cold weather unless he stayed out in the barn with the mamas. “Buckle up and hold on.”

Once she was settled, he eased off the brake. Traction was limited, but the truck crawled forward.

They didn’t talk. Tension filled the cab. Caleb thought his shoulder muscles might snap in half.

Kristen leaned forward, staring out at the crystallized terrain as if her kryptonite eyes could melt the ice. Caleb focused on holding the truck on the road. No one else had driven this way since Kristen had come in. No tracks, no ruts, and the dirt and gravel had disappeared beneath a thick sheet of ice. Nothing to give him traction.

They’d traveled less than a quarter mile when he started up a small hill. The truck slowed to a crawl. He gently pressed the accelerator. All four wheels spun. The truck slipped to one side. Caleb eased off the gas pedal. And the truck began a slow, silent slide. Backward.

Caleb was helpless to stop it. One tap of the brakes and they’d be in a ditch or worse, upside down.

Holding the wheel, he did his best to stay on the road until gravity stopped them at the bottom of the hill.

Kristen looked at him with worried eyes. “I don’t think we can do this, Caleb.”

Suddenly, it hit Caleb like a brick to the face. The woman he couldn’t get out of his head or his heart, the woman who belonged to a Colorado doctor, was stranded in the ice storm. Maybe for days. With him.