Anytime Darlin’
Paramedic Jake McKenna drops to his knees beside the young woman. Beaten, starved, she's barely breathing, burning with fever. He stabilizes her, but when she opens her green eyes and stares, panic-stricken, into his, he realizes this is only the beginning of their relationship.
Devlin Barre has been through hell. If her uncle finds her, she's dead. When she looks into the warm brown eyes of the paramedic, she knows deep in her bones she can trust this man with her life. Devlin and Jake grow close, but, fearful of commitment, Devlin runs off to rebuild her life, leaving Jake heartbroken.
Five years later, Jake and Devlin meet again. Neither has forgotten a single detail of their time together. Both harbor the secret hope that they can begin again--this time, for keeps. But Devlin isn't the only person who ran off. Her uncle still waits for the right opportunity to get the one person who got away.
Note: This book contains rape of the heroine.
Genre: Contemporary/Romantic Suspense/Western/Cowboys
Length: 80,570 words
ANYTIME DARLIN’
Julia Rachel Barrett
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
ANYTIME DARLIN’
Copyright © 2010 by Julia Rachel Barrett
E-book ISBN: 1-60601-352-1
First E-book Publication: August 2010
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter from Julia Rachel Barrett
Regarding Ebook Piracy
Dear Readers,
Many thanks to each and every one of you for purchasing this book from legal online bookstores who signed resale contracts with the publisher. Much hard work, dedication, and heart went into Anytime, Darlin’. Please feel free to share your opinion, but encourage your friends to buy the book from legitimate Web sites. When e-book pirates upload or download these books to and from file sharing sites where there is no respect for copyrighted materials, it hurts the livelihood of many who write and produce these books.
With deep gratitude,
Julia Rachel Barrett
DEDICATION
Anytime Darlin’ is the first romance I wrote. The story of Devlin and Jake holds a special place in my heart. My thanks to Siren for taking a chance on a farm girl and her cowboy.
ANYTIME DARLIN’
JULIA RACHEL BARRETT
Copyright © 2010
Chapter One
January 29, 1980
Devlin shivered behind the dumpster. She hugged her legs tighter as the wind howled down the alley, blowing grit into her eyes and sending trash flying. Every bone, every muscle, every joint in her body ached. She needed food, she needed warm clothes, and she needed shelter. She toyed with the idea of simply falling asleep. It would be so much easier to give up, but as her mother used to say, “Everything wants to live.”
Groaning, Devlin pushed herself to her feet and considered her plan. If it worked, she’d have a coat, a pair of gloves, and maybe a warmer hat. Then she could think about stealing some food. If it didn’t work, she’d end up in a warm detention facility where they’d feed her. Devlin figured it was a win-win situation.
She’d used a rock to break the single bulb above the back entrance, and when the cleaning crew pulled up half an hour later, Devlin had been hiding in the shadows. The crew consisted of three men and a woman. The woman complained that she was afraid to walk back and forth to the van in the dark, so they’d propped the access door open with a stool. A square of light spilled out of the door, illuminating the side of the van.
Devlin edged around the vehicle and peered cautiously into the doorway, searching for any sign of movement. Though she could hear the dim sound of a floor polisher, she didn’t see anyone near the open door. Hugging the wall, she slid into the store, treading softly in her ragged tennis shoes, keeping to the shadows. Suddenly, Devlin was enveloped by warmth, and she lingered in a dark corner beneath a heating vent. Closing her eyes for just a moment, Devlin surrendered to her fatigue. She’d been in the alley for two days, with only newspapers and cardboard boxes for cover. The warm air felt so good.
The corner where Devlin crouched was screened by stacks of merchandise waiting to be shelved. Since she was unlikely to be spotted by the cleaning crew, Devlin decided that a nap wouldn’t hurt. If she got locked in the store, it would be okay. She could sneak out the back tomorrow when they opened up. And once the cleaning crew left, she’d have the store to herself. She wondered briefly if the store had security cameras, but then decided it wouldn’t matter because she’d be gone before anyone looked at the tapes. Studying the merchandise nearby, Devlin chose an oversized stuffed bear from a storage shelf and sprawled across it on the linoleum floor. Within minutes, she fell asleep.
* * * *
“Angie! Angie, get over here!”
Devlin heard it in her dreams. The voice was harsh.
“AAAAnnnnnggggiiieee!”
Somebody in her dream was yelling in a very unpleasant manner. Devlin wished she would hurry and wake up, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to move.
A woman’s voice interrupted the screeching. “What?” it demanded, sounding quite irritated. “What is it, Brad?”
“Look,” said the first voice.
With that word, Devlin felt a painful poke in her ribs. The toe of a boot had definitely poked her in the ribs. She must be dreaming, because she couldn’t get away from the poking.
“What the heck?” came the woman’s voice. “How the heck did he get in here?”
I’m not a he, Devlin tried to say, but nothing came out. Get in where, she wondered. A hand shook her, hard.
“Hey, get up,” demanded the woman’s voice. “Get up, kid, and get outta here before I call the cops. C’mon, wake up.”
“I can’t wake him up,” the woman’s voice said.
“Jesus! He’s not dead, is he?” asked the other voice, the annoying voice.
“No, but I can’t wake him up. Maybe he’s on drugs or something. Go get the manager, Brad, now. Get the manager now.” The woman, whoever she was, sounded upset.
In the midst of the dream, Devlin felt someone remove her baseball cap. She tried to muster the energy to tug it back down, but her arms were as heavy as lead, and nothing seemed to move. Her long hair spilled around her face. If she’d been awake, Devlin might have cried, but instead she thought she heard herself mumble something that sounded vaguely like the word “no.” She wasn’t sure she’d actually said it aloud.
A cool hand touched her forehead, and Devlin heard a hiss and a muttered “She’s burning up.” After hearing those words and wondering briefly who was burning up, the cacophony of voices suddenly became louder. Devlin decided it was simply too much trouble to figure out exactly who was who in her very peculiar dream, so she stopped listening and drifted back the way she had come.
* * * *
Jake McKenna was in the midst of stuffing his clothes into an overnight bag when the call came in for the ALS unit. Shit. Wouldn’t you know it? Nothing for four hours, then thirty minutes left in his shift and a call comes in about an unresponsive kid in a Kmart. Probably another OD. Methamphetamine or heroin. There was a lot of bad stuff on the street right now. He and Lou scrambled toward the back of the ambulance while Kyle and Leanne hit the front.
“You guys got everything?” Kyle called back from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, she’s all ready,” replied Jake, “just stocked her up.” He turned to Lou. “Hand me the IV kit and a thousand-cc bag of normal saline.”
“Need the O2, I’m assuming,” replied Lou, handing Jake a large black bag. “Hey, you want the cardiac kit? If it’s heroin, we might need the cardiac kit.”
“Yeah, grab it just in case,” Jake responded. He felt his heartbeat speed up, like it always did on these runs. “Anybody know anything about this kid?”
Leanne responded, “Teenager. Found down in the back room of a Kmart. No history. No witnesses. No ID.”
“Male? Female?”
“Don’t know yet. Guess we’ll find out soon enough. Mike’s already on the scene.”
The South Broadway crew was proud of their response time, under five minutes in most cases. Kmart was only a couple of miles down the road, and Kyle drove an ambulance like some high-speed concept car on the Indy 500 track. Jake rolled his eyes at Lou. They both wondered how Kyle could be so damn good and so damn reckless at the same time. But a minute or two could make a huge difference when it came to saving lives, so nobody ever complained. They edged around the cop car and pulled up to the back entrance in just under two minutes.
Jake and Lou swung the doors open and hopped out the back as Kyle and Leanne exited the front. Mike Jones met them at the door.
“What ya got for us, Mike?” asked Kyle, grabbing the portable oxygen canister.
Mike shrugged. “Young girl. No ID. Can’t wake her up. The manager’s a pain in the ass, wanted me to drag the kid out to my patrol car, but the stockroom supervisor claims the kid’s feverish. Looks starved too.”
“Any chance it’s a drug overdose?” asked Lou as he and Jake followed the police officer into the stockroom.
“Can’t tell, maybe. Runaway probably. No recent missing persons report that match her description. I already checked it out.”
Using the long stride that he reserved for calls, Jake outpaced Mike and with an unerring sixth sense skirted a pallet stacked to the ceiling with merchandise. He somehow knew the girl would be behind it. Jake dropped to his knees at her side, slipping the bag from his shoulder. He flipped the lid open with a click, taking in the scene with a quick glance. A young girl, pale. Her respirations were shallow, rapid. Mike was right. She was very thin. Jake wondered if she bought drugs instead of food, and he hoped not. An older woman cradled the girl’s head in her lap.
“She’s hot,” she said, concern evident in her voice. “Feel her. She’s burning up.”
Jake glanced up. “I will, ma’am, thank you, but I need you to move back a little.”
Lou was already putting an oxygen mask over the girl’s mouth and nose. He cranked it up to four liters. Lou tried waking her, but got no response. Jake could hear Kyle and Mike in the background, keeping the irate manager occupied.
“Jake, help me cut off the sweatshirt. I need a better vein. Skin turgor’s really bad,” commented Leanne, grabbing a pair of scissors out of her bag.
Jake lifted the girl slightly off the floor, and he and Leanne began to cut through her Denver Broncos sweatshirt and then her threadbare tee shirt. She moaned softly. The older woman, still sitting near the girl’s head, sucked in her breath.
“Jeez, it looks like she’s been dragged down the street!” she exclaimed.
“Shit,” said Jake, “shit, shit. Mike, Kyle, get over here now.”
“I gotta find a vein,” interjected Leanne. “She’s real dry.”
Kyle reached them first. “Shit.”
Mike whistled. “Goddamn.” “How bad is she?”
“Let you know in a minute. Lou,” said Jake. “Hand me those electrodes, and look on that other arm for a vein.”
Jake applied the electrodes to her chest and flipped on the portable EKG machine. After a quick glance at her heart rhythm, he began a systematic head-to-toe assessment while Kyle radioed each finding back to the ER. Jake felt sick as he stripped her and ran his hand over every single bruise and abrasion, checking for broken bones and possible internal injuries, anything they might make worse by moving her carelessly. The girl had been badly beaten. Her back was scraped raw, and there were thick purple wheals around both wrists. Her left side was swollen and covered with bruises. From the feel of things, Jake suspected at least a couple of broken ribs. He didn’t find needle marks—her arms and legs were clean. This wasn’t likely to be a drug overdose. Leanne and Lou got the IV started, and Jake sighed with relief as fluids began flowing. The EKG showed a normal sinus rhythm, but she was tachycardic, and the woman was right. She was hot. Her axillary temp was 103.4. Her lungs sounded congested. Probably pneumonia. Jake suspected she’d been outdoors for several days, probably guarding her respirations because of the rib pain, which meant she was a sitting duck for pneumonia.
Mike cleared his throat. “He was wearing wafflestompers. Look at the marks on her thigh.”
They stared in silence.
Then Jake broke it. “Let’s move it, people.”
Kyle and Lou wheeled in the gurney, and the four of them lifted the girl. As they laid her down, her eyes flew open. Jake was by her head, looking right at her. He started. Her eyes were unexpected, aquamarine with flecks of gold, wide and slightly almond-shaped, and when she lowered her lids, he noticed the long lashes that cast faint shadows on her pale cheeks. Her eyes opened again and sought his. Jake was surprised by the intensity in her gaze. He saw confusion mingled with pain and a flat-out panic, the kind of panic one would find in a cornered animal.
Jake felt a hand wrap around his as he pushed the gurney.
“It’s okay, darlin’. It’s okay. We’ll take care of you. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
He thought her panic increased for a moment, but then she nodded, and he could tell she understood him.
“You got a name, sweetheart?”
She closed her eyes again and shook her head.
“C’mon, everybody’s got a name. It’s all right. You can tell me, sweetheart. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“Dev,” she said after a moment, her voice so soft beneath the mask that he almost missed it. “Devlin.”
“Devlin, I’m Jake, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Suddenly the hand in his went rigid and the rapid respirations turned to gasps.
“Heart rate increasing!” called Leanne, “One-sixty a minute!”
“Lou.” Jake spoke with deliberate calm. “Give me an ET tube now, and get the Ambu bag.”
Jake and Lou worked fast and had the girl intubated before Kyle could even put the vehicle in gear. Mike slammed the ambulance doors shut.
“I’m right behind you,” he called.
* * * *
Nervous, Janice paced at the ER entrance. It had been a quiet night before they’d gotten the call from Kyle just at the change of shift. She agreed to stay over and lend a hand, as the usual daytime ER inflow of sore throats, headaches, and chest pain had already begun. Besides, if Kyle called in, then Jake would be with him. She hadn’t spoken with Jake in a month. Since their breakup, he’d gone out of his way to avoid her, leaving the ER as soon as he’d reported off on a case. The breakup was her fault, she knew that, but she wanted to talk to him anyway. To ask how he was doing. Find out if he missed her. To see if there would be any hint in his voice or manner that might indicate he’d take her back. To see if, by any chance, he would look at her the way he used to, in the beginning. Janice missed that look.
She’d miscalculated badly. Jake planned to interview for a job in Missoula with the Bureau of Land Management. He’d gone off to visit his folks at their ranch near Big Timber and check in with his old search and rescue unit near the Bob Marshall Wilderness before the interview. He hadn’t asked her to go with him.
Janice knew she should have understood. Jake had ended up with a couple of extra days off, and it was a last-minute decision. The ER was short-staffed, and she couldn’t get away. He knew that. She knew that. But she wanted him to ask anyway. At least ask and let her decide, even if her decision was already obvious. So they’d fought, and he’d left in a rush. Just as quickly, she’d fallen into bed with the new ER doc. It was stupid and rash, and Janice didn’t mean it to go that far.
But, she was pissed off, and she wanted to hurt Jake. It had worked. Quite well, actually. Jake had been hurt and felt betrayed. It didn’t take long for the news to spread. Hospitals were not only a good place to breed germs, they were a hotbed of gossip. By the time Jake got home, everyone in the ER knew, and so did Jake’s paramedic team.
Barrett, Julia Rachel - Anytime Darlin' (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 1