If he thought he could punch a man through a telephone wire... “Like I said, the doctor will call if she has any more questions.” And he hung up the phone as fast as he could before he said something that would get their lab report lost in paperwork limbo.
“Campy. E. Coli. Campy.” Madeline was repeating to herself, so softly that it sounded like she was just breathing. “Campy.”
“Yeah. That.” He pulled out the chair she was sitting in and crouched down in front of her. “Is that good?”
“It’s...a...bacteria.” She was averaging one completed blink an hour, and each word seemed to take about half of what she had left.
“And you gave everyone antibiotics.” She’d done the right thing, as she’d put it. She’d made the right call.
“Yeah.” Her head moved, and he saw that her eyes—still wide—were all shiny.
She was about to start crying.
He had to get her out of here. She was done, toast, stick a fork in her, and anything else she said or did right now would only come back to embarrass her. “Clarence. The lab said it was campylo-something and E. coli.”
“Shit,” the big man whistled to himself. Some of the kids giggled—the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “Campy. I’ll be...” Clarence shot a warning look at the kids, “…darned.” They all whined in disappointment.
Rebel didn’t like being the only one in the room who didn’t know what was going on—it was a foreign feeling, to say the least. But he couldn’t care about that right now. “Listen. I’m taking her home and putting her to bed.”
Clarence looked at him, at the kids in the beds and at the new, pitiful patients. Rebel thought he seemed a little anxious. Talk about a foreign feeling—Clarence never looked anxious.
Rebel sighed as he pulled Madeline to her feet. Her knees buckled, and he was forced to sweep her off her feet in full view of everyone. What the hell. If things were going to be more permanent around here, this was as good a place to start as any. “Give me an hour or so to get her cleaned up. I’ll come back.” She wouldn’t miss him while she was passed out. He just had to be there when she woke up.
“Thanks, man,” Clarence called after him as he carried Madeline out to her Jeep. She didn’t even flinch when he whistled for Blue Eye to follow them
And then he took her home.
Chapter Seventeen
Madeline had the nagging feeling she should be doing something—something besides chasing a rabbit down his hole. She’d been having strange chase dreams the whole night, but as she lay in bed in the limbo of not awake and not asleep, the only one she could remember was of Alice in Wonderland. She’d been wearing her costume from trick-or-treating when she was seven, but she’d chased that damned rabbit all over the rez. That was all she had, though. Alice in Wonderland and something to do.
God, what was it? She knew she had something she needed to get up and do, but her eyelids were not responding. Nothing was responding. She tried to say something—tried to tell herself to get out of bed—but she couldn’t even manage a mumble. And attempting to swing her legs out of bed was even less productive. No, it seemed she had no choice but to lie there and continue drifting.
Still, that something itched at her—if only she could remember what it was. That does it, she thought with growing impatience. I am waking up. Right now. That’s an order.
Which, actually, didn’t turn out to be right now. Even concentrating all of her effort, waking up was more like climbing underwater stairs in the dark. A long set of underwater stairs.
Finally, her eyelid—just one, the left one—opened. An amber glow made the ceiling of her little cabin look like a magnificent dome of some cathedral. The brightness of the room popped the other eyelid open for her. An amber glow? The sun didn’t hit this side of the house until late in the evening. Her heart picked up the pace, which was enough to get the rest of her moving. She managed to get her head turned to the clock. What the hell time was it?
6:10. As in, 6:10 in the evening. As in, 6:10 at night.
She swung her feet over the bed and shook her head. It didn’t help. She should be doing something? Holy hell, she should be at work! She’d slept through work? How did she sleep through the entire day? It was Monday, for God’s sake. It’s not like she could just...sleep...through...
Monday. The lab.
And from there, her brain filled in the blanks like it had just been waiting for the word go.
The phone call. Nelly, sick. Everyone sick. Rebel and supplies. Jesse and Nelly. The phone call.
She kept coming back to that call. As her eyes did their best to operate at the same speed, she was fully aware that she might have dreamed the whole thing. But she had the word campy ricocheting around her brain. Campy. If it had been campylobacter, then she’d done the right thing. And everyone would be okay.
She pinched herself, but nothing changed. Except that she noticed the straw cowboy hat hanging off her dining room chair, and then the pair of black cowboy boots next to the door. A mug, still steaming, was on the table. She managed to get on her feet and took a cautious sniff. Tea. Warm tea.
She wasn’t alone.
“Morning, Madeline.” The voice coming from the front porch made her jump. That was why her ceiling looked so lit up. The front door was open. “Or should I say evening?”
Rebel was here. Rebel was waiting for her.
She bent over to pick up her mug and noticed that she was wearing a T-shirt—and nothing else. It barely skimmed her thighs. Her hands flew to her hair—it was a gnarly, knotted mass of scratchy craziness that made Medusa seem well-styled. There was no doubt about it. She’d gone to bed with wet hair.
Rebel was here, and she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and had funky hair. It was dinner time on a Monday, and she couldn’t remember leaving work.
What the hell was going on?
There was only one way to find out. But she was doing it with her pants on.
A few minutes later, she cautiously crept out onto the porch, mug in hand. Her head hummed in protest as the full force of the sunset hit her, but she ignored it. Instead, she focused all her attention on the man on her porch. Rebel was kicking back in her recliner, his bare feet up on the railing as he watched another jeweled sunset settle over the land. He had a mug of his own in his hand, and his hair hung loose around his shoulders.
The sight of him tried its hardest to take her breath away. In the amber glow of light, he was hot. Unfairly hot. It wasn’t right of him to look so damn good, all proud and noble and intelligent and caring and out-and-out sexy on her porch. Getting her all worked up for nothing didn’t do anyone any good anymore.
“What are you doing here?” Excellent. Bitchy. Well, maybe that beat swooning or confused babbling. She could at least pull off bitchy. She went with it. He didn’t have a right to look that good on her porch. He’d walked away, remember? He’d walked right out the door. Waiting for her on her porch—like he always did on Friday nights before they went camping—that was just being cruel.
“Waiting for you to wake up.” His eyes didn’t leave the sunset as he sipped at his tea.
She supposed she should count her lucky stars he was waiting outside. “Why?”
“Wanted to make sure you were okay.” Finally, he looked at her—all of her. His eyes started at her bare feet and worked their way over her jeans, then the T-shirt, to her insane mop of hair. Her nipples tightened under his gaze, and she wished she’d taken the time to put on a damn bra. Finally, he settled on her face, and a slow grin took hold of his mouth.
She knew that look. He liked what he saw, and he wanted to see some more. She tried to cross her arms over her pointy chest and just missed dumping tea down her front. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.” Which was patently not true, but to hell with him.
“Sure are,” he drawled with another once-over.
Okay, it was now officially past the time that she took control of this situation and got to the bottom of all this. “What happ
ened? How long have I been asleep? How did I get home? Is everyone okay? Why didn’t I go to work today?”
The grin faded away. “I didn’t think you’d remember all of it.”
“Well, start talking.” Keeping one hand over her traitorous breasts, she took a sip of her tea. The sweet warmth rolled down into her stomach, so she took a bigger sip. Her brain already felt perkier. He did make good tea. “What’s going on?”
“Everyone’s fine. You were at work today, until just after eight thirty this morning, when you passed out after I got off the phone with the lab. I brought you home, got you cleaned up and tucked in, and went back to help Clarence. The kids are all fine,” he repeated with more insistence this time.
She hadn’t dreamed it—any of it. Well, maybe just the Alice in Wonderland part. “You got me cleaned up?” That sounded bad. That sounded like being naked—in the shower—with him. That sounded like he’d put her in a T-shirt—and nothing else.
Damn this man. All of him. Even the parts that took care of her.
“Trust me, you needed a good scrubbing, but you weren’t exactly up to it yourself. Don’t worry. I already took care of your clothes. Clarence washed them for you at the clinic.”
A good scrubbing. And he took care of her clothes? She hadn’t been wearing any panties. What the hell else had he been taking care of? She was positive she was blushing as brightly as the sunset, but she refused to care. “All the kids are fine?” Yes. That’s right. She was much more concerned about her smallest patients right now than the fact that her nipples were trying to break through the T-shirt.
“Clarence sent most of them home. Nelly’s still there.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Jesse’s pulling the night shift again.”
She slammed her mug down onto the railing. “I’ve got to go. What the hell am I doing standing around looking at you? I’ve got to get to work.” She tried to hurry back into the cabin, but something held her back.
Not something—someone. Rebel had grabbed hold of the arm that wasn’t acting as a nipple shield.
“Madeline, relax. She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. You did the right thing.”
“But I should—”
“No, you should stay here, eat dinner and get a little more rest. What was it Clarence said?” He went through the motions of scratching his head like he was really thinking about it, but as far as Madeline was concerned, he was doing a shitty job of humoring her. “Oh, yeah. You’re on call. Jesse’s got your number if the smallest thing gets out of hand.”
She tried to jerk out of his hand, but he was having none of it. “But—but—but—”
“No buts. We called Tim, who brought in this CSI guy from the state troopers. He collected the samples and marked all the evidence and took it to be processed. The trooper said they were gonna get a warrant for the rancher’s property too. The law is taking this seriously, Madeline, and that’s because of you. You got those test results back in three days. The CSI guy was impressed at how organized everything was. You did your job better than anyone else could have.”
“Really?” She was tempted not to believe him. Someone from off the rez had come and taken things seriously? It never happened.
Wait. She’d come from the outside. She’d taken things seriously by just doing her job.
Rebel nodded in agreement, a knowing smile on his face. “Now you need to let Jesse do his. He’s Nelly’s father, after all.”
Well, hell, she couldn’t argue with that. And, if she was remembering things correctly, Jesse had done a fine job of keeping the kids clean and calm. She looked down at Rebel’s hand, which was loosely circling her wrist. And, damn that man, his thumb was stroking her skin. “I’m not happy about this.”
He froze and then pulled his hand back. “Which part? The part where you single-handedly saved several lives? The part where you guessed right about the campy and E. coli thing?” He swallowed. “Or the part about me?”
You. The part about you. But strangely, she couldn’t put a finger on exactly which part of the part about him bothered her. The fact that he was here? Maybe that was it. Maybe. “Why are you here?” she repeated, taking a step away from him and his long arms and strong hands.
He finished his tea and stood. Automatically, she took another step away. Instinctively, she knew a close Rebel was a dangerous Rebel.
“I want to apologize. To you.”
Of course, he was plenty dangerous without touching her. Her heart did that weird lurching thing, but she ignored it. “All right, then. You can apologize.”
One corner of his mouth notched up. “I know I can. May I?”
Damn this man, she thought. But that was as far as she got.
“I’m sorry, Madeline. I acted like an… Well, a real asshole about that phone call.”
The lurching thing got stronger. “Yes,” she managed to get out. “You did.” She wanted to tell him apology accepted, and since they all agreed she was fine, he could just get the hell off her porch. But she couldn’t. He was still standing before her, shifting his hips back and forth as he didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath.
“And you were right.” He took another small step toward her—but, given the overall tininess of her porch, it was more than enough to back her into the corner. “I, of all people, should know about faking it.”
She couldn’t get anything out. Which was just as well. If she’d opened her mouth, she might have started squeaking or something equally undignified.
“I know who you really are,” he went on, politely ignoring her silence. “I know that wasn’t the real you, and I know you were doing that for me. For me.”
She was being the bitch, remember? An apology was one thing, but the way he was slowly closing in on her made it clear that he thought a simple apology wasn’t enough. And it wasn’t. It was time to be the bitch.
“Is that so? When did this blinding revelation hit you? Because it sure didn’t have you over here for three days. Three days, Rebel. And I don’t want to hear the crap about you not used to being certain places at certain times.”
He closed his eyes and nodded in a way that struck her as tired. “You aren’t going to like the answer.”
Did she like any part of this? “Try me.”
“I was in the sweat lodge. Albert told me to get my shit together.”
There was a small chance she was still in bed, still dreaming, because in the normal world, dead grandfathers did not tell Traditional Masters of Fine Arts to get their shit together. But if she knew anything, it was that the rez wasn’t the normal world. And the hell of it was, she actually did believe him—a little, anyway. “Oh? And did he tell you to apologize?”
“Nope. I had to figure that out myself.” The color on his cheeks deepened as he took another step forward. “I’m not too smart. It took me a few days.”
“It took you a few days to figure out how to say you’re sorry?” She took two quick steps past him. At least she wasn’t in the corner anymore, but she wasn’t sure if she should make a break for the house—he’d just follow her in—or head off the porch. Which would not be a victory since it was her damn porch.
“No.” The quick, solid way he said it pulled her up short. “It took me a few days to figure out how to make it up to you. And then,” he said as he reached around to his back pocket. For a split second, Madeline was afraid he’d pull out a ring. Instead, he grabbed a sheaf of papers. “There was that whole medical crisis. I’d been planning on coming up to see you Sunday afternoon, hoping you wouldn’t pull a gun on me, but I had this dream that night...” He trailed off as he began smoothing the papers out. “I had to get to the clinic. And the clinic is no place to make a formal apology.”
Make it up to her? Without a ring? She shook her head. She didn’t want his ring. Rings were just things. She didn’t want things. She wanted him. “And?” she said, trying to bitch her way through this, because this wasn’t what she’d expected. He wasn’t groveling, and h
e wasn’t begging, and he wasn’t telling her that she was making the biggest mistake of her life. He was being his regular old self.
Not dreaming, she realized. If she were dreaming, they’d be naked in a river.
His smile was cautious. “You don’t wear jewelry. So I had to get something better.” And he handed her the paper.
This made no sense, none whatsoever. She was looking at a flyer that had a trailer—scratch that, a modular home, the flyer said—on it, with a happy family sitting on a porch. At the top, a small square of paper was stapled to the flyer. “What is this?” Even as the words left her mouth, she realized what the small square was. It was a receipt. For nine thousand dollars.
“A house.”
“You bought a house?” All she could do was stare at him.
And he was grinning away at her. “I bought you a house. With a porch.”
“You bought me a house?”
“Actually, I bought us a home.”
Us. Home. That was all she heard. Us. Home.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he went on, again ignoring her carp-mouthed silence. “I’ve been thinking that a man could get used to indoor plumbing and coffee that makes itself. A man could get used to soft mattresses and warm blankets.”
He was going to stay. It wasn’t even January, and he was going to stay. That lurching thing was going to knock her to her knees.
“And I’ve been thinking. A porch—that’s like being outside, only with one wall. Hell, give a man a comfortable chair and a porch is even better.”
“A home?” Excellent. She was squeaking.
“We could still go camping when it’s nice.” He closed the distance between them with one step and pried her hands loose from the flyer. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crushing it against her chest. “Besides, I think your pipes are going to freeze this winter.”
“Home?” Oh, this just got better. She was down to one word.
He set the flyer down on the recliner, and then his hands were around her waist. “I made a down payment, but they said we could come back and pick out a different model, if you wanted. It doesn’t matter to me, just as long as it’s got a porch.” He touched his forehead to hers and tilted her head back. “Just as long as it’s got you.”
Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 Page 24