Proud Mary

by Bette McNicholas

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Bette McNicholas

  Proud Mary

  Copyright

  Other Books by Bette McNicholas

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc. and other major retailers

  A feeling of sadness came over Carolina, thinking about the beauty she had missed because all she had seen during the eighteen years she lived there was that trailer, the creek that only had water during monsoon season, hard work, and the end of Carl’s leather belt. What a waste…

  And yet, she remembered struggling to remain happy and always trying to smile and be friendly to everyone she knew. By coming this far in her quest to find Carl and reconcile with him by offering her forgiveness, she began to see things differently. She began to appreciate the surroundings and enjoyed her budding relationship with Jenny. And maybe one day, Carolina Palmer would wonder whatever happened to Mary Fox, or would that be the other way around?

  Praise for Bette McNicholas

  “LOVE/FORTY, a romance set in the glamorous world of professional tennis brims with luscious details. Besides her early crash as an athlete, Mercedes and her brother had childhoods clouded by tragedy and heartbreak. Although the tone of the novel is breezy, it skillfully deals with the difficult subjects that cause the romance’s conflict. The breakthrough for both Mercedes and Dante during his championship match is handled with skill and suspense. Add sumptuous details of setting, food, scents, surroundings, paintings and you have an enchanting romance!”

  ~Eileen Charbonneau, author, Waltzing in Ragtime

  ~*~

  MEMORY’S EDGE, another Bette McNicholas story, received “Five Hearts!” from The Romance Studio.

  ~*~

  Ms. McNicholas received a Coffee Time Reviewers Recommended Award in recognition for outstanding writing “above and beyond.”

  Proud Mary

  by

  Bette McNicholas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Proud Mary

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Bette McNicholas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by RJ Morris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Yellow Rose Edition, 2019

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2459-3

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2460-9

  Published in the United States of America

  Other Books by Bette McNicholas

  available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Memory’s Edge

  Farragut Square

  Songs the Soldiers Sang

  Farragut North

  Whispers in the Wind

  Love/Forty

  Chapter One

  “Do you recognize this woman, Stede?”

  Perplexed, Stede Foster pushed back the brim of his black Stetson and knelt by the body, elbow resting on one knee as he balanced on the balls of his cowboy-booted feet. His Wranglers tugged at the belt loops, causing his hand-tooled leather belt to dip slightly in the back.

  “No. I’ve never seen her before,” he answered. “How did you happen to find her, Manny?”

  “After I finished putting the horses in the barn and made sure everything was ready for our trip tomorrow, I headed down the hill toward home, and saw her looking in the window of the trailer.”

  “You think she might be the owner?” Stede asked, carefully turning the woman over to examine her injuries.

  “Can’t rightly say. She took off running the minute she saw me, and before she made her way back to her car parked up on the shoulder of the highway, she slipped and fell down the incline, then I texted you.”

  “Well, whoever she is, she has a pretty bloody head wound. She’s unconscious but has a good pulse. Maybe there’s a small fracture in her ankle.”

  Stede lifted the lithe form in his arms, relieved she wasn’t conscious while he moved her. “Let’s get her inside and I’ll take a look at her injuries. Do me a favor, Manny, and run up to the house and ask Jenny to meet me in the examining room.”

  He didn’t want any more trouble from the woman in his arms than she’d already dumped on his plate and wanted a female witness for self-protection. Animals were easier to deal with; they didn’t have attorneys.

  ****

  The moment the cold ice pack penetrated the ACE bandage on her ankle, Carolina Palmer returned to consciousness. She wasn’t quite sure how much time had passed, but she knew she was safe now and in a hospital.

  The air smelled like antiseptic and the bright light above her was vaguely visible through her eyelids. How she’d gotten to the hospital, she didn’t know. She remembered tripping, and surmised from the way her body ached that Carl must have caught her and beat her for running away.

  What didn’t make sense was that when Carl used to beat her, he never took her to a doctor. Although he acted as if he didn’t care if anyone discovered the abuse he dealt her, he counted on that to temper her revealing the beatings. She often wore jeans and shirts with long sleeves because she was too ashamed to ever let anyone see the bruises she bore. He forever taunted her, calling her Proud Mary.

  Aware of movement around her, she heard snippets of conversation between a man and a woman speaking in whispers, but couldn’t decipher their exact words, and kept her eyes closed.

  “Well, Señor Doc, looks like you found yourself quite a stray,” the woman said, overstressing her Mexican accent. “Beautiful, too, no?”

  “Very funny,” rumbled a deep voice revealing a Texas accent that made Carolina wonder whether or not she was still in Arizona.

  “She won’t be wearing these shoes any time soon,” he said with sarcasm, as he tossed the one he had removed on the floor. “Why on earth would anyone poke around the desert wearing heels? Even a city woman ought to know scorpions and snakes are out there.”

  “Well, you’re certainly in a cheerful mood,” the woman responded.

  “You know, if you weren’t such a great nurse and cook, I’d have fired you a long time ago,” he teased.

  “Ha! Now that’s funny.”

  “Grab a couple of blankets out of the closet, please, and place them underneath her when I lift her off this cold table.”

  Carolina moaned even though the man held her gently when blankets were placed beneath her.

  “Can you open your eyes?” he asked.

  All she could mu
ster was another moan.

  “Wake up, honey,” Carolina heard the woman say, and then she felt a gentle nudge on her shoulder. “You all right, gal?”

  Carolina nodded and again tried to open her eyes. When she did, she quickly closed them and turned her head away from the light, wincing at the pain the motion caused. Using one arm as a shield against the light, she used her other hand to explore the pain’s source.

  She felt her arms being moved away from her eyes and when she opened them again, a man whose face was now inches from hers blocked out the light.

  A tanned face with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes with eyelashes that echoed the raven black of his thick though neatly combed hair greeted her, and for a moment she thought she had died and gone to heaven.

  As she was about to speak, he put a small instrument to his eye and turned on a light and looked into hers. She found his steady scrutiny less than impersonal, lying on her back with him leaning intimately over her.

  “Your pupils aren’t dilated; that’s a good sign. How do you feel?”

  His warm breath lightly fanned her moist skin and carried a hint of mint. Having a good-looking man instead of a disheveled drunk in her face, a man acting as her shield rather than her adversary, quietly asking about her welfare instead of yelling obscenities, was a pleasant surprise. Yet, she wasn’t sure this wasn’t the calm before the storm and wasn’t ready to place her trust in him no matter how solicitous he seemed.

  She answered guardedly, “All right.”

  Her automatic answer surprised her, but then, self-preservation had often required her to lie because of Carl. She glanced furtively around, not caring that she wasn’t pliant while he studied her pupils. “Where’s Carl?”

  “Carl?” He straightened, his brows creased, and he lifted the light away from her, and put away the tool he’d used to peer into her eyes, his motions careful and meticulous.

  “Yes, Carl.” To this day, the thought of referring to Carl as her father repulsed her. Mentioning him by his first name removed the intimacy of his ever having been her father and eased the pain she suffered through fear and trembling.

  “You must be confused,” the man she assumed was a doctor, said. He frowned, studying a wound on the side of her head as he draped her hair over her shoulder.

  “Maybe,” she agreed, thinking Carl must have abandoned her after he beat her. She didn’t like the feeling of not being in control of her situation—of being at this or any man’s mercy. “How did I get here?”

  “I carried you.”

  “You?” she asked, more like an accusation.

  Carolina closed her eyes in an attempt to replay in her mind what had happened. She’d sat for a long time behind the steering wheel of her rental car with the doors opened, staring at the old trailer. The skin on her arms glistened with the natural oils heated by the one-hundred-and-ten-degree afternoon temperature. Whenever she moved a muscle, she felt her blouse separate from her body, sticking to the leather upholstery.

  The trailer park in Sage Canyon, Arizona, abutted the eastern edge of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, surrounded by dry, barren land the government granted the Native Americans. The place where she’d spent eighteen miserable years of her life.

  She had been in Phoenix, speaking at a genealogy seminar when she toughened up her nerve and made the decision to come back and resolve the past instead of flying home to Washington, D.C., where she now lived.

  However, recollections of a past she couldn’t forget paralyzed her and she questioned her reasons for returning to this wretched place she referred to as anything but home.

  “Yes,” he continued. “Manny, my business partner, came to see if you needed help, when he saw you down by the trailer.”

  Had the man she thought was Carl been someone else? In her haste to climb the hill to her car to avoid capture, she tripped and slid backward. She remembered now hitting her head on something. Beyond that, she couldn’t recall anything.

  “Stay awake,” the man urged, pulling her out of her reverie. He seemed satisfied when her eyes blinked open again and she met the steady gaze that she found disquieting.

  “Can I go now?” Although every part of her body hurt, she needed to leave. As she tried to sit up, she moved with caution to cut down on the throbbing in her head and ankle, but failed miserably.

  “Ma’am?”

  Ma’am? He called me, ma’am? If I weren’t in pain, I’d laugh.

  “You got yourself a few scratches on your face and a pretty bad cut on the side of your head. You’re gonna need about six or eight stitches, I figure. The X-ray I took while you were unconscious didn’t show a fracture in your ankle, but you got yourself a rather severe looking sprain. We’ll have to wait until the swelling goes down to see if you need an MRI. I can stitch your head wound up, if you sign a permission paper, but if you prefer we can take you to the clinic.”

  “The clinic?” She arched an eyebrow and glanced around her. “What’s this place?”

  “The animal hospital,” he answered without apology.

  “Animal hospital?” She sat straight up, this time not caring what hurt, although she saw stars for a few seconds. “You brought me to an animal hospital?”

  If not for her ankle and the throbbing in her head, she would have jumped from the examining table one high heel on, one high heel off, not at all appreciative at the moment of him or his efforts to tend to her.

  “Why on earth did you bring me here?”

  Although the room and equipment appeared immaculate, she shrank from touching anything she didn’t have to and with a sniff primly tucked her smudged lime-colored skirt more closely about her. God knew what kind of animal had been on this table, or on the blanket for that matter.

  Carolina glared at him accusingly. The blue in his eyes deepened before he said, “I brought you here because you happened to fall on my property.”

  She frowned. His words immediately caused great concern. Did Carl no longer live in the trailer? Had she missed her opportunity to settle the past once and for all?

  “Do you own the Rust Bucket?”

  “The what?”

  “That trailer.”

  “My partners own the property the trailer sits on, but not the trailer itself.”

  She struggled to digest the meaning of what he said. “Where’s the owner of the rust bucket?”

  “The rust bucket?” he repeated, shaking his head and, glancing at the woman assisting him and then focusing again on her, looking her over thoroughly.

  He nodded toward the woman. “This is Jenny Ruiz. Jenny’s my nurse, and she and Manny, her husband, are my business partners. They’re temporarily living in that trailer you refer to as a rust bucket. But to answer your question about the owner, I’ve no idea. Been lookin’ for him awhile. Thought you might know this Carl Fox character’s whereabouts, since you were poking around the property?”

  “No.” Her reply came quick and emphatic even to her own ears. The sound of Carl’s name always filled her heart with fear. “I only pulled over to stretch my legs,” she said, which of course, wasn’t entirely true.

  All her life she had struggled to be strong at her weakest moments in order to remain alive, then why now? She wondered. If she planned to accomplish her mission, she couldn’t let her fear of Carl send her running again, which she’d have to acknowledge was easier said than done. But, Proud Mary was back and she deserved first crack at Carl…

  Chapter Two

  “Look, whoever you are…”

  “Stede Foster, Ma’am.”

  “Just plain Doc, to most folks around here,” the nurse, Jenny interjected.

  Carolina turned from Jenny back to the man before her. “I apologize for the inconvenience I’ve caused you. But I do think that I should see a real doctor.”

  “A real doctor!” He practically snorted.

  She stiffened, mentally and physically bracing herself out of old habit against what she perceived as the start of a full-blown ver
bal attack—the prelude to a physical blow. And, as often happened with Carl, she didn’t know what she’d done to trigger such vehemence, feeling her comment had been reasonable, since she was fairly certain he didn’t have a veterinarian for his personal doctor, either. He confused her, however, when he shifted gears and again focused on caring for her.

  “Seems to me you’re a bit of a snob,” he said with a slight grin on his face, “but we’ll gladly get you to a real doctor like you want. Jenny here will drive you to the clinic and you can get stitched up there.”

  “Don’t know why in your condition you’d want the jostle of the ride to the clinic when Doc here can stitch your wound,” Jenny commented. “I’ve seen him stitch up a cowboy or two, including Manny. He’s the best whether he’s treating man or beast.”

  “The best?” She knew this town was no metropolis, but a vet was the best they had to offer?

  “Given where your wound is, don’t you want as teeny a scar as possible?” Jenny persisted.

  “Yes,” Carolina admitted with a reluctant nod.

  “All right, Miss Palmer…” Stede said.

  “You know my name?”

  “Yep. Had Jenny go through your wallet for a driver’s license and to make sure you didn’t carry a medical emergency card. Pretty far from home, I’d say.”

  That depended on how one defined home, she thought. Certainly, she was a good distance from Washington, D.C., as well as the hotel in Phoenix. Since he was willing to help her, she might as well let him, because she was certain there wouldn’t be a plastic surgeon at their clinic either.

  “Is there a hospital nearby?”

  The cowboy vet shut his eyes and shook his head. “The nearest hospital is about forty-five minutes away. I can call the fire department nearby and they can take you there in the ambulance, if you’d prefer.”

  Carolina stared at him and tried to keep the tears from clouding her vision. She needed to get out of there. “I’ll sign your permission paper, and after you stitch my wound, do you think you can find me a motel or some place to stay the night, like a bed and breakfast or something?”