by Caro Carson
If she could just find Trey—
The woman stopped Rebecca by placing a hand over hers. “Just a minute. I’ll help you take the rest of those off. But first, I want you to know that nobody will come into this room without your permission. Only hospital personnel are allowed. You’re safe.” True to her word, she removed the rest of the electrodes.
“Second, I want you to stay in this safe room until the doctor can see you. You were assigned to Dr. Brown, but she’s got a patient from a car accident who’s taking all her time. I’m going to get Dr. MacDowell to see you instead.”
* * *
Trey recognized Dr. MacDowell immediately. He was Jamie, the youngest of the three MacDowell brothers who had played football for Trey’s high school. The MacDowell family owned the River Mack Ranch, which bordered the James Hill Ranch to the east.
Trey had known Jamie MacDowell his entire life, but he doubted he would have remembered him if Zach Bishop hadn’t been on that helicopter. It sometimes happened that way. Trey was missing a memory—without knowing it, of course—and then someone like Zach from football would come along, and suddenly, all the football memories would be unlocked. The MacDowells had played football. Trey now remembered the MacDowells.
Jamie—Dr. MacDowell—wanted him to walk in a straight line, heel toe, heel toe.
“Would you like me to tell you who the President of the United States is, too?” Trey asked. He was sick of this routine.
“Been through this before, huh?” Jamie said. “Sobriety test by a police officer, or did a doctor ask you?”
“Does it matter?”
“As a matter of fact, it does.”
Trey had no patience for this. He wanted to check on Rebecca. “A doctor.”
“When?”
“College. Let’s get on with it.”
“I’m going to give you three items, and I want you to remember them. A house, an apple, an elephant. Can you say those back to me?”
“House, apple, elephant. Got it.”
“Do you know what each of those things are?”
This was the part that always made Trey the most angry. He hated being treated like he was a moron. “Give me a break, Jamie. House, apple, elephant. Let’s move on.”
There was a knock at the door, and an attractive woman Rebecca’s age stuck her head in the room. “Dr. MacDowell, can I interrupt you, please?”
Trey sat on the treatment table, feeling like a fool in a hospital gown. He’d give Jamie about two minutes more of this nonsense, and then he’d find Rebecca.
“Sorry about that, Trey.” Jamie came back in the room, only to be yanked back out by the sleeve of his white coat. Trey heard the woman ask Jamie if his patient’s name was Trey. An indistinct conversation followed.
Jamie returned, taking his stethoscope from around his neck and putting it in his ears. “Let me listen to you breathe.”
It was awkward, having the pest baby brother of his neighbors listen to his heart. Not awkward like sharing a sleeping bag while naked, but awkward all the same.
Jamie put his stethoscope back around his neck. “Earlier, I asked you to remember some words. Can you repeat those items back to me?”
“House and apple.”
Jamie put a plastic cone on the end of a flashlight and asked Trey to stick out his tongue to say, “ah.”
Trey wasn’t fooled. “I can stick out my tongue straight.”
“Say, ‘ah,’ damn it, and stop being such a stubborn cuss.”
“Ah.”
“Great.” Jamie tossed the plastic cone in the trash. “The nursing assistant was just telling me that your Aunt June is in the waiting room with someone else. One of your cousins, I assume.”
What the hell was everyone doing at the hospital? Trey had already been worried about getting Rebecca home. Now he had to transport Aunt June and Emily, too. That was four people. His pickup truck only held three.
“Thanks for the update,” he said. “Now I’ve got to drive four people home in a three-man truck.”
Jamie crossed his arms over his chest. His white coat flared behind him like a cattleman’s duster. “You came by helicopter, Trey. You don’t have a pickup truck here.”
Aw, hell. It was so damned obvious when he pointed it out.
Trey tried to play it off. “I need to get some sleep. It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”
“You could also be dehydrated.” Jamie handed him a hospital cup with ounces marked on its side. “I want you to drink all thirty-two ounces, and then I want you to fill it up and drink it again. Slam it, like you just finished football practice. I’ve got to see my next patient, but I’ll be back. Drink up.”
Trey wanted to ask where Rebecca was. Hell, he wanted to demand to be taken to her. But if he’d ever needed a reminder of why he wasn’t man enough for her, he’d just gotten it.
Rebecca, Rebecca. He remembered the taste of her shoulder as he’d murmured the apology. He’d misunderstood how much she wanted him then.
How could he explain why he couldn’t keep her now?
Chapter Eleven
Trey paced the treatment room after putting on his dry-enough jeans and reliable cowboy boots. He turned the hospital gown around so that it opened down the front. It felt more like a shirt that way, one he just hadn’t buttoned up.
Jamie MacDowell came back into the room, tossed his clipboard on the sink counter and sank into the room’s vinyl chair. He looked hard at Trey for a moment.
Trey waited. Whatever Jamie had to say, it was serious. Whatever it was, Trey truly didn’t care. He didn’t do serious with doctors anymore. They were always serious when they told him they’d found nothing. His problems were his to deal with.
“I just saw the woman you rescued from the ice storm. She asked about you.”
Trey suddenly cared a hell of a lot more. He’d been ready to hear something serious about himself, but this was about Rebecca. The morning’s memory was still achingly fresh in his mind. Honored. Responsible. Possessive.
“Where is she?” Trey made a move toward the door, but Jamie held up his hand.
“Not so fast. You aren’t her next of kin. I’m bound by all kinds of patient privacy acts here. But I’ve known you my entire life, and I know you aren’t going to hurt her, so I’m going to ask you a favor. You have every right to turn me down.”
Trey sat slowly on the edge of the bed. Physically, he’d never hurt Rebecca, but if he didn’t put some distance between them immediately, he was going to break her heart when he left.
She was Jamie MacDowell’s patient now, and he was a good man. The hospital itself was well-known. Rebecca would be okay from here on out. Trey ought to bow out gracefully, right here, right now, before things got any deeper.
“You’re under no obligation to say yes, and I shouldn’t be asking. Let me explain that Miss Cargill is on a very high state of alert, physically.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s not all that unusual, given what she’s been through. The body can stay in survival mode even after a person is safe. I’m planning on sending her home with a few days of Valium, just so she can get some sleep.”
“She doesn’t want to close her eyes,” Trey said, more to himself than Jamie. She was afraid she’d never wake up—unless Trey was there to keep her from freezing. He understood.
Jamie continued explaining. “I could give her a little something now, a sedative or anxiety med to take the edge off, but I’d rather see her heart rate and other vital signs come off high alert on their own before I discharge her.
“She’s asking for you. I’d say she’s fixated on you, like you’re necessary to her well-being. Again, not that unusual, given the fact that you saved her life. You’ve done your part, so you’re under no obligation at a
ll, but I’d like to see if having you around will lower her stress levels. Would you consider waiting with her in her room? Just sit there, keep her company?”
Trey didn’t like the picture Jamie painted. A future broken heart was an abstract concept in the face of Rebecca’s immediate distress. He’d have to worry about tomorrow some other time.
Trey stood. “What room is she in?”
“Hold up. One more thing. Is there any reason she has to fear your aunt June?”
The question was so preposterous, Trey was certain his faulty brain had missed something.
“The nursing assistant told her there was a woman in the waiting room who’d like to see her, and Miss Cargill started trying to leave. Urgently. She wanted to find you. I checked out the waiting room myself. It’s your aunt June.”
“Your nursing assistant must have gotten it wrong.”
“The nursing assistant is my wife,” Jamie said. “I trust her judgment.”
Why would Rebecca be frightened that a woman was waiting to see her? Trey was shaking his head at Jamie when the answer broke through. Her mother. Rebecca must have thought her mother had come to get her.
Damn it. It wasn’t like Trey had forgotten about her mother: the woman controlled her, and she was trying to send Rebecca off with a man in exchange for houses or jewels or some other money-related thing. Because it hadn’t been an immediate concern while they were worried about shelter, he hadn’t thought about it yet. Piece by piece, one step at a time—his brain hadn’t focused on that particular piece of wood, so to speak.
“I know who Rebecca is worried about. I’ll handle it.”
“All right, then. I’ll walk you to room three.”
Trey left the room, but Jamie was only a couple of inches shorter than he was, so the young doctor easily kept pace as Trey headed down the row of numbered cubicles.
“I don’t need an escort,” Trey said, impatient, embarrassed.
“My ER. My patient. My rules. Wait with her until radiology comes to do the CT scan.”
“What is she getting a CT scan for?”
“She’s not. You are.”
Trey stopped short. “For a stupid comment about a pickup truck? I told you, I’m tired. You said dehydrated.”
“Trey,” Jamie said, his voice very low in the public hallway, “you forgot the elephants.”
“What?”
“House, apple, elephants. You’ve been examined before. Second injuries are generally more dangerous than the first. It could be nothing, or it could be an old injury, but it’s possible you hit your head during that rescue and you just don’t remember it. I’ve had people brought in here who didn’t know they’d been in a car accident ten minutes prior.”
“It’s not a new injury.” Trey forced the words out. “Nothing old, either. I’ve been told I’m normal a half-dozen times.”
“Maybe so, but when you exhibit the symptoms of a possible brain bleed, you don’t leave my ER until I check it out.”
Trey crossed his arms over his chest again and glared at Jamie. MacDowell seemed unimpressed. Little brothers, whether his own or his neighbors’, had always been pests.
“You always were a pain in the neck,” Trey said, speaking the thought out loud without intending to. He refused to apologize. He wouldn’t mutter his usual I didn’t mean to say that. It was better to let Jamie think it was intentional instead of another case of forgetting elephants.
“Well, now I’m a pain in the neck with an MD after my name.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means you’re getting a CT scan. Quit fighting it.”
Trey had no intention of fighting, and every intention of leaving. Jamie could fill out the paperwork for a patient who refused treatment. Trey didn’t want to hear, one more time, that everything was normal.
But they were standing outside of room three. Trey would not turn and walk out of the hospital now.
Rebecca wanted him, so he’d stay awhile longer, and he’d probably get another damned CT scan because he couldn’t leave Rebecca here, not for any reason.
He turned the doorknob and left Jamie standing in the hall.
* * *
Rebecca watched the IV drip. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, toes grazing the tile floor, ready to jump up when the IV bag was empty, so she could get the tube taken out of her arm and get the heck out of this hospital.
Somehow, some way, she had to get back to the James Hill Ranch. Her rental car was already there, so she’d have to rent another one. She didn’t care. She’d do whatever it took to get to Trey.
When she found him, she wanted to kill him. She imagined him in that ranch house, standing by that ginormous stone fireplace, waiting for her to show up once she was all better. She was going to show up, alright, and she was going to give him a piece of her mind. She was so angry at him for leaving her all alone, she would never speak to him again.
I couldn’t have sex with you now if I wanted to, I’m so mad, she’d said last night. She meant it this time.
The door opened, and Trey walked in, denim below, bare-chested above, with the open flaps of a hospital gown trailing behind him.
He was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. She was standing and reaching for him without thinking about it, but he’d already reached her and was closing his arms around her. She clung to his neck, but her IV tubing stretched to its limit, so she lowered that arm and held on for dear life with the other.
“I missed you so much,” she said, over and over, when what she’d planned to say was How dare you leave me? She wanted to kiss him, but she clung to him and buried the side of her face in his neck. “No one will tell me what’s wrong with me, and my mother is waiting to take me away.”
Trey stroked her hair and listened as she continued to babble on. “I know I’m supposed to be starting a new life, but this is my first time in a hospital and it’s hard not to be silent after all these years, because I don’t know these people, not like I know you. I didn’t know where you were...”
He held her tightly against his chest. The sheer physical size of him was comforting to hang on to, and she ran out of things to say. Only then did he talk.
“Your mother isn’t here. It’s my aunt June in the waiting room. You won’t see your mother without me.” Trey pulled away from her far enough to hold her face in his hands.
He addressed only the issue of her mother, as if she hadn’t gone through a list of worries. Rebecca realized that was the only issue that really had her scared. She was so relieved not to be alone. “You’ll stay here? Just in case?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Hospitals like their rules, so they examined us separately, but we’re together now.” His gaze roamed from her eyes to her lips, and he gave her one soft kiss, but mostly, he cupped her face in his palms and looked at her.
“What is it?” she whispered, when she couldn’t guess what his expression meant.
“I just want to memorize this pretty face.”
And then they were kissing for real, openmouthed, hot and wet and hungry. He wanted her heat as much as she wanted his. It was a tremendous feeling, to think that she could be as important to him as he was to her.
She felt very near to tears, so she broke off the kiss to stand on tiptoe and whisper in his ear. “This probably sounds crazy, but I want to go back to the cabin.”
“I know. It was easier.”
There was a knock on the door, and Dr. MacDowell entered the room. Rebecca released her hold on Trey’s neck. He was a little slower to release her, keeping her face in his hands, keeping his gaze on her face.
Dr. MacDowell sounded completely stunned. “Waterson—what are you—when I asked you to wait with her—”
Another quick knock, and the door opened again. Trey let go of her then
, but only to sit on her bed and pull her down beside him, very close beside him. He put his arms around her, and Rebecca savored the shelter.
The ponytailed woman beamed at Rebecca. “Good, I see you’ve got your Trey.”
Rebecca felt proud to have him by her side. I’m not a loser without any friends, she wanted to say. Until a few minutes ago, that was exactly what Rebecca had been, and this cheerful woman had been the only one who’d listened to her worries. “I’m sorry I made a scene. You’ve been very kind.”
“If I’d been left alone in the ER, I’d have been yelling for my Jamie, believe me.” She smiled at the doctor while she said it.
Rebecca’s surprise must have shown on her face, because the woman hiked her thumb toward him and winked. “This is my husband, Jamie.”
Dr. MacDowell introduced his wife to Trey, also to Rebecca’s surprise. The men clearly knew each other. Trey stood when he was introduced to Kendry, a show of manners that somehow didn’t surprise Rebecca, and then he spoke easily with the couple about living on neighboring ranches and playing football.
Rebecca listened to every word. Trey had been the quarterback at a high school, and Jamie had taken over once Trey had graduated. Kendry hadn’t known them then, but she loved the high school games, and she told Trey this year’s season had been great.
Rebecca watched the three of them chat, fascinated by Trey’s history. Until this moment, he’d been simply hers. He’d materialized when she’d needed him most, and he’d been her exclusive property every moment since. She hadn’t wondered what his life was like beyond her.
The MacDowells fascinated her, as well. They were a darling couple, the kind that Rebecca had witnessed now and then over the years. So much of her world had been spent with schoolmates whose fathers were on their third wives. Her mother’s friends were women who vacationed with men they were not married to, but there had been exceptions. Rebecca had always noticed the exceptions.
She’d seen a millionaire get teary-eyed in the middle of raising a toast to his gray-haired wife. The Lexingtons’ main home had been run by a married couple who’d worked together in the same mansion for decades. Rebecca knew true love existed, she just hadn’t seen it up close very often, and she hadn’t seen it in her own age group. The MacDowells couldn’t take their eyes off each other. It was wonderful.