Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  No automatic beds in this place.

  “What…? Um…” His throat moved with a swallow. “What happened after I passed out, do you know?”

  Kitty slipped the thermometer into the left breast pocket of her blue scrubs. Normally she wore camouflage BDUs when on duty, but not here. “The ambulance you were driving crashed. Flopped over on its side like a dead milk cow.”

  He paled. “Oh, no.”

  “Don’t get to worrying about it.” Kitty wrote his vitals on his chart. “Lieutenant Hammond and Miss Dougin came out fine.” They’d come into triage looking a mite stressed, that was for dead sure, worried for the unconscious lieutenant, of course, but also as if they’d seen and done things they wished they hadn’t. Kitty hung the clipboard at the end of the lieutenant’s bed. “You hungry? I need to check with the doctor to see if you’re cleared for a liquid diet, but then…oh. Here’s Dr. Barr now.”

  Farrin was standing just inside the door marked Authorized Personal Only located at the far end of the post-op ward, her hands on her hips. She was glaring at the pot of boiling water sterilizing the surgical instruments. “The autoclave is broken again?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kitty said. “Sorry.”

  Farrin humphed. “It’s not your fault IHMR has provided us with only second-rate equipment for this aid station.” The doctor strode down the aisle, the edges of her white lab coat flapping at the knees of her tan slacks. “How are you feeling, Mr. Whitmore?” she asked, stopping at Steve’s bed and unhooking the chart from the end of it.

  “Embarrassed,” he answered.

  Kitty stole a swift peek at her patient, the bare honesty of his words giving her a start. Officers generally weren’t so…open. Most she’d met were kind of stuffy, actually.

  Farrin glanced up from reading Kitty’s notes.

  “I passed out,” Steve admitted and blushed.

  Farrin tut-tutted, like it was a silly thing to feel bad about.

  But Dr. Barr wasn’t someone who easily found fault in another—the only person in the world Kitty had ever met with such a quality. In fact, of all the doctors Kitty had worked for in her four years as a corpsman, Dr. Barr was by far the best: competent, fair, tolerant, friendly—but without crossing the boundaries of the boss-employee relationship. Farrin wasn’t too forthcoming about the more personal sides of her life—whereas Kitty pert-near wore Farrin’s ears off with the telling of her own secrets. Otherwise Kitty would’ve surely figured out why such a beautiful, smart woman like Farrin was still single. Was there something in Dr. Barr’s past? Kitty had an inkling there was.

  The doctor unwrapped the bandage on Steve’s arm and inspected the stitches. “You’re doing well,” she pronounced. “Isn’t he, Kitty?”

  “Fit as a fiddle, ma’am.”

  Farrin stood, writing on the chart as she said, “Let’s get some broth and Jell-O into Mr. Whitmore.” She smiled at Steve. “Lucky you.” Dr. Barr re-hooked the chart at the end of the bed. “Re-dress his arm, if you would, Kitty.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  Dr. Barr moved off to the next bed while Kitty grabbed a roll of gauze bandage and white tape and set to re-wrapping the lieutenant’s wound. The skin on his arm was as pale and freckled as the rest of him.

  Lieutenant Whitmore watched her work, his attention on her hands. Oddly, a blush began to rise into her cheeks. There was something so…admiring in the way he looked at her. His focus moved to her face, and she could feel his appreciation deepen.

  “You’ve got an amazing touch,” he told her. “You make me feel better just rewrapping my arm.”

  More with the frank honesty. She taped off the gauze and dropped her hands, sitting back.

  The lieutenant’s eyes were now clear as a Fourth of July day. His hospital gown had sagged off his right shoulder, showing part of his chest. It was all bare smoothness, just a sprinkling of hair around his nipples.

  “Yes, well… I know what it’s like to be hurt and not treated so nice.” Maybe his kind regard lowered her inhibitions, all his admiration loosening her tongue, because for some odd reason, she told him how she knew…

  Chapter Eight

  Five years ago, Covenant Hospital, Plainview, Texas

  The distance from the Plainview Cemetery to Covenant Hospital was only three miles, but the seven-minute ride there had been excruciating. Every lurching movement of the horse-drawn hay wagon had jarred Kitty Hart’s forearm, making the stars in the night sky whirl together in a blizzard of agony. When her fellow high school seniors had hoisted her off the ground, she’d taken a single peek at her arm, seen bone sticking out, and thrown up. Drunk as Cooter Brown when she’d taken her flight off the top of the wagon, she was now sober as a judge. Plumb amazing how pain could do such a thing to a person.

  Little wonder her parents had always threatened to take a switch to her if she ever touched alcohol. Things sure unraveled when a girl got herself schnookered. What had started out as a pleasant homecoming night hayride had detoured into this nightmare trip to the emergency room, and all because Kitty’s boyfriend, Clete, had brought a jug of his pa’s moonshine, and this time she decided to try a few swigs. It only took a few for her to think it’d be hilarious to hijack the reins of the wagon team and hightail it from the high school to the cemetery. She was a little vague on whether it’d been an accident or a planned idea to start running over headstones, but at some point she hit an especially stubborn square block, and the wagon had stopped abruptly.

  She hadn’t.

  So now here she was, sitting on paper sheets on an ER bed, her arm clutched to her breasts while she waited for the doctors to treat her—hopefully starting with a walloping dose of pain relief drugs. Clete was slumped in the visitor’s chair, dozing, his nose red from his own liberal partaking of the moonshine jug. She should probably just tell him to—

  The examination room curtain was slapped aside, and Kitty’s mother plowed in like a John Deere subsoiler. “What’s this I hear?” Shirleen demanded, her ample bosom heaving. “You broke your ever-lovin’ arm?”

  Kitty’s father ambled in behind Shirleen about the same time Clete jolted awake.

  “Do you not have the sense God gave a goose?” Shirleen’s eyebrows, bushy as any man’s, arrowed together.

  Kitty dragged in a shaky breath. “Yes, I-I was just funning around, but then—”

  “I. Beg. Your. Pardon.” Her mother’s face flushed a dark red. “I may not be the Queen of Sheba with jewels, a fine house, and shittin’ in high cotton, but I sure as heck know I didn’t raise no daughter of mine to be forgettin’ to say ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’ to her betters.”

  Kitty swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you.” Shirleen rounded on Clete. “Nothin’ but a no-’count pissant, lettin’ this happen to Kitty. Skedaddle!”

  Clete took off so fast, his boot soles left black skid marks on the tiles.

  “Funnin’ around,” her mother repeated Kitty’s words with a sneer, returning to the matter at hand. “Do you think you’re at liberty to be gettin’ arm broke with your father out of work so many months now?” She made a sweeping gesture of the emergency room. “We ain’t got the money for this. We lost our insurance. You know that, girl.” Her careworn hands landed on her rounded hips. “How could you be so stupid?”

  “She’s a dimwitted child,” her father agreed. “Always has been.”

  Blushing painfully, Kitty clutched her arm tighter to her breasts.

  “Let’s go.” Shirleen grabbed Kitty’s good arm and pulled her off the exam table.

  Kitty yelped, a blinding flash of pain enveloping her.

  Her mother’s rigid forefinger instantly appeared in front of Kitty’s face. “You hush,” her mother hissed savagely. “This is your doin’, and you’ll take your up ‘n’ comin’s without complaint.”

  Hospital staff gawked at the Hart family barreling through the ER ward, Shirleen leading the way with all the charm and grace of a front loader. No one dar
ed stop Shirleen Hart when she was wearing one of her legendary scowls. But then, why would anyone hold them up? It wasn’t like they owed a bill. Kitty hadn’t done more than warm an exam table.

  Soon the three of them were rattling home in their Chevy flatbed, Kitty barely choking back tears. She stared into the night through vision doubled by pain. What was going to happen to her arm now? Dread turned her stomach into Buffalo Springs Lake on a blustery day.

  Her lips had trembled themselves into a state of numbness by the time her mother was leading her into the dining room at home and forcing her to sit in a chair jammed back against the wall.

  “Get my sewing kit, Howard,” Shirleen ordered Kitty’s father. “And the aspirin.”

  “Mama…?” Ice filled Kitty’s belly and froze her spine. “What are you going to do, Mama?”

  “I’m goin’ to set your arm myself, girl.” Shirleen pushed up her shirt sleeves. “Did it to a calf once. Can’t imagine it ain’t the same here.” She held out her hand to Kitty. “Now give me your broke arm.”

  Kitty cradled her arm closer. No, please… Tears streamed down her face.

  “Give me your arm, I say!”

  Kitty sobbed harder, but held out her arm to her mother.

  Shirleen grabbed Kitty by the wrist, planted a mud-caked boot on her daughter’s chest, then yanked back hard.

  Kitty peered down at her hands. Her fingers were trembling, and she’d unraveled the roll of gauze a bit during the telling of her story. Guess five years wasn’t enough distance from that memory for it not to leave her shaky and feeling a tad sick. Drawing in a deep breath, she pulled herself back to the present by focusing on the soft clank of surgical instruments butting around in the boiling pot.

  She lifted her head to meet Lieutenant Whitmore’s gaze, expecting to find an expression of shock or dismay on his face. That’s how most folks acted when they heard this story: either concerned for the agony she’d endured or plain flabbergasted over how Shirleen had handled the situation. Sometimes both.

  But Lieutenant Whitmore surprised the heck out of her, because he was sitting rigid as a washboard, his face cherry red, looking like he wanted to cream someone’s corn.

  Sighing, Kitty started to re-roll the gauze. No doubt it was Shirleen’s butt he wanted to blister. “You have to understand, my ma was—”

  “I cannot believe,” he cut in sharply, “that your boyfriend left you in the hospital like that.”

  Kitty glanced up, blinking. “What?”

  “That Clete jerk should’ve looked out for you.” The lieutenant’s eyes blazed—an odd sight in such a pleasant young face. “He should’ve stayed and taken care of you. If you’d been my girl, I would’ve done anything—argued with your mother, if that’s what it took—to make sure you got proper help.”

  Kitty just kept staring, wide-eyed as a newborn calf. Argued with Shirleen…? Well, no one did that.

  “Nothing could have made me leave you.”

  She parted her lips and let go of an uneven breath.

  Lieutenant Whitmore yanked his sagging hospital gown back in place. “Did Clete at least look out for you afterward?”

  “Well, uh…” Kitty peered down at her hands again. The gauze tangled in her fingers.

  Chapter Nine

  Only nine o’clock in the morning and the temperature was already in the high eighties. Heck with it. Max was going with summer wear. Blowing the hair out of her eyes, she riffled through the clothes she’d unpacked onto the bookshelves that went with her cot. She dug out a pair of olive drab shorts, a short-sleeved maroon top, and flip-flops meant to be shower shoes, but today would serve as an escape from her boots. Her feet would probably be covered in dust in mere minutes, but, oh, well. She also definitely wasn’t putting on a hijab. She seriously doubted she’d be leaving the camp today, anyway.

  As suspected, JEM had been very upset to learn about the attack on the Americans. Yesterday when she talked to her contact via satellite phone, he told her he would call to reschedule a meeting once the situation had been resolved. Max assumed “resolved” meant unearthing their traitor and dispatching him. She hadn’t asked, though, and didn’t particularly want to think about it.

  Dressed for the day, she propped the door to her tent open—if a breeze came by, she wanted it—and went over to Kitty’s shelves, searching through the selection of books her roommate had said Max could borrow. She was reading the back cover blurb for A Hundred Summers when Kyle strode inside.

  “Any word?” he asked her. He was dressed similarly to yesterday, apparently opting out of making concessions to the heat. By high noon, he’d be melting in those long pants and boots.

  “No.” Max nudged the book back into its slot. “We need to give JEM a few days, though.”

  “Days?”

  She spread her hands in a what can I do? gesture. “I offered encouragement for haste.” She’d made the observation to her contact that the US Government would be less inclined to negotiate as more time passed, hoping the veiled warning would keep JEM from lollygagging too much. “But otherwise…I have no idea how long this will take.”

  “Fuck.” Kyle moved over to Max’s cot and sat down. “I hate doing nothing.”

  “Me, too.” She picked up a small, locally made purse off the top of Kitty’s bookshelf and ran her thumb over the colorful Sindhi patchwork design. “But we don’t have a choice. It’s out of our hands.”

  Kyle hefted a large breath and glanced outside the tent door. “Nothing to do around this Deliveranceville aid station, either,” he mused. “I never thought I’d get a hankering for a steel beach barbeque.”

  She laid the purse down. “What’s a steel beach barbeque?”

  “It’s a like a picnic we have sometimes on the ship while we’re underway,” he said, bringing his attention back to her. “We clear the flight deck and put out barbeques, cook up dogs and burgers, maybe set up a basketball hoop in the hangar.”

  She smiled. She could imagine Kyle doing all of that. Maybe in a pair of shorts…? “Sounds like a kick.”

  He shrugged. “Kills time when we’re not working.”

  “I think there’s a movie tonight in the mess tent,” Max offered.

  “Eleven hours from now,” he complained.

  She grabbed a deck of playing cards off Kitty’s second shelf and held it up. “We could play cards.”

  Kyle glanced at the cards, then his gaze moved up to her face, holding there for two beats before slipping to meander down her body. One corner of his mouth lifted. “I think I’ve got a better way to chase off some boredom.” He languidly stretched out on her bed, crossing his legs at the ankles and folding his hands behind his head. The pose displayed a set of wide lats and his beautifully formed biceps to perfection. Not to mention that his crossed legs bunched up the sizable bulge at his crotch. “Let’s have sex.”

  She hiked a single brow at him as she lay down the card deck. “Because you’re bored?”

  “Because it’s fun,” he countered, his voice softening to a velvety rasp, a teasing light dancing into his eyes.

  Hello. The seductive predator from the Jebel Ali Club was back. She sighed to herself. This time, however, she knew what waited for her on the other end of Kyle’s charm. How to let him down easily…? She ran her fingers through her bangs as she considered options. She was a firm believer in truth-telling, but she didn’t want to hurt Kyle’s feelings with an outright, No, thank you, it wasn’t enjoyable for me statement. Because beneath this smooth operator, she’d discovered a man with a lot of heart. I seem to be making a nasty habit of killing people on deployments. She’d never forget the hurt confusion she’d seen flicker over his expression when he’d said that.

  He grinned. “You’re not going to start playing shy on me now, are you?”

  “No. Just…”

  His grin turned into a knowing chuckle.

  Oh, boy. “I’m just not a casual hookup woman, Kyle. I’d never had a one-night stand before you, so…” S
he broke off. Oh, drat. She hadn’t wanted to spill that.

  “You are trying to play shy,” he said, his words interwoven with continued laughter. “Look, honey, I know you had a good time with me.”

  Er…

  “A guy can tell these things, especially a man like me whose equipment is…hmm, how shall I put it?” His hands whipped out from behind his head and he shot up onto his elbows, his eyes narrowing down to tight slits. “What the fuck?”

  She startled. “What?” Talk about a sudden mood change. “What’s what the fuck?”

  “You did something with your mouth.”

  I did? “My mouth?” What had she done?

  “You grimaced.”

  “I…”

  He swung up to a sitting position, his boots hitting the floor with a solid wump. “Did I hurt you?”

  Mayday, mayday. Hard collision with his male ego imminent. “No. It was, uh, a little uncomfortable at first, but then—hey!”

  He’d just slammed to his feet, his eyes on fire with a mixture of emotions. Pissed off was a prominent one, but she was reasonably sure she also saw mortified in there. “I know there wasn’t a whole lot of foreplay involved in what we did, Max, but…it’s sort of how those things work, and I assumed you were okay. Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

  “I did. I asked you to back off a bit, and you did. So, you know, it was fine.”

  “Fine.” He all but spat the word. Crossing his arms over his chest like he didn’t trust himself not to punch a hole in the tent wall, he accused, “Did you fake?”

  Um…

  “Jesus! You did!”

  She held up a placating hand. “No need to start searching for your balls under my cot, Kyle. I’m just someone who has to connect with a guy before I can enjoy sex with him is all.”

  He considered her for a long moment, his tongue moving around inside his mouth. “All right.” He sat back down so hard on her cot, the hinges barked. “Let’s connect.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He waved an impatient hand at her. “Whatever you do to connect, do it, so we can get on with it.”