by Dianne Drake
He reached down to the bottom of her wet shirt and pulled it slowly above her waist
His hand skimmed along her flesh, causing her to shiver. He continued upward ever so slowly and stopped just before the shirt crossed over her breasts. “This is where I stop, Joanna, or go on, depending on what you want. It’s tonight for us. Maybe tomorrow or the day after, but…”
She knew the rest, and it didn’t matter. She wanted tonight more than anything she could remember wanting in her life. And if that was all there was, so be it. Raising her index finger to Chay’s lips, Joanna sucked in a quivering breath. “It is what it is, Chay. I understand that. So this is where you stop talking and start paying.” She took hold of his hand and guided it under her wet shirt to her breast. “And if it is only tonight, make tonight count.”
24/7
The cutting edge
of Harlequin® Medical Romance™
The emotion is deep
The drama is real
The intensity is fierce
24/7
Feel the heat—
every hour…every minute…every heartbeat
The Medicine Man
Dianne Drake
CONTENTS
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 ONE
SOME things never changed. The old road leading from nowhere, going to nowhere was still dusty and desolate. The weather-beaten sign reading WELCOME TO HAWK RESERVATION, POPULATION 3000 hadn’t seen a coat of paint on its gray, rotting boards since the first time he’d left here eighteen years ago. The rusty old hull of a 1972 Ford pickup truck that was sitting off to the side of the road had been there since the last time he’d left…left here for good eight years ago.
No, some things never changed, and already Chayton Ducheneaux was missing his morning cup of proper coffee and a quick read-through of the Chicago Sun-Times. Certainly, Hawk would have coffee of some sort, something basic and strong, barely drinkable. But the reservation’s version of the Sun-Times was a once-a-week, four-page edition of local news. That is, if Will Two Crows was up to putting it out. Most weeks for the past thirty years Will had met his editorial deadline, and most likely he still would for the next twenty or thirty years to come, because, like everything on Hawk, Will Two Crows didn’t change much either.
As did every other grown man on Hawk, Will worked the ranch. Hawk Cattle Ranch was owned co-operatively by the smattering of tribes throughout the reservation—the Assiniboine who were Canadian transplants, a small group of Cheyenne on the southern border of Hawk, and the Lakota Sioux—his tribe. By population, his tribe was the majority in the seven small towns that made up the entirety of the reservation. Seven small towns, the largest boasting a population of only seven hundred, and all those towns spread out over nearly two thousand square miles, with only dirt trails and patchy roads connecting them.
Seven small towns, three thousand people. Chayton almost cringed, thinking about it. Hell, his medical practice had more than three thousand patients in it. Talk about reducing the statistics to the barest elements. Chay was beginning to feel agoraphobic. Too much open space here to suit him.
Travel one hundred and fifty miles from civilization, turn right and this was what he got—the same thing he’d left so long ago. Chay looked down the long expanse of God-forsaken road ahead of him, trying to decide what to do. Should he, shouldn’t he? This was the turning-back point, if he wanted one. His last chance. He could go back to Billings, Montana, catch the next plane home to Chicago, and be back in the OR by tomorrow morning. Or he could go forward, down that long dusty road to Rising Sun to face the family that had shunned him these past years.
The easy choice should have been to turn around, but his grandmother, Macawi, had sounded so serious when she’d called last week that he hadn’t had the heart to tell her he didn’t want to come. “Your father is ill, Chayton.” Macawi would not have gone against the family to call him home if she hadn’t been so desperate. “He won’t listen to anyone, he won’t get help. He refuses to see a doctor.”
Macawi. Chayton smiled, thinking about his grandmother. In the Sioux language her name meant generous, and that she was. Generous, loving, small and feisty. She’d taken the American name Marie to go along with the family name Ducheneaux, and in the outside world she was Marie. But here at home she insisted on the use of her Sioux name, even when so many others were giving up that tradition. Except him. Chayton, falcon, was a good name. He liked it, and even though he had spent so many years away from Hawk, his name was a mantle he still carried proudly, much like Macawi did. The single token in his otherwise typical Anglo life—except for his looks, that was. But they weren’t so much a token as a reminder.
It would be nice to see Macawi again, he thought as he put his rented BMW in gear. For a day or two at the most. He’d make his obligatory visit to the ones who would receive him, get rebuked by his father, then go home where he belonged. A simple trip, really. Short, but not too sweet.
The road leading into Rising Sun was pretty much like the road leading back out of it. A big, open, desolate prairie, lots of sky, a few scrub bushes, grass. It took some getting used to, having so much nothing all around. He remembered his first trip home, after he’d been sent to the community college up in Fort Peck to study agriculture. Fort Peck, a much larger reservation with the same kind of Indian makeup as Hawk, had seemed like the biggest place in the world to him at the time. There were brand-new buildings, a theater for movies, modern schools—he’d eaten his first pizza there. Then he’d come home to Hawk on holiday, and to his own little town of Rising Sun, and had thought he was going to die of boredom. There was nothing, absolutely nothing here, and when he hadn’t known better it had been good enough. But once he’d tasted a bit of the outside world, the craving had set in.
And so here he was back in Rising Sun—the same now as it had been then. The main street, called Main, was a wide, dusty expanse, all of three blocks long. No stoplights, no stop signs at the intersections because there wasn’t enough traffic to warrant the expense or the upkeep. Chay saw his mother’s diner as he passed through the first block. Wenona’s, open daily for breakfast and lunch. He’d practically grown up in Wenona’s, drinking cherry cola and washing dishes in the back room. As a boy, his friends had gathered there after school and on weekends for a lack of anyplace else to go, and visitors to Rising Sun always stopped there. That had been the best, listening to the outsiders, because sometimes he’d snatched glimpses of the world from them, glimpses he’d most often got from school books. And hearing about places like Chicago, New York, London or Paris was so much more exciting for a kid than reading the flat words on a flat page. Who knew? Maybe it was all those outsiders who’d given him the burning desire to go out and see for himself. And he had seen for himself all the places he’d dreamed about—Chicago, New York, London, Paris and so much more.
He smiled, glancing back in the rear-view mirror at his mother’s diner. Of all the places in town, Wenona’s was the one that held the most, and the best memories for him.
Wenona…she would be cordial. She would greet him as a mother should when his father wasn’t around. And she would treat him as his father dictated when he was. That had been the order of things for eighteen years now, and even though Macawi had had high hopes that the situation might have changed, it hadn’t. Chay knew that.
The second block
, which was only three buildings long, consisted of a dry goods store, the same one that had always been there, a library and a…Well, what do you know? Chay thought. A pizza restaurant with video rentals. Maybe things were looking up for Rising Sun after all.
First building in the third and last block was the medical office. His first destination. Pulling to a stop in front of it, right alongside a run-down, rusty Jeep, he looked up the half-dozen steps at the person standing at the top, staring down at him. In the midday glare all he could make out was red hair. It was poked up under a baseball cap with only the shoulder-length red ponytail hanging out. She was definitely not a native.
“Dr Ducheneaux?” she called. “Dr Chayton Ducheneaux?”
He pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them into the seat next to him. “And you are?”
“Dr Joanna Killian.” She ambled down the steps and stuck her hand through the window to shake his.
“Glad to meet you, Dr Killian.”
“Look, I’ve got to go make a house call. Out in Steele. Everything you need is in the office, and the first patients won’t arrive until you call Ruth Young Bird Belcourt and let her know that you’re ready to start to work. She’s the first patient you’ll see—allergies. Normally she does fine with a mild antihistamine. Anyway, she’ll spread the word that the clinic’s open for business this afternoon, and everybody scheduled will show up. Her phone number’s on my desk, by the way.”
Chay heard her rambling on and on, but the words weren’t sinking in. Did this lady actually think he was there to work in her clinic? “What the hell are you talking about, Dr Killian?”
“Your clinic hours. We’ve been scheduling them for you ever since we knew you were coming.”
“Whoa, lady. I’m not here to be a doctor. I’ve come to see my grandmother and a few other family members. She told me I’d be staying here at the clinic since it wasn’t in use much but I’m not—let me repeat, not—seeing patients and I don’t know where the hell you would have gotten a crazy idea like that.”
Joanna swiped impatiently at a few hairs straying out of the confines of her cap, then bent even further into the BMW. “Your grandmother told me you’d exchange medical favors for staying in the room above the clinic. I assumed that to mean you’re here to work. And right now, Dr Ducheneaux, I don’t have time to stand here and argue with you. Steele’s a twenty-minute drive and I have a broken leg to take care of. I’ve got ten patients expecting to see you some time today, nothing serious that I’m aware of, and I’d appreciate it if you would oblige me this one favor. Then we’ll call it even. OK?”
“Not OK, Dr Killian.”
She backed out of the car and stood up. “Fine, Dr Ducheneaux. Suit yourself. But if anybody comes by, will you at least tell them I’ll be back this evening, after I treat a broken leg in Steele, hop over to Whitestone and see a new mother about her baby’s croup then come through Flatrock to spend an hour or two giving flu shots on my way back here? Tell them I won’t get back until late—that if it’s urgent I’ll see them tonight, if it’s not urgent they’ll have to come see me first thing in the morning. Starting at six. Oh, and Dr Ducheneaux, make up your own damned bed. I didn’t have time.”
What a temper, Chay thought as he watched her hop in her Jeep, kick up a dust storm as she threw it in reverse, then barrel out of town. Cute as hell. Small—probably not much over five feet tall—wild, red hair, gorgeous green eyes. Had he seen a smattering of freckles across her nose? Cute as hell, but not the kind of hell he wanted to put himself through. Dr Joanna Killian was a lady with a mission, and he was a man who’d given up crusading a long time ago.
Joanna was halfway to Steele before her temper finally began to let up. She didn’t have time to be angry, not with the whole of Hawk Reservation depending on her. Circuit doctor—the ad in the medical journal had sounded appealing when she’d answered it. Would you like to set your own hours? Do you love to travel? Then come practice medicine in the Big Open. That was the name for this part of Montana because that’s what it was. Big and open. That detail of the advertisement hadn’t been deceptive. Setting her own hours was, though, because basically, they added up to every day, all day. Lots of travel could have been a plus point to the job, except they hadn’t mentioned that there weren’t always roads on which to travel, and most of her destinations were not sufficiently large to earn even the tiniest of dots on the map.
But it was her medical circuit to tend now. Back and forth from place to place, and once in a while she slipped in a day off purely for sleeping. So maybe she should have taken a little better heed when the offer had come within days of her application and they had seemed so anxious to get her. Too anxious. No one had been giving any kind of medical care to the people who lived in the isolated eastern regions of Montana for well over a year now. The last couple of doctors there had lasted only a few weeks, then run straight back to civilization, leaving most of the people with no medical care at all, and the ones who had needed it a long, long drive to seek it out.
So she’d seen the ad for a circuit doctor and had jumped at it because she’d wanted to get away from her old life, her former marriage, any way she could. And here she was, spending more time driving than doctoring.
But the doctoring, when she got to it, was so good, so rewarding, it made all the driving worthwhile.
When Macawi Ducheneaux had stopped by to see Joanna a few days ago and had told her that her grandson, the doctor, would be here soon to help, that had been Joanna’s dream come true. Another doctor to share the load. At least that’s what she’d assumed. Why, she’d even given him her bed, and been happy to do so. Anything to make him comfy. Not that a lumpy mattress was much of an inducement to keep anyone there for any length of time. And Macawi had said it was only for a short visit, but Joanna would take any help she could get. And her lump-filled mattress was the best she had to offer.
Another doctor to share the load…Yeah, right. More like he was a load. A load of pure worthlessness and pretense. Showing up in a BMW convertible out here. She almost laughed aloud over that one. This country was four-wheel-drives and pickup trucks all the way. His little Beemer would get swallowed up by a dust cloud if he wasn’t careful. Yep, Chayton Ducheneaux was definitely all worthlessness and pretense.
Good-looking, though, she decided, thinking about her first glimpse of him. Even though he’d been stuffed into that little car, she could tell he was taller than his family, probably a couple inches over six feet tall. Naturally, he had dark skin, dark eyes, plus a nice muscular build from what she’d been able to tell in her brief encounter. His hair was black, of course, styled in a crisp, short cut. Most of the older men she’d encountered on Hawk here stuck to the old ways—long hair pulled back into a ponytail or a braid. The younger men went both ways, long hair or short. None quite so GQ as Chayton, however. Having been married to someone with the same proclivities, she recognized a fifty-dollar haircut when she saw one. And she’d seen one on him. That, plus manicured fingernails.
Come to think of it, what would have ever given her the silly idea that he would come all the way out to nowhere to work? He was like her ex-husband, Paul. Caught up in the lifestyle. She hated people like that. Especially doctors!
Pulling to a stop in front of Fred Red Elk’s house, Joanna waved at Fred’s eight-year-old son, Michael. He’d fallen off a horse, suffered a minor break to his leg and, after eight weeks, was hobbling along nicely now. One more check and Michael would be turned loose to play with the other boys—on a limited basis for starters.
“Can I please go do something now?” Michael begged. “It works, it doesn’t hurt.”
She would have liked another X-ray to be safe, but the Red Elks had neither the money to have it done nor the time to take Michael somewhere to get one. So it was all instinct on Joanna’s part. Minor break, eight weeks ago, no pain, no swelling. And the kid was driving his mother crazy. Time to untether him. “If it hurts at all, you have your mother call me,” she w
arned him. “And take it easy for another couple of weeks. No dirt bikes, no horses.”
“Can I play football?”
“Can you play something a little less rough instead? Maybe baseball?”
“I hate baseball,” he complained.
Cute kid. Dark skin, dark eyes like everybody else. And so full of mischief it fairly sparkled all over him. “Football in a few weeks, Michael. OK? If you go easy for a while.”
“But they’ll call me a baby, DocJo,” Michael whined.
Dr Joanna had become Doc Jo, had become DocJo, one word. She liked that. The lack of formality showed a certain amount of friendly respect she’d been told she wouldn’t receive, being an outsider. At least it was a first step in the long process of proving herself. “You tell them I’ll be around in a couple of weeks to give everybody shots, with great big needles, and then we’ll see who the real babies are.” She handed him a sucker, her tradition with all the kids she saw, then shooed him off the porch while she motioned for his mother to come outside.
Betty Red Elk had six other children, and looked frazzled, as any mother of six would look. Like most of the women on the reservation, she was a stay-at-home mom. Scooted the kids off to school in the morning, cleaned, cooked, then greeted the kids when they came home from school in the afternoon. Since it was August and school was still on break for the summer, she merely shooed them out the door and prayed they’d stay outside long enough to give her sufficient time to get her chores done. Then later, when the kids came home for the day and her husband returned from his job at the cattle ranch, she served supper, then she cleaned some more before her day was over. Day in, day out. And the pleasant smile she always wore on her face revealed such a deep contentment with her life Joanna was almost envious. It was certainly a contentment Joanna had yet to find in her own, though it was one she was definitely looking for.
“Restrict Michael to light play for now,” she instructed Betty. “I’ll be back next week to make sure he’s well enough to play football. And he could use multivitamins. In fact, all of your kids could use them. Just some of those chewables that look like cartoon characters. One every day.”