She blinked at the compliment and he watched a light sprinkle of color wash over her cheekbones. “I…thank you,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
They lapsed into silence again.
“How’s Anna these days?” Lauren asked after an awkward moment. “I heard she was in the Northwest now.”
Grateful for the conversation starter, he smiled at the thought of his baby sister. “She loves Oregon. She runs a little gift shop and gallery in Cannon Beach that seems to be doing well. I took a few days and drove up there last year and she seems happy.”
“She’s not married?”
Some of the tension between them seemed to ease as they talked and he wanted to prolong the moment indefinitely. “No. Marc’s the only one of us to bite the bullet so far. He and his wife live in Cache Valley. They have twin boys we all spoil like crazy.”
“And Ren is still in Central America?”
“Right. We can’t get him away from his sea turtles.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but cut off the words as a hospital worker pushed a gurney around the corner.
“Here’s Rosa,” she said.
The beating victim looked even younger here in the harsh glare of the hospital lights and her bruises showed up in stark relief against the white linens. Daniel studied her features, trying hard to find any hint of familiarity, but he was certain he didn’t know her.
He helped push the gurney through the door into the examination room, earning a censorious look from Lauren for the mild exertion. He returned it with a bland smile, though he had to fight down a spurt of warmth. He liked her worrying about him far too much.
“How did it go, Riley?” she asked the kid, who looked young for an X-ray technician, as his hospital ID identified him.
“Good. She fell asleep while I was waiting for the films and I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Poor thing.”
“She’s been through a terrible ordeal. She must be exhausted.”
Lauren took the films from him and slid the first of several into the light box hanging on the wall. She studied it, then exchanged it for another and finally a third, a frown of concentration on her lovely features.
“Just as we suspected,” she said after a moment. “She’s got three broken ribs, a fractured ulna and a broken nose.”
“Somebody did a real number on her.” He was angry all over again at the viciousness behind the attack. “How’s the baby?”
Lauren studied tape spitting out from a machine that was attached to a belt around Rosa’s abdomen. “The contractions have stopped. That’s a good sign. We did an ultrasound earlier and the fetus seemed healthy. It’s a miracle. She’s a dozen different shades of black and blue on her abdomen. My guess is somebody kicked her hard at least two or three times in an effort to induce abortion.”
Daniel had a feeling this was one of those cases that would grab on to him with rottweiler jaws and not let go until he solved it. “Can I talk to her?” he asked.
Lauren pursed her lips. “My instincts say to let her sleep for a while, but I understand your urgency. You likely have to return to Moose Springs as soon as possible.”
“I do. I’m sorry. We’re shorthanded tonight.” He paused and met Lauren’s gaze. “It’s not just that, though. I want her to tell me what happened. The quicker she identifies whoever did this to her, the quicker I can lock the bastard up.”
Though he spoke with a hard determination that didn’t bode well for the perpetrator, Lauren didn’t feel so much as a twinge of sympathy for whoever had done this. They deserved to feel the full wrath of Daniel Galvez, a terrible thing indeed.
“I’m right there with you on that sentiment,” she told him. “In fact, if you gave me half a chance, I’d like to be the one twisting the key in the lock.”
“I’ve got to catch him first and I can’t do that until I talk to Rosa.”
Lauren sighed. “All right. Why don’t you wait in the hall while I wake her, though. She might panic if you’re the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Am I really that scary?”
She felt her face heat and regretted her fair coloring that showed every emotion to the world like a big neon billboard. “I meant your uniform,” she answered stiffly, though she had to admit, she found the man absolutely terrifying.
Could he tell? she wondered, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as her blush. She wasn’t afraid he would physically hurt her, though he was big and powerful and all large men tended to make her uncomfortable on some instinctive level.
With Daniel, though, she was more wary of her own reaction to him and all the feelings he sparked in her, emotions she would rather not be experiencing for someone with whom she had such a tangled, complicated relationship.
To her relief, he let the matter drop. “Yell when it’s safe for me to come in, then,” he murmured, slipping out of the room with far more grace than a man his size should possess.
The room immediately felt about three times bigger without his overwhelming presence filling it. Lauren let out the breath she always seemed to hold around him and moved to her patient’s bedside.
“Rosa? Niña, I need you to wake up.”
When she didn’t respond immediately, Lauren gently shook her shoulder. “Rosa?”
The girl’s eyes blinked open and she looked around in wild confusion, panic blooming in her dark eyes. Her gaze shifted to Lauren and a light of recognition sparked there. “Doctora.” She covered her abdomen with her hands. “El bebé. Está bien?”
“Sí. Sí. Está bien.” She smiled, wishing she had a little better command of Spanish. If things weren’t so tensely uncomfortable with Daniel, she might ask for private lessons. But of course, that was impossible, so for now she would have to muddle through.
“Rosa, the sheriff is here to talk to you about who hurt you.”
The panic returned to her features. “No. No policía.”
Lauren sighed. The physician in her wanted to urge her patient to rest, to promise her she could have this difficult interview later when her body had a chance to begin the healing process.
She couldn’t, though. Daniel had a job to do—a job she very much wanted to see him conclude with an arrest. She just had to trust that he would handle a frightened girl with both tact and compassion.
“I’m sorry, Rosa,” she answered in Spanish. “But you must tell him what happened.”
The girl shook her head, her hands clasped protectively around her abdomen as if she feared Daniel would snatch the child from her womb. Lauren gave her a reassuring pat. “It will all be all right. You’ll see. Sheriff Galvez only wants to help you.”
Rosa said something in Spanish too rapid for Lauren to pick up on. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing.
She went to the door and opened it for Daniel. “She’s upset and doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said in an undertone. “I honestly don’t know how much she’ll tell you. I’m sorry. I can give you a few moments but if I think you’re upsetting her too much, I’ll have to kick you out.”
“All right.”
When he entered the room, Rosa shrank against the bed linens, her fine-boned features tight with tension. Daniel pulled out one of the guest chairs and sat on the edge of it. He moved slowly, like someone trying to coax a meadowlark to eat birdseed from his hand.
He spoke Spanish in a low, calm voice. She couldn’t understand him well, both because he pitched his voice low and because he spoke too quickly for her limited comprehension skills.
After a moment, Rosa answered him quickly, reluctance in every line of her body.
Lauren found it a surreal experience trying to follow their conversation when she only understood about one word in five. Even without a perfect command of the language, she could hear the compassion ringing through his voice.
He genuinely cared about Rosa, Lauren thought. The girl might be just a stowaway he had never seen until an hour ago, but he wa
nted to get to the bottom of things. She suddenly knew Daniel would go to any lengths to protect the girl. Fate had dropped her into Moose Springs, and she had become one of his charges.
She had a feeling his sincerity wasn’t translating for Rosa. She shook her head vehemently several times, and Lauren could at least understand the most frequent word the girl employed. “No” sounded the same in English and in Spanish.
After several moments of this, Rosa turned her head against the wall, a clear message that she was done talking to him. Daniel said something, his voice low and intense, but Rosa didn’t turn around.
At last Daniel stood with a sigh, his big handsome features tight with frustration. He tucked a business card in Rosa’s hand. The girl closed her fingers around it, but didn’t even look at either the card or at Daniel. With another sigh, Daniel nodded to Lauren and left the room.
She followed him. “She won’t talk?” she asked when the door closed behind them.
“She claims she doesn’t remember what happened to her.”
Lauren frowned. “She has no head injury that might account for a loss of memory. I suppose it might be some self-protective psychological reaction to the trauma…”
“There is no loss of memory. She remembers perfectly. She’s just not telling.”
“Doesn’t she understand her safety and that of her baby is at stake here?”
“I think that’s exactly what she’s thinking about. I think she just wants to pretend none of it happened. ‘I’m fine, the baby’s fine. That’s all that matters,’ she just kept saying over and over.”
“I’ll talk to her. She’ll be under my care and the attending’s here for at least the next two or three days. I want to consult with the high-risk ob-gyns on staff here and make sure we monitor her closely to ensure no lasting harm to the fetus from her injuries. I don’t know that it will do any good, but I’ll try to persuade her she has to talk to you, or whoever did this to her will get away with a double attempted murder.”
“Thanks, Lauren. I’ll try to stop back in first thing in the morning. Maybe she’ll change her mind about talking to me by then.”
“You put in long hours, Sheriff.”
He smiled and the sight of those white teeth flashing in that darkly handsome face sent her stomach trembling. “I could say the same for you, Doc.”
She gazed at him for far longer than was probably polite, until he finally cleared his throat.
“You still need a ride back to Moose Springs?”
Chill, she chided herself. This was Daniel Galvez, the one man in town who shouldn’t rev her motor. She would be better off with a player like Kendall Fox. At least he just annoyed her. Being with Dr. Fox never left her feeling like she had just stood in a wind tunnel for two or three days.
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble,” he assured her, though she couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t being completely truthful.
“Just give me a few more moments to wrap things up with Kendall and I should be ready.”
“Here comes the good doctor now.”
She turned and found Kendall walking purposefully down the hallway.
“The sheriff is my ride back to Moose Springs since I came in the ambulance,” she said quickly, hoping to deflect any more flirtation. “Do you mind if I leave my patient in your care?”
“We’ll take good care of her until they can find a bed for her on the medical floor.”
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning to check on her,” she said. “I want a phone call in the night if her condition changes at all. Make sure the nurses know that when they admit her upstairs. Any change at all, I want to hear about it.”
“I’ll take care of her, I promise.” Kendall gave her the full wattage of his lady-killer smile. “I’m on until seven in the morning and I expect doughnuts and some decent coffee out of the deal.”
“Done.”
As her interactions with Dr. Fox went, this one was fairly innocuous. She could only hope she would get through the hour-long drive with Daniel Galvez as painlessly.
Chapter 3
The slushy snow of earlier in the evening had given way to giant, soft flakes as the temperature dropped. Daniel drove away from the U. toward the canyon that would take them back to Moose Springs through the feeder streets along the foothills. Roads here were mostly clear, though he knew the canyon would probably be dicey.
He was painfully aware of Lauren sitting beside him and wondered if they had ever been alone like this. He was so conscious of her that it took all his powers of concentration to keep his attention on driving as he took the exit to I-80 through the canyon.
Still, he was aware of every movement from her side of the SUV. When he caught her covering a yawn, he risked a look at her. “Go ahead and sleep if you need to. I’ve got a pillow in the back.”
“I’m all right. It’s been a rather long day. I imagine you know all about those.”
“This week, I certainly do.” He signaled to change lanes around a car with out-of-state plates going at a crawl through what was just a light layer of snow.
The scanner crackled with static suddenly and he heard radio traffic of somebody in Park City reporting a drunk-and-disorderly patron at one of the popular restaurants on Main Street.
“I’m sure that’s not the first one of those they’ve had this week,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, and it won’t be the last until Sundance is over. The detective I spoke to tonight on the way here sounded just a little frazzled.”
“Things are busy enough in Park City in the winter with all the skiers. Throw in the film festival and it’s a nightmare.”
“Have you been to any screenings this year?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of free hours to go to movies. You?”
“No. I caught a few screenings last year but I’m afraid this one is going to pass me by. Too much work.”
“We’re pathetic, aren’t we? Sounds like we both need to get a life outside our jobs.”
“I’d love to,” he deadpanned, “but who has the time?”
She laughed out loud at that, the low, musical sound filling all the cold corners of his Tahoe. “We are pathetic. I was thinking the exact same thing. By the time I finish a twelve-hour shift at the clinic, I’m lucky to find the energy to drive home.”
“You need a vacation.” He pushed away the image of her on a white sand beach somewhere, a soft sea breeze ruffling her hair and her muscles loose and relaxed.
“Funny, that seems to be the consensus,” she said. “You’ll be surprised to find, I’m sure, that I’m actually taking one next week. Coralee and Bruce Jenkins are going on a cruise. Rather than hire a temp to be the office manager for a week, I decided to close the whole clinic and just give everyone the time off. My staff needed a break.”
“Good for you!”
“The town got along without any doctor at all for a long time. I’m sure a few days without me will be bearable.”
“What are you doing with yourself?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Mom’s bugging me to come down and visit for a few days. I might. Or I might just stick close to home, try out some new cross-country ski trails, maybe take in a movie or two in Park City.”
“I’m sure Dr. Fox would be happy to take you to a screening if you just said the word.”
He immediately wished he had just kept that little statement to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lauren’s eyes widen with surprise. Even from here, he could see color flare on her delicate cheekbones. “Kendall? I don’t think so.”
He knew he should let it rest but he just couldn’t seem to make himself shut up. “Why?” he pressed. “He’s good-looking, successful, probably loaded. Seems like a good catch.”
“Maybe you should date him,” she said tartly.
“I’m not the one the good doctor couldn’t take his eyes off.”
“You’re delusional. I’d be happy to refer you to a
doctor who can prescribe something for that.”
He laughed, but figured he should probably change the subject before he revealed too much, like the attraction he had done his best to hide for more than a decade. Before he could come up with a conversational detour, she beat him to the punch.
“What about you?” she asked. “I heard rumors of wedding bells a few summers ago when you were dating little Cheryl White.”
“She wasn’t little,” he muttered.
“Not in physical assets, anyway. But wasn’t she barely out of high school?”
He had to admit, he was a little stung by her implication that he might be interested in jailbait. At the same time, he had to wonder why she noticed who he dated. “Cheryl was twenty-one when I started dating her. She didn’t even have to use fake ID to get into Mickey’s.”
“That must have been a relief for you. It probably would have been a little awkward to have to arrest your own girlfriend.”
It must be late, if she could tease him like this. The tension usually simmering between them was nowhere in sight as they drove through the snowy night. He savored the moment, though he was fairly certain it wouldn’t last.
“For the record, Cheryl was never my girlfriend. We only dated a few times and we never discussed wedding bells or anything else matrimony-related. You ought to know better than to listen to the Moose Springs gossips.”
Even without looking at her, he could feel her light mood trickle away like the snow melting on the windshield.
“You’re right. Absolutely right.” Her voice cooled several degrees in just a few seconds. “Who gossips to you will gossip of you, isn’t that what they say? And I certainly don’t need to be the subject of any more whispers in Moose Springs.”
The ghost of her father loomed between them and all the usual tension suddenly returned. He would have given anything to take his heedless words back, but like those snippets of gossip spreading around town, they couldn’t be recalled.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he made some innocuous comment about the weather. She responded in a quiet, polite voice, as if those shared moments of intimacy had never been.
Shelter from the Storm Page 3