by Diana Palmer
Her skin crawled when she had to pick up the basket and gather the eggs, especially the ones the snake had been curled around. Now, every time she went to the henhouse, she’d be shivering with apprehension.
You’ve looked at gunshot wounds, accident victims, every sort of horror known to human eyes, she told herself firmly. The snake wasn’t even lacerated! So get it done and move on.
She did, walking back out into the sunlight with a full basket of eggs and a forced look of composure on her soft face.
Rey was waiting for her, leaning against the bumper of the truck with his arms crossed and his hat pulled low over his eyes.
She didn’t dare look at him for long. In that indolent pose, his lean, muscular body was shown to its very best advantage. It made her tingle to think how it had felt to be held against every inch of that formidable frame, to be kissed by that long, hard mouth.
“You get thrown, you get right back on the horse,” he said with approval. “I’m proud of you, Meredith. It would be hard for even a ranch-born girl to go back into a henhouse where a snake had been lurking.”
She took a slow breath. “We don’t face things by running away from them, I guess,” she agreed.
His eyes narrowed under the wide brim of the hat. “What are you running away from, Meredith? What is your father running away from?”
She clutched the basket to her chest. “That’s nothing that you need to concern yourself with,” she said with quiet dignity.
“You work for me,” he replied.
“Not for long,” she pointed out. “In another week or so, I’ll be a memory.”
“Will you?” He lurched away from the bumper and went to stand just in front of her, a tall and sensual threat. His fingers touched her soft mouth lightly. “Those bruises still look pretty fresh,” he pointed out. “And you did ask for a month’s leave, or so you said. Did you?”
She grimaced. “Well, yes, but I don’t have to stay here all that time.”
“I think you do,” he returned. He bent and drew his mouth slowly over hers, a whisper of a contact that made her breath catch. He smiled with faint arrogance as he stood up again. “Anything could happen,” he drawled. “You might like ranch life.”
“I don’t like snakes already.”
“That was a fluke. They’re generally hibernating by November, but it’s been unseasonably warm. Spring is generally when you have to watch where you put your hands. But you don’t need to worry. I’ll protect you from snakes. And other perils.”
“Who’ll protect me from you?” she asked huskily.
He raised any eyebrow. “Why would you need protection?” he asked. “You’re well over the age of consent.”
“I’ve lived a very sheltered life,” she said flatly.
He pursed his lips as he studied her, examining the statement. “Maybe it’s time you walked out of the cocoon.”
“I’m not in the market for an affair.”
“Neither am I.” He smiled slowly. “But if you worked at it, you might change my mind.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. Her eyes were cool as they met his. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was ‘drooling’ over you,” she added deliberately.
His face changed. He knew immediately that she’d overheard what he’d said to Leo. He was sorry, because it wasn’t true. He’d been desperate to throw Leo off the track. He didn’t want his brother to know how attracted he was to her.
“Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, don’t they say?” he asked quietly.
“Never,” she agreed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go wash the eggs.”
“I said something else that you’ll remember with sordid ease,” he murmured as she started past him. He caught her by the shoulder and tugged her close, bending to drag his mouth roughly across hers. “But I didn’t mean that, either,” he whispered against her parted lips. “Your innocence makes my head spin. I lay awake at night thinking of all sorts of delicious ways to relieve you of it.”
“You’d be lucky!” she exclaimed, shocked.
He laughed softly as he let her go. “So would you,” he drawled. “I’ve been called ‘sensual hell’ in bed, and I can assure you it wasn’t meant to be a derogatory remark.”
“Rey Hart!” she burst out.
“But why take anyone else’s word for it?” he teased. “I’ll be glad to let you see for yourself, anytime you like.”
“If you think…I have never…of all the…!”
“Yes, it does tend to make women flustered when I mention what a great lover I am,” he said with a wicked grin.
She couldn’t get one coherent sentence out. She stomped her foot hard, turned around, and stormed into the kitchen, almost knocking herself down with the door in the process. It didn’t help that Rey stood out there laughing like a predator.
* * *
If she expected Rey to be apologetic about what he’d said, she was doomed to disappointment. He watched her with narrow, assessing eyes as she went about her household duties. He didn’t harass her, or monopolize her. He just watched. The scrutiny made her so nervous that she fumbled constantly. Her heart ran wild at the attention from those dark, steady eyes.
“Why don’t you want to do something else besides keep house?” Rey asked her one evening when she was putting supper on the table. Leo, as usual, was late getting in. Rey had volunteered to set the table while she fixed Mexican corn bread and chili.
“Keeping house has less stress than most outside jobs,” she said, not looking at him.
“It pays lousy wages,” he continued, “and you could get into a lot of trouble in some households, with men who’d see you as fair game.”
“Do you see me that way?” she asked, wide-eyed.
He glowered at her. “No, I don’t. The point is, some other man might. It isn’t a safe career. In a profession, there are more laws to protect you.”
“Most professional people have degrees and such. Besides, I’m too old.”
“You’re never too old to go back to school,” he replied.
She shrugged. “Besides, I like cooking and cleaning.”
He eyed her curiously. “You’re very good at handling injured people,” he said suddenly. “And you’re remarkably calm in an emergency.”
“It’s good practice for when I have kids,” she said.
He drew in a short breath. “You like being mysterious, don’t you?”
“While it lasts, it’s fun,” she agreed.
His eyes narrowed. “What dark secrets are you keeping, Meredith?” he asked quietly.
“None that should bother you, even if you found them out,” she assured him. She smiled at him from the stove. “Meanwhile, you’re getting fresh biscuits every day.”
“Yes, we are,” he had to agree. “And you’re a good cook. But I don’t like mysteries.”
She pursed her lips and gave him a teasing glance over her shoulder. “Too bad.”
He put the last place setting on the table and sat down at his place, just staring at her, without speaking. “You know,” he said after a minute, frowning, “there’s something familiar about your last name. I can’t quite place it, but I know I’ve heard it somewhere.”
That wasn’t good, she thought. He might remember Leo talking about her brother. She didn’t want to have to face the past, not just yet, when she was still broken and bruised and uncomfortable. When she was back on her feet and well again, there would be time to come to grips with it once and for all—as her poor father was already doing.
“Think so?” she asked with forced nonchalance.
He shrugged. “Well, it may come back to me one day.”
Fortunately Leo came in and stopped his train of thought. Meredith put supper on the table and sat down to eat it with the brothers.
* * *
The next morning, Rey came out to the kitchen with a bright silver metal gun case. He set it down beside the counter, out of the way, before he started eating
his breakfast.
“Going hunting?” Meredith asked impishly.
He gave her a wary glance. “Skeet shooting,” he corrected. “The season’s over, but I practice year-round.”
“He won two medals at the World championships in San Antonio, this year,” Leo told her with a grin. “He’s an A class shooter.”
“Which gauge?” she asked without thinking.
Rey’s face became suspicious. “All of them. What do you know about shotguns?”
“I used to skeet-shoot,” she volunteered. “My brother taught me how to handle a shotgun, and then he got me into competition shooting. I wasn’t able to keep it up after I grad…after high school,” she improvised quickly. She didn’t dare tell him she gave it up after she finished college. That would be giving away far too much.
He watched her sip coffee. “You can shoot, can you?” he asked, looking as if he were humoring her. He didn’t seem to believe what she claimed.
“Yes, I can,” she said deliberately.
He smiled. “Like to come down to the range with me?” he asked. “I’ve got a nice little .28 gauge I can bring along for you.”
By offering her his lowest caliber shotgun, he was assuming that she couldn’t handle anything heavier.
“What’s in the case?” she asked.
“My twelve gauge,” he said.
She gave him a speaking glance. “I’ll just shoot that, if you don’t mind sharing it. Uh, it doesn’t have a kick or anything…?” she added, and had to bite her tongue to keep from grinning at her innocent pose.
He cleared his throat. He didn’t dare look at Leo. “No,” he said carelessly. “Of course it doesn’t have a kick.”
In truth, it would kick worse than any other of the four gauges, but Rey was planning to call her bluff. She was putting on an act for his benefit. He was going to make her sorry she tried it.
“Then I’ll be just fine with that gun,” she said. “More apple butter?” She offered him an open jar and spoon.
“Thanks,” he replied smugly, accepting the jar. He put it down and buttered another biscuit before he spooned the apple butter into it. “Don’t mind if I do. Leo, want to come along?” he asked his brother.
Leo was also trying not to grin. “I think I will, this time,” he told his brother. This was one shooting contest he wasn’t about to miss. He knew that Mike Johns was a champion shooter. If he’d been the one who taught his sister, Meredith would shock Rey speechless when she got that shotgun in her arms. He was going along. He didn’t want to miss the fun.
“The more the merrier, I always say,” Rey chuckled.
“Funny thing, that’s just what I was thinking,” Leo replied, tongue-in-cheek.
Meredith didn’t say another word. She finished her breakfast, waited until they finished theirs, and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Then she dressed in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved flannel shirt with a down-filled vest and a bib cap, and went off to let Rey show her how to shoot a shotgun.
* * *
The target range was unusually busy for a lazy Friday afternoon in November. It was a cool day, with a nice nip in the air. Meredith felt good in the down vest. It was one she’d often worn when she went to the firing range with Mike in cold weather. Coats were cumbersome and often got in the way of a good, quick aim.
Rey and Leo stopped to pass the time of day with two elderly shooters, both of whom gave Meredith a warm welcome.
“This is Jack, and that’s Billy Joe,” Rey introduced the white-haired men, one of whom was tall and spare, the other overweight and short. The short one had walked briskly the short distance from the red pickup truck parked at the clubhouse, and he was out of breath already. “We all go to district, state and national shoots as a team from our club.”
“But we get honorable mention, and Rey wins the medals,” Billy Joe, the shorter man, chuckled, still trying to catch his breath. “We don’t mind. We’re just happy that somebody from our club breaks records!”
“Amen to that,” Jack agreed, smiling.
“All right, let’s get to shooting,” Billy Joe said, turning back to his truck. “Stay where you are, Jack. I’ll bring your gun, too!”
He turned back toward the truck, rushing and still breathless. Meredith frowned. His cheeks were unnaturally pink, and it wasn’t that cold. His complexion was almost white. He was sweating. She knew the symptoms. She’d seen them all too often.
“You might go with him,” Meredith said abruptly, interrupting Jack’s banter with Rey.
“Excuse me?” Jack asked.
Just at that moment, Billy Joe stopped, stood very still for a minute, and then buckled and fell forward into a crumpled heap at the door of his truck.
Meredith took off at a dead run. “Somebody get me a cell phone!” she called as she ran.
Leo fumbled his out of the holder on his belt and passed it to her as she knelt beside Billy Joe.
“Get his feet elevated. Find something to cover him with,” she shot at the other men. She was dialing while she spoke. She loosened the man’s shirt, propping the phone against her ear—the worst way to hold it, but there was no other way at the moment—and felt down Billy Joe’s chest for his diaphragm. “Get his wallet and read me his weight and age from his driver’s license,” she added with a sharp glance in Leo’s direction.
Leo dug out the wallet and started calling out information, while Rey and Jack stood beside the fallen man and watched with silent concern.
“I want the resident on duty in the emergency room, stat,” she said. “This is Meredith Johns. I have a patient, sixty years of age, one hundred and eighty pounds, who collapsed without warning. Early signs indicate a possible myocardial infarction. Pulse is thready,” she murmured, checking the second hand of her watch as she took his pulse with her fingertips, “forty beats a minute, breathing shallow and labored, grey complexion, profuse sweating. I need EMTs en route, I am initiating cardiopulmonary resuscitation now.”
There was a long pause, and a male voice came over the line. With her voice calm and steady, Meredith gave the information again, and then handed the phone to Leo as she bent over the elderly man and did the spaced compressions over his breastbone, followed by mouth-to-mouth breathing.
Rey was watching, spellbound at her proficiency, at the easy and quite professional manner in which she’d taken charge of a life-or-death emergency. Within five minutes, the ambulance was screaming up the graveled road that led to the Jacobsville Gun Club, and Billy Joe was holding his own.
The EMTs listened to Meredith’s terse summary of events as they called the same resident Meredith had been talking to.
“Doc says to give you a pat on the back.” The female EMT grinned at Meredith as they loaded Billy Joe into the ambulance. “You sure knew what to do.”
“Yes,” Rey agreed, finding his tongue at last. “You’ve obviously had first-aid training.”
He probably meant it as praise, but it hit Meredith in the gut. She glared at him. “What I’ve had,” she emphasized, “is five years of college. I have a master’s degree in nursing science, and I’m a card-carrying nurse practitioner!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rey stared at his new cook as if she’d suddenly sprouted feathers on her head. His summation of her abilities was suddenly smoke. She was someone he didn’t even know. She was a health-care professional, not a flighty cook, and certainly not the sort of woman to streetwalk as a sideline.
She nodded solemnly. “I figured it would come as a shock,” she told him. She turned her attention back to the EMTs. “Thanks for being so prompt. Think he’ll be okay?”
The female EMT smiled. “I think so. His heartbeat’s stronger, his breathing is regular, and he’s regaining consciousness. Good job!”
She grinned. “You, too.”
They waved and took off, lights flashing, but without turning on the sirens.
“Why aren’t the sirens going?” Rey wanted to know. “He’s not out of danger yet, surely?
”
“They don’t like to run the sirens unless they have to,” Meredith told him. “Some people actually run off the road and wreck their cars because the sirens rattle them. They use the lights, but they only turn on the sirens if they hit heavy traffic and have to force their way through it. Those EMTs,” she added with a smile, “they’re the real heroes and heroines. They do the hardest job of all.”
“You saved Billy Joe’s life,” Jack said huskily, shaking her hand hard. “He’s the best friend I got. Thank you.”
She smiled gently and returned the handshake. “It goes with the job description. Don’t try to keep up with the ambulance,” she cautioned when he went toward Billy Joe’s truck, which still had the key in the ignition. The two men had come together.
“I’ll be careful,” the older man promised.
“Whew!” Leo let out the breath he’d almost been holding, and put up his cell phone. “You’re one cool lady under fire, Meredith.”
She smiled sadly. “I’ve had to be,” she replied. She glanced at Rey, who looked cold and angry as it occurred to him, belatedly, that she’d played him for a fool. “I can see what you’re thinking, but I didn’t actually lie to you. You never asked me exactly what I did for a living. Of course, you thought you already knew,” she added with faint sarcasm.
He didn’t reply. He gave her a long, contemptuous look and turned away. “I’ve lost my taste for practice,” he said quietly. “I want to go on to the hospital and see about Billy Joe.”
“Me, too,” Leo added. “Meredith…?”
“I’ll go along,” she said. “I’d like to meet that resident I spoke with. He’s very good.”
Rey glanced toward her. “You’ll get along. He keeps secrets, too,” he said bitterly, and got behind the wheel.
Leo made a face at Meredith, opening the third door of the big double-cabbed truck so that she could sit in back. He put the gun cases in the boot, in a locked area, and climbed in beside Rey.
* * *
The resident turned out to be a former mercenary named Micah Steele. He was married to a local girl, and he’d gone back to school to finish his course of study for his medical license.