“Okay. I’ll see you at the clinic then,” she said and made a move to scrape the dirty plates into the trash compactor.
Brady immediately grabbed the plate from her hand and placed it in the sink. “Forget that. Reggie will find them. C’mon, you can lean on me as we climb the stairs.”
He held out his arm to her and with a wan smile, she looped her arm through his. “Behind that deputy’s badge, you’re a real knight, brother.”
He chuckled as the two of them started out of the room. “A knight, eh? I thought I was a cowboy.”
“Is there any difference?” she asked.
“Not in the Donovan family.”
The next morning when Brady arrived at the clinic to pick her up, Bridget was ready and waiting. After loading her medical bag and helping her into the plush cab of his personal truck, he turned the diesel toward the main highway.
As they drove southward on Highway 70, the sky lightened with streaks of purple clouds and golden shafts of sunlight. Bridget tried to concentrate on the beauty of the morning instead of seeing Johnny again. But his face was something that had haunted her for years and now that she’d seen him again, kissed him as though he was still her lover, he was a vivid vision she couldn’t shake.
“How long is this doctor’s visit going to take?” Brady asked as they grew closer to the Chino homestead. “You have to be back at the clinic soon, don’t you?”
“I should have warned you that we’ll be here a while,” she told him. “I have to run a bag of medications through Naomi’s IV.”
His head whipped around to stare at her with concern. “My God, an IV! I didn’t realize she was that ill!”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “Brady, I told you last night that the woman actually needed to be hospitalized.”
“Well, yeah, but you know how you doctors are,” he reasoned. “You’re overly cautious about sick people. And you overdramatize something as simple as a splinter in the end of your finger.”
Not in the mood for his sarcasm, she said flatly, “Look, if you can’t wait around while the IV drips, then you can leave and come back later to pick me up.”
Cursing, he jerked the wheel in order to miss a giant chughole in the dirt road. “What the hell is wrong with you? If need be, I can stay all day. Naomi is like a second grandmother to me. Why would you think I couldn’t give her a few hours of my time? You’re being insulting.”
Bridget had thought her spirits were already at rock bottom, but she’d been wrong. Harping at Brady for no good reason had shoved them to a new low.
“I’m sorry, Brady.” She cast him an apologetic smile. “Really I am. I’m—well, I’ve been under a lot of stress these past few days. I didn’t mean to be so catty. In fact, I love you for coming with me this morning.”
Relenting, he reached across the seat and patted the top of her hand. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have been so sensitive. But I am going to be frank and tell you that you look downright awful. Are you sure you don’t need a doctor yourself?”
I need to get Naomi well. I need to get away from Johnny and try to forget the wretched state of my heart.
“Don’t worry about me, Brady. I’ll survive.”
“Humph,” he grunted. “Surviving isn’t everything.” Five minutes later he parked the truck in front of the Chino home. As Bridget quickly reached for her medical bag, Brady spoke up, “There’s Johnny over by the barn. I’ll go see if he needs any help.”
Bridget glanced briefly out the passenger window to see him dumping feed into a trough for a small herd of goats. He was dressed in blue jeans and boots and a camouflage army jacket. His black hair was loose from its usual ponytail and for a split second she was remembering the days and nights they’d spent together at the fishing cabin. He’d looked so raw and untamed and sexy that the sight of him had literally taken her breath. And this morning she realized that it still did.
“Okay. I’ll go on inside and start tending to Naomi,” she said in a nervous rush, then slipped from the truck and, without so much as glancing in Johnny’s direction, hurried to the house.
To her great relief, the woman was showing a bit of improvement and it pleased her to be able to assure Charlie that his wife appeared to be on the mend.
She had already examined Naomi and started the bag of IV fluids flowing when she heard the two men enter the house. Moments later, she spotted Brady standing in the open doorway, waiting for her to give him a signal as to whether he could come into the patient’s room.
She said, “Come in, Brady. I’m sure Naomi will be glad to see a new face. Just don’t talk her head off. She needs her rest.”
Removing his hat from his head, Brady stepped into the room and Bridget intercepted him just as he reached the foot of the bed.
“Where’s Johnny?” she asked. “I want to discuss Naomi’s condition with him.”
“In the kitchen. Making coffee.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I’ll be in there if you need me.”
He nodded and she quietly left the room.
When she entered the kitchen a sense of déjà vu settled over her, but she did her best to shrug it off. It might be the same time and same place, she thought, but this time their lips wouldn’t meet, their hearts pound against each other.
“I thought you might want to know that your grandmother has improved slightly,” she said without preamble.
He turned away from the cabinet counter to stare at her. “Why did you bring Brady with you?”
The bluntly spoken question propelled her across the room until she was standing directly in front of him. “I didn’t bring Brady,” she explained. “He brought me. And since you seem to need an explanation, it was his idea.”
A grimace tightened his already stiff features. “I don’t want him to know about us.”
“How could he?” she retorted. “You told me yesterday that there was no us.”
His jaw turned to a hunk of concrete. “You know what I mean.”
Bridget suddenly realized she was trembling. And not because she was near the object of her affections. Oh, no, she was angry. Very angry.
Moving to within an inch of him, she asked, “And why do you want to keep the truth from my brother, Johnny? Because you don’t want him to find out that for once in your life you allowed yourself to act human?”
Faster than a flash, his hand was on her shoulder, his fingers dipping into her flesh.
“When you finish here this morning, that’s it!” he muttered harshly. “You’re not coming back!”
Fury pumped hot color to her cheeks. “And what about your grandmother?” she demanded.
“I’ll force her to go to the hospital. You said she should be there anyway.”
Being a doctor, Bridget had never wanted to physically harm anything or anyone in her life, but at this moment she would have taken immense satisfaction in slapping his stony face.
“Okay, Johnny,” she shot back in a sarcastic rush. “You go in there right now and tell Naomi that I can’t treat her anymore! Tell her that it’s more important to you to keep me away from here—and from you!”
“What the hell is going on in here?”
Bridget’s head jerked toward the sound of Brady’s voice and she watched with a measure of shock as he stepped into the kitchen. His gaze was zeroed in on the grip Johnny had on her shoulder and she had no doubt he’d heard her raised voice and had caught, at the very least, the last few words she’d flung at his friend.
Her cheeks blazing, she whirled away from Johnny and stalked past her brother. “Get your friend to explain,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I have a patient to see to.”
Chapter Six
Bridget had already clamped off Naomi’s IV and checked her vital signs one last time when Brady entered the bedroom and walked over to where she was packing away her medical tools.
Glancing up at him, she tried to keep her expression natural, which wasn’t an easy feat. Even though an hour and a half
had passed since her heated exchange with Johnny, she was still feeling the aftershocks of her anger.
“I’m nearly finished here. Are you ready to leave?” she asked him.
“Not yet. Johnny wants to speak with you. Privately,” he added. “He’s out back—splitting firewood.”
“He had to send you to tell me this?”
Brady shrugged, but the cock of one brow told her that his curiosity was piqued. Thankfully, he refrained from asking questions that she wasn’t ready to answer.
“Johnny’s not a man who likes to do a lot of talking,” Brady explained.
Bridget bit back a disgusted curse. The man didn’t have any trouble talking when his temper was riled. Which seemed to happen often, whenever she was near him.
“All right. I’ll go talk with him.”
With a faint grin, Brady squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” he told her.
Bridget quickly finished packing her medical bag, then said goodbye to Naomi and Charlie. As she left the couple’s bedroom, she braced herself as she walked to the kitchen, then stepped through a back door and onto a small porch.
More than two hours had passed since she and Brady had first arrived and now the morning sun was warming the sky. The branches of the pine were slanting shadows across one end of the porch and shading part of the yard. A few feet away, on a barren slope, Johnny swung a heavy splitting maul over his shoulder and straight into a short piece of log. The fierce impact sent two large hunks of wood flying in separate directions.
As he bent over to gather the scattered pieces, she stepped off the porch and walked over to him. He took his time positioning the next log to be split, before he finally straightened to his full height and acknowledged her presence. By then Bridget’s heart was fluttering and her mouth so dry she wondered how she’d be able to form a word.
Damn it, the man made her crazy, she thought. His behavior should have turned her to unfeeling steel a long time ago. Instead, one look from his dark eyes only melted her more.
“Brady said you wanted to speak with me.”
Nodding, he tossed the maul aside and turned to face her directly. Bridget’s gaze remained fastened on his face as she tried to compose herself, to tell herself that he wasn’t the same man that used to whisper his love for her, that never would have spoken harshly to her. She wanted that man back. Oh, God how she wanted him back.
“I asked him to fetch you for me.”
“Why? Are you having trouble walking and couldn’t make it to your grandmother’s bedroom? Maybe I should examine your feet and legs,” she suggested with a hint of sarcasm. “They appear to be holding up your weight well enough at the moment.”
“Has becoming a doctor given you that smart mouth?” he asked.
“No. Stubborn men. One in particular.”
His gaze dropped to the split firewood. “Brady thinks I want to talk to you about Grandmother’s condition. Nothing more.”
“Brady isn’t a fool. He saw us arguing. But what does that matter anyway? You and I are over, remember? Or to hear you tell it, we never were.”
At that moment the collie left her spot across the yard and walked over to Johnny’s side. Turning his attention to the dog, he absently stroked its sleek head. “I hope it’s the anger at me that’s making you talk this way. I don’t want to think that you’ve changed so much.”
Normally she didn’t allow anything or anyone to push her into losing her cool. But Johnny affected her like no one else. Drawing in a deep, cleansing breath, she admitted in a softer tone, “You did make me angry.”
His dark gaze lifted to her face. “I’m sorry about that, Bridget. When I saw Brady with you—I jumped to conclusions. I thought you’d probably told him—about us. I was wrong.”
She couldn’t remember a time that Johnny had ever apologized to her over anything. It wasn’t his style to bend. But to be fair, he’d never done anything to her that he’d needed to apologize for. Except break her heart.
Her voice hardly more than a soft whisper, she asked, “Would that matter so much, Johnny? For Brady to know that we’d had an affair?”
Grimacing, he turned his attention to the distant mountains. “He’d see me as a fool. It would ruin our friendship.”
She studied his carved profile with a mixture of pain and confusion. “Being with me made you a fool?”
A tiny muscle in his cheek jumped, then quivered. “That’s not what I meant. A man is a fool when he reaches for something he knows he can’t hold on to.”
You have two hands and a heart, she wanted to say. That’s all you need to hold on to me.
Instead, she simply said, “Oh.”
Looking at her, he asked, “Are you going to continue to be Grandmother’s doctor?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “I never considered doing anything else. Naomi is my patient. She asked for my services and since all her senses are working properly, I’ll adhere to her requests. Not yours.”
“I guess I knew that all along.”
Mollified by his admission, she softly reasoned, “I’m not here to test you, Johnny. I’m here to get your grandmother well. That’s all. And as for Brady or anyone else knowing about our affair, you should know that for five years I’ve respected your wishes to keep it a secret.”
“Thank you.”
Not wanting to dwell on the issue any longer, she quickly announced, “I need to get back to the clinic. I’ll go tell Brady I’m ready to go.”
She turned and started toward the house when his voice caused her to pause and glance back at him.
“I won’t interfere with you doctoring Grandmother anymore. I wanted you to know that.”
She forced herself to smile at him, even though she felt drained and defeated. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised.
On the way back to Ruidoso, she and Brady had traveled a good ten minutes before he finally brought up the awkward scene he’d walked in upon in the Chino kitchen.
“Since you had your hands full treating Naomi, I didn’t want to question you back there,” he said, “but it sounded like you and Johnny were very angry with each other.”
Shrugging with a casualness she was far from feeling, she answered, “It wasn’t anything serious. In fact, it’s already forgotten.”
“Hmm. That’s a relief to know. You two looked like a pair of fighting lovers. I don’t get it. You two have barely met. What reason do you have to be going at each other’s throats?”
“Nothing,” she lied. “We—just had a disagreement over Naomi’s treatment, that’s all. Your friend just happens to bring out the worst in me, Brady.”
He cast a skeptical glance at her. “So what do you think about Johnny?”
The question jolted her. “What do you mean?”
Settling his gaze back on the gravel road, he said, “Oh, I was just wondering. He—well, I know for a fact that some women find him very attractive. But you—no.” He chuckled at his spoken musings. “You wouldn’t be one of them. Would you?”
At that moment, Bridget wanted to confess so badly that it was all she could do to keep the words on her tongue. If there had ever been anyone who’d come close to understanding Johnny, it was Brady. She wanted to tell him how much she’d loved the man, how much she still loved him. And ask him what he thought she should do about it. But her promise to Johnny kept the words in her mouth and a desolate ache in her heart.
“No,” she forced herself to say. “From what I gather Johnny is the strong silent type. Give me the outgoing type. A guy who can laugh and make me laugh with him.”
Smiling, he glanced at her. “Yeah. I guess in your profession you need something to lighten the load on your shoulders.”
“Laughing helps,” she admitted.
They rounded a curve and a short distance ahead, the main highway appeared. As Brady geared down the truck for an oncoming stop sign, he said with a measure of sarcasm, “Well, I guess you’ve already seen for yourself that Johnny is a man w
ho laughs a lot.”
Her heart winced with sadness. Not for herself, but for the man she loved. “Sure,” she replied, her voice edged with sarcasm. “I can’t get a word in edgewise for all his laughing.”
A solemn frown suddenly marred the center of Brady’s forehead. “Just remember, sis, his life has been very different from ours.”
“I know,” she said. That’s why I can forgive him. Even for breaking my heart.
Three days later, after seeing her last patient at the clinic and making her rounds at Sierra General, Bridget changed into casual jeans and a thick green sweater before she climbed into her Jeep and departed for the reservation.
The past few days had seen a marked improvement in Naomi, and though she was thrilled about the elderly woman’s recovery, Bridget was beginning to think about the time when her medical visits would be superficial. Whenever that day came, she’d have to put an end to her trips to the Chino home. An end to seeing Johnny.
Since that day in the backyard when he’d apologized to her, he’d been noticeably different whenever she was around. She didn’t know what had brought about the change, but he was talking more and scowling less and she was beginning to look forward to seeing him.
Night had fallen and cold air had settled over the mountains when she finally arrived at the Chinos’. It was only the second time she’d made an evening visit, but as she parked her Jeep near the old pine, something about the warm glow of lights in the window and the wood smoke spiraling up from the small chimney made her feel as though she was coming home. Home to her family.
By now the dogs had taken to greeting her with licks and happy whines. Tonight the two of them trotted at her sides as she made her way across the barren yard and onto the small porch.
Before she had a chance to rap her knuckles on the door, the panel of wood swung wide and Johnny stood on the other side of the screen.
“You’re here,” he stated in the way of a greeting.
His Medicine Woman Page 6