Jaimie pulled him down to the nest of blankets and straddled him, her cheeks feeling on fire. “I’m sure we can come up with something,” she promised.
His soft laugh was cut off by a low groan. “No doubt.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jaimie hung up the phone. She turned to Matthew and swallowed. Two weeks had passed since she’d come down with the chicken pox. She only had one spot in the middle of her back that wasn’t quite healed. Two weeks when Matthew had stopped pushing her away. Had stopped acting as if they could go back to where they started from...the rancher and his housekeeper. And though he’d gone back to the big house at night again, leaving Jaimie alone at Joe and Maggie’s place, Jaimie felt closer to him than she’d ever dreamed possible.
“Well?”
“That was Joe,” she said. Unnecessarily, since Matthew had been the one to answer the phone in the first place.
She was thrilled for Maggie and Joe. Truly she was. And yet, underlying the happiness and relief she felt that the baby had arrived safely, she couldn’t ignore the knowledge that her time at the Double-C was rapidly coming to an end.
Not unless Matthew asked her to stay. And she knew that wouldn’t happen, no matter how wondrous the past two weeks had been.
“And?”
She dragged her thoughts under control. “Maggie went into labor again. They couldn’t stop it this time. The baby came this morning.”
He nudged her chin up with a long finger. “And?”
She blinked, managing a smile. “She’s fine. It was a girl.”
“What’s her name?”
Jaimie shook her head. “I don’t know. Joe hung up too quickly for me to find out. He did say Maggie would be coming home tomorrow. They want to keep the baby for a while yet. Just in case any problems develop.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, well, they don’t keep a woman for days anymore. Not if everybody is healthy and all. Oh my...I’ve got to get that room ready as a nursery. Maggie bought a crib and some furniture a while back, but it’s all still in boxes.” Jaimie suspected that her sister-in-law hadn’t wanted to somehow jinx her pregnancy by setting things up too soon.
“The second bedroom?”
She nodded absently, her mind already busy. She pulled the small notepad off the phone and found a pencil.
“What about you?”
“What about me? I’ll try to set it up—”
“I meant, where will you sleep?”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “On the couch, I guess. There won’t be room in there for the bed with a crib.” She felt color heat her cheeks. She had fond memories of that couch. So fond, she wasn’t sure she would get a decent night’s sleep on it. Set up crib, she wrote. He was silent while she scribbled.
Wash new dia—
“You could stay here.”
Her pencil scratched off the edge of the pad. “Oh?” That was good, she thought, about her tone. Just the right touch of casual interest.
“We’ve got extra bedrooms,” he added.
His gruff voice scraped tantalizingly across her nerves. Then shel realized. Extra bedrooms. With Squire visiting Gloria again, it wasn’t as if they would need to protect his sensibilities. Nope. This wasn’t exactly a declaration of intent. She set down the pencil. “I see.” He sighed and she felt his impatience. “Actually,” she added quickly, “I really should stay with Maggie and Joe. She’ll need help when she first gets back with the baby.” When she dared a glance at him, he nodded, easily accepting her explanation.
What she’d said wasn’t untrue. Maggie would need help. Jaimie just needed to concentrate on that one fact. Not on the realization that she didn’t want to stay in the big house. Not unless it was as Matthew’s...something. She told herself, yet again, to be realistic.
She tore off the list, and Matthew leaned past her to look at it. “When Daniel gets back from Weaver this afternoon, I’ll get him to help me move out the furniture that’s in there now,” he said. “Then I’ll help you set all that up.”
Jaimie moistened her lips, nodding. “Thanks.”
Matthew eyed her downcast features. He squelched the words that rose in him. Words that would bring her to his bedroom tonight. For all nights. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let himself draw her that far into his life. No matter how much he found himself wanting her, needing the dash of spice she brought just by walking into a room.
He would help her with the baby furniture. He would help her clean up the dishes after supper as had become their habit over the past several days. He would even lie with her, share the electricity that streaked between them with the quickest of glances. But he wouldn’t ask her to stay.
He kissed her, long and more hungrily than he’d intended, then tore away. He had nearly a dozen calves that Daniel had brought in that morning to check. It was like a birthing frenzy these days. Maggie... calves...
He left Jaimie seated at the table, where she’d plopped, sending him a dazed wave. Sandy scrambled out from beneath the table and trotted at his boot heels as he headed to the barn. The snow that had fallen so fiercely when Jaimie was sick had begun melting. Matthew’s instincts told him that they’d seen the last storm of the season. Now, they would endure long, muddy weeks until the ground started to dry, then green, then bloom with wildflowers and clover.
In his mind he saw himself laying Jaimie back amongst the lush knee-high grass and flowers that would grow along the road leading to the swimming hole. Then he shook his head sharply. Jaimie would be gone by then.
The calves were fine, and he called to Sandy, setting off for the machine shed. He knew Jasper needed exercise, but this once he’d leave the horse for the snowmobile. In minutes he was zooming across the fields, rapidly, thoroughly checking fence and stock.
Jaimie had loved the speed of the snowmobile, even though she’d been half-frozen the evening he took her to the cabin.
Stop thinking that way. He bounced over a small hill, tilting his head against the cold rush of wind. On foot he checked Dawson’s bend, and rousted two stubborn cows out of its treacherous reaches, then aimed the snowmobile toward home.
Later Matthew couldn’t have explained how it all happened.
One minute he was zooming along, following the lazy arch of the frozen creek. The sleek black machine flying easily, smoothly, across the snow. The next he was airborne, going one way, and the snowmobile following, almost in slow motion. Everything probably would’ve been okay, too, if he’d landed just a few feet sooner. He would have hit a solid foot of snow. Cold, sure. But not exactly deadly.
Instead, Matthew saw himself heading straight for the iced surface of the creek, and braced himself. He felt the impact through every bone in his body. Swearing between his gritted teeth, he began to roll, when the ice gave an ominous, groaning creak. He looked up. “Ahhh...hell.”
The snowmobile came slamming down on top of him.
Jaimie felt a sudden chill tingle down her spine, and she automatically reached out to push the door to the mudroom closed. Holding the phone to her ear, she punched out Emily’s phone number. She had wanted to know when Maggie had the baby.
Jaimie shivered again, waiting. After several rings, their answering machine clicked on, and she ended up leaving a message.
Brushing her hands up and down the goose bumps that had risen on her arms, she went into the mudroom and looked out the storm door. The thermometer that was affixed to the wall outside the door told her that it hadn’t really gotten any colder.
Shaking her head at her silliness, she pulled on her purple coat and let herself out into the cold, bright morning. She was halfway to Joe and Maggie’s place when she heard Sandy bark.
Nothing unusual there. Sandy barked a lot. She barked at the cattle. She barked at D.C. She barked at rabbits and at dust motes in the air. Still...
Jaimie changed course and walked across the gravel road, stopping only when she came up against a fence rail. The sun reflected blindingly off the snow,
and she squinted, watching the golden retriever run, low and long, across the horizon.
She felt her mouth grow dry. The urgency inside her grew. When Sandy finally jumped through the fence rails to circle Jaimie’s legs, only one thing hammered through her brain.
“Where’s Matthew?” she asked the dog. Sandy sat on her haunches, whining. Jaimie swallowed and stared out over the land.
Suddenly she raced into the horse barn and, cursing the way her hands trembled, managed to get a halter over Daisy’s head. She slipped onto the horse, bareback. “Show me where Matthew is,” she whispered. Whether a request to Matthew’s golden retriever, or a prayer, she didn’t know. Probably both.
Jaimie had never been more conscious of the way time flew. By the time she saw the overturned snowmobile, half-submerged in the creek, she figured more than an hour had slipped past.
Sandy bounded through the snow that seemed feet deeper here than it did near the big house. Jaimie sank into it up to her knees as she struggled toward the site.
She felt the cold seep into the legs of her jeans, and snow creep under her coat as she fell flat on her face. She scrambled on her knees toward the rear end of the snowmobile that rested on the edge of the creek. Then she saw Matthew.
One gloved hand clung to one of the bent skis. His hat had skidded across to the other side of the creek, sitting safely atop an intact sheet of ice.
Crying his name, she scurried to the other side of the machine, where she could see him better.
Her breath climbed right back down into her lungs. “Oh, please,” she moaned, falling to her knees. His head was barely above the jagged shards of ice. The rest of his body was submerged in the shallow creek...probably pinned down by the weight of the huge snowmobile.
Blood matted the sheepskin lining near his face. If it weren’t for the hand that he’d wrapped around the ski, there was no doubt he would have been forced completely under the ice.
“Matthew,” she cried, but his eyes remained closed. She prayed he was still breathing. She tried not to think how people could drown in just a few feet of water.
Frustration brought tears to her eyes and she turned to study the snowmobile. She couldn’t push it from where she was. It would just slide further down on top of him. She doubted she had the strength to pull Matthew out from under it It was probably his very size that kept the machine from completely sliding into the creek in the first place.
She stood and looked frantically about. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Her eyes fell on Daisy and the reins that trailed in the snow. She dashed over and pulled the horse closer. Her fingers refused to work, and she yanked off her mittens, tossing them aside.
Blessing the knots that she’d learned when she’d worked at the marina in Lake Havasu City, she gently tossed the long rein over the end of the bent ski, above Matthew’s glove. If she could shift the snowmobile, just a little, she could drag Matthew out from the other side. If. If. If.
Daisy shook her head, nickering softly. Jaimie rounded the horse and slipped her hand against the rein that pulled tautly behind the horse and the snowmobile. “Come on, girl,” she begged. “Just a little.” She wrapped her own hand over the length of slender leather. She sank into the snow. Daisy snorted and shuffled her feet.
Jaimie dragged.
And centimeter by agonizing centimeter, the snowmobile started to slide to the left. “Just a little more. Just a little more,” Jaimie gasped, adding all her weight to the horse’s. The ice cracked sharply and, praying that Daisy didn’t move forward, Jaimie darted under the horse’s head and the straining leather. She sat down on the bank of the creek. Only an incline of a few feet, it barely qualified as a bank but she slid down it, feeling the icy cold water penetrate her jeans and seep down into her boots.
The snowmobile began sliding forward. “No!”
She grabbed Matthew by the coat and yanked so hard it felt as if her shoulders popped out of the sockets. “Matthew, please, open your eyes, baby, please.” His head lolled back, and she caught him around the neck before his head could hit the ice again. She could feel the pulse in his neck and knew, with nauseous relief, that he was still breathing.
“Open your eyes, open your eyes.” Her teeth chattering, she dug her heels into the rocky bottom. She wasn’t going to lose him to the water. No way.
His glove was still wrapped around the ski, preventing her progress. She tugged at his arm, then realized that the leather glove was caught on a bent piece of sharp metal. Afraid of what she was tearing in addition to the leather glove, but unable to reach it any other way, she sank her fingers into the sopping wet sleeve of his coat and yanked.
His hand came free; the glove still stuck to the ski. He groaned and his eyelids moved, then he went limp again. Blood smeared across his hand, and Jaimie gritted her teeth. She couldn’t afford to cry. Matthew couldn’t afford it.
She felt under the water—swearing a blue streak at the pain that engulfed her from the cold—until her fingers were latched inside his belt. Then, huffing and puffing and swearing at him for doing this to her, she managed to pull him free of the ice and onto the edge of the snow.
She called Sandy over, and the dog lay down next to Matthew, her long tongue lapping at his still face. Then Jaimie managed to unfasten the rein. Without that last tether, the snowmobile slid in exaggerated slowness into the creek, breaking through the ice to rest crazily on its nose.
Yanking off her own coat, she wrapped it around Matthew’s chest and neck, tying the arms awkwardly across him. “Come on, Matthew. I love you, dammit, but I can’t lift you on the horse,” she cried. Though she tried. Lord, she tried. But he probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds.
His lips were turning blue, and Jaimie’s mind simply shut off. She would get him on that horse, or she would just lie right down next to him and die with him. Because she knew with stark clarity that there wasn’t any point in living in a world without him in it.
If she’d thought about it, she would never have done it. Not after she’d had to pull him out of the water. But her choices were slim to none. So she led a reluctant Daisy into the water and twisted Matthew around on the snow until his head hung over the bank. Then, climbing into that hideously frigid water again, she maneuvered beneath his chest and pulled his arms over her shoulders.
She decided later that God must have felt inclined to grant a small miracle. Because against gravity and all logic, Jaimie managed to get Matthew sprawled crosswise over Daisy’s back. She held him in place, and Daisy lost no time scrambling up the bank. Jaimie was numb when she clambered on behind him. Holding Matthew in place with an arm clamped about his waist, she raced for the cabin. It had to be closer than the big house.
And there was a phone there.
Getting him off the horse proved no easier than getting him on. In the end she simply tugged him down and cushioned his fall with her own body. The interior of the cabin was decidedly cold, but at least they were out of that incessant breeze. He lay on the floor of the single room and she untied her jacket then peeled him out of his sodden coat. She could see the cut along his jaw that had been the source of the blood. Much lower and the cut would have sliced right into his neck.
Swallowing the nausea clawing at her, she stripped him bare, then rolled him inside several blankets that she’d yanked off the bed, before grabbing the phone.
The next hour was a blur to Jaimie. Daniel and Jefferson, having heard the emergency call, arrived minutes before the helicopter did. Jaimie felt them gently peel the blankets away from where she had wrapped their two bodies together. Jefferson carefully lifted Jaimie off Matthew, though she struggled to stay next to him, and securely wrapped the blanket around her bare body as the helicopter settled on the ground outside the cabin.
Daniel helped lift Matthew on the stretcher, and the emergency medical technician took over. Within minutes both Matthew and Jaimie were enroute to the hospital in Gillette.
So this was hell. Funny, but he couldn’t remember
doing anything bad enough to deserve this. Except watching his mother die without doing one bloody thing to help her....
God. He was on fire. He could feel the vicious, ferocious appetite of the white-hot flames consuming him. His feet. His hands. He tried to get away...pushed at the hands that held him in those fiery clutches.
He swore and prayed. He growled and fought.
Then collapsed into the pain.
Suddenly she was there. Her rich auburn hair glinted in the sunlight, drifting about her shoulders on the wondrously cool breeze. Every sense within him reached for that soothing coolness.
“We’re not gonna lose this one. He’s stubborn. Get that drip started.”
The voice over his head jolted Matthew, but he dragged his attention back to her peach-tinted skin. My God, she was beautiful. He wasn’t in hell. He’d gone to heaven, after all.
Her emerald eyes glowed and she smiled, just a little bit crooked, just a lot sexy.
“Nurse! Where’s the heat pack?”
Matthew opened his eyes, nearly startling the emergency room nurse out of her starched whites. “Would you all mind not yelling,” he asked evenly, his gaze immediately arrowing in on the doctor who’d been barking out orders. “You’re gonna scare away my girl.”
Then he closed his eyes once more and fell asleep.
They’d brought Jaimie a pair of pale blue scrubs to wear, and she shivered in the lightweight cotton and paper booties, huddling inside a hospital-issue blanket as they awaited news.
Jefferson and Emily sat across the room, his arm stretched around her back protectively. Daniel paced back and forth outside the sliding glass doors. And Squire, who’d arrived by chartered plane barely thirty minutes ago, sat beside Jaimie. his large, warm hand holding hers.
“You saved his life,” Squire said after a while.
She had no more tears left. Dry-eyed, she stared at the squares of tile beneath the off-white plastic chairs. The truth was, Matthew had been in that freezing water a long time. And it had taken her ages to get him to help. She really was the city girl he’d accused her of being.
The Rancher And The Redhead Page 23