As Julia’s head started spinning in circles, her newcomer caught sight of her likely paling face, his brows rising.
“You don’t look so good, Little Darlin’. How about we move you on outside? Get you into some fresh air.”
All Julia could do was nod. She didn’t feel so good, either. She felt warm all over, flushed from head to toe. And the very second he put his gentle hand on her upper arm to guide her to the front door she nearly fainted right where she stood. He easily picked her up in strong, capable arms and with great care laid her out on one of the sofas.
“Don’t think we’re gonna make it outside, are we?” he asked.
Her eyes had followed his every move. Her right hand was in a death grip to the front of his T-shirt. There was sweat rolling down her back and she felt as though about to puke up muffin all over her late great-grandmother’s carpeting. Technically, now the Hillard family’s carpeting; even more technically her carpeting, but all beside the point.
The point was Uncle LeRoy looked a wee bit concerned for her well-being, yet not as much as the man staring at her face did.
“Do you need me to get you something, sweetheart? Glass of water? Cool rag?” LeRoy asked from behind her head.
Julia could only nod while LeRoy’s nephew ran his hand up and down her right arm, supposedly trying to make her feel better; his touch doing the exact opposite.
She rarely, if ever, fainted. But life had taken stranger turns for her as of late. She wouldn’t be surprised if she passed out on these two concerned gentlemen. She felt very close to doing exactly that. His gentle touch to her arm was sending even more tingling sensations throughout her entire body, making her feel much, much worse. She wasn’t ready for tingling sensations to run through her. She wasn’t ready for any of this. But it was part of her life now. And it was making her hate what she had to deal with on a daily basis.
“Name it. Whatever it is, we’ll get it for you,” the nephew added. His steely gaze directed into her unfocused eyes, breath that now smelled of blueberry muffins instead of cigar as it had before, fanned her face.
Hadn’t he taken the apple?
Oh, that’s right, he’d had two. And he wanted to keep her!
Julia wished with all her heart she did not have to tell either of these wonderful, considerate men what it was she needed, but time was running out. She had no other choice than to confess.
“Refrigerator, Insulin, and orange juice.”
Their shared silence and matched groans couldn’t be missed.
Two seconds of her life and she’d stunned grown men into speechlessness. The eldest was the first to recover and hightail it into the kitchen to get what she asked of him, while the younger picked up her hand and brushed a tender, brazen kiss to her knuckles.
“You’re a diabetic, aren’t you?” His voice was filled of deep concern, as a pair of silver-blue eyes drilled into hers for the horrid truth.
Yes. She was, and it was all Gills’ fault.
Chapter Five
Julia could barely nod her head to the man’s question. Her handsome Sunday morning stranger had inadvertently stalled her insulin shot, by being on the front porch—and she completely losing her mind at the mere sight of absolute perfection once inside.
She’d forgotten for one gosh darn minute she had what others called a disease. To her, it was an inconvenience, but controllable.
For now, she was looking at her diabetes as a nuisance, more than anything. Then one thing led to another (that brain lobotomy thing cropping up), and she’d forgotten a shot after her run. She was a twenty-eight-year old woman…and she’d forgotten her insulin shot? Again? Over a pair of quickly changing silver-blue eyes, tight fitted blue jeans, and one very, very sexy smile?
Hell yes! She was human, after all. A lapse in normal brain activity would certainly explain the female aspect of it…
“Do you need me to give it to you? Or, can you manage the needle all by yourself?”
He’d do that for her? He would give her the shot of insulin?
Jeez, Louise! Can I keep him?
“I—I think I can manage,” she struggled saying.
LeRoy returned with a small vial and a sterile syringe. Both men waited while she did her best to try to sit upright and fill the syringe with the needed dosage. Without testing her blood sugar level first, she was going to have to wing it. However, by the reaction her body was giving her, testing would only tell her what she already knew. She’d waited too long.
The sweats, the dizziness, those had been the familiar warning signs of low blood sugar levels. She knew better.
Sexy Man must have changed his mind about waiting and easily held her down with two gentle fingers pressed against her shoulder, asking how much to draw into the syringe. He then took the vial from her trembling fingers and offered his take on the situation.
“This is going to hurt me far more than I suspect it will hurt you, Little Darlin’.”
Ain’t that sweet of him to say.
The nausea rose quickly. Wave after wave hit her like a ton of bricks.
This was, perhaps, the worst attack she’d had thus far. Foolish women tend to suffer the most when so damn forgetful.
Barely able to control her tightening stomach, she watched his hands draw up the needed dosage from the small vial.
“Well, Little Darlin? Where should it go?” He held the medication in his right hand to look her over, head to toe. His left hand went to her face and his fingers removed a wayward wisp of her hair, tucking the tendrils behind her ear.
Julia wished she could crawl in a hole and die; lock herself in a closet and never come out. Perhaps, never be born at all. However, she was too sick to argue or crawl anywhere, or wish her birth never to be. She didn’t hate being alive. Truly, she did not. She just hated being insulin diabetic. Through no fault of her own, except for a simple hereditary defect of the gene pool, she’d become one of many.
Besides, he was being very gracious about the whole thing. Not many men in this world would’ve even considered such a generous offering of giving the shot to her. Especially if they didn’t know the person they were giving it too, nor aware of the first name, other than Little Darlin’.
She tugged up the corner of her pink T-shirt, exposing her midsection to his sight; unbeknownst the bottom of her purple lace bra, as well. All the previous needle marks were there, right in front of his gaze. It would’ve taken a cold angry man not to feel pity toward what she had to put herself through on a daily basis.
She’d tried using the thigh approach, the upper arm. However, the stomach area seemed to hurt the least.
“Ah, hell, Little Darlin’!” The simplest, purest form of human compassion filled his silver-blue eyes. “Like I said, this is going to hurt me very, very badly.”
Uncle LeRoy turned his head and groaned like a baby. He then took the bottle of insulin back to the refrigerator before his nephew had a chance to stick a needle directly into her stomach muscles.
Sexy Guy moved down to his knees, stuck her quickly, and did what he had to do with no questions asked.
When he bent his head and actually kissed the minor wound he’d inflicted upon her tender flesh, her head and heart suddenly reeled. She’d never had that happen before. Damn! Not after one of her insulin shots.
She found voice quickly.
“I’m sorry. Thank You. You and LeRoy…Thank you. I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”
She tugged her T-shirt back in place, hiding the signs of her diabetes; hide the marks.
“No thanks are ever necessary, Little Darlin’. Just comes with us Bull Men being really great guys.”
She nodded. “Yes. You are. Great, that is.”
“I should most likely be tellin’ you my name, now with us kissin’ and all.” The man’s grin was more than openly contagious this time. “I expect it not proper around these parts if I kept you unaware of my name and already gained a kiss from these lips.”
He pointed t
o his mouth as his light teasing had Julia forgetting all about her rather awful disease—if only for a moment.
Reading her mind, he handed her the glass of orange juice, then helped her to sit upright to drink.
Julia took in as much as she could of the cool fluid. She gave the glass back to him as she slumped back on the pillows of the sofa.
Both individually groaned at the same time. One, out of pure necessity, the other for the pain of another he could do nothing about. Sexy Guy then picked up her right hand and felt for her pulse.
“It’s Saber,” he said.
Julia let the feel of his gentle caress sink into her entire body. God! He had such soft hands. To match an incredibly wonderful man would remain to be seen. Yet his single word reached her ears at a snail’s pace, her confusion palpable.
“Saber?” she asked.
“My name. It’s Saber.”
Her gaze darted to his, Julia dragging her sight from the very tormenting grip on her wrist.
“I have horrible parents,” he added—as if that would explain a name like Saber.
Julia had always thought herself as having terrible parents. “No. Mine are far worse,” she determined ruefully. Her slightly overprotective father, especially.
“How so?”
The cowboy was delving into a private life that was none of his business and for the briefest moment she didn’t care. “For starters, they produced a very defective daughter.”
He drew his head back, dragging an insolent gaze over her entire prone body, and inflected his thoughts out loud.
“Ain’t any actual defects that I can see Little Darlin’. Two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes. Don’t see a third arm anywhere.”
Julia smiled sweetly at his kind words. “It’s the really big one that you can’t see that is the only problem here.”
“Controllable,” he announced bluntly.
His hands were now holding hers in a tight grip, slipped from her wrists. The touch was quite unnerving; as if he dare let her hands go she’d disappear into thin air.
“Just barely,” she muttered, slipping her fingers out of his grasp; slowly. Diabetes was more of a nuisance than uncontrollable.
“I’m quite partial to uncontrollable women,” he said.
Julia’s vision slammed into his, catching the devilish grin on his lips. He looked about as happy as a poor boy, standing in mud, with a handful of freshly caught frogs.
“Are you always this way so early in the morning?”
“Not always. I’ve been savin’ up my best behavior, Little Darlin’.” He moved forward to within inches of her, whispering, “I kind of figured if I can get into your good graces before ten a.m., on a Sunday mornin’ no less, you will only charge me half price for that single bed of yours’.”
Julia’s eyes widened to his unscrupulous behavior. “And how, exactly, do you plan on getting in my good graces by saying something like that?”
Saber pulled back and chuckled. “Shoot my ass off the back of a horse, woman! If stickin’ a needle into your sweet tempting flesh didn’t do the trick, then I must be losin’ my touch. Perhaps I should’ve kissed you here, instead?”
He leaned down quickly and before Julia could react he gave her one of the best damn kisses she’d ever had. This time, right on her lips; never mind that brotherly peck she’d received on her flat, needle-poked stomach.
The second his touch melted into her, she forgot all about her disease. However, unless dead, there was no way on Earth she’d ever be able to forget the darting of his tongue; the complete searching for her soul. Once it was over, she found that her hands had wound themselves around his neck and it did seem she’d been guiding him closer. Surely, she wouldn’t have put her hands there without permission?
Ever so slowly, Saber leaned back, removing her death grip on his neck to wedge distance between their quickly overheating bodies. “Well, shoot, Little Darlin’!” was all that came out of his mouth.
Ain’t that the truth! Julia’s head screamed.
“Guess I should’ve asked you your name first before springing a kiss like that on you.”
She licked her lips and smiled. “It’s Julia. My name is Julia. Julia Hillard.”
“Julia?” He raised his brow.
She nodded.
“It sure as the devil beats having the name Saber.”
Very quickly, the man’s name rang a bell in her head. In fact, many bells rang, and all of them quite loud.
Saber? Oh, Sweet Jesus! Not the highly talked about Texan Eight Second Wonder, bull rider extraordinaire Saber Patterson?
The quick mention of his calling himself a bull man filtered into her fuddled brain. The newspapers mentioned something about Eight Seconds Patterson coming to Preacher’s Bend. He was one of four hundred hungry, lust-filled, libido-driven, male testosterone-induced rodeo men parked in permanent overdrive her father should be terribly worried about. He was early! And…he wanted to stay here, in her great-grandmother’s boarding house, for the whole week?
Crap!
“By the strange look on your face, I’d say about a two-hundred and fifty-watt light bulb just turned on.”
“Sort of,” she sheepishly said, glancing at the shirt on his chest. She read it over again, just to make certain her eyesight wasn’t failing her, as well as her hearing.
Saber leaned farther away. His sigh sounded heavy. “Damn, Little Darlin’. I guess my reputation preceded itself. I was hoping I could sneak into town without anyone noticin’.”
Julia’s grin was huge. “That would be a little difficult, if not altogether impossible, with a guy like you.”
**
Saber looked down at what he’d unwittingly thrown onto his back, only because it was the cleanest shirt of the lot and he’d not the time to do laundry. The shirt was purely for promotional tactics, nothing more.
He’d come to Preacher’s Bend earlier than all the rest just to get a real lay of the land; a feel for the place and the people within it. If he could find out what they expected of him, what they desired as full entertainment value from him—from all the riders—eventually their little traveling rodeo would turn into a better success than it was. Men on this particular circuit lived out their entire existence to ride bulls and broncos, and be paid for it. Most of the guys wanted this as their only career; little boys who grew into mature adults while seated on the back of a one-ton raging bull, having started out on fair circuits riding mangy, smelly sheep.
If Saber could’ve skipped wearing the promotional T-shirt, he would have. Yet he highly doubted Ms. Hillard would’ve been able to control her blood pressure if he’d chosen to take the shirt off. Her insulin was dragging its feet, taking its sweet old time in doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
She’d not even noticed his strong hand circling her wrist again. Nor his thumb placed on the base of her pulse point. Ms. Hillard’s head was still stuck on the kiss he’d given her and that’s why he’d done it. The only reason he’d kissed her—tongue diving and all.
Diabetes could strike anyone, at any time; some at birth, some during their golden years. Why it came to this woman at such a young age, his mind wondered about, but out of propriety he wasn’t going to ask. It wasn’t his place to know. She didn’t seem the type to sit around, watching television, while shoveling her face with fats and sugar. The obvious answer would be genetics when the patient thin and in relatively good health.
He unwisely ignored what it was his brain was trying hard to tell him not to do—let it be, not pry into a life he had no right to pry into. He might be one of the best Bull Men around, but he was also a doctor.
He’d spent his first eight years out of medical school stuck in the military; the next four, within a Miami hospital’s surgical staff ward. Riding bulls was a dangerous pastime of his—that somehow escalated into an all-out career over the course of three short years.
Not exactly a chosen occupation for a blue blood to ever consider, especially when he
’d had a damn good job. He was choosing to spread his legs over twenty-five hundred pounds of pure mean because it was all he had now. He rarely, if at all, practiced medicine.
When riding with the circuit there really was no need for it. They had their own Doc to fix up the men.
His heart was no longer in it. There was too much bureaucratic bullshit, mega-insurance giants that kicked people out of their hospital beds before they were ready or even able to go. Saber wanted nothing to do with that kind of medicine. For the moment, he had his reasons; strong, solid reasons with strong, solid convictions.
While in town Dr. Saber Patterson, MD wanted to keep the fact of his being a doctor a secret from the good folks of Preacher’s Bend. More importantly, that huge secret kept from this woman.
To both, he should be nothing more than Saber, a legitimate Eight Second Wonder who could entertain the masses on the back of a bull.
He pulled his thoughts to the here and now, slipping his hand from her wrist.
Julia spoke first. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, reattaching conversation to his thoughts. “The reputation thing you’re speaking about.”
It took him a few seconds to jump into life again. His eyes had somehow glued to the rise and fall of her lusty chest.
Chapter Six
Julia wasn’t into rodeo men, per se. She’d only heard the name Saber from the gossip running around town. This man was to be the highlight of the rodeo, come next week; a Friday night crowd-pleasing, man of the hour, and a Saturday night womanizer—more the latter than the former.
Every elderly matron living in Preacher’s Bend already warned her to stay away from a man the rodeo circuit called Eight Second Wonder, if ever she came across his path. And what did she do the very second she ran smack dab into such a man? She invited him inside her home, and she let him kiss her! That’s what.
And every second that kiss lingered, she’d enjoyed it to the utmost.
Seduction of Saber (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend #3) Page 4