Seduction of Saber (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend #3)

by Jevenna Willow

  **

  God, would it always be this way? Always this much heartache?

  Get out. Get out before it is too late, you fool.

  Get out and never look back.

  “I guess you’re right,” Saber answered her, closing his eyes. “But this was supposed to have been a perfect evening.” He flared his nostrils to yet another wave of anguish; followed by a heavily dragged-out sigh as likely the adrenaline was kicking in to slow it down. “This was supposed to be …perfect.”

  Julia wanted to speak, choking up momentarily on the sentiment, her lips pinched. “It will be. Once they get you better and on your feet. You’ll see.”

  The waterfall came out unchecked as he openly stared at her face. He looked as if he was trying to memorize her in his drug-induced haze. Very cautiously, he moved his fingers to the side of her cheek and brushed away a lone tear with only his thumb. Here he was, broken into a thousand pieces, and he was more concerned that she was crying her heart out over his many injuries, than he was of being so damn hurt.

  “I’m so sorry,” he muttered again.

  A half second later, his hand dropped and Saber fell asleep on the hospital gurney.

  Julia stood and gently placed his large hand along his side. She tucked the warm blanket around his battered and bruised body.

  “So am I,” she admitted; her words no more than a breathless whisper caught on the confining sterile air.

  She bent down, kissed the side of his bruised cheek tenderly, took one last look at the injured man—one last look at a man she was falling head over heels in love with—then backed out of the room. Once free, to where she could breathe without feeling as if she was drowning, she ran the length of the corridor, and directly out the hospital’s front door.

  She never looked back. Her heart had broken in two this time. No amount of promises would ever to be able to fix that. No amount of foolish pride would force her to believe his lies. He was a complicated Bull Man, and in her heart she knew she’d never be able to settle her fears about that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Julia was more than aware she barely ate enough to feed a sparrow, tossing her half-finished sandwich into the trash bin. She had far more important things to do than eat, picking up dustpan and broom and making headway into an all-out cleaning of the garage. She’d lost weight too; nearly fifteen pounds at last measure, and at a rate to where she would likely have to buy a completely new wardrobe come fall.

  What had she gained from near starvation? A cleaned house, cleaned garage, and a broken heart, when least expected. That’s all.

  It had been two full months since she’d given Saber Patterson that final kiss to the cheek; her rather unexpected Good-bye in the hospital room down in Sparta. She’d been too afraid of her own shadow during the moment, too afraid of getting in too deep and never getting out. She hadn’t stayed to wait it out, nor wait for his recovery.

  She couldn’t.

  He’d been nothing more than a stranger to her. A man who showed up out of nowhere, seated on Petty’s sacred rocker, and rode dangerous bulls for a living because he’d given up a promising career of heart medicine the day his son died.

  Saber Patterson wasn’t the man for her. She should’ve figured it out much sooner than she had, before letting him break her heart.

  After an all-out, no-holds-bar heated argument about her just up and leaving Saber in his hour of need, and Liddy left to make the excuse—Julia spent an entire week inside the local library, looking up everything she could on the Internet about Dr. Patterson’s supposed miracle. And, ultimate betrayal dealt him by the child’s mother.

  What she found out about Dr. Patterson tore her apart, physically and mentally. How could a woman be so horribly cruel to her husband? The ex-Mrs. Patterson had willfully, with malicious intent, destroyed a man’s child and promising career in the blink of an eye. Carol Patterson was as far down the totem pole as any low-class bitch could ever get. Even Eliza Porter, Liddy’s archenemy and only real reason Liddy’d left town ten years prior, was a few steps above Carol Patterson.

  In Julia’s lopsided opinion Carol Patterson should be rotting in prison. She killed her own son. Not directly, but by having kept his medicines from him so Dr. Patterson would take the fall by negligence.

  This all came out during a dragged out, four month trial.

  Carol Patterson wasn’t anything more than a vindictive bitch, with an ulterior motive to remove her only child from the scene. She’d taken out a large insurance policy on her kid; more than two million dollars. Never once had she disclosed the child born with a heart defect to the insurance company.

  The Patterson child born while Saber and Carol were on vacation, the paperwork of the boy’s birth got lost between the two countries. Carol’s sight set on only the money, nothing more, Mrs. Patterson figured her son wouldn’t live long enough to be a burden to her lifestyle.

  But the insurance company never paid up. Saber would not give her any money. In the end, Carol Patterson skipped town with her rich lover in tow. She might not be in prison, but she was a wanted woman now.

  How Saber could have kept this to himself was beyond anyone’s guess. He had a good heart, but used it in the wrong context from where Julia stood.

  She was taking out her frustrations with the world on a large pile of accumulated dirt, sweeping the concrete with a vengeance. She glanced at her tremendous accomplishment and sighed heavily. Petty’s minuscule one-car garage hadn’t seen this good a cleaning since Richard Tressle was alive. At that was saying a lot. Preacher’s Bend’s citizens tended to shy away from what a man who impregnated a married woman owned. His assets eventually had passed onto his mother after his death and not to his real son, Gill.

  Cleaning the garage was like sweeping out the skeletons of one’s closet; therapeutic to a certain degree.

  So what if Julia was simply turning chicken these days. She kept ignoring the numerous phone calls, the small tokens of delicate bouquets brought to her door by the florist. She was hiding her broken heart in dust, dirt, and smelly paint fumes. She had a boarding house to keep up, boarders to take care of. In another two weeks, there were fifty some odd students to teach mathematics at the local high school. She had things to do. She couldn’t possibly answer phone calls from someone who was a complete stranger to her, or stick into vases daisies with little to no meaning.

  Denial was quite therapeutic, as well.

  She was about to turn around when she heard the free-fall of heavy footsteps. They stopped, as did her heart. Turning ever so slowly her stomach moved to her throat, and stayed there.

  “Heard you take in boarders, Little Darlin’?” he drawled out.

  Oh, God. The man’s incredibly sexy voice came dangerously close to starting that submerged ember again.

  Julia found her voice pathetically squeaky and simply told him like it was. Her response was flat. “Not anymore.” Yet, it was all she could do not to run into his arms and throw herself at his mercy.

  Her eyes glued themselves to his newest T-shirt, which now read “I survived White Hot Lightning. Can You?”

  A picture of the very bull that nearly killed him was plastered across his muscular chest, while large, brilliant white flames shot out of the creature’s flared nostrils.

  Julia dragged her sight from the anger in that devil’s eyes and moved it up to an even more dangerously unwise position. Saber Patterson’s face.

  He made no initiative of moving any closer to her than he already was. A good ten feet away, he was leaning heavily on a cane.

  “Sure about that, Little Darlin’?”

  **

  God, it was good to see her. Good to see Julia up to her eyeballs in dirt and grime; numerous garbage bags strewn about and the woman right in her element. She had to take care of something that needed her care and attention or she wasn’t happy in life.

  He’d heard through the grapevine she would be starting to teach in another couple of weeks. Damn. If eve
r he’d had a teacher as hot as her, he would’ve probably paid much closer attention in school than he had, and would have wished those last two weeks of summer vacation over more quickly.

  Liddy was the one who’d called him a week ago, pushing him into standing up on his own two feet and dealing with the problem directly. Julia certainly wasn’t going to do it. She needed a hard shove in the right direction. And a hard shove from a man down on his luck was as good as any.

  The fact of school starting was the very reason he’d bribed his Uncle LeRoy to drive him all the way up here, six hundred forty-three miles to be exact. He had a lot to say to this woman, whether she wanted to hear any of it said out of his mouth—or not. But it was going to be said, nonetheless.

  She’d left him hanging, on a precipice with no bottom, on a cliff with no edge. He didn’t know whether he was coming or going most days. When he finally could figure it out, he hated that actual feeling of acknowledgment. It stung a man’s pride to know he’d been wrong.

  “Very sure,” she responded, brushing an unruly lock of long red hair out of her eyes, then smudging a dark line of dirt across her suddenly pale cheek.

  Saber willed himself not to openly stare at her actions, or her face. He cleared his throat, and his conscience. He wanted to see her. Now that he had, it was much harder than he ever thought it would be.

  Very hard.

  “If that’s the case, would you mind too terribly at giving an injured man the offering of a chair so he can sit a spell? His leg is feeling mighty poorly right about now.”

  His leg was killing him; a continuous hard throb over the past two hours. The doctors said this would happen and as a doctor himself, he knew it would, but that still did not make the pain go away; or him having to deal with it on a daily basis, any better.

  Though his body had healed considerably over the near goring …His heart? Not as fast. But it would, in time. He would get over Julia’s disappearing act from the hospital while he’d been under the knife.

  They told him two days after the surgery that she ran out of the place as if the devil had been at her heels. Damnit. He’d surely been dumped before. But never by someone not even considered as dating him…

  Nor while recuperating from getting his ass kicked in by twenty-two hundred pounds of pure mean, with his insides ripped apart, altogether twelve bones broken; and his pride perhaps the most physically destroyed of all.

  Women generally fawn all over an injured man. Not Julia, Mind-of-Her-Own, Don’t-Stand-in-My-Way Hillard. No. Independent Julia truly meant it when she’d said she would not do the sympathy thing.

  “Is it now?” she asked; with very little compassion put to these words. In fact, they’d come out of her mouth razor-edged sharp. “Perhaps if the man speaking hadn’t gotten himself thrown to the ground by White Hot Lightning, and then pummeled until unconscious, his leg would not be hurting him so badly.”

  “Why do you always do that?” he warned softly, taking a painful step forward. His every intention was to clear the air.

  **

  Julia’s blue eyes widened, her hackles raised. “Do what?”

  For two whole months she’d been trying her damnedest not to think about this man, not remember his dimpled face, and not remember how great he smelled. Nor how easy the sexy cowboy could make her melt into a pool of forgetfulness when barely tried. And what happened? He shows up, unannounced, yet again; when she certainly wasn’t ready for him to show up unannounced.

  “You attack when you think it will protect you from getting hurt,” he said.

  “I do not attack,” she tried ruling.

  Saber raised a brow that said otherwise.

  “I do no such thing!”

  “Yes. You do, Little Darlin’. Every damn time anyone tries to get close to you, wanting little ole’ Julia to think for herself, you attack. With perfect aim I might add.”

  Angered by his awful and callous words, she physically stormed over to a lawn chair set leaning against the far wall of the garage and actually tossed one at his body.

  “There. There’s your chair. Sit on it, for all I care.”

  His sight moved recklessly to the carelessly tossed piece of lawn furniture, as his smile widened. “Why did you not stay, Little Darlin’?”

  She balled her fists, completely frustrated with his arrogance, frustrated Saber was right. She did attack when she thought it could keep her from getting hurt too badly.

  And, he was rubbing in being right, the arrogant sonofabitch!

  “Stay where?” Julia snapped.

  “At the hospital …with me.”

  She turned her head, and muttered her answer. “I had better things to do with my time. I couldn’t stay in Sparta holding your hand, waiting for you to heal.”

  “Why the hell not? Any other woman would have done it.”

  His head tilted to the left, the sunlight hitting his blond hair just so, that it had Julia groaning aloud. She raised her line of sight to above his head, holding back the tears.

  “Because,” she said.

  “Because you were too afraid of what it might have meant, had you done so?” he asked, moving toward her ever so slowly.

  There was a definite limp to his gait.

  “No.” Julia took a baby step back “No. Well, just …because,” she repeated.

  Mr. Patterson stalled his forward momentum. He looked down at her. Hard. Eyeball to eyeball, prey to predator.

  Unfortunately, as the prey, Julia was also a terrible liar. She knew more than anyone she would turn her head when she wanted to tell a lie. Her friend Liddy would chew on her bottom lip. Neither had ever gotten away with it.

  Saber’s grin deepened as he kept his eyes locked with hers.

  “Why the devil are you smiling at me?” She asked; openly glared at his handsome face. A face she’d missed dearly.

  “I’m smiling because you are lyin’ your little heart out, Little Darlin’. You did not stay at that hospital, holding my hand, nurturing me back to health, because you were too afraid of what others would say about you, and far too afraid of what they would figure out about us.”

  “Such as?” she questioned rudely.

  “Such as, you are completely head over heels in love with me, and you can’t help yourself.”

  Startled by this seemingly easy comment coming out of his mouth, she sputtered, “I am no such thing!”

  “You’re not?” He cocked a lone brow. “Really? Well, if not, my mistake then. I thought you were.” His lopsided grin didn’t sit properly on his face, however.

  “It was your mistake, Dr. Patterson.”

  She made to move past the very determined individual, toward the relative safety of the boarding house. Hopefully, to escape from what she was feeling. It took an awful lot for her to call him Dr. Patterson. She was so used to simply knowing this man as Saber.

  Eight Second Wonder Saber.

  Mr. Eight Second Wonderful.

  From the moment they’d met on her great-grandmother’s front porch, he’d been a doctor to the rest of the world—a heart surgeon, no less. She shouldn’t have pushed this fact aside, once discovering it for her own.

  Dr. Patterson had much quicker reactions than she, even though still recuperating from his numerous injuries. The man’s hand snaked around her arm faster than a coiled Cobra could strike. “And that’s where you are horribly wrong,” he warned.

  “Wrong about what?”

  “I am not mistaken about this.”

  He pulled hard on her arm, dragging her toward his body, and slamming her into a chest made of steel.

  Julia’s hands slipped up to stop the impact. Breathless, she shifted her eyes to his, as his mouth descended upon hers. With fascination, she did nothing at all to stop the kiss. And boy, what a kiss it was. Hard, then soft, then demanding, then so damn gentle it made her head swoon. It was a kiss that pulled at her inner being, her inner sanctity, her inner psyche, until she physically begged for him to let her go. It was broa
d daylight. What would the neighbors think?

  Damnit all! Exactly who was she trying to kid? She didn’t give a crap what her neighbors thought of her. Let them watch. Let them wonder. Let them be in awe!

  She drifted her fingers up to his neck and kissed him back, all on her own. God, she missed this man so terribly. It was all she could do not to throw her body at him; then beg for mercy and forgiveness.

  She shouldn’t have walked away from him as she had. The timing of his injuries somehow coincided with her inner misgivings about being with him. Each had canceled out the other. Until, in the end, she’d been left with nothing but a terribly broken heart and a few more months of complete loneliness to notch into her belt.

  “There. Now that’s a much better ‘Hello’ out of you,” he teased, circling her slender waist with his fingers; dropped the cane to the garage floor to better hold onto her.

  “So? Where do we go from here?” She regretted these words the instant they’d left her mouth.

  “Go?” he teased.

  Julia punched a smiling man square on the arm. “You know what I meant, Dr. Patterson. Don’t play dumb on me now.”

  “Do I, Little Darlin’?” A blond brow arched upward. “I did get my brains kicked in a little while back. Perhaps you should enlighten me as to what you meant, exactly.”

  “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”

  “No. And I never intended too,” he warned. “From the moment we met on your front porch, nearly three months ago, I get hurt by something or someone coming from inside this house.” He was reminding her of their first day together, when she didn’t need such a swift remembrance. “This go around I intend to keep my body intact. What’s left of it, that is.”

  “How?”

  “How?” he repeated. “By doing what I should have done in the first place.”

  “And what is that, Dr. Patterson?”

  He moved his head down to whisper this single thought into her ear.

  Julia’s entire body covered in goose flesh from head to toe because of it.

  “Are you certain you can still do that?” she teased, eyeing the man up and down, crown to boots. Her grin meant to be contagious when her sight stalled on well below the waistline.