by Helen Lacey
Lucy grinned. “Well, you’re a model patient, so it’s been easy.”
“Never a more beautiful girl have I ever seen,” Joe said and chuckled. “Makes me wish I was forty years younger.”
Lucy smiled at his outrageous flirting and glanced toward Brant. He was watching her with blistering intensity and she quickly shifted her gaze. “How are you feeling?” she asked, grabbing the chart from the foot of the bed.
“Better for seein’ you, Doc,” he said and winked.
“Joe,” Colleen chastised her much older brother-in-law gently. “Behave yourself.”
Joe Parker smiled again, wrinkling his cheeks. “Ha! There’s no fool like an old fool, right, Doc?”
He made a breathless sound and Lucy stepped toward the bed and grasped his wrist. He was overdoing it. She urged him to lay back and rest. She checked him over and scribbled notes in his chart. When she was done she asked Grady to walk with her outside the cubicle. The eldest Parker son had his uncle’s medical power of attorney and she wanted to keep the family updated on his condition.
“It was a mild-range heart attack,” she explained once she and Grady were out of earshot. “But I’m concerned enough to send him to Rapid City for a full set of testing. He may need surgery sooner rather than later, but the cardiologist there will make that call. For the moment he is stable and out of pain.”
Grady nodded and she was struck by how alike the brothers were. Same color hair, same eyes, same tough jaw. Grady was a little taller than his brother, but Brant was broader through the shoulders. And Grady always looked happy...like he had some great secret to life. Whereas Brant...? Lucy only saw caution and resistance in his gaze. For the moment, though, her only concern was Joe Parker’s welfare. She explained the procedure for transporting him to the larger hospital and when she was done asked if he had any questions.
“No,” Grady replied. “I do know Brant will want to go with him. They’re very close.”
She nodded. “I can arrange something.” She turned to walk away when Grady said her name. “What is it?”
He shrugged loosely. “About Brant. I know this might not be the right time to say anything...but do you think you could talk to the counselor at the veterans home about perhaps having a word with him...kind of on the down-low, if you know what I mean?”
Lucy’s skin prickled. “Do you think he needs counseling?”
“I think when he was a solider he went through some bad stuff and doesn’t want to talk about it,” Grady said and sighed. “Not even to me or Mom.”
Lucy thought that, too. She knew enough about PTSD to recognize the signs. His isolation, irritability and moodiness could definitely be attributed to something like that. Of course, she had no idea what he’d witnessed in service to his country. But if his brother was concerned, that was enough for Lucy to do what she could to help.
“I could have a quiet word with Dr. Allenby. He comes to the home once a week and he’s trained to deal with veterans, particularly combat soldiers.”
Grady nodded. “Yes, my mom has mentioned him. That’s great. I’d really appreciate it if you could do that. But we might want to keep this between us, okay?”
Going behind Brant’s back didn’t sit well with her conscience. This was a conversation the Parker family needed to have together. But she could clearly see the concern in his brother’s eyes and that was enough to get her agreement for the moment. “Don’t think there’ll be a problem with that. Your brother hardly talks to me.”
“Self-preservation,” Grady said and grinned.
“What?”
His grin widened. “You know how guys are. We always do things stupid-ass backward. Ask Marissa how much I screwed up in the beginning. Ignoring her was all I could do to keep from going crazy.”
Lucy’s mouth creased into a smile. “You know he’d hate the fact we’re out here talking about him, don’t you?”
“Yep,” Grady replied. “Just as well we’re on the same side.”
Lucy’s smiled deepened. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Grady returned to his uncle’s bedside and Lucy headed to the cafeteria for a break. She ordered tea and a cranberry muffin and sat by the window, looking out toward the garden, an unread magazine open on the table in front of her. The place was empty except for the two people behind the counter and a couple of orderlies who were chatting over coffee in the far corner. She liked days like this. Quiet days. It gave her time to think. The hospital was small but catered to a wide area and some days she didn’t have time for breaks.
“Can I talk to you?”
Lucy looked up from her tea. Brant stood beside the small table. “Oh...sure.”
He pulled out the chair opposite. “Can I get you anything? More coffee?”
“Tea,” she corrected and shook her head. “And I’m good. What can I do for you?”
It sounded so perfunctory...when inside she was churning. He looked so good in jeans and a black shirt and leather jacket. His brown hair was long, too, as it had been in high school, curling over his collar a little—a big change from the regulation military crew cut she was used to seeing when he came back to town in between tours. There was a small scar on his left temple and another under his chin, and she wondered how he’d gotten them. War wounds? Perhaps they were old football injuries or from school-yard antics? Or when he used to work horses with his brother? He’d always looked good in the saddle. She had spent hours pretending to have her nose in a book while she’d watched him ride from the sidelines. At twelve she’d had stars in her eyes. At twenty-seven she felt almost as foolish.
She took a breath and stared at him. “So...what is it?”
“My uncle is seventy-three years old, and I know he has health issues and might not have a lot of time left. I also know that he trusts you.”
“And?” she prompted.
He shrugged one shoulder. “And I was thinking that once he gets to the hospital in Rapid City there will be a whole lot of people there who he doesn’t trust poking and prodding and making judgment calls and decisions about him.”
Lucy stilled. “And?” she prompted again.
“And he’d probably prefer it if you were around to see to things.”
She eyed him shrewdly. “He would?”
His other shoulder moved. “Okay... I would.”
“You want me to go to the hospital with him?”
“Well...yes.”
“I’m not on staff there,” she explained, increasingly conscious of his intense gaze. “I couldn’t interfere with his treatment or be part of his appointments with specialists.”
“I know that,” Brant replied softly, his attention unwavering. “But you could be there to explain things...you know, to make sense of things.”
Lucy drank some tea and then placed the paper cup on the table. “With you?”
He shrugged again. “Sure.”
“Won’t that go against your determination to avoid me and my wicked plans to ensnare you with my white picket fence?”
His eyes darkened. She was teasing him. And Brant Parker clearly didn’t like to be teased.
“This is about my uncle,” he replied, his jaw clenching. “Not us.”
The silly romantic in her wanted to swoon at the way he said the word us. But she didn’t.
“I do have the day off tomorrow,” she said, thinking she was asking for a whole lot of complications by agreeing to his request. But she did genuinely care about Joe Parker.
“So...yes?” he asked.
Lucy nodded slowly. “Sure. I’ll arrange for the ambulance to leave here around nine in the morning and we can follow in my car.”
“I’ll drive. We’ll take my truck.”
Lucy gave in to the laughter she felt. “Boy, you’re predictable. Clearly my little Honda is
n’t macho enough.”
“I need to get some building supplies from Rapid City,” he shot back, unmoving. “I don’t think the footrest for the bar that I’m having made will fit in your little Honda, Dr. Monero. Besides the fact that your car is unreliable.”
“I had my car towed and the battery replaced yesterday, so it’s as good as new.” Her cheeks colored. “And I thought we agreed you were going to call me Lucy?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Did we? Okay, Lucy, I’ll pick you up around nine.”
* * *
His uncle looked much better the following day, but Brant was still pleased he was going to be assessed in Rapid City. He was also pleased that Lucy Monero had agreed to go with him. He knew it was a big favor to ask. But she’d agreed, even when she had every reason not to. He’d acted like a stupid jerk the night she’d broken down outside the tavern.
He waited in the foyer while his uncle was being prepped for the trip in the ambulance, and Lucy sidled up beside him around two minutes past nine. She looked effortlessly pretty in jeans, heeled boots, a bright red sweater that clung to her curves and a fluffy white jacket. Her hair was down, flowing over her shoulders in a way that immediately got his attention.
“You’re late,” he said, grinning fractionally.
“I’ve been here for ages,” she replied and crossed her arms, swinging her tote so hard it hit him on the behind. “Oh, sorry,” she said breathlessly and then smiled. “The ambulance is about to leave, so we should get going.”
Brant rattled his keys. “Okay.”
It was cold out, but at least the snow had stopped falling and the roads were being cleared.
“Once you’ve finished renovating the Loose Moose,” she said when they reached his truck and he opened the creaky passenger door, “you might want to consider giving this old girl an overhaul.”
Brant waited until she was inside and grabbed the door. “Are you dissing my ride?”
She laughed. “Absolutely.”
He shut the door and walked around the front. “That’s cruel,” he said once he slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. “I’ve had this truck since I was sixteen.”
“I know,” she said, and fiddled with the Saint Christopher magnet stuck on the dash. “You bought it off Mitch Culhane for two hundred bucks.”
Brant laughed, thinking about how Grady had gone ballistic when he’d come home with the old truck that was blowing black smoke from the exhaust. The truck hadn’t really been worth a damn back then, but he’d fixed it up some over the years. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I think Brooke told me. We’re friends, remember?”
He nodded. “I know that. She’s another fan of yours.”
“Another?”
“My mom,” he replied, smirking a little. “Patron Saint Lucia.”
Her eyes flashed. “How do you know my real name?” she asked as if it was something she didn’t like.
“I think Brooke told me,” he said then shrugged. “We’re family...remember?”
“Funny guy,” she quipped sweetly. “And I didn’t think the Parkers and Culhanes were friends.”
“Grady and I used to get into some scrapes with the Culhane brothers,” he admitted wryly. “But since we shared a mutual dislike of the O’Sullivans we were friends more often than not.”
“He still shouldn’t have sold you this crappy old truck,” she said. “You took Trudy Perkins to prom in it.”
That’s not all he’d done with Trudy on prom night, he thought, but he wasn’t about to say that to the woman beside him. Trudy had been the wildest girl in their grade back then. And she’d had him wrapped around her little finger. He’d been a typical teenage boy and at the time Trudy had been his every fantasy.
But he’d changed. He didn’t want that now. He wanted...well, he didn’t have a damned clue what he wanted. All he knew was that there was nothing crass or easy about Lucy. She was kind and innocent. The kind of girl his mother approved of. Hell, the kind of girl his mother kept pushing him toward.
“I wonder what happened to Trudy,” he said as he drove from the parking lot.
“She lives in Oregon. She married some rich banker and had three kids. I guess she could be divorced by now.”
Brant glanced sideways. “How do you know this stuff?”
She shrugged. “I’m a doctor. People tell me things.”
“Clearly.”
“Except you wouldn’t, right?” she said and leaned back in the seat. “You keep everything to yourself.”
“Not everything.”
“Everything,” she said again. “Say, if I asked you what you were doing talking with Parker enemy number one, Liam O’Sullivan, the other night, you’d shrug those broad shoulders of yours and say it was just business.”
“Well, it was.”
She laughed softly and the sound hit him in the solar plexus. “When everyone knows he’s trying to buy you out because he hates the idea of competition.”
“Everyone knows that, do they?”
“Sure. He told Kayla and Kayla told me.”
“Kayla?” he inquired. “That’s your friend with the supermodel looks?”
“The one in the same. Every man notices Kayla. She’s the original blonde bombshell.”
Brant made a small grunting sound. “I’ve always preferred brunettes myself.”
She glanced at him and then looked to the road ahead. “Could have fooled me.”
Brant bit back a smile. “It’s true.”
“Trudy was blond,” she said, frowning a little. “Remember?”
“She was brunette,” he replied. “Trudy dyed her hair.”
She snorted. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the only fake part.”
Brant wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but the disapproval in Lucy’s voice about the other woman’s surgically enhanced attributes made him smile. “You could be right.”
Lucy Monero had a habit of doing that. Whatever transpired between them, however much he desired her, wanted her, imagined kissing her, there was something else going on, too. Because he liked her. She was sweet and funny and good to be around. A balm for a weary soul. Something he could get used to, if he’d let himself. Not that he would.
“Incidentally,” he said, speaking without his usual reserve. “Don’t confuse my reluctance for disinterest.”
“You really do talk in riddles sometimes,” she said and then gave a soft laugh. “But I least I have you talking.”
She did. In fact, he’d done a whole lot more talking with Lucy than he had with anyone outside his mother and brother and Uncle Joe for the past six months. “Communicating is important to you, isn’t it?”
“People are important to me.”
“I guess they have to be, considering your profession. Is that why you chose to become a doctor?”
She didn’t answer and he glanced toward her and saw her gaze was downcast. She was thinking, remembering. Lost in some secret world of her own for a moment. She looked beautiful and just a little sad.
“No,” she said finally. “It was because of my mom.”
Brant could vaguely recall Katie Monero. She’d spoken with an Irish brogue and had taught dance lessons at the studio above the bakery in town. She’d married an Irish/Italian rancher who’d had no idea about cattle and horses, and who had died when Lucy was an adolescent. The crash that had taken her mother’s life a few years later was a tragic accident. Katie had lost control of her car while a seventeen-year-old Lucy had dozed beside her. Katie had been flung from the car and Lucy had survived with barely a scratch.
“Because of the accident? It wasn’t your fault, though.”
“No,” she said and sighed. “But my mom was alive for over ten minutes before
the paramedics arrived. I didn’t know what to do. I went numb. If I had put pressure on the main wound she might have had a chance. But I didn’t know...and I vowed I’d never be in that position again. So I decided to go to medical school and become a doctor. I wanted to know that if I was ever in that position again that I would be able to do things differently.”
“I understand,” he said. “But you might need to let yourself off the hook a little.”
“I can’t,” she replied. “I was there. I was the only person there that night. My mom needed me and I couldn’t help her.”
Brant’s chest tightened. There was guilt and regret in her words. And he knew those things too well. “Sometimes you can’t help,” he said quietly. “Sometimes...sometimes in an impossibly bad situation, there’s simply nothing you can do. You have to live through the moment and move on.”
“It sounds like you know what that feels like.”
“I do,” he said soberly.
“But you don’t like talking about it, do you?” she asked quietly. “The war, I mean.”
Brant shrugged loosely. “No point rehashing the past.”
“Sometimes talking helps.”
He shrugged again. “For some people. Anyway, your mom...she’d be really proud of you.”
Lucy sighed. “I hope so. I hope she’d think I was a good person.”
“How could she not? You’re incredible.”
Heat crawled up his neck once he’d said the words. But there was no denying it. Lucy Monero was one hell of a woman.
“You better stop being nice to me,” she said softly, “or I might start polishing my white picket fence again.”
The heat in his neck suddenly choked him. “Look, I’m sorry about that, okay? I shouldn’t have said it. I must have sounded like some kind of egotistical idiot...and I’m not. I think I’ve just forgotten what it’s like to be normal. For years I’ve been driven by routine and rules, and now I’m living an ordinary life, talking about everyday stuff, and it takes practice. And time.”
“I know that,” she said and smiled. “I can’t imagine even some of what you’ve been through.”
His stomach clenched. “I had it easy compared to some. I got to come home. And in one piece.”