He smiled a feral smile. "Sure I can. Even if it means I have to sleep in my truck in your driveway."
She shook her head, dislodging his hands. He stepped back, allowing her space to breathe. "You can't. Think what people would say."
"I couldn’t care less. Whatever it takes you keep you and Scarlet safe." He held out his hand to her. He must've picked up her cell from the kitchen table; now he extended it to her. "Call the precinct."
Her hackles came up. She really hated it when he ordered her around, but in this case, he was right.
She sat back down in the chair, and did what he'd asked. The officer on duty took down a report that her ex had been on her property, and that while she didn't have a valid protective order against him, it had scared her. She was put on hold, and then the captain came on, a man who'd been a friend of her Uncle Pat's for years. He told her they'd send a patrol car down her street several times a day and at night, until Rob left town.
She hung up feeling slightly reassured.
Trey had listened to her side of the conversation, and she was glad to see he now had his coat on and one kitten tucked under each arm like twin footballs. He was tall and solid and ready to leave and for one micro-second, she wished he would stay.
"You could always relocate out at the Triple H for a little while," he said. "Nobody'd get to you out there."
The thought caused an instant bloom of hope before she quashed it quickly. She was a big girl. She'd stay in her own house.
She shook her head. He smiled with half his mouth, like he'd expected that answer.
"You sure you don't want me to sit outside? It's not like I've got to be up with the rooster tomorrow morning. I don't have to be at the feed store until noon."
The reminder that he no longer belonged at the Triple H was a blow, but she shook it off. She had to be strong for Scarlett, for herself.
"I'm sure." She stood, ready to show him the door, just like earlier.
But he didn't walk straight to the door. He came to her instead, standing close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to look him in the face. One of the kittens struggled in his big hand, getting one claw stuck in the shoulder of her sweater.
"If you get scared, call somebody," he said quietly. "Your brother, the cops, your friend Sarah."
It was so like what he'd told Scarlett earlier that more tears threatened, but she blinked them back. Watching him comfort her daughter had done something to her. That was all, that was the real reason for her tears.
"And... I might've snuck over to Mrs. Cherry's house earlier and told her you'd had some trouble. She'll be looking out for you too."
He ducked out the front door, squirming kittens in hand, before he could see the roll of her eyes.
She should be mad. Mrs. Cherry was her next-door neighbor, a kindly older lady who also happened to be a busybody. She'd probably be watching out her windows day and night to see if Rob would come back.
Carrie should be mad, but actually, she felt a little warmer inside because of what he'd done.
"Lock your door," he called back to her without looking.
She did, leaning against the inside of the door and listening to him fire up his truck and then drive off.
Maybe it wasn't wrong to lean on Trey, just for this one night.
Chapter 4
A week later, Carrie was experiencing the pre-holiday slowdown. There hadn't been many clients in today. A cold front had come in, the local weathermen forecasting an ice storm overnight.
She hadn't seen any hint of her ex-husband, but she had seen way too many of the single men in town. A total of five guys had randomly asked her out after getting their hair cut in her chair. She couldn't figure it.
Today's bachelor—number six—was one Joe Bob Rivers, a dairy farmer from across town who smelled like manure. She settled him in her chair thinking about the moment when she could wash her hands after he left. Even so, she refused to give a paying customer a bad cut and, after she’d finished, was eyeing the line of hair around his ear, attempting to judge whether she'd cut one shorter than the other.
She had a tickle in her throat and cleared it. "Are you spending the holiday with your sister?" Scarlett had had his sister for her kindergarten teacher last year.
"Yep. She'll roast a turkey, and I'll bring the mashed potatoes."
"That's nice." She snipped a stray hair behind his left ear. She was looking closely and saw a line of pink creep up from the collar of his shirt as he flushed. Oh, please. Not again.
"Would you... would you think about goin' to a movie with me sometime?"
It was a good thing she was done with the cut, because her temper flared, and she slammed the scissors down on the counter. "What is it with all the eligible men in town suddenly asking me out?" She propped her hands on her hips and faced the man still in the stylist's cape.
"Ah…" he stammered.
She probably shouldn’t have asked the questions. She’d managed to keep her temper through five others. But now that the question was out there, she wanted an answer. She waited.
His face reddened even more. "I—"
She tapped her toe.
He exhaled noisily. "I saw Trey Reynolds at the feed store earlier in the week, and he insisted I come in here and ask you on a date."
Trey.
She felt blindsided. She’d never imagined that Trey would do something like this to her. He must've asked each of those five other guys to come in, too. Six gullible guys! Why? Why would he think she needed or wanted a date? After all they’d been through, didn’t he know better?
Did he feel sorry for her?
"I think we're done here," she said. She whipped the cape off of his neck, carefully folding it, paying attention to what her hands were doing as her face burned.
He stood, hesitated, gripping the back of her stylist's chair. "So that's a...no?"
"It's a no."
He turned tail and left, which was a blessing because she didn't have an ounce of patience left.
Trey!
Cassandra, one of the other stylists, blew into the shop on a gust of freezing air. It was almost three o'clock—Carrie's quitting time—and Cassandra would take over the afternoon shift.
Carrie was still hot all over, steaming from the inside out, and when the gust of cold air blew against her overheated skin, she started shivering. And couldn't stop. Her bones ached suddenly. But she couldn't get sick. She had a little girl to take care of. And a man to ream.
"Hun, you don't look so good," Cassandra said with a pop of her gum. Good thing the shop was empty.
Carrie raised her gaze to the mirror to see that she was indeed pale, with huge red blotches on both cheeks. She raised the back of her wrist to her forehead. "I don't have time to get sick. I still have Christmas shopping to do."
Cassandra didn't laugh at her lame joke. In fact, she looked concerned. "There's a nasty flu going around the elementary school. Maybe Scarlett brought it home."
She shook her head, though now her head was starting to feel as if it was stuffed with cotton. "She hasn't been sick."
"Doesn't mean she didn't bring a germ home for you."
Minutes later, Carrie sat in her car in its parking spot on Main Street, trying to rally. Didn't she have some Tylenol in her purse? She rifled through the contents of the bag and found a small pill bottle that seemed right. She popped three, hoping the medicine would kill this nasty fever.
She felt worse as she drove to the elementary school to pick up her daughter. She parked in the lot, head lolling against the steering wheel as she tried to find the energy to walk to the doors and claim her daughter. Her eyes fell on the pill bottle that had fallen into the console and not back into the purse. Xanax. She didn't have a script, but Cassandra had pushed the pills on her earlier in the week, when Carrie had been complaining about her nerves, her fear that Rob would return.
She knew better than to take pills not prescribed by her doctor. Why had she kept them? She should've tossed them. Now as he
r head spun and she drowsed off, she knew this had been one giant mistake.
A blast of cold air roused her from a fevered daydream about her brother Gideon's royal wedding. She pried her eyes open to see Scarlett slipping into the car. The door almost slammed shut on the girl's leg, blasted by icy wind.
"Are you okay, Mama? My teacher waited at the door, but all the other kids already got picked up and she let me walk across the parking lot because it's pretty empty..."
Scarlett kept going, but the fuzz in Carrie's ears got louder. She lifted her wobbly head off the steering wheel long enough to see that most of the cars had vacated the lot. She waved at Scarlett's teacher, watching from the sidewalk just in front of the double doors. The woman seemed happy enough to duck back inside and out of the freezing wind.
Carrie could do this. She just needed to stop her eyes from crossing, and then she could drive home, make Scarlett an afternoon snack, and curl up on the couch with a blanket to ride this out. Surely she'd be better by morning.
No.
She couldn't do all that.
She wanted to cry just thinking about it.
She refused to put her daughter's life in danger because she was too proud to ask for help.
"Baby, I think I'm sick." That's what she said, but what emerged from her mouth was a garbled mess. "I think I need some help." Again, her words were a mumble with no distinguishable syllables.
Her body went limp, her head lolling on the steering wheel as she watched Scarlett dig through the mess of napkins in the center console before she found Carrie's phone.
There. Scarlett would know to call someone for help. Even if her daughter dialed 911, the town was small enough that they'd know it wasn't a real emergency, and someone would come and help her get home.
"Uncle Matt...? Oh, it's your recording. ... Mama is sick. I'll call Trey next."
That was a good idea. She wanted to talk to Trey about...about something. His number was still saved in her Favorites. Scarlett would reach him...
Stubborn woman.
Trey's heart was in his throat, but he kept up his "calm and collected" act as he balanced his cell phone between his shoulder and ear and drove at the same time.
The slate-gray skies had begun to intermittently spit, which meant he didn't have much time for this rescue mission before the weather got really dicey.
Luckily, he'd already been in his truck and only a few minutes away from the elementary school when Scarlett had called.
"Is your mama still awake?" he asked the girl.
Scarlett was so brave, not breaking down in tears like many little kids might've when they saw their mom faint, or whatever had happened before Scarlett had dialed him.
"Kinda," she said now. "Her eyes are a little open, and she keeps trying to talk, but I can't understand her. Her cheeks are red and I touched her forehead and she's really hot."
He'd considered asking her to hang up so he could call an ambulance, but with the weather bad and turning worse, the rescue crews would already be working, and it might be faster for him to take Carrie to the ER than wait on an ambulance.
He hoped it was the right thing to do.
He'd been shocked to get the phone call, still wasn't sure why Scarlett had called him. Did she know his number, or had she just found it in Carrie's contacts list?
His truck slid on the ice as he pulled into the elementary school parking lot. Carrie's car was there, along with three others. Had everyone just drove off, not seeing the woman slumped over her steering wheel? Had they all been so worried about the weather that they'd just rushed past her without seeing?
He threw his truck into park and got out, immediately getting a blast of cold air where his coat was unzipped.
He opened the driver's side door, worried when Carrie slumped toward him, her body almost totally limp. Scarlett watched wide-eyed in the passenger seat.
He braced himself and let Carrie rest against him. Her head lolled in the crook of his neck, and Scarlett was right. She was burning up. He could feel it through the layers he wore.
"I found this," Scarlett said. She held up a pill bottle. "I don't think it's Tylenol. Do you think she took some? I don't know what KKSS... KKSS. Argh. It's spelled X-A-N-A-X."
He looked at the bottle. Why would Carrie have taken that? He didn't know she was on an anti-anxiety med. He'd have to figure it out later, or maybe her doctor could. She was so feverish that he was worried.
"Climb over, kiddo," he said to a worried-looking Scarlett. "Grab your mom's phone. We're going to the hospital."
He hooked one arm behind Carrie's back, the other beneath her legs, and lifted her.
She mumbled something as they emerged from the shelter of her car into the icy wind. He battled the passenger door of his truck, grunting as the wind tried to slam it on him.
While Scarlet circled to the driver’s side, he settled Carrie in the seat, carefully belting her in. Because of the way he had to lean over her, her mouth was close to his ear, and he heard her whispered, "No hospital."
He moved back to look at her face. Her glassy-eyed stare was almost as worrying as the fever.
"You're burning up and Scarlett said you were talking nonsense."
"Just the flu," she whispered. "Rest. That's all. Took the wrong pills. Thought they were Tylenol."
He got that she didn't want to go to the hospital. When they'd dated, she'd once confessed that she hated the place. Always reminded her of when that snake Rob had beat her up. He'd also once seen a bill he shouldn't have and knew her insurance was terrible and wouldn’t cover all the costs if she were hospitalized. With Scarlett having to go in overnight recently for an asthma attack... She was probably worrying about the money, too.
But if she was in danger...
"I'll take you home for one hour," he said. "One hour. If your fever doesn't come down some, then it's the ER for you."
And he didn't promise that he wouldn't call her family doctor.
Chapter 5
Carrie's fever did come down.
A call to her family physician had provided some answers. The Xanax explained the drowsiness and slurred speech. Her doctor had told him to watch for shallow breathing, but that didn't seem to be an issue for Carrie. He'd watch her carefully until that stuff was out of her system.
She rested on the living room couch, curled beneath a well-loved quilt, while he made grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup for Scarlett's supper. He had very early memories of his grandpa making the same meal. Being in Carrie's home again reminded him that this was what he'd wanted all along.
Another two weeks, and he'd be gone. He'd been offered a job on a big spread near Grapevine and would head out just after the new year.
After he'd called the doctor, he'd called Matt, sure she'd want her brother here instead of him. Except he hadn't counted on the roads already being iced over. Or that Matt was out in the fields hunting down a couple of missing cows. By the time Matt got back, it would be dangerous to drive in from the Triple H, dangerous and unnecessary, when Trey was already here.
Next, he called the motel, and the kind manager assured him she'd check in on the kittens before she went home for the night.
He poured a bowl of soup and fixed a half sandwich for Carrie, then set them both on a tray. He left Scarlett at the kitchen table.
In the living room, he froze when he saw her. She must have been feeling slightly better, because she glared at him. "You're not supposed to be here."
"You're welcome," he said, ignoring her words and setting the tray on the coffee table in front of her.
"I'm mad at you."
Maybe it was the fever talking. He didn't know what it was, but he couldn't help smiling at her petulant statement.
"Joe Bob came in to my shop today."
Uh oh. He froze halfway back to the kitchen. And maybe he should've kept on going, because his stopping could have been seen as an admission of guilt.
"He said you'd sent him and some other g
uys to come in and get their hair cut."
And judging by the glare that was singeing the hair on the back of his head, Joe Bob had spilled all of it.
"And to ask me out."
He glanced into the kitchen, where Scarlett sat poring over a chapter book that was probably above her pay grade. He turned back to the steaming woman on the couch.
She was mad, but he was afraid she'd see through him, to the feelings he couldn't seem to get rid of.
"Can we talk about this later?" he asked, with a nudge of his chin toward the child.
Carrie's eyebrows came together. A moment passed before she said, "Fine. But I'm not letting you off the hook."
Her threat might've carried more weight if her eyes hadn't been drooping closed in exhaustion. He figured the thing she needed most right now was sleep.
He joined Scarlett in the kitchen, sitting down in one of the chairs, and stretched his legs out. "You got homework, kid?"
"Nope. I finished it all during quiet time in class this afternoon."
It'd been a long time since he'd been in first grade. "What's quiet time?"
"It's right before recess. We get thirty minutes to work on class work we haven't finished for the day or, if we're done, then we can work on our homework. I'm almost always done."
He didn't doubt it. Scarlett was one of the smartest kids he knew. Got it from her mama. It was no wonder the women had figured out his plan. It hadn't been that great of a plan to start with.
He glanced in at Carrie. It appeared she'd drifted off, judging by the even rise and fall of her breathing.
"Mama was s'pposed to make Christmas cookies with me this afternoon. We do it every year for my school teacher and my Bible class teacher and the principal, and we even save some for Uncle Matt and the Triple H cowboys, but you already know that..."
She ran out of steam long enough for him to say, "I'm not very good at baking cookies."
She squinted at him. "You can read, can’t ya?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then I'll show ya Mama's recipe book, and we'll be good to go!" She beamed. How could he say no? He figured he could replace whatever ingredients they used, and Carrie and Scarlett could redo the cookies when she was feeling better.
Courting Carrie: a Cowboy Fairytales spin-off (Triple H Brides Book 2) Page 4