Jake snorted. “It’s entirely possible that she wouldn’t have recognized you, given her mental state. Just what did you intend to do if she cried out in surprise at your unorthodox appearance, and roused either myself or Dr. Gardiner?”
Cyrus chuckled. “Oh, I would have dealt with the two of you.” He pulled aside his coat and whipped out a finely wrought pistol. Steadily, he trained it at Jake’s head. “Handy little item, a gun. Useful in persuading even the most stubborn of bastards to see things my way.”
“And if I hadn’t been in the frame of mind to be persuaded, you would have just shot me?”
“With pleasure. Perhaps I should kill you now and save everyone a lot of trouble. I doubt anyone will object to a father serving justice to the man who killed his daughter.”
He shook his head, an evil smile twisting his lips. “No. It would hardly be justice enough to let you die so easily.” Cyrus lowered the gun until it was pointed squarely at Jake’s belly. “While a shot in the head assures a quick death, a gut full of lead makes for a slow, excruciating, entertaining one. I want to watch you suffer, Parrish, to see you writhe at my feet in agony as you beg me to finish you off. Even your little doctor friend won’t be able to save you once your bowels are blasted full of holes.”
Hallie gasped with horror at Cyrus’s threats. Dear Lord! The man was serious! She couldn’t just stand by while he murdered Jake in cold blood. If anything were to happen to Jake— No! The thought was simply too terrible to contemplate. Hallie made a move toward the men, desperate to be near Jake, but he warned her back with a shake of his head.
“And what gives you the right to dispense justice?” Jake stared at Cyrus intently for a moment before he continued, “Isn’t it Judge Dorner’s job to see me hung? Or do you want to shoot me now and dangle in my place when you’re found guilty of killing an innocent man? I’d consider carefully, King. Do you really think you can get away with shooting a man of my stature and have no one bother to investigate the matter?”
Cyrus’s finger twitched on the trigger as he struggled with his conflicting emotions. There was nothing he wanted more at that moment than to see the bullets tear into Jake Parrish’s body, to see the terror in his foe’s eyes as he watched his blood spurt from the mortal wound.
Cyrus glanced down at Serena’s contorted features.
Yes, it would be worth the risk of hanging for the satisfaction of knowing he had avenged all the wrongs his daughter had suffered at the bastard’s hands. Resolutely Cyrus King’s hand tightened on the gun.
Jake Parrish was a dead man.
“Mr. Jake! Mr. Jake! Police come!” Hop Yung came tearing around the hedge at breakneck speed, and before he could halt his helter-skelter flight, he plowed into the rigid obstacle of Cyrus King’s back.
There was a deafening report from the gun as Cyrus and Hop Yung tumbled to the grass in a wildly flailing heap. Hallie screamed in horror as she saw the bullet explode into Jake’s torso. She cried his name over and over again as he collapsed to the ground, his face a vivid mask of agony.
In moments, the tiny rose garden was overrun with a small contingent of uniformed policeman, all of whom seemed to be talking at once.
“Jake! Oh, dear God! Jake!” Hallie shrieked, rudely pushing at the officers who had surrounded his now still form. “For the love of God, let me through!”
She jabbed her elbow into a particularly solid specimen of humanity, eliciting a yowl of protest from the man, who glowered down at her with indignation.
“I’m a doctor,” she shouted. “Move out of the way and let me through!” She gave him another shove.
The men looked at each other uncomfortably. Most of them had never heard of a woman doctor. At last, the one who appeared to be in charge nodded his consent; as if by magic, the wall of bodies parted.
Ignoring them all, Hallie knelt at Jake’s side. He lay doubled over in pain, convulsively clutching at his midsection. She wanted to cry with despair as she noted the flow of blood soaking his sweater and staining his hands.
“Jake?” she whispered, gently stroking his pale cheek.
To her everlasting relief, his eyes fluttered open and he gave her a lopsided smile.
“Don’t worry, Jake, I’ll take care of you. You’ll be fine.”
He reached up to grasp her hand, smearing a crimson ribbon of his blood across her trembling fingers. “I’m not worried, Mission Lady. You’re here, aren’t you?”
Chapter 10
“Hallie?”
Hallie paused in her task of cutting away Jake’s blood-soaked sweater to meet his pained gaze with her compassionate one. “I thought you’d fainted,” she murmured.
“No such luck,” Jake replied, lifting his head from the pillow to look down at his side. His already pale face blanched several shades whiter as he stared at the ugly wound, and with a groan, he fell back again. He lay breathing raggedly for a few moments before choking out, “Just how bad is it?”
“I don’t think it’s as awful as it looks.”
“It feels awful.”
“I know,” she crooned, setting aside the scissors. Gently, so as not to cause him further pain, Hallie peeled away the remnants of the sweater, exposing a chest and torso rippling with strongly sculpted muscles. Frowning, she pushed at the waistband of his trousers, trying to assess the full extent of his injury.
It was a nasty one, no doubt about it. A large piece of flesh had been blown away when the bullet had passed through his side, leaving a good-sized hole. Thankfully, the bleeding had begun to slow.
Hallie wrung out a cloth in a basin of clean water and dabbed at the wound, once again tugging at his waistband. She would definitely need to remove Jake’s trousers in order to treat his wound properly. Too bad Hop hadn’t thought to do it when he’d slipped off his employer’s boots.
“Jesus!” Jake bellowed, flinching violently beneath her hand. “That hurts!”
“I’m sorry.” Hallie paused in her ministrations to stroke his chest, anxiously watching his contorted face.
When he closed his eyes with a shuddering sigh and began to relax beneath her touch, she returned to the problem of his trousers.
Oh, double damn! she cursed silently, a crease marring her forehead. She’d sent Hop to the infirmary to fetch chloroform, so she could rule out help from that quarter. Hallie peered down at Jake’s still form as she mulled over her remaining options.
There were the policemen waiting to question Jake in regard to Serena’s murder. Perhaps she could have one of them come in and undress him for her.
She shook her head as she resumed cleaning his side. No, that would never do. Those men had already made several slighting remarks about her abilities as a doctor; to ask them for help would simply confirm their unflattering suspicions.
And the undertaker who had arrived to tend Serena—well, he was definitely out of the question. Just the thought of letting him touch Jake seemed like a bad omen. Hallie couldn’t suppress a shudder at the idea.
So what was she to do?
But she already knew the answer to her dilemma: if she was ever going to prove her mettle as a doctor, she’d have to stop these missish posturings over the idea of treating a nude man.
Hallie tossed aside the bloody cloth, groaning inwardly. Why did her first male patient have to be someone as virile as Jake Parrish? Why did it have to be Jake?
Fighting back her growing trepidation, Hallie stood up and began to remove her surgical instruments from her medical bag. With her back to Jake, she said as casually as if she’d said it a thousand times before, “Jake, I’m going to need to remove your trousers.” She held her breath, tensely waiting for his reply.
It seemed like a decade before he answered, “Fine.”
She let out her breath in a hiss of relief. Good. He seemed cooperative enough. After arranging the instruments in a basin, Hallie we
nt to the fireplace to retrieve the kettle Celine had put to boil earlier. She poured the steaming water over her instruments. That task completed, she turned back to Jake with a no-nonsense expression on her face, ready to resolve the trouser issue.
But when she saw that his eyes were closed and his breathing even, almost as if he slept, her features softened.
He reminded her of a prince from some mythical kingdom as he lay amid the ornate splendor of his curious bed. Done in an Oriental style, the bed was a large, impressive piece of furniture, wonderfully fashioned out of black-and-gold-lacquered mahogany. The headboard was an intricate puzzle of intertwining woodwork topped with a canopy which was carved to resemble the exotically curving shape of an ancient pagoda. Four fancifully rendered dragons served as bedposts, standing in silent vigil over their sleeping master. With their fiercely bared fangs and smoothly carved scales, they looked poised to spring on anyone foolish enough to disturb his slumbers. The bed was an object of rare, undeniable beauty—just like the man resting upon it.
Hallie gave one of the dragons a pat before sitting on the edge of the bed beside Jake. Laying her fingers against his cheek, she murmured, “Jake?”
He opened his eyes.
“I’m going to undress you now.” She was pleased to hear how steady her voice sounded.
He nodded once and then his eyes fluttered closed again.
Hallie heaved a sigh of relief. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as she’d imagined. Willing her hands to be steady, she began to unbutton his trousers. She was uncomfortably aware of the warm, hard flesh of his belly beneath her fingers and the way the crisp line of dark hair dipped below his navel, branding a path that led to his most secret regions. She felt herself growing flustered at the idea of exposing that area of his body and suddenly her hands became clumsy.
After what seemed like an hour, the fastenings fell loose. Gingerly, Hallie rolled down the right side of his waistband, fully exposing the hideous wound. Frowning at a raw flap of skin, she picked up a fresh cloth and wiped the blood away. The loose piece of skin would have to be cut away.
As she carefully lifted the jagged flesh to clean deeper, a descriptive oath exploded from Jake’s lips, and she was forced to drop the cloth to brace his hips when he jumped at the sudden pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I need to clean your injury so I can examine it. I don’t think the bullet penetrated any of your organs, but I’ll need to probe to ascertain that.”
“Pleasant thought,” he grumbled beneath his breath.
Hallie released her hold on his hips and slipped her hands into his spasmodically clenching ones. She gave them a reassuring squeeze. “I know it hurts, Jake. And I’m trying to be as gentle as I can. Hop should be back with the chloroform soon. You can sleep through the worse of it. I can’t say you—”
“No,” he cut her off shortly.
“What do you mean, no?”
He removed his hands from hers, to grip at her forearms. “I mean no chloroform.”
“The bullet appears to have gone cleanly through your side,” she began, pointedly ignoring the mulish set of his jaw. “But it drove fragments of your clothing deep into the wound. I’m going to have to remove them and most probably I’ll have to cut into your flesh to get to the deeper ones. The pain will be far too severe for you to endure. And of course I’m going to need to stitch you up afterwards.”
“No.”
“Jake, be reasonable. Why should you—”
He let out an impatient snort. “Just bind it tightly and leave it alone.”
“Fine!” Hallie let out a snort that perfectly mimicked his. “Just imagine how wonderful it’s going to feel in a few days when I have to probe into your swollen, festering wound.” He looked positively nauseated by the idea.
Good, she thought. A few more words to drive the point home, and the stubborn man will be eager to sleep through the whole procedure.
Hallie nodded for emphasis. “Make no mistake about it, it will fester. That is, if you don’t bleed to death first.” She felt his hands tighten on her arms, but continued ruthlessly, “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, every time you bend or move, you’re going to tear that laceration open again. Of course, in a few days, you’ll be half out of your mind with fever from the infection and so weak from the loss of blood that you won’t be able to put up much of a fight. So you see, any way you look at it, I’ll be probing and stitching. The only questions are when and how much you choose to suffer.”
Jake dropped his hands from her arms with a groan and pressed his palms hard against his eyes. He lay still for several moments, considering her words.
God! He was all too familiar with the horrors of such infections. Vividly he remembered the waves of pain as the army surgeons probed the inflamed flesh of his thigh, pain intensified a hundred times by the madness of his fever. And the suturing. His gorge rose at the memory of the needle tearing through the edges of his wound, each stitch stinging far worse than the one before.
Jake Parrish remembered, and he was afraid.
“Please, Jake,” Hallie implored, smoothing back his hair. “Let me give you the chloroform. I can’t bear the thought of hurting you like that.”
He dropped his hands to his sides and gave her a brittle smile. “And I’m not sure I can bear to be hurt.” But he knew she was right. He needed to be properly tended, and as much as he hated to admit it, there was no choice in the matter. Perhaps the surgery wouldn’t be quite so terrible when performed by someone as gentle as Hallie Gardiner. He prayed he was right.
Sighing heavily, he said, “All right. You win. Do what you must … but no chloroform.”
“But why? It would make it so much easier—for both of us.”
“They gave me chloroform in the army hospital—once. I almost died.” He dug his fingers into the mattress beneath him. “All I remember is waking up wretchedly sick and having the doctors hem and haw something about chloroform sickness. From that day on, no matter how painful the treatments, they couldn’t risk using it on me again.”
Compassion surged through Hallie with a force that made her want to weep. Her poor Jake! She knew she couldn’t even begin to imagine how much he must have suffered. And knowing that, how could she bear to put him through another painful ordeal? Yet what choice did she have? She stole a glance down at his face. There was another way.
“I can give you an injection of morphine,” she whispered, looking everywhere but in his eyes. “It will take the edge off the pain.”
“God, no!”
Hallie reached down and clasped his hand in hers, her expression pleading. “Please. It’s the only way.”
“No.” He shuddered convulsively. “I know how easily the drug can entrap a man. And have you forgotten what it did to Serena?”
“This is different. Just one injection to help you through. I promise it won’t harm you.” When he stubbornly shook his head, she pointed out, “You’re hardly the kind of man to fall victim to a vice like morphine.”
“Damn it, Hallie! I was one of those men! How do you think I endured the pain and horror after I was wounded? How do you think I survived?” Jake’s eyes bored into Hallie’s, half daring her to recoil with the disgust he was sure she was feeling, half pleading with her to understand the anguish that had driven him to such degradation.
Hallie met his stark gaze squarely, aching for him, knowing what his confession had cost him. “Those days are over,” she stated, gently cupping his cheek in her hand. “What’s important now is that I care for your wound.” There was a silent plea in her eyes, begging him to forgive her for what she was about to do to Mm. “I’ll work as quickly and gently as possible. I promise.”
Jake swallowed hard, terrified of his coming ordeal, yet touched by the expression of tender concern on Hallie’s face. Pressing his cheek against her palm, he murmured, “I
trust you. And I promise to lie as still as a statue while you probe to your heart’s content.” And he meant it. He did trust Hallie, and for her, he could bear anything.
She smiled, pleased by his faith in her skills.
“I also promise not to holler more than, ah, three times, while you sew me up.”
Hallie’s smile broadened at that. “Jake,” she whispered, grasping at the waistband of his trousers. “Do you realize how truly wonderful you are?”
He chuckled feebly. “Wonderful, you say? And you haven’t even seen me without my britches yet.”
She turned the color of a well-boiled lobster at his words, a shade of red he found remarkably charming at that moment. When had Hallie Gardiner become such a beauty? he wondered.
“You’re a wicked man, Jake,” she chided. And then, without further prompting, she slipped his trousers down his hips.
Flames of embarrassment burned across Hallie’s cheeks as a thatch of dark curls sprang into view. When she realized where she was staring, she quickly averted her gaze, mortified. Refocusing her gaze in the vicinity of his knees, she gave the form-fitting garment another yank. To her relief, it glided the rest of the way down his hips, stopping at what she judged to be about mid-thigh level. Not that she actually looked up to verify the location.
Why did the man have to have such long legs?
Groaning inwardly, she tugged at the trousers with all her might. This time they slid the rest of the way down his legs, and with a sigh of relief she eased the garment over his feet.
“Bravo, Mission Lady.” Jake actually managed to laugh at her tortured expression. “Done without so much as a peek.” Then he let out a moan of sheer agony and doubled over onto his undamaged side, gasping as pain ripped through him at the sudden movement from his laughter.
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