The Men of Medicine Ridge

by Diana Palmer

  “And when I lost my sight,” he continued, “you held me.”

  She bit her lower lip hard to stop it from trembling. “I wasn’t the only one who tried to nurse you,” she recalled.

  “Vivian cried when I snapped at her, and the boys hid under their beds. You didn’t. You snapped right back. You made me want to go on living.”

  She lowered her eyes to his chest. He had the build of a rodeo cowboy, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. His checked shirt was open at the neck, and she saw the thick, curling hair that covered him from his chest to his belt. He wasn’t a hairy man, but he was devastating without a shirt. She’d seen him like that more often than she was comfortable remembering. He was beautiful under his clothing, like a sculpture she’d seen in pictures of museum exhibits. She even knew how he felt, there where the hair was thick over his breastbone….

  “You were kind to me when Carl died,” she returned.

  There was a new tension between them after she spoke. She sensed a steely anger in him.

  “Since we’re on the subject of your poor taste in men, what do you see in that Markham man?” he asked curtly. “He’s as prissy as someone’s maiden aunt, and in a stand-up fight, he’d go out in seconds.”

  She lifted her face. “Dave’s my friend,” she said shortly. “And certainly he’s no worse than that refugee from the witch trials that you go around with!”

  His firm lips pursed. “Glenna’s not a witch.”

  “She’s not a saint, either,” she assured him. “And if you’re going without sex, I can guarantee it’s not her fault!” she added without thinking. But once the words left her stupid mouth, and she saw the unholy light in the eye that wasn’t covered by the black eye patch, she could have bitten her tongue in two.

  “Will you two keep your voices down?” young Bob Killain groaned, as he peered around the barn door to stare at them. “If Sadie Marshall hears you all the way in the kitchen, she’ll tell everybody in her Sunday school class that you two are living in sin out here!” he exclaimed, naming the Killain housekeeper.

  Natalie looked at him indignantly, both hands on her slender hips. “It’s Glenna you’d better worry about, if he gets involved with her!” she assured Mack’s youngest brother, a redhead. “Her name is written in so many phone booths, she could qualify as a tourist attraction!”

  Mack tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself. He pulled his hat across his eyes at a slant and turned into the barn. “Oh, hell, I’m going to work. Haven’t you got something to do?” he asked his brother.

  Bob cleared his throat and tried desperately not to laugh, either. “I’m just going over to Mary Burns’s house to help her with her trigonometry.”

  “Carry protection,” Mack’s droll voice came back to him.

  Bob turned as red as his hair. “Well, we don’t all stand around talking about sex all day!” he muttered.

  “No,” Natalie agreed facetiously. She looked at Mack deliberately. “Some of us go looking for names in phone booths and call them up for dates!”

  “Can it, Nat,” Mack said as he opened a stall and led a horse out. He proceeded to saddle it, ignoring Natalie and Bob.

  “I’ll be back by midnight!” Bob called, seeing an opportunity to escape.

  “You heard what I said,” Mack called after him.

  Bob made an indignant sound and stomped out of the barn.

  “He’s just sixteen, Mack,” she said, regaining her composure enough to join him as he fastened the cinch tight.

  He glanced at her. “You were just seventeen when you were dating the football hero,” he reminded her.

  She stared at him curiously. “Yes, but except for a few very chaste kisses, there wasn’t much going on.”

  He gave her an amused glance before he went back to his chore. He tested the cinch, found it properly tight and adjusted the stirrups.

  “What does that look mean?” Natalie asked curiously.

  “I had a long talk with him when I found out you’d accepted a date for the Christmas dance from him.”

  Her lips fell open. “You what?”

  He slid a booted foot into the stirrup and vaulted into the saddle with easy grace. He leaned over the pommel and looked at Natalie. “I told him that if he seduced you, he’d have me to contend with. I told his parents the same thing.”

  She was horrified. She could hardly breathe. “Of all the interfering, presumptuous—”

  “You were raised in an orphanage by spinster women, and then you lived with your aunt, who couldn’t even talk about kissing without going into a swoon,” he said, and he didn’t smile. “You knew nothing about men or sex or hormones. Someone had to protect you, and there wasn’t anybody else to do it.”

  “You had no right!”

  His dark eye slid over her with something like possession.

  “I had more right than I’ll ever tell you,” he said quietly. “And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.”

  He turned the horse, deaf to her fury.

  “Mack!” she raged.

  He paused and looked at her. “Tell Viv she can have her friend over for supper Saturday night, on the condition that you come, too.”

  “I don’t want to come!”

  He hesitated for a minute, then turned the horse and came back to her. “You and I will always disagree on some things,” he said. “But we’re closer than you realize. I know you,” he added in a tone that made her knees wobble. “And you know me.”

  She couldn’t fight the emotions that made her more confused, more stirred, than she’d ever been before. She looked at him with eyes that betrayed her longing for him.

  He drew in a long, slow breath, and his face seemed to lose its rigor. “I won’t apologize for looking out for you.”

  “I’m not part of your family, Mack,” she said huskily. “You can tell Viv and Bob and Charles what to do, but you can’t tell me!”

  He studied her angry face and smiled gently, in a way that he rarely smiled at anyone. “Oh, I’m not telling, baby,” he replied softly.

  “And don’t call me baby, either!”

  “All that fire and fury,” he mused, watching her. “What a waste.”

  She was so confused that she could hardly think. “I don’t understand you at all today!”

  “No,” he agreed, the smile fading. He looked straight into her eyes, unblinking. “You work hard at it, too.”

  He turned the horse, and this time he kept riding.

  She wanted to throw things. She couldn’t believe that he’d said such things to her, that he’d come so close in the barn that for an instant she’d thought that he meant to kiss her. And not a chaste brush on the cheek, like at Christmas parties under the mistletoe, either. But a kiss like ones she’d seen in movies, where the hero crushed the heroine against the length of his body and put his mouth so hard against hers that she couldn’t breathe at all.

  She tried to picture Mack’s hard, beautiful mouth on her lips, and she shivered. It was bad enough remembering how it had been that rainy night that Carl had died, when one thin strap on her nightgown had slid down her arm and…

  Oh, no, she told herself firmly. Oh, no, none of that! She wasn’t going to start daydreaming about Mack again. She’d gone down that road once already, and the consequences had been horrible.

  She went back into the house to tell Viv the bad news.

  “But that’s wonderful!” her friend exclaimed, all smiles instead of tears. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

  “He’s trying to manipulate me,” Natalie said irritably. “I won’t let him do that!”

  “But if you don’t come, Whit can’t come,” came the miserable reply. “You just have to, Nat, if I’m your friend at all.”

  Natalie grumbled, but in the end, she gave in.

  Vivian hugged her tight. “I knew you would,” she said happily. “I can hardly wait until Saturday! You’ll like him, and so will Mack. He’s such a sweet guy.”

  Natalie hesitate
d, but if she didn’t tell her friend, Mack certainly would, and less kindly. “Viv, did you know that he got a girl in trouble?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “But it was her fault,” she pointed out. “She chased him and then when they did it, she wouldn’t let him use anything. He told me.”

  Natalie blushed for the second time that day, terribly uncomfortable around people who seemed content to speak about the most embarrassing things openly.

  “Sorry,” Viv said with a kind smile. “You’re very unworldly, you know.”

  “That’s just what your brother said,” Natalie muttered.

  Vivian studied her curiously for a long time. “He may not like the idea of Whit, but he likes the idea of your friend Dave Markham even less,” she confided.

  “He’s one to criticize my social life, while he runs around with the likes of Glenna the Bimbo. Stop laughing, it isn’t funny!”

  Vivian cleared her throat. “Sorry. But she’s really very nice,” she told her friend. “She just likes men.”

  “One after the other,” Natalie agreed, “and even simultaneously, from what people say. Your brother is going to catch some god-awful disease and it will be his own fault. Why are you still laughing?”

  “You’re jealous,” Vivian said.

  “That’ll be the day!” Natalie said harshly. “I’m going home.”

  “He’s only gone out with her twice,” her best friend continued, unabashed, “and he didn’t even have lipstick on his shirt when he came home. They just went to a movie together.”

  “I’m sure your brother didn’t get to his present age without learning how to get around lipstick stains,” she said belligerently.

  “The ladies seem to like him,” Vivian said.

  “Until he speaks and ruins his image,” Natalie added. “His idea of diplomacy is a gun and a smile. If Glenna likes him, it’s only because she’s taped his mouth shut!”

  Vivian laughed helplessly. “I guess that could be true,” she confessed. “But he is a refreshing change from all the politically correct people who are afraid to open their mouths at all.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Vivian stood up. “Natalie?”

  “What?”

  She stared at her friend quietly. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

  Natalie turned quickly toward the door. She wasn’t going to answer. “I really have got to go. I have exams next week, and I’d better hit the books hard. It wouldn’t do to flub my exams and not graduate,” she added.

  Vivian wanted to tell Natalie that she had a pretty good idea of what had happened between her and Mack so long ago, but it would embarrass Natalie if she came right out with it. Her friend was so repressed.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she lied, “but you have to remember, you were just seventeen. He was twenty-three.”

  Natalie turned, her face pale and shocked. “He…told you?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” Vivian said softly and honestly. She hadn’t needed to be told. Her brother and her best friend had given it away themselves without a word. She smiled. “But you walked around in a constant state of misery and wouldn’t come near the place when he was home. He wouldn’t be at home if he knew you were coming over to see me. I figured he’d probably said something really harsh and you’d had a terrible fight.”

  Natalie’s face closed up. “The past is best left buried,” she said curtly.

  “I’m not prying. I’m just making an observation.”

  “I’ll come Saturday night, but only because he won’t let Whit come if I don’t,” Natalie said a little stiffly.

  “I’ll never mention it again,” Vivian said, and Natalie knew what she meant. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up something painful.”

  “No harm done. I’d long since forgotten.” The lie slid glibly from her tongue, and she smiled one last time at Vivian before she went out the door. Pretending it didn’t matter was the hardest thing she’d done in years.

  Chapter 2

  Natalie sat in the elementary school classroom the next morning, bleary-eyed from having been up so late the night before studying for her final exams. It was imperative that she read over her notes in all her classes every night so that when the exam schedule was posted, she’d be ready. She’d barely had time to think, and she didn’t want to. She never wanted to remember again how it had been that night when she was seventeen and Mack had held her in the darkness.

  Mrs. Ringgold’s gentle voice, reminding her that it was time to start handwriting practice, brought her to the present. She apologized and organized the class into small groups around the two large class tables. Mrs. Ringgold took one and she the other as they guided the children through the cursive alphabet, taking time to study each effort and offer praise and corrections where they were necessary.

  It was during lunch that she met Dave Markham in the line.

  “You look smug today,” he said with a smile. He was tall and slender, but not in the same way that Mack was. Dave was an intellectual who liked classical music and literature. He couldn’t ride or rope and he knew next to nothing about agriculture. But he was sweet, and at least he was someone Natalie could date without having to worry about fighting him off after dessert.

  “Mrs. Ringgold says I’m doing great in the classroom,” she advised. “Professor Bailey comes to observe me tomorrow. Then, next week, finals.” She made a mock shiver.

  “You’ll pass,” he said, smiling. “Everybody’s terrified of exams, but if you read your notes once a day, you won’t have any trouble with them.”

  “I wish I could read my notes,” she confided in a low tone. “If Professor Bailey could flunk me on handwriting, I’d already be out on my ear.”

  “And you’re teaching children how to write?” Dave asked in mock horror.

  She glared at him. “Listen, I can tell people how to do things I can’t do. It’s all a matter of using authority in your voice.”

  “You do that pretty well,” he had to admit. “I hear you had a good tutor.”

  “What?”

  “McKinzey Killain,” he offered.

  “Mack,” she corrected. “Nobody calls him McKinzey.”

  “Everybody calls him Mr. Killain, except you,” he corrected. “And from what I hear, most people around here try not to call him at all.”

  “He’s not so bad,” she said. “He just has a little problem with diplomacy.”

  “Yes. He doesn’t know what it is.”

  “In his tax bracket, you don’t have to.” She chuckled. “Are you really going to eat liver and onions?” she asked, glancing at his plate and making a face.

  “Organ meats are healthy. Lots healthier than that,” he returned, making a face at her taco. “Your stomach will dissolve from jalapeño peppers.”

  “My stomach is made of cast iron, thanks.”

  “How about a movie Saturday night?” he asked. “That new science fiction movie is on at the Grand.”

  “I’d love to…oh, I’m sorry, I can’t,” she corrected, grimacing. “I promised Vivian I’d come to supper that night.”

  “Is that a regular thing?” he wanted to know.

  “Only when Vivian wants to bring a special man home,” she said with a rueful smile. “Mack says if I don’t come, her boyfriend can’t come.”

  He gave her an odd look. “Why?”

  She hesitated with her tray, looking for a place to sit. “Why? I don’t know. He just made it a condition. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t show up and he could put Viv off. He doesn’t like the boy at all.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Where did all these people come from?” she asked, curious because there were hardly any seats vacant at the teachers’ table.

  “Visiting committee from the board of education. They’re here to study the space problem,” he added amusedly.

  “They should be able to see that there isn’t any space, especially now.”

  “We’re hop
ing they may agree to budget an addition for us, so that we can get rid of the trailers we’re presently using for classrooms.”

  “I wonder if we’ll get it.”

  He shrugged. “Anybody’s guess. Every time they talk about adding to the millage rate, there’s a groundswell of protest from property owners who don’t have children.”

  “I remember.”

  He found them two seats at the very end of the teachers’ table and they sat down to the meal. She smiled at the visiting committee and spent the rest of her lunch hour discussing the new playground equipment the board of education had already promised them. She was grateful to have something to think about other than Mack Killain.

  Natalie’s little house was just on the outskirts of the Killain ranch, and she often complained that her yard was an afterthought. There was so little grass that she could use a Weed Eater for her yard work. One thing she did have was a fenced-in back yard with climbing roses everywhere. She loved to sit on the tiny patio and watch birds come and go at the small bird feeders hanging from every limb of her one tree—a tall cottonwood. Beyond her boundary, she could catch occasional glimpses of the red-coated Red Angus purebred cattle the Killains raised. The view outside was wonderful.

  The view inside was another story. The kitchen had a stove and a refrigerator and a sink, not much else. The living-room-dining-room combination had a sofa and an easy chair—both second-hand—and a used Persian rug with holes. The bedroom had a single bed and a dresser, an old armchair and a straight chair. The porches were small and needed general repair. As homes went, it was hardly the American dream. But to Natalie, whose life had been spent in an orphanage, it was luxury to have her own space. Until her junior year, when she moved into her aunt’s house to become a companion/nurse/housekeeper for the two years until her aunt died suddenly, she’d never been by herself much.

  She had one framed portrait of her parents and another of Vivian and Mack and Bob and Charles—a group shot of the four Killains that she’d taken herself at a barbecue Vivian had invited her to on the ranch. She picked up the picture frame and stared hard at the tallest man in the group. He was glaring at the camera, and she recalled amusedly that he’d been so busy giving her instructions on how to take the picture that she’d caught him with his mouth open.