A Match Made in Texas

by Arlene James

  Stephen grinned. “Well, if the name fits…”

  “She’s also a complete sweetheart who cares about everyone and everything,” Kaylie hastily defended, “and the reason you’re here, by the way.”

  “She’s the reason? How’s that? I thought Dr. Leland arranged this.”

  “Brooks asked Aunt Odelia to open Chatam House to you, and she did, but of course he knew she would. That’s why he asked her in particular, I’m sure.”

  “And I suppose it had nothing to do with the very generous sum of money we offered,” Stephen retorted.

  “Which went to charity,” Kaylie reminded him, leaning a shoulder against the footpost of the bed.

  “Right,” he said. “I support a lot of charities.”

  Kaylie smiled, strangely delighted to hear it. “Really? Which ones?”

  “Whichever ones the team tells me to. It’s in my contract. Pain in the, ah, you-know-what most of the time.” He made a little shrug. “But that’s how it is. Comes with the territory.”

  Deflated, Kaylie bowed her head. “That’s nice.” For a moment there, she’d thought she’d stumbled onto something that her father might appreciate about this man. Glancing at her wristwatch again, she saw that she was running late and pushed away from the footpost, saying briskly, “I have to go. Don’t get up unless there’s someone here to help you. All right?”

  “Fine,” Stephen muttered resentfully, laying his head back on the pillow.

  He let out a gusty sigh. Kaylie paused for an instant, worried that he might be in more pain than she’d supposed, but then his eyes drifted shut and his big body seemed to relax. She realized that he would be asleep within moments.

  Tiptoeing from the room, she pulled her keys from the pocket of her smock and headed downstairs. As she slid behind the wheel of her beloved convertible some minutes later, she shook her head. Imagine driving through the walls of a house and into a fireplace. The wonder that was Stephen hadn’t been killed.

  She thought of her father, waiting for her at home. No doubt, he would behave as petulantly and spoiled as the man she was leaving behind for his sake. It struck her suddenly how alike the two were. Stephen had survived a horrendous accident and would ultimately be none the worst for wear. Hub had survived a massive heart attack without damage to his heart muscle. Except for the medication that he must take to control his cholesterol and blood pressure, his life should have been little changed. Both had good reason to praise God; yet, both behaved as if God was picking on him. How could it be, she wondered, that two such different men—one of them an elderly retired Christian minister, the other a fierce, young, physical competitor—had so much in common?

  “Are You trying to tell me something here, Lord?” she asked softly. Is this my true calling, then? she went on in silence. Am I made to nurse fractious, unreasonable men? Or am I missing something?

  She wanted to help. She truly did. She wanted to help her father, and she wanted to help Stephen Gallow.

  “Show me, Lord,” she whispered. “Please show me what to do.”

  Chapter Five

  As much as he disliked her being away from his side, Stephen had to admit that Kaylie proved as good as her word. She arrived back at Chatam House just after noon and brought up his lunch. Despite his nap, however, she wisely judged him too weak to make the trek back into the sitting room. She was right. He felt like a limp dishcloth; much as it grated, he dined in bed after only a token argument.

  Later, she helped him clean up somewhat and change into fresh clothing, but he simply did not have the energy to shave. She decided to forego wrapping his ribs for the time being. For one thing, he wasn’t likely to be doing much more moving around today. For another, his incisions were still sore to the touch. Eventually she dosed him with painkiller that he did not want but desperately needed. After disappearing into the bowels of the house with his lunch tray, she must have left again a short time later, for she was gone when he awakened in just over two hours.

  Her aunts popped in and out during the afternoon, thankfully one at a time and sans tea tray. Stephen found them surprisingly entertaining.

  Hypatia was the first. Graceful and slight, she put him in mind of the beloved queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix. She seemed to simply appear in the chamber, giving Stephen something of a start. He looked up from playing a game on his phone and there, without warning, she stood. Almost terrifyingly proper, she had him actually speaking in perfect syntax during their brief interview, as if he expected to be graded on his grammar. It didn’t take long for him to realize that Hypatia reigned as the undisputed authority at Chatam House.

  He was bored enough to have picked up a book when Magnolia clumped in bearing two vases of flowers, one of which she left atop the dresser in his bedroom. The other stayed in the sitting room. Frumpy and a tad on the stocky side, she seemed more than a little suspicious, sniffing the air as if checking for gas leaks. When he politely asked about the flowers, however, she eagerly told him more than he’d ever wanted to know about the various blossoms. How could he not describe the incredible tulip fields of Holland and the massive international flower market in Amsterdam for her? Afterward, to his disgust, he drifted off to sleep again, despite becoming surprisingly but thoroughly engrossed in a mystery novel with a floral theme, of all things.

  Odelia woke him when she brought up his dinner, a succulent baked chicken breast and yams, with asparagus and pickled beets. Kaylie sailed in while they were trying to get situated and took over, allowing Odelia to leave in a flutter of lace and daffodils. Stephen gobbled down everything, including the beets, relieved to find his appetite strong and ridiculously glad to see Kaylie with her sweet smile and her hair windblown, tendrils escaping her ponytail to waft about her face. She admired the flower arrangements and teased him about Magnolia taking a liking to him. Frightening thought.

  She helped him take care of his personal needs then stayed to hold a small mirror while he used the electric razor that Aaron had supplied him at the hospital. She asked questions about the book he was reading and surprised him by saying that she would have to take a look at it herself once he had finished with it. Then she made him comfortable, administering his meds and straightening his bed with brisk, easy, efficient motions. Her placid smile remained fixed but somewhat impersonal.

  That irked him for some reason, and the fact that he could not bully himself into staying awake long enough even to check the scores of the night’s hockey games did not help. As the drug and his own exhaustion pulled him under, he thought unhappily that he should be playing tonight and instead may have tanked his career. To add insult to injury, his pretty little nurse apparently did not like him. God clearly felt the same.

  Carrying such thoughts into sleep with him, he should not have been surprised that his rest was uneasy. Yet, when the nightmare came in the dark of the night, it took him unaware. One moment he floated in a vast, black sea of oblivion, then suddenly he found himself behind the wheel of the sleek, low-slung, midnight-blue sports car that had been his signing gift to himself. He had bought the vehicle as soon as the ink had dried on his first pro contract and couldn’t wait to show it off. The valet at the club where he and Nick had stopped in for drinks earlier that evening had gushed about what a sweet ride it was when he’d delivered it to the curb that night and traded Stephen the keys for a generous tip.

  Adrenaline pumped in Stephen’s veins as he put the car through its paces. It sped through the night, wind whipping through the open windows, Nick whooping it up in the passenger seat. Pleased with life, Stephen laughed and stomped the gas pedal. Nick braced an arm against the dash, howling with glee as the car shot forward.

  Suddenly headlights appeared. Stephen knew with sickening dread that he was dreaming and exactly what was coming, but he could do nothing.

  “No! No!” he cried. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  He tried everything, from trying to rouse himself from the dream to yanking and pounding the steering wheel, but nothing
prevented the bone-jarring crash. Then they were rolling, banging around the interior of the car as it tumbled. Unbelted, Nick slammed into him more than once, tossed about like a rag doll. Stephen knew that the car would come to rest on the passenger side and what he would see then.

  Blood. Shattered glass. Crumpled metal. Nick, twisted and broken.

  Howling in grief, Stephen clawed at his own safety restraints. Abruptly, the colored lights of emergency vehicles flashed macabre shadows across the scene, but Stephen knew it was too late. Still, he struggled, sobbing and screaming, desperate to reach the dearest person in his world. Nick could not be gone. He could not, for how could anyone possibly live in a world without Nicklas?

  The call came on the house phone, not the expensive mobile unit that Stephen Gallow had insisted she must have. Somehow, though, even as she reached for the receiver on the low chest beside her bed, Kaylie knew that it had to do with him. Hearing Odelia’s trembling voice on the other end of the line only confirmed that assumption.

  “Kaylie? Can you come? He’s fallen, and the pain is terrible. We don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll be right there,” she answered without hesitation, throwing off the bedcovers.

  Her father tapped on her bedroom door as she pulled on her scrubs. “One moment!” Reaching for the doorknob with one hand, she stuffed a pair of socks into a pocket with the other.

  “What’s going on?” Hub demanded, yanking a knot in the belt of his plaid robe. “I heard the phone ring, and it’s not even 5:00 a.m.”

  “Stephen has fallen,” she told him, stomping her bare feet into athletic shoes.

  “Who is Stephen?”

  “Mr. Gallow.”

  “Your new patient?”

  “That’s right.”

  Hubner rolled his eyes. “I knew this job would turn into a terrible imposition.”

  Kaylie tried to hang on to her patience as she stuffed her wallet into her pocket and grabbed her keys. “I don’t have time to discuss it, Dad.”

  Pushing past him, she moved down the narrow hallway and into the living room. Hub padded along behind her in his house slippers.

  “When will you be back?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She skirted the room, with its comfortably worn furnishings and fieldstone fireplace. Just as she reached the opening to the small foyer, a lamp snapped on and her father spoke again.

  “What about breakfast?” he asked, the faintest whine in his voice. “Will you be back in time to get breakfast, do you think?”

  Exasperated, Kaylie rounded on him. “I don’t know, Dad. Thankfully, you can feed yourself.”

  Something dark and troubling flashed across his face, but Kaylie’s worry for Stephen pushed all other considerations away just then. She whirled and rushed out, telling herself that she would apologize later. As she raced toward Chatam House, her only prayer was for the injured man who had put that tremor into her auntie’s voice.

  Locking his jaw, Stephen held still as Kaylie injected medication into his upper right leg. Red-hot pain radiated up and down from the thigh, knifing up into his hip and down into the plaster cast below his knee, all the way to the ankle. Add to that the intense throbbing in his ribs, and it was all he could do retain consciousness.

  Nevertheless, as soon as Kaylie recapped the syringe, he insisted through his teeth, “I do not need an ambulance!” For all the good that did him. She had already made the call to 9-1-1.

  Ignoring his desires entirely, she turned to address those crowded into his bedroom. She surprised him, this small, wholesome, quiet woman; he might even have been fascinated by the cool, competent manner in which she had taken control and created order out of chaos within moments of her arrival, had she not ignored his every wish and order.

  “Carol, would you go down and watch for the emergency vehicle, please?” she directed briskly. “Hilda, I think everyone is going to need a hot cup of tea soon.”

  Carol, in her messy ponytail and hastily donned slacks and blouse, nodded. Dressed in a threadbare caftan, her elder sister Hilda did the same. Her straight, thin, gray-dulled yellow-gold hair flopped about her double chin.

  “I’ll heat some cinnamon rolls, too.” She went out with her younger sister.

  Chester, wearing black pants and a white undershirt with bare feet, watched his wife and sister-in-law leave without comment, then looked to Kaylie for his own assignment.

  “Thank you for helping to get him back into bed,” she told the older man.

  Stephen grunted in agreement. He wouldn’t have believed that the old guy could manage it, but somehow he had, though at the time Stephen had thought the transfer from the floor to the bed would kill him. He’d have bitten off his own tongue before he’d have admitted it, of course. He was a hockey player, for pity’s sake, toughest of the tough.

  Kaylie dispatched Chester to move the sofa in the sitting room so the paramedics could get a gurney into the bedroom. He went out to rearrange furniture in his bare feet. That left just the aunts and Kaylie herself.

  “What can we do, dear?” Odelia asked, looking like a runaway from the circus, with pink foam rubber curlers in her white hair and a ruffled, knee-length, red satin robe zipped over a floor-length yellow nylon gown. Stephen would have laughed if he hadn’t been so busy trying not to whimper like a wounded dog.

  Magnolia, her long braid intact, wore a flannel robe over flannel pajamas, while Hypatia, her silver hair clubbed sleekly at her nape, appeared ready to receive visitors in tailored navy silk with white piping. Her silent, intelligent gaze contained a good deal of concern, along with a measure of speculation that unnerved Stephen. She had been the first to arrive after his fall, and he sensed that she at least suspected the cause.

  He closed his eyes to escape that acute amber gaze and heard Kaylie say, “Just pray for him. I’m pretty sure he’s broken another bone above the leg cast and dislodged the old break.”

  Stephen felt the terrible urge to cry, partly because the leg screamed and partly because a really bad break could mean the end of his career. If so, he—and only he—could be blamed. He had done some stupid, stupid things in his life and would never, apparently, quit paying for them.

  While silently berating himself, he felt the gentle touch of several hands on his shoulder and chest. He looked up to find the Chatam sisters standing over him, their heads bowed and eyes closed. A glance at Kaylie, who hugged the footpost of the bed, showed that she, too, stood in an attitude of prayer. Before he could digest the amazing notion that they were actually going to pray over him at that very moment, Hypatia began to speak.

  “Father God, we entreat You, on behalf of this poor man. You know his great pain, Lord. You know the reasons for it. Give him comfort now, Father, please. Heal him inside and out. Let him feel Your great love and power. You have brought him here to this place for a reason, Lord, and we trust that it will work out for his best and Your great glory and honor. Make us blessings to that cause, Sovereign Father. These things we pray in the name of Your Holy Son and our Savior. Amen.”

  Stephen lay dumbfounded for several seconds before realizing that, to his utter shock, the pain seemed to have subsided to a manageable level. Oh, but surely that had more to do with the injection that Kaylie had administered moments ago than any prayer. Didn’t it? If so, it would be the fastest working injection he had ever received, but then his sense of time was surely skewed.

  Carol shouted up the stairwell that the ambulance had arrived, and Hypatia immediately went into action, herding her sisters from the room. “We had best get out of the way now. Kaylie can manage this.” She paused at the bedside long enough to look down on Stephen again. “We will be praying for your swift return to us, Stephen dear. God bless.”

  Stephen dear. It felt suddenly as if he had unknowingly crossed some divide and managed to plant himself in the bosom of the Chatam family. Nameless emotion swelled his chest. Unaccustomed to such feelings, he attempted to turn it off with an icy glare,
but for once his game face failed him. A tight smile curling up one corner of her mouth, Hypatia patted his shoulder comfortingly and followed her sisters from the room. Kaylie instantly took her place, bending low to sweep a lock of hair from his forehead and address him softly.

  That absurd, nameless yearning swept through him again. Why, he wondered, did the slightest display of tenderness from this woman reduce him to a maudlin nostalgia for something he had never known and could not even describe? She was not his mother. She was not his girlfriend. She was not even his type. She was a paid nurse, an employee, an uptight little holy-roller with as much disapproval as pity in her big, dark eyes. Yet, something about her made him want more than simple professional comfort from her.

  “Stephen, listen to me. I need to know how it happened.”

  A great clattering and thumping on the landing snagged his attention. “They’re here.”

  “I know. Quickly. How did it happen? Why did you fall?”

  He shook his head, unwilling to say. Hypatia might suspect, but she didn’t know, and she wouldn’t if he could help it. This was his issue, his secret shame. But then Kaylie gently cupped his face with her small, delicate hands, as if it, he, were somehow precious to her. He could not have denied her anything at that moment.

  “It’s important, Stephen. Please.”

  “Nightmare,” he admitted tersely, shifting his gaze from hers.

  “It’s not the first, is it?” she whispered, her voice a sweet, soft zephyr of compassion. Her hands stroked his face, creating an island of bliss in a sea of pain and angst.

  Men and material suddenly crowded the room. Kaylie left him to sweep all of his medications from his bedside table into the pockets of her smock and answer questions from the emergency medical technicians. Two of them moved into position and quickly transferred him from the bed to the gurney, an excruciating experience that Stephen endured with a clenched jaw.

  The trip out of the suite, down the stairs and into the ambulance was every bit as painful as he’d expected. He gulped and gritted his teeth, training his gaze on the frescoed ceiling above, a painting of blue sky, fluffy cloud and feathers. Suddenly a large, ornate crystal chandelier blocked the peaceful scene.