by Caro Carson
“I just hope her mother made it. That woman never came to, never even moaned.”
The mother had been the one patient airlifted to San Antonio, of course.
“Come with me.” Patricia wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She took Luke by the hand and started for the admin tent. “You know that phrase ‘better than sex’? I think I’ve got something better than sex right now. I’ve got access to a satellite phone, and I can call San Antonio.”
“You don’t have to do that. Rouhotas will get on the radio tomorrow. Firemen relay info like that.”
Patricia sniffed. “That’s rumor. I’m going to get you the facts, so you can sleep tonight.”
She stuttered to a stop. Luke nearly crashed into her. “If that would help you. Maybe you’d rather wait until morning? The facts might not be good. I can’t stand not knowing, but maybe that’s just me.”
He rubbed his jaw, and it took her a moment to realize he was exaggerating the indecisive move. “Let’s see. I could hope for info tomorrow and have Murphy to talk it out with, or I could find out tonight while I’ve got a beautiful blonde by my side who’s being very kind. She’s very soft, too, I might add, and a thousand times more fun to kiss than Murphy. Gee, this is a tough one.”
“You are just a barrel of laughs, Waterson.” Patricia couldn’t quite hit her usual acerbic tone. Everything seemed more hopeful now that Luke was teasing her.
They continued walking to the admin tent. “This may not be a great idea, Patricia. Your hair is a mess. People will definitely talk.”
Without stopping, she pulled a few pins out, held them in her teeth, made a quick twist of her hair, and stuck them back in.
“Okay, that’s distracting. You know men are amazed at how women do that stuff, right?”
Luke stayed outside the tent while Patricia nodded coolly to the night clerks, used her laptop database to find the hospitals in San Antonio that had major trauma centers, and started dialing. No one questioned her right to pull the satellite phone from its orange case.
She’d refused to abuse Texas Rescue resources for her personal benefit, but when it came to Luke, she found it easy. Should Karen ask, Patricia could explain that Texas Rescue personnel had made the rescue, and she’d needed the patient’s status for the follow up report. Or, the emergency responders needed to know if their efforts had been successful in order to refine their training. Or—oh, hell. Patricia would just buy her own satellite phone and bring it next time.
She left the tent to find Luke and tell him the good news. The mother was already out of surgery and had awakened from anesthesia. She was under observation because she’d lost consciousness at the scene, but it was only a routine precaution. She was expected to be moved to a regular bed after twenty-four hours.
“The charge nurse was in a chatty mood, so I got her chatting about how patients fared better when family members were present. I asked her what kind of accommodations her hospital had for out of town families.”
Luke pulled her into the shadow between the tents. “I heard some of that. You are one smooth talker, Patricia Cargill. What did the nurse tell you?”
“The husband is there, and the nurse says it’s the sweetest thing, how he won’t let his daughter out of his sight. The nurse was very proud to tell me how she’d arranged a room for them in the hotel next door. They’re going to be okay.”
Luke didn’t say anything. In the dark, Patricia couldn’t read his expression.
“Are you going to be okay?”
He answered her with a kiss that made her go weak in the knees. Patricia didn’t worry that she’d fall. She didn’t worry about anything at all. Luke was happy, and so was she.
Chapter Fourteen
Patricia couldn’t wait for night to come again, but first, she had to face the day. She took her sleeping mask off and rolled onto her back, raising her wrist to squint at her watch out of habit. It took a moment for her mind to register the sounds coming from a few cots away. The distinctive whoosh sound that meant a text message had been sent. The chime of an email coming in.
Phones were working. The cell towers had been fixed.
As eager as everyone else, Patricia grabbed her cell phone and turned it on, then laid back on her air mattress to wait for the miracle of technology to begin.
It began slowly. Images of circles spun slowly, loading, loading, as Patricia’s phone competed with every other phone in the city to claim space on the network. Thousands of people were undoubtedly trying to download four or five days’ worth of information and updates.
Impatient, Patricia sat up and started brushing out her hair, keeping one eye on her phone screen. This mission had pulled her out of her normal life in the middle of so many issues. There’d been that unauthorized withdrawal from her bank account, which should have been fixed. Patricia pressed the app for her bank account. Its circle started spinning.
She waited for it to open, hoping against hope to find that her father had finally signed the last series of checks she’d written. He’d been sitting on them, doing nothing, as usual. She hadn’t had time to cajole him into signing before Texas Rescue had been activated.
She knew her father was busy with his new mistress, but the old one was pouting and getting in his way. Patricia could use that to her advantage. She’d handle the old mistress, if he’d sign her checks. It was a deal she’d made with him a dozen times.
From the cot across from Patricia’s, Karen made a little squeal of excitement. Patricia closed her eyes briefly, her only outward show of her inward disgust. Her supervisor shouldn’t have already been in bed if Patricia wasn’t up and on duty.
Karen smiled at her and waved her phone. “Level eighty-nine, and I got an extra sprinkle ball, too.”
“How lovely.”
Honestly, what was the polite rejoinder to nonsense like that? Get the hell off the network. I’m trying to verify that the Cargill donation to Texas Rescue went through. Your paycheck depends on it.
That would be so satisfying to say. Her father would have said it in a heartbeat, and loudly, which is why Patricia did not. She’d been trained to be twice as classy to make up for his bluster.
Patricia glanced at her own phone. Half the screen had loaded, so she could see the trust fund’s balance. Her father must have signed those checks, because the balance was considerably lower than she expected. Millimeter by millimeter, her bank statement appeared, but it froze before loading more than half the screen.
She read the two entries that appeared. The first was Wife Number Three’s quarterly allowance, a hefty seven figures. Number Three and Daddy had never legally divorced, and the seven figures hurt less than alimony might have, so Patricia was relieved to see she’d been paid. Keep her happy with her polo ponies in Argentina, where I don’t have to deal with her.
The second entry was an electronic funds transfer to a jewelry store, the one from which Daddy Cargill liked to buy baubles for his “girls.” Patricia had long ago agreed to a standing order that pre-authorized a certain amount every month, so that her father could practice his largesse without consulting his daughter in public.
The two expenditures blurred before her eyes. Money for women, so he could have more women. A family fortune, a Texas legacy, squandered to appease one man’s appetites. Patricia had to negotiate for every donation to Texas Rescue. He’d made her crawl before they’d donated an MRI machine to West Central, and then he’d shown up to cut the ribbon and flash his diamonds.
The humiliation would be over soon. She’d been foolish to place all her hopes on Quinn, but she’d find the right husband, and she’d find him before her year was up. She’d win his bet, take her inheritance and start her own branch of the Cargill family. Things would be different.
The first step in winning her freedom was simple: give up Luke Waterson.
The phone screen stayed stuck, half loaded. The jeweler’s amount taunted her. Daddy had hit the spending limit already, and it was only early June. She s
upposed she’d have to call him, but a more unpleasant chore didn’t exist.
Someone else in the tent didn’t feel the same. Patricia heard a chipper “Hi, Daddy” spoken with such delight, it was startling. The new pharmacy tech was sitting cross-legged on her inflatable mattress, speaking happily into her phone. “Daddy, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’m doing great. How are you?”
Patricia closed her eyes, blindsided by a sudden wave of emotion. She had no idea what it would be like to want to hear her father’s voice. The joy in the young woman’s words speared right past every defense Patricia had, painfully showing her what her life might have been like, had she been born to a different kind of man.
“Oh, Daddy, this has been the best week of my life.”
The best week of her life. Patricia knew it was almost over. The cell towers were up. The McDonald’s had reopened. The best week of her life would soon end, and her crucial hunt for the right husband would resume.
Patricia let the cell phone slip from her fingers. There was no contact in her directory, no family member, no friend that she wanted to call. The only person she wanted to see right now was a fireman named Luke. She wanted to see him right away, because soon, she wouldn’t be able to see him ever again.
Her dearest Daddy—every Texan’s favorite Daddy—had made sure of that.
* * *
“The rain was good for the grass, but it was bad for the dirt. The herd can’t eat the green stuff without getting stuck in the mud.”
Luke had been dreading this phone call, with good reason. He’d left the James Hill Ranch in the competent hands of his foreman, Gus, but he’d known Gus wasn’t going to have any rosy news for him when Luke called. This morning, when everyone’s cell phones had started to work, Luke had known he had to check in, anyway.
“How much feed have you laid out?” Luke asked.
“Hay every day.”
Luke saw dollar signs going down the figurative drain. His herd ought to be grazing from pasture to pasture right now, but the mud was making him buy them dinner. The year’s profits were literally being eaten up by the day.
“No way around it,” Gus said apologetically. “That was a lot of damn rain.”
“Yep. We drove through it on the way down here.” Luke opened the door to the fire engine’s cab and climbed in. He might as well sit while Gus hit him with bad news. “Move as much of the herd to the high hundred as you can. I know they ate it low already, but there should be enough left that you can put out less hay.”
“Will do. And boss, I know this is a sore subject for you, but those free-range chickens are running out of dry places to do their free-range thing.”
The damned chickens. Luke called them something else out loud, and Gus echoed it heartily.
Luke’s mother had fallen in love with the idea of organic chicken-raising the last time she and his father had decided to come home from their endless travels and play ranchers for a while. They’d stayed a month longer than usual, all the way through Christmas. Then his father, one of the generations of James Watersons for whom the James Hill Ranch had been named, had suddenly realized that if he was going to the southernmost tip of South America to see penguins, he needed to do it in the winter. “Because when it’s winter in Texas, it’s summer near the South Pole.”
Thanks for the tip, Dad. When it’s winter in Texas, you work every day. How about we talk about penguins while we drive some hay out to the dogleg pasture?
He hadn’t said anything out loud, of course. He loved his parents, and they’d raised him to be respectful at all times. But as they’d been doing since he’d turned twenty-one, they’d packed their suitcases and left him to care for the cattle, and a bunch of chickens to boot.
Luke had been born on the JH Ranch, because his mother had been in love with the idea of organic homebirth at the time. He’d been raised on the ranch. He was trapped on it.
His older brother, another James Waterson, owned a third of the JHR. He hadn’t been home to the ranch he was named after in years. Their parents owned a third, which funded their world travels. Luke owned a third, but ran the whole damned thing, of course. By default, because everybody else was older and had left first, Luke was a rancher, tied to the land for better or worse.
The fence line penned him in as surely as it did his cattle. He felt it keenly enough that he’d joined Zach as a volunteer fireman. A man had to be stir-crazy for certain, working natural disasters just for the change of pace.
Still, when this job was over, Luke would return to the JHR. He knew every square mile. He’d touched every new calf this spring. He was a cattleman.
But he wasn’t dealing with someone else’s left-behind chickens any longer.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with those chickens, Gus. Sell them.”
As Gus agreed heartily over the phone, Luke looked toward the tent hospital and saw a sight that wiped all his thoughts of mud and hay and obligations clean out of his mind. Patricia Cargill was walking toward him, looking the same as always in polo shirt and knee-length shorts and boat shoes, yet looking completely, utterly different.
Her hair was down.
Luke knew it was long. He’d twisted it around his finger in the dark shower tent, when the strands had been wet and straight. But he couldn’t have known how it would look in the sun, full and golden, framing her face and tumbling over her shoulders with every step. Patricia wasn’t a princess. She was a movie star.
Luke had never before felt a woman was so incredibly out of his league. He could only stare for a moment. Then his brain began to work again, and he realized that for Patricia to come to him like this, something must be wrong.
“Boss, you there? Which way do you want to get it done?”
“Sure, Gus, that’s fine.”
Luke hung up and jumped out of the cab. He started walking toward Patricia, since she was clearly heading straight for him, discretion be damned. Luke might have to play it cool for both of them right now.
“What’s up?” he asked, stopping a decent foot away from her. They were only a few yards from the engine, and Luke didn’t know exactly where his crew were and who was watching.
“Cell phones are working now,” she said.
“Tell me about it.”
She looked like she had more to say, but she only clasped her hands together. And unclasped them.
Luke realized she wasn’t carrying her clipboard or her radio. “Patricia, what’s up?”
The sound of air compressors and nail guns filled the air. A construction crew had been on the hospital building’s roof since yesterday.
“They’re fixing the roof,” Patricia said, stating the obvious, and she almost wrung her hands together. “It’s only a matter of time now. Our work here is through.”
Since she seemed to be sad about that, Luke tried to offer her some hope. “The power’s still out.”
“That hospital has generators. They only shut the place down because of the roof. If they hadn’t lost their roof, we never would have been called down here.” She didn’t sound like herself. Her voice was shaky. “Your fire engine might have been called down, but they wouldn’t have needed my mobile hospital. We’re just temporary, you know.”
“I know. Would you like to take a walk with me?”
“No, I might cry.”
It was the most surprising thing Luke had heard in a long, long time.
“I just wanted to see you,” she said, and she unclenched her hands and stuffed them in the front pockets of her crisply-creased long shorts.
“Because the cell phones came on?”
“It’s silly, isn’t it?”
Luke had a hunch that, like him, she wasn’t eager to return to her normal routine. He was also pretty certain that whatever she was returning to was far worse than what he faced.
“Chief Rouhotas is coming,” she said, looking over his shoulder. She started speaking quickly. “Tonight could be our last night. We could start breaking d
own as early as tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll make the most of it.”
And I’ll find out what you’re afraid to go back to.
“Good morning, Chief,” she said, and the smile on her face was almost as politely pleasant as usual. “I wanted to see the fire truck while I still could. Breaking the hospital down will be a twenty-four hour operation like setting it up was. I better play hooky while I can.”
The chief was as dazzled by the waves of blond hair as Luke, but he managed to speak with his usual unusual courtesy, offering to show her the engine personally.
“Thank you, Chief, but Luke has already promised me a tour,” she said, using her perfect manners to neatly force the chief to bow out. Whatever had upset her so badly this morning was a mystery, but Luke was glad to see she was back on her game, at least verbally.
He led her over to the red engine. “Here she is, engine thirty-seven.”
Zach and Murphy paused in the middle of wiping down the smooth red side of the vehicle. After they grunted their “good mornings,” Luke walked Patricia around the vehicle, opening doors and sliding open compartments, showing her the array of tools and ladders. She seemed impressed at how compactly they stored two thousand feet of hose, so Luke kept talking as the other guys kept cleaning, giving her the same spiel he’d give an elementary school class.
“What are you going to do today?” she asked.
“Murphy’s already doing it. We clean. We clean every day.”
“Can I help?”
Murphy and Zach didn’t hide their surprise any better than Luke did. “It’s grunt work.”
Patricia picked up a polishing cloth from Murphy’s stack and started wiping down the bottom row of gauges on the side of the trunk. They measured hose pressure, foam pressure, even air pressure to the horns. She began wiping down their cases and lenses as if it were routine. She did it well.
All three of the guys shrugged at each other. Zach announced that he was going to clean the other side, since the two of them had this. “C’mon, Murphy.”
“Do you call this brightwork?” Patricia’s demeanor didn’t change although they were relatively alone. “That’s what we call it on a boat. You have to polish all the brass, all the time. Of course, on a boat it’s not really made of brass anymore, but everyone still calls it that.” She kept polishing, methodically moving from lens to ring, from left to right. She obviously found “brightwork” soothing.
