Cook had retired for the evening, and the room was quiet with everything in its place. The sight of the kitchen had Nicolette’s thoughts turning to Ridge’s place and how he’d accused her of thinking the house wasn’t good enough for her to live in. He believed she wanted maids and a cook to do her bidding, as though she was so spoiled she couldn’t care for herself or him. The accusation had probably hurt her more than anything he’d said. So much so that for the past few days she’d wanted to march down to his office and tell him how the cow ate the corn. She wanted him to know exactly how wrong he was about her.
But to do that would only stir up the ashes again and Nicolette needed to let them die. She needed to forget about Ridge Garroway and get on with this solitary life she’d made for herself.
Chapter Thirteen
Minutes later Nicolette fixed herself a glass of sweet iced tea with lemon and then headed out the door of the kitchen with the intention of drinking the cold beverage on the patio.
Outside she was quietly fastening the screen door behind her when the voices of her mother and brother floated over to her.
“I really don’t know what’s happened,” Geraldine was saying. “She hasn’t said anything to me.”
Suspecting that the “she” her mother was talking about was her, Nicolette paused in her tracks and listened.
Lex quickly replied, “Well, I’ve never seen her looking so unhappy. It’s got to be that young doctor who’s caused her all this grief. For two cents I’d go look him up and beat the hell out of him.”
“Lex, Lex,” Geraldine scolded with sarcasm. “This isn’t Dodge City.”
“Hell, no! We’re not in Kansas. We’re in Texas, thank God. And down here we take care of our own! I may not be Matt Dillon, but I sure as hell can handle Dr. Garroway.”
Nicolette shook her head while she heard her mother groan with disapproval.
“Really, Lex! In spite of what you think, there are ways other than fists to settle a matter. Besides, this isn’t any of your business. This is Nicolette’s life. Not yours.”
“Mom, do you think I want to see my sister hurt? It kills me to see her acting as though there’s no tomorrow. She’s already carrying around enough of the miserable baggage Bill left her with. Now she’s gone and let another man stab a stake in her heart.”
Was that the way she appeared to her family, Nicolette wondered? As though she was a hopeless judge of men? The idea shocked and angered her. She didn’t want their pity!
Marching across the patio to where Lex and their mother were sitting, Nicolette glanced from one to the other.
“What are you two doing out here discussing me?” she demanded.
Unperturbed by her curt tone, Lex asked, “What are you doing out here eavesdropping?”
“I came out to drink my tea in peace. Instead, I find you two discussing me as though I need to be put away before I hook myself up with another loser!”
“Oh, Nicci,” Geraldine gently admonished. “We don’t think any such thing! We’re only worried about you. We don’t even know if Ridge is your problem. Since you’ve clammed up, we can only guess.”
Embarrassed by her defensive outburst, Nicolette sighed and sank down next to her brother, who was rocking gently back and forth in a cedar glider.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I understand you two care about me. It’s just that—I feel like an idiot for letting this thing with Ridge get me down.”
“What thing?” Lex prodded.
Geraldine looked expectantly at her daughter.
Nicolette sighed again. “We had a big rift a few days back and I left his place. We haven’t spoken since.”
“What sort of rift?” Geraldine asked. “I’m sure it’s something that can be fixed.”
Nicolette glumly shook her head. “I don’t think so. Ridge asked me to marry him. I refused.”
“What! Oh God in heaven, why?” Geraldine asked in dismay.
Lex shoved a hand in the air. “Now just wait a minute, Mom. We all know that you want your babies married and happy. But you need to hear Nicolette’s side of things before you start in on her about this. After all, you just said this was sissy’s business, not ours.”
Geraldine scowled at her son. “I might have known you’d side with your sister. A damn mule couldn’t drag you down the marriage aisle. But maybe that’s a good thing ’cause I doubt any decent woman could put up with you.” She turned her attention back to Nicolette. “And as for you, Nicci, I just don’t understand how much longer you’re going to keep running from your past. I never thought a daughter of mine would end up a coward!”
Sensing they needed to stick together against their mother’s wrath, Nicolette snuggled closer to her brother while he put a comforting arm around her shoulders.
Nicolette said, “You don’t understand, Mother! And neither does Ridge! We have too many years between us. Besides that, we’re both doctors. Our jobs would never allow us to be together.”
Unimpressed with Nicolette’s reasoning, Geraldine looked at her daughter with a bit of disgust. “I’ve heard these arguments from you before. And if that’s the way you felt, why did you get involved with the man in the first place? You knew both of you were doctors!”
Feeling utterly stupid, Nicolette’s chin dropped to her chest. “Of course I did. But I believed—I thought we could be just—I thought we could be together without getting serious.”
“In other words, just have an affair—enjoy the man without any strings or commitments,” Geraldine muttered with distaste, then shook her head as though she couldn’t believe she was discussing her own daughter’s behavior. “Thank goodness Ridge wouldn’t give in to you!”
Nicolette glanced up at her brother for aid and support. “Lex, tell her! Tell her that I just jumped out of a burning skillet and that I don’t want to jump into another one. Marriage to Ridge would be all wrong!”
His gaze gently roamed her face and then his hand smoothed over her dark hair. “Nicci, sweet sissy, the short time you and Ridge were together I’ve never seen you looking happier. I believe you love the man.”
Neither her brother nor her mother could ever know how very much she did love Ridge, Nicolette thought. Even she hadn’t realized the real depth of her feelings until the days without him had begun to slip by and her heart had grown emptier and emptier.
“I do love him, Lex. That’s why it hurts so much to be away from him.”
Across from them, Geraldine spat, “Hell! If you really felt that way about the man, you’d get over there and tell him so! You wouldn’t be sitting here whining about it!”
Lex shot his mother a reproving glance. “Mom, you don’t have to be so rough. Can’t you see she’s hurting?”
Geraldine loved her children greatly. But she was made of strong, sturdy stock and she expected her offspring to be equally as tough. It wasn’t in her to allow anything less.
“I’m not blind, Lex,” Geraldine told him. “And don’t expect me to pat Nicci’s cheek and say, ‘You poor little thing, go ahead and cry and everything will be all right.’ I’ve tried to be easy with her and that hasn’t worked. Besides, that’s not the Ketchum way. It’s not the Saddler way either.” She looked directly at Nicolette. “I’m going to say one thing on the matter and that’s it. The rest is up to you, Nicci. Do you want to hear it?”
The only response Nicolette could give her was a simple nod.
Geraldine leaned forward toward her two offspring. “Love is too precious to throw away. And nothing in this world is perfect. If you think you’re going to find the perfect man with just the right job so that the two of you can have a flawless marriage and dance around on a dreamy cloud, then you might as well roll over and give up right now.”
After she spoke, Geraldine got up from her lawn chair and left the patio. Nicolette turned a torn gaze on her brother.
“I think she’s angry with me,” she murmured with regret.
Lex’s smile was wan. “She loves you and
she wants you to be happy. So do I.”
Nicolette let out a long breath. “Do you think she’s right?”
Her brother chuckled. “Let me put it this way, I’ve never seen her when she wasn’t right.”
Nicolette darted a glance at her mother’s retreating back, then stared blindly forward as her mind swam in all directions.
After several long moments she said to herself and to Lex, “I wasn’t expecting Ridge to be perfect.”
“Weren’t you?” he asked softly.
Jerking her head around, she stared wondrously at her brother. “No! I was trying to be logical about things.”
A wan smile touched his lips. “From what I’ve heard, love and logic don’t mix.”
With an agonized groan, Nicolette covered her face with her hands. “A woman has to be careful,” she tried to reason, but her heart was already beating fast, thumping out orders for her to get to her feet and fly to Ridge as swiftly as they could carry her.
“A woman has to take chances,” he countered.
She looked at him for a moment and then leaped up from the swing so suddenly that it swung madly.
“Where are you going?” he called as she hurried toward the house.
“To take a chance!”
Miles away at Ridge’s place, late-evening thunder-clouds were gathering overhead as he and Corey headed to the barn to finish the evening chores.
After church that morning, Ridge had brought the teenager home with him. Since that time the two of them had been removing the rusty, corrugated iron from the roof of the chicken house. They’d stopped only for a light lunch and now they were dirty, hungry and tired.
“Some hamburgers and milkshakes would taste real good right now, don’t you think?” Ridge asked the boy as the two of them stepped into the barn.
“Boy, yeah! And some French fries, too. Or maybe some onion rings. You know how to cook those, Mr. Ridge?”
Since Nicolette had left, Ridge hadn’t done much cooking or eating. The joy of making a meal had left him, and eating was just something to keep his body from collapsing. Nothing about life was the same without her and he realized he’d reached the point where he had to do something about his misery. He couldn’t go on living in that sort of agony.
“No,” he answered Corey. “And I’m not going to cook this evening. We’re going to drive into town and eat in a restaurant. My treat. How would that be?”
Corey paused in the act of opening the door to the feed room and turned an incredulous look on Ridge. “Really? That’d be great! Mom’s at work, so she won’t be around to make supper.”
Suzette, Corey’s mother, was forced to work long hours to support herself and her son. She had no other choice. Yet Ridge could see how much better things would be for the teenager if his mother were more available to him. Corey’s family situation, or lack of one, had set Ridge to thinking about a lot of the things Nicolette had said to him that night before she’d driven away.
Now that he’d had more than enough time to think about it, most of what she’d said had held at least a measure of truth. It would be hard for the two of them to find quality time for each other and for their children. He could admit that. But nothing worthy in life was easy to obtain. He had to believe it could be done. He had to go to Nicolette and convince her that the two of them needed to be together.
During his mother’s visit, Lillian had confessed to Ridge how scared she was to start over. Richard Garroway had stripped away her sense of worth and crushed her ability to trust in herself as a woman and a person. These past few days Ridge had been asking himself if the same held true for Nicolette. Maybe she was simply too scared to let herself try again.
If that was the case, he had to make her see that she could trust him with her heart, her very life.
Pulling his mind back to the task at hand, he told Corey, “I’ll get the feed. You go open the gate and let the horses into the lot. And be careful.”
Nodding, Corey left the cover of the building and Ridge stepped inside the feed room to collect a fifty-pound sack of sweet feed. He was in the process of ripping the top open when, outside the barn, a light flashed and thunder cracked with such a vengeance that Ridge jerked and very nearly toppled the whole contents of the sack onto the floor.
Realizing a storm was about to hit, he propped up the open sack and hurried out of the barn to check on Corey.
The teenager already had the five horses in the lot and was trying to get the gate shut, but the animals were stirred up by the approaching storm and were nudging and pressing Corey tightly against the metal gate.
Sensing that the horses were endangering his buddy, Enoch began to bark loudly and nip at their heels.
“Wave your arms, Corey! Make them get back away from you,” Ridge yelled to the boy as he quickly climbed the fence. “Climb over the gate! Get out of there!”
Corey brandished an arm through the air and managed to drive one horse away. He was attempting to shoo the others to the opposite side of the pen when another streak of lightning lit up the sky. One of the animals reared up in fear and pawed the air. Another one bolted with Enoch barking frantically at his heels. Amid the chaos, the one horse that remained near Corey began to buck.
Ridge didn’t see exactly how it happened, but he saw the flash of a back hoof slicing viciously toward the boy and then heard a sickening thud as it landed in the middle of his chest.
“Corey! Oh, God!”
By the time Ridge got to him, the teenager had already crumpled to the ground with his face buried in the dirt.
“Corey!”
There was no response, and Ridge swiftly but carefully eased the boy onto his back. The moment he saw that Corey wasn’t breathing, fear rushed over him like a blinding wall of water.
A cell phone was in his jeans pocket, but every second was critical. They were too far away for an ambulance rescue, and he didn’t want to waste the few precious moments needed to make the emergency call. Instead he ripped open Corey’s shirt and laid his ear to his chest.
No heart beat. No respiration. Nothing.
Steeling himself against the personal emotions pouring through him, Ridge quickly ordered the doctor in him to take over.
One. Two. Three. He began to count the compressions he made on Corey’s chest, followed by the breaths he blew into the lifeless boy’s mouth and nostrils.
Over and over Ridge pumped and blew and prayed for the boy to show some sort of response. A few feet away he could hear Enoch whining a pitiful wail as though he were begging Ridge to make his little buddy okay again.
My boy! My boy! Breathe for me! Come back to me!
Ridge was growing doubtful and wondering if he should leave Corey long enough to run to the house to search for a stimulant among his stash of emergency medical supplies, when the teenager made a faint gasp for air.
Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, Ridge swiftly placed his ear once again to Corey’s chest. The faint sound of heartbeat was like a heavenly trumpet to his ears.
“That’s it! Hang in there, son! You’re going to be all right.”
With tears of relief glazing his eyes, he jerked out the cell phone and dialed 911.
By the time he’d finished giving the dispatcher his location and the reason of the emergency, rain had begun to fall in earnest and Corey had started to rouse and mumble in a disoriented way.
Ridge picked the boy up in his arms and carried him to the cover of the barn to wait for the ambulance.
After the conversation with her mother and brother, Nicolette didn’t waste time changing clothes. She brushed her hair, grabbed her handbag and jumped in her car. It wasn’t until she was halfway to Ridge’s place that it dawned on her he might be on duty this evening and could perhaps be attending patients at the hospital.
Her cell phone was lying in the console next to her seat, but she’d not programmed the instrument with Ridge’s number. And even if she remembered the set of digits, she wasn’t sure she would call him.
Surprise was always best when a woman was planning an attack on a man.
If she didn’t find him at home, she would wait until he returned. Maybe the shock of seeing her again would catch him off guard and give her a chance to explain herself before he ordered her to leave the premises, she thought grimly.
Once she turned off the main highway to head toward Ridge’s small ranch, a tropical deluge began to pour from the sky. Even with her windshield wipers on high speed, she was forced to creep along the road in order to see.
Relief washed over her when she finally spotted Ridge’s turnoff, but she’d hardly had time to ease her death grip on the steering wheel before an emergency vehicle raced out of the little dirt lane and directly in front of her.
Dear God, it was an ambulance coming from Ridge’s place!
Was Ridge inside, she wondered frantically, or had a guest of his become ill?
Torn between following the ambulance or driving to Ridge’s house to see if he might be there, she made a quick decision to do the latter and sped her car down the rough, muddy road until she reached the yard gate.
Enoch was on the porch, but Ridge was nowhere in sight as she raced up the steps and into the house. The dog followed her and continued to whine in a soulful way as she went through the rooms calling Ridge’s name.
“It’s all right, Enoch,” she said with a quick pat to the dog’s head. “I’ll find him and bring him home.”
There was only one place for the ambulance to go and that was the county hospital. With her whole body trembling in fear, Nicolette raced to her car and gunned it back down the dirt lane.
Thankfully, by the time she reached the main highway, the rain had eased and she stepped down on the accelerator as much as she dared with all the water pooled in the ruts of the asphalt.
Even as the miles sped behind her, time seemed to stand still for Nicolette. Emotions, raw and painful, jabbed her from every direction and she realized she hated herself for not seeing Ridge as the man she loved, the very thing she wanted most in her life.
The Best Catch in Texas Page 17
