“So…you don’t have any problem with the idea of me finding a, um, a date like this.” Her voice went so smooth that warning bells jangled in the back of his mind.
She sounded miffed.
If he were honest, he could have told her, hell yeah, he had a problem with it.
He had a problem with the notion of her going out with any other guy, no matter where or how she met the man.
He had a problem thinking about anyone touching her. Physically. Emotionally.
But that sort of honesty wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“Like you said. You’re a grown woman. It would be unusual if you didn’t want to date.” To marry. Have children. “Though, I’d have thought you’d have plenty of pickings at the hospital and wouldn’t have to resort to meeting strangers in a bar. Or aren’t there any eligible doctors there?”
She was silent just long enough that his curiosity started nagging at him and he peered at her from beneath the cloth again. She was chewing at the inside of her lip, her eyes narrowed. But after a moment, all she said was, “You should be in bed.”
“No.”
He was almost surprised when she didn’t argue.
“All right. But if you need to get up or anything, just call my name. I’ll hear you.”
The last damn thing he wanted to do was call her name so she could help his sorry butt off the couch just so he could take a leak. That was the only thing he could think of at the moment that would make him willing enough to bring on a fresh set of agony by moving around.
Unless it was to go to her bed.
Which would be a joke right now.
The mind and some parts of his body were definitely willing, but the rest of him—the injured, aching part of him—just sat back with a snide, cruel laugh at the very idea of it.
“I’ll yell,” he said, having no intentions of it at all. “G’night.”
She hesitated a moment longer, still looking strangely indecisive. But then she did turn on her heel and head down the hall. A moment later, he heard the sound of a door closing softly. Then water running.
His fertile mind took off like a shot, and again, the part of him that was in control got a damn good laugh.
His head hurt. His ribs and his back hurt. He had an itch beneath the cast on his arm that was driving him batty. It was hours before he finally dozed off. The sky that he could see through a kitchen window was beginning to lighten. And when he did sleep, his dreams were a jumbled mess.
Cole was behind the wheel of the SUV aiming for little Lari McDougal. Mason watched it all unfold, his dream-state legs refusing to run fast enough, knowing he wasn’t going to make it. Wasn’t going to be able to save the child.
Only, Lari wasn’t a child, he realized as he forced his legs to move through the sludgelike paralysis that was holding him in place. It was Courtney.
Beautiful, young Courtney.
The SUV was speeding closer. Mason could see the whites of Coleman Black’s eyes.
He yelled out to Lari. To Courtney.
Knew it was too late. He was too late.?…
He jerked and barely caught himself from rolling off the couch. His heart was pounding in his chest, his breath coming fast and hard.
But at least he knew where he was.
In Courtney’s house. Sleeping on a surprisingly uncomfortable leather couch while cool sunshine streamed through the plentiful windows.
The washcloth was still damp but annoyingly so, considering it was caught under his neck.
Grabbing the back of the couch with his good hand, he managed to pull himself up until he was sitting, and then he worked on getting his bulky, casted leg out of his way long enough so he could get his butt up and off the couch.
There was no sound from the bedrooms, and he was glad to think that she was still sleeping, since he didn’t relish the idea of Courtney witnessing his fumbling struggles just to get onto his feet.
She’d left his crutches propped against the chair and, balancing on his good leg, he leaned over to grab them. Only, as he did so, something in his back grabbed with talon sharpness and before he knew it, he was off balance and crashing face-first on the floor.
“Dammit!” Pain ricocheted through every corner, and he rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.
It was crisscrossed with rough-hewn beams.
“Mason?” He heard her running, and then she was in the room with him, her knees grazing his good arm as she knelt down, her hands fluttering over him. She pressed her palm to his forehead. “Fever’s gone. What on earth were you doing?”
She smelled warm. Bed warm. Sweet warm.
And his hankering for that sweetness was heading straight off the charts.
Which was not a helpful thing at the moment.
She peered into his face. “Are you hurt?”
“Besides my pride?” He tried using his hands to push himself up, only to swear and fall back on the floor at the searing pain that shot through his arm. His teeth came together as he swore again.
“Don’t try to move anymore.” Now she was leaning over him, and every centimeter of him—despite the nagging pain in his back—homed in on the soft push of her full breasts against his chest. Only when she was slipping her arm beneath his shoulder and neck did he realize she’d been reaching for the throw pillow.
Which she tucked beneath his head.
Then she pushed to her feet and stepped right over his body, jogging into the kitchen. She was back in seconds, with a phone at her ear.
“I’m not going back to the hospital,” he warned flatly.
Even if it meant he was going to shrivel up and rot right there on her living room floor, he wasn’t moving.
“You are,” she returned just as flatly. “Your cast looks like it’s cracked.”
He automatically started to raise his arm to look for himself, but a sharp pang warned him to stop.
He muttered another oath.
“Thanks. We’ll be waiting,” Courtney was saying into the phone before she set it down on the table.
“Waiting for who?”
“Not an ambulance,” she said, “so you can stop worrying about that.”
Getting carted away in an ambulance wasn’t the worst of his worries, but it wasn’t something he necessarily wanted. “Then, again, waiting for whom?”
“Axel. I want some help before I get you off the floor. Plus, you’ll be able to ride much more comfortably in the front seat of his steroid-size pickup truck than you would in my little economy job.” She stood near his bare feet, her hands propped on her hips. Her hair was sleep tousled and tangled around her shoulders, and the pajamas that had looked thin in the middle of the night looked even thinner during the cold light of morning.
He wished he could lie there and just look at her for a long, long while.
“I’m not going to stay at the hospital,” he warned. “They can fix the cast. But I’m not going to stay.”
She tilted her head slightly and a thick lock of long blond hair curled alongside the jut of her breast. “What is it with you and hospitals? Just dislike on general principle, or are you afraid you won’t be in control there, and you’ll end up with some of these in your system?” She pulled something out of the hidden pocket in her thin pants and held it up.
It was the bottle of pain pills that he’d dumped in the trash while she’d been at work.
He had actually opened the bottle and poured two pills out on his shaking palm before his better sense had forced him to return them to the bottle and pitch it in the trash.
Chapter Four
Courtney knew she was skirting close to the truth when Mason’s gaze flickered.
Then he narrowed his eyes, and his expression became unreadable. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for someone who likes to dig in the trash.”
“Since you didn’t work very hard to get rid of it, it wasn’t hard to find.” The bottle had been the only thing lying at the bottom of the small, decorative waste bin in the hall
way bathroom. It would have been pretty hard not to notice it. She also noticed that he hadn’t emptied the bottle’s contents down the drain, which told her that he didn’t want them around but wasn’t quite ready to make it a reality.
If she could pluck the bottle out of the waste bin—narcotic contents no worse for the wear—then so could he.
She set the pills on the table next to the telephone. If Axel was true to his word, he’d be there any second, and she needed to get some real clothes on—or at least a fresh pair of scrubs—before they went to the hospital. She didn’t really want to parade around in front of her coworkers in her jammies.
Nevertheless, she pulled out one of the dining room table chairs, turned it around and sat where Mason could see her with no effort. She folded her arms across her knees and leaned forward. “I’m guessing you had a dependency problem?”
His expression went even more blank.
“You don’t have to tell me all the details. Or any of them, unless you choose to. But it would be helpful where your care is concerned to know if it’s something recent or not.”
His scar, where it traveled over his temple, looked white. Whiter, even, than the line around his thinly compressed lips. “Not.” The word was snapped off.
It was more of an answer than she’d expected to get.
The woman inside had a million questions that she had to squelch. The nurse, though, had only a few. “Would it be better for you if I really did flush ’em?”
“No, because I could get more if I wanted.”
She knew that was true enough. “Are you going to want to?”
His lashes lifted. The green of his eyes was pale. Sharp. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
His honesty felt brutal. During her nursing training in Cheyenne, she’d volunteered at a detoxification and rehabilitation unit. She’d worked with patients of all ages, both sexes, those who came from money and those who were living on the streets. Some were there by choice and some weren’t. She’d heard every story, every excuse, every reason for how and why they were there in the first place, every reason and every goal for how and why they wouldn’t be back.
Some made it through. Some didn’t.
Those who were the most successful were the ones who were honest—with themselves, at least—through every step they took.
“Well.” Her voice sounded husky, even to her own ears. “Try to remember that it isn’t a crime to ask for help when you need it. And that’s what I’m here for. To help you until you’re back on your feet.”
“The only help I need at the moment is for you to sit up, so I can’t see straight down that excuse of a shirt you’re wearing right to the little pink jewel stud in your navel.”
She sat bolt upright. She hadn’t had her navel pierced when they’d slept together. Getting their navels pierced was one of the last things she and Margaret had done together.
“Sorry.” Even as she said the word, she felt heat fill her cheeks.
“I’m not. Most entertaining thing that’s happened to me since I planted my face on your floor.”
“Which you wouldn’t have done,” she reminded him, “if you’d asked for assistance.” She turned on her bare heel and hurried back to her bedroom, stopping only long enough to put the dog out in the backyard with fresh food and water.
By the time she’d thrown her hair up in a clip and pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt, a pair of cargo pants, and shoved her feet into sandals, Axel—and her brother, Ryan—had arrived.
“I stopped and picked up reinforcements,” Axel told her when she stopped in surprise at the sight of her brother.
Between the two men, they had gotten Mason off the floor and onto his crutches.
“Hey, there.” Courtney smiled at her brother. He’d been back in their lives now for over a year, but it still felt like a miracle every time she saw him. “How’re the beautiful women in your life?”
“Beautiful.” Ryan’s lips tilted. “Mallory got called out early this morning on another emergency. Two in one night. I dropped Chloe off at school on my way here. When we left the house, Kathleen was trying to decide whether she wants to go out tonight with Fred Beeman—who is ten years younger than she is and can keep up with her during bowling, but lives with his daughter and granddaughter, thus cramping his style—or with Sam Driscoll, who is the same age as she is but still has all his own teeth, lives on his own and—honest to God, her words, not mine—has no need for that little blue pill.” Ryan’s blue gaze shifted to Mason. “Kathleen’s my eighty-year-old grandmother-in-law,” he told him and shook his head. “God help us all.”
Courtney laughed. “We should all be so lucky to be filled with life the way Kathleen is.” Goodness knew the woman had more romance in her life than Courtney did.
She realized her gaze had strayed to Mason at the thought and shook herself. “Glad they got you on your feet.” She wasn’t going to suggest she get the wheelchair that she’d folded up and stored in the closet. She’d told him where it was and, if he’d wanted to use it, she had no doubt that he would be sitting in it right now instead of standing there stiffly with his crutches, looking painfully uncomfortable. “Let’s get that cast taken care of.”
He didn’t look enthusiastic, but he turned and slowly crutched his way out of the house. When he got outside, she waited silently while he hesitated at the steps.
“For God’s sake, Mase,” Axel complained with the ease of friendship. “This would take half the time if you’d just plant your ass in that wheelchair you had.”
Mason told Axel what he could do with his comment. Ryan rolled his eyes.
Courtney remained quiet. She might agree with the other men in theory, but Mason needed to feel like he had some control, even if it was just over the matter of trying to get out of her house.
He chose the stairs over the ramp and, even though it made her nearly bite off her tongue to keep from pointing out the pitfalls, she still said nothing. Instead, she walked down the ramp, leaving the men behind.
Between the two of them, her brother and Axel were more than capable of lending Mason some assistance if it became necessary, and she figured his pride would be better able to take it if she weren’t watching.
So she climbed into the backseat of Axel’s oversized pickup truck and watched the minute hand on her watch slowly tick along until finally, finally, Mason was inside the truck.
“The wheelchair would have been easier,” he said under his breath, while Axel went around the front to the driver’s side.
“Your choice,” Courtney reminded.
Axel climbed behind the wheel, and Ryan drove off in his own truck, lightly tooting his horn as he went. “How the hell’d you end up on your butt, anyway?” Axel asked as he put the truck in motion, following Ryan down the quiet street.
“Trying to do too much,” Courtney couldn’t help answering with her own observation.
Mason just turned his head and stared out the side window, ignoring them both.
Fortunately, it took only a few minutes to reach the hospital. Axel pulled up right outside the emergency room entrance so that Mason wouldn’t have to move far.
Courtney hopped out of the truck and went inside. She smiled at Wyatt Mead and Greer Weston, who were her counterparts on the day shift, while she grabbed one of the wheelchairs. “Call Richie in imaging and tell him to put down his book of Sudoku puzzles. Probably going to need him for a few minutes. And see if Dr. Jackman is around.” He was the orthopedist on staff, and she’d copied him with Mason’s records before he’d arrived in town.
“Jackman’s not, but I saw Pierce Flannery on the floor a few minutes ago. Do you want me to flag him down before he leaves?”
She’d only met Dr. Flannery once. He had a private practice in Braden, with privileges at Weaver’s hospital. After they’d met, she’d sidestepped his calls a few times, much to Lisa Pope’s chagrin, who’d figured Courtney couldn’t do much better than accept a date with the eligible doctor.
She would have preferred Dr. Jackman to look at Mason, but knew there was nothing wrong with Dr. Flannery except for the plain interest he’d shown in her. And her purpose there today was for Mason, anyway. So, she just nodded as she pushed the chair outside through the automatic sliding doors.
With Axel’s help, Mason managed to move from the truck to the chair. “I’ll come back and play taxi when you need me to, as long as it’s not too late,” Axel offered. “Tara and I are going down to Cheyenne for dinner tonight.”
Courtney gave her cousin a quick look. “Cheyenne?”
He shrugged. “She wants to go to that bead store she likes to get some supplies for the jewelry she makes at the shop. Figured we might as well make an evening out of the drive. Right now, I’ve gotta run out to Tristan’s office for a few minutes.”
Tristan was Tristan Clay, one of their uncles, who owned CeeVid, a popular gaming company that was located in Weaver. Courtney didn’t have proof, but she was pretty certain that CeeVid was also a cover for Hollins-Winword.
“I’ll call when he’s ready to get home,” she told her cousin as she moved around the wheelchair. “Thanks.”
“No prob,” Axel assured as he headed around his truck again.
Courtney quickly adjusted the chair’s footrest to support Mason’s heavy cast and then pushed him inside. Scooping up the clipboard and forms that Wyatt was holding out, she deftly wheeled Mason around to roll backward through the swinging double doors that separated the waiting area from the exam area.
She knew it was a quiet morning by virtue of the empty beds in the exam area, and she positioned Mason’s chair in the first “room”—which was really only an area that could be separated from the next bed by the long curtains that hung from U-shaped ceiling tracks. She retrieved a pen and handed it, along with the clipboard, to him.
He eyed the forms and exhaled roughly. “I don’t have my reading glasses with me.”
Remorse quickened. “I should have thought of them.” If she didn’t continually feel off balance around him, maybe she would have. “I’ll fill it out for you.” She took the board and the pen from him and commandeered one of the low, rolling stools for herself. She knew his first and last name, obviously, but that was pretty well it.
Courtney's Baby Plan Page 5
