Every Breath She Takes

by Norah Wilson

  “Coming up.” He handed her a steaming mug of coffee, then turned to Brady. “Why don’t you wake Marlena? Since Lauren’s up, we’ll get an early start.”

  Brady blushed at the reminder that he’d shared a bed with Cal’s ex-wife, but manfully managed not to squirm. “Sure,” he said, then left the kitchen.

  Cal’s gaze followed him. “Kid’s still worried I’m gonna come aboard him.”

  “Any danger of that happening?” Lauren asked.

  “Hell, no. Marlena’s a free agent. And Brady’s a paying customer.” His expression flat, he turned back to the gas range.

  “Cal!”

  The anguished shout came from Brady. Before Cal or Lauren could react, the young man came skidding into the room.

  Cal put up a hand to stop him. “Whoa, man, what is it?”

  “Marlena! She won’t wake up. I think she’s dead!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  No, thought Lauren as she watched Cal roll Marlena’s sheet-tangled body over. Her blond hair spilled over the pillows like Barbie doll hair. Not like this. It’s not supposed to happen this way.

  Then a moan issued from Marlena’s almost bloodless lips.

  “Oh, thank God! She’s alive.” Brady looked like his grip on the bedpost was the only thing keeping him standing.

  “Thank God is right,” Cal muttered. “That’d be just what I need.” Cal lifted one of Marlena’s eyelids, and she shrank away, groaning. He lifted his gaze to Brady. “Did she take anything last night?”

  “Huh?”

  “Drugs, Brady. Did she take any drugs?”

  “Yeah, she did.” Brady’s Adam’s apple bobbed. Suddenly he looked less like a man and more like a scared kid. “She said it was nothing bad, nothing illegal.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. Some pills.”

  “She took them to get high, I presume?”

  Brady blushed furiously. “She said it would make it better for her. She offered me some, but I didn’t take any. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to…you know, to…”

  “Okay, okay, we get the picture.” Cal sighed. “Bring me her backpack.”

  Brady complied, his gaze downcast, shoulders slumped.

  “Upend it,” Cal instructed as he removed the pillow from under Marlena’s head and rolled her onto her side.

  Again the younger man did as he was told.

  “There! That cosmetic bag—dump it on the bed.”

  Brady hesitated at the invasion of Marlena’s privacy.

  “Go on, for God’s sake, just dump it. We’ll make our apologies after we make sure she’s gonna live.”

  He dumped it. Lauren gasped.

  “Damned walking pharmacy.” Cal scooped up a handful of drugstore-issue pill bottles and scanned the labels. “Uppers, downers, sleeping pills, painkillers. Jesus, she must have double-doctored her way through greater Calgary to collect this much junk.” For the first time, he looked as though he might not have the situation completely under control. “What do we do now? She might’ve taken a freaking cocktail of this stuff.”

  “Let me have a look at her,” Lauren heard herself say.

  Brady perked up. “You a doctor or something?”

  “Or something.”

  Cal glanced up. “You know first aid?” When she nodded, he shifted out of the way. “She’s all yours.”

  “Brady, have a look at the pills and see if you recognize what she took,” she said before perching on the bed. Brady jumped to the task, and Lauren turned her attention to the exam. It turned out to be more reassuring than she’d anticipated. Despite first appearances, Marlena wasn’t unconscious, just very drowsy and reluctant to open her eyes. Her pupils were responsive, heartbeat regular, reflexes good. Through the whole exam, Marlena mumbled curses, trying to twist away into sleep.

  Lauren sat back. What could Marlena have taken? She didn’t display the slow respiration and poor reflexes of a barbiturate overdose, nor the excited vitals of an amphetamine high. It looked like a hashish overdose, but Brady said pills…

  “Found it!” Brady’s voice was excited. “This is the one. I’m sure of it. It starts with an X.”

  Lauren took the bottle from him. “Xanax.” Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Benzodiazepine. Good.”

  “Good?” asked Cal.

  “It’s a nervous system depressant. It can cause profound drowsiness, impaired coordination, and so forth, but normally not coma. At least not in reasonable quantity and not in the absence of alcohol or some other substance.” She glanced up at Brady. “Can you be sure she didn’t inhale or inject anything in addition to this?”

  “Just the pills. Nothing else.”

  “No booze?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What time did she take it?”

  “The last time?” Lauren didn’t think Brady could redden any more, but he did. “An hour ago. Maybe a little longer.”

  “Then stand clear.” Lauren rolled Marlena closer to the edge of the bed. Hoping that her patient had a healthy gag reflex, she introduced two fingers into Marlena’s throat.

  “Jesus!”

  Both men leapt back in unison as Marlena vomited neatly on the small braided rug beside the bed. With arms that trembled more from relief than exertion, Lauren maneuvered a suddenly vocal and decidedly furious Marlena back onto the pillows.

  She grimaced, holding her hands in front of her. “I’m going to clean up, after which I think I’m really going to need that coffee.” With that, she strode to the bathroom on shaking legs.

  When she emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, she found Cal at the table with the flowered cosmetic bag. Lauren filled a coffee mug and carried it to the table without sloshing a drop, her trembling finally conquered. “She all right?”

  “Judging by the abuse she’s heaping on our boy right now, I’d say she’s well on the road to recovery. Thanks to you.”

  She shrugged. “The effects are a lot like alcohol. If we hadn’t tried to wake her up so early, she’d likely have slept it off. We’d have been none the wiser.”

  “Jesus, that’s scary.” He raked a hand through his hair, making it stand up. “So how’d you come by all that knowledge if you’re not a doctor? ER nurse? Pharmacist?”

  Her mind raced as he refilled his mug. She’d known this question was coming. While she’d busied herself cleaning up, she’d toyed with the idea of telling him the truth—that she’d done a year of med school before deciding to thwart her parents’ ambitions for her by pursuing her own love, veterinary medicine. But it was a little late now. He’d find it pretty strange that she hadn’t mentioned before that she was a vet. Worse, he’d probably think she made the erotica writer bit up to titillate him. How humiliating would that be? She’d painted herself into a corner.

  “EMT,” she said, then took a hasty swallow of her coffee. Well, she wasn’t lying. Her knowledge of poison control did come largely from her paramedic experience.

  “EMT?” His forehead wrinkled.

  “Emergency medical technologist. Before I moved to Halifax, I worked with a rural volunteer ambulance service. But then they upgraded, got rid of all the volunteer services in favor of a paid professional corps, and that was the end of my stint. I haven’t worked on people in years.”

  Lauren almost bit her tongue at the last bit, but if he wondered what she did work on these days, he didn’t ask. Instead he gestured toward the cosmetic bag.

  “What do you make of this stash?”

  She pursed her lips. “It seems fairly comprehensive for a young, healthy woman.”

  “Diplomatically put.” He extracted one of the tiny bottles. “Personally I’d say my ex-wife has a honkin’ big drug problem.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first to abuse prescription drugs.”

  “No doubt.” He rolled the bottle in his hand. “But I’ve got a hunch the prescription route wasn’t her first choice.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I do
ubt she spent her whole settlement, plus whatever she borrowed from the loan shark, on drugstore highs. I’m thinking she must have developed a taste for the recreational stuff, then turned to prescription drugs when the money ran out. Not that it matters.” He poked the bottle back in the bag with the others. “She’ll be doing without any of it as long as she stays here.”

  Lauren said nothing, merely stared into her coffee cup.

  She heard the legs of his chair scrape across the floor as he pushed back from the table. “What?” he demanded roughly.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to.” He snapped up the cosmetic bag, dangling it by its grip. “You think I should give this back to her?”

  The intensity of his gaze reminded her of the angry energy of the Atlantic when the tail end of a hurricane stirred it up. She found it disturbing to watch the ocean then, just as she found it disturbing to hold Cal’s gaze now. But hold it she did.

  “I have the impression you’re planning to hustle her out of town again as soon as this loan shark thing blows over.”

  “Damn straight I will.”

  Lauren strove for the right words. “Underneath her…exuberance, she seems very…I don’t know…emotionally shaky. Do you think it’s fair to set yourself up as her keeper when you’re planning to cut her loose?”

  “Fair?” He pinned her with that gray gaze. “How about just keeping her alive? With a stash like this, we could find her OD’d in her bed any morning. Or she could kill herself pulling some reckless trick like she did yesterday, flying down that bluff.” He pushed his coffee cup aside and blinked. “Shit, what if she hurt someone else while under the influence? It would ruin me.”

  Of that she had no doubt. He’d do everything in his power to keep Marlena safe while she was on his ranch. With so much on the line, he wouldn’t let bad publicity kill his business.

  “Hell, Lauren, I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t some kind of power trip.” He stood and deposited his empty mug in the sink, then turned to her, his posture rigid. “I can’t give those drugs back to her. Besides the fact I don’t want to see her kill herself, I’d be putting other people at risk every time she put a foot in a stirrup. The ranch…”

  “I understand.”

  “And there’d be no confining her to the house. She’d sooner give herself up to that thug who’s chasing her than to sit around inside.”

  “I know. You’re right.”

  “She’s a good horsewoman, but ripped out of her head on—” He stopped, blinked at her. “Wait a minute, did you say you understood?”

  “I did. You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “The stakes are high. I guess I can understand.”

  His smile started slow, then spread over his face. “Saints be praised. A woman who can admit she’s wrong.”

  The smile was devastating. Because she felt dangerously close to grinning foolishly back at him, she turned away, picked up the carton of eggs from the counter and shoved them at him. He accepted them reflexively.

  “You still owe me an egg. Easy over, one slice of toast. I’m gonna go pack.”

  His surprised bark of laughter followed her into the bedroom, where she had trouble wiping the grin off her own face as she regarded her reflection in the mirror. Lord, the man could make her insides melt with a mere smile. Imagine the kind of fire he could start if he really tried.

  The face in the mirror sobered. In the interests of her mission, she sincerely hoped he wouldn’t try.

  At least the rational part of her mind hoped he wouldn’t. Unfortunately, the rest of her longed to taste him. She studied her own eyes in the mirror and read the truth—the urge to press her body against his was growing. What had started as a pulse of awareness had swelled to a drumbeat in her blood.

  God help her, she didn’t think she could resist him.

  Cal pulled the brim of his hat down against the glare of the sun. So far the trip back to the ranch had been quiet. Marlena’d been spitting mad about being made to vomit in front of lover boy, and her mood hadn’t improved when she found out her drugs had been confiscated. She had since graduated to full-fledged seething, but at least she was doing it quietly. Brady was subdued as a whipped puppy, and Lauren was in her own world.

  For a change, Cal’s mind wasn’t on Lauren as he followed the small train of riders. For once it was where it belonged, on the herd. The cattle were in the high pasture now and would be until fall when the men rode out to round them up and drive them back to the homestead. It was a dusty, miserable job driving cattle, yet Cal couldn’t wait. He loved that part of ranching.

  The summerlong race to put up enough winter feed to see the cattle through until spring wasn’t so wonderful, though. It was hard, endless work, but he’d take it over babysitting doctor-cowboys and lawyer-cowboys any day.

  Hell, he’d take it over managing the ranch, or at least the business end. He liked the office part little enough to begin with, but now, with the big agribusinesses moving in and further destabilizing things, he was really starting to hate it.

  It was just like his daddy said when Cal had left home for good at the age of sixteen. “You’ll never amount to nothin’, boy, ’cause you can’t settle to nothin’. You’ll wind up broken in that damned rodeo you love so much, or busting your hump for wrangler’s wages.”

  Well, the bulls hadn’t done him in, and he paid the wages around here as opposed to collecting them, but his father had been right about one thing. He was a wrangler at heart, not a cattle baron.

  But just because the old man had been right in some respects didn’t mean Cal couldn’t prove him wrong about the rest. He’d make a success of this ranch if it killed him.

  “Cal,” Brady called, dragging him out of the past. “Rider at two o’clock.”

  “I see him.” Brady had stopped, and the others pulled up too. Cal reined in Sienna, cursing as the rider on the handsome palomino changed course to intercept them. Just what he needed to cap the day. He shot a glance at Brady. The kid’s face was stony, eyes hard. Clearly he recognized the rider now.

  “Well, come on,” Cal growled. “Let’s keep moving. It’s not a ghost rider. Just my neighbor, Harvey McLeod.”

  Cal’s irritation grew as Harvey closed the gap between them. White Stetson, white hair, white teeth—he looked like a Hollywood cowboy. A Hollywood cowboy who coveted Cal’s ranch.

  “’Morning, Cal,” called the other man.

  “McLeod.” Cal nodded an acknowledgment. “You looking for me or are you just lost?”

  Harvey flashed those preternaturally white teeth in a fierce grin. “Just passing through to visit my new property.” He gestured vaguely to the northeast. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  Cal glanced in the direction Harvey indicated. Shit. “MaKenny’s spread?”

  “Yep.” Harvey nodded. “Hinchey place too.”

  MaKenny and Hinchey both. Poor bastards. Both men—each easily fifteen years his senior and with a lot more ranching experience—had been clinging to their ranches by the skin of their teeth, just as Cal was. A chill went up his spine as he realized he was now sandwiched between McLeod’s holdings and the mountains. Not that it made any difference to his operations. But it still gave him a bad feeling.

  “Well, don’t let me keep you. It’s a long ride.”

  McLeod bared his teeth again. “Just thought I’d let you know my offer’s still open. Your land and your herd.”

  Anger leapt, but Cal was careful to keep his expression flat. “The answer’s still no.”

  “Times are tough. If you change your mind, let me know. I’ll give you a fair price.”

  That much was true. He had made a decent offer. If he’d offered as much to Tom and Dan, they probably counted themselves lucky. They could have lost it all to the bank and gone away empty-handed. Still, Cal couldn’t feel terribly well disposed toward a man who made no secret that he wanted his land. “Appreciate your concern, McLeod. That’s
right neighborly of you.”

  His sarcasm appeared to be wasted on the older man, whose attention had shifted to Marlena and Lauren. With a gallantry that grated on Cal’s nerves, Harvey swept his hat off. “Ladies.”

  Gritting his teeth, Cal realized he wasn’t going to get away without introductions.

  “This is Lauren Townsend, a guest here. Lauren, my neighbor, Harvey McLeod.” When they’d exchanged greetings, he nodded toward Marlena. “And you’ll remember Marlena. She’s here for a short spell of R & R.”

  “Marlena Taggart? The Marlena?” McLeod’s perfect smile widened. “I’m afraid I never had the pleasure. You left just after I bought the Hoyt place, but I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Hadn’t had the pleasure? He was one of a select few, then. And Cal could well imagine what he’d heard.

  With effort, he clamped down on the thoughts. It was done and over.

  Marlena took her own hat off and shook her hair free, running a hand through it. “I certainly would have remembered a cowboy who sits a horse as nicely as you do, Mr. McLeod.”

  “Call me Harvey, please.”

  “Harvey. Now that’s a fine, a masculine name.”

  Cripes, Marlena was turning it on. Beside her, Brady was going red in the face. Just like old times. Life wasn’t interesting enough for Marlena unless she had at least two men in a lather.

  Unfortunately, things could get uglier than usual between these two men, seeing as Harvey was Brady’s father.

  Well, not really. But Harvey had raised Brady as his own until a couple of years ago, when he’d abruptly cast out both his wife and son. Evidently a paternity test had revealed that Brady was not his progeny after all. Not content merely to jettison them, McLeod had stripped them both of his name by making that a condition of a quick, easy divorce settlement. It was either accede to that demand or live hand to mouth for years while the lawyers duked it out in the divorce courts. So Brady Harvey had become Brady Hirsch. Cal knew he had his own daddy issues—Zane Taggart had deliberately destroyed the one thing Cal had loved above all else—but all of that paled in comparison to Brady’s issues, he suspected.