Larger Than Life

by Alison Kent

  Jeanne didn't have to like any of it but, quite frankly, none of it was her business at all.

  Edward Bronson Hill, DVM, MD, PhD, had moved to Pit Stop, Texas, the same year as Neva, making them both newcomers in a town where old-timers were slow to accept change. Embracing such required a sign. Pigs flying. Hell freezing. Roosters laying. The moon turning blue.

  The initial cold stares and colder shoulders had only recently begun to thaw. At least in Doc Hill's case. Everyone out here in ranching country would eventually need a vet, probably more often than they'd need a general practitioner—one who made regular house calls.

  And, besides, who could find fault with any man who devoted his life to the honest service of others? Especially one who'd shown up just as the town's only veterinarian had put himself out to pasture.

  Neva, an attorney from the big city—aka Sodom or maybe Gomorrah—had been automatically suspect and subjected to a longer probationary period. She expected to retire before fulfilling it. She'd made friends, yes; Jeanne Munroe was one of her best.

  But two years ago, when the crew from the weekly national news program had rolled into town and dropped boom mics and spotlights over everyone's head, had started asking questions about the Big Brown Barn for their expose on Earnestine Township, her progress toward Ed's level of acceptance had skidded to a halt.

  The people who chose to live in Pit Stop did so for a reason. They were either running away from something or had nowhere else to go. Whatever the individual case, no one had wanted—or welcomed—the exposure. Including Neva herself. Especially Neva herself.

  After backing her truck up to the rear of Ed's clinic, she cut the engine and climbed from the cab. Before lowering her tailgate, she walked over and hit the big red button next to the clinic's rolling door and waved at the camera above. the motor engaged and the door began to crawl upward.

  Seconds later, the doctor appeared feet first in the doorway, his legs clad in denim spattered with, well, Neva didn't want to know what, and his top half garbed in his standard green scrubs. At least his hands looked clean. His face she only gave a quick glance. As well as she knew him, she needed no more.

  "I've got a couple of patients here for you." She waved a hand over the truck bed. "Both on their way to being road kill, so I went ahead and broke all the medical rules and moved them to bring them in."

  "Now, Nevada," Ed said with a patronizing shake of his head. "What have I told you about emergency protocol?"

  "Uh, nothing?" She jerked at the latch, lowered the tailgate. She knew he was teasing. She'd just never liked his idea of a joke. "But I have told you not to call me Nevada."

  Ed winked at her quickly before turning his attention to her human and canine cargoes. At that point, he was stern and all business, and she stood back and watched him work. His hair was military short and a Richard Gere gray, his eyes only a little bit darker.

  He was a man in his forty-something prime, fit and fine. And she wished, she really truly wished things between them had worked. They definitely had in bed, and still did when she got the itch, though she hadn't itched in too many months to count, and Ed had noticed.

  But out of bed? He asked too many questions. He wanted to know too much. He found reasons she'd never imagined to be jealous. And that more than anything drove her nuts. As often as he'd been there for her, as many times as he'd dropped everything to help her, no matter how much she depended on him to offer medical treatment to the girls at the Barn, she hated to have her loyalties mistrusted.

  "Where did you find these two?"

  That she could answer. "Just over the state line. On the side of Sixty-two. Coming back from Carlsbad."

  Having given both patients a quick once-over, checking whatever he checked in their eyes with his penlight, he headed into the clinic's large animal suite for a gurney, calling back, "Which one did you stop for? The man or the dog?"

  Neva wanted to roll her eyes but stood at the truck bed to scratch FM's ears reassuringly. As if she'd actually get it on with a half-dead guy. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Get rid of the rope and blanket. Carefully," he called over the rumbling clatter of the gurney wheels crossing the concrete floor.

  She hopped into the bed of the truck, her back to the cab as she straddled and squatted above her mummy man, ridding him of his bindings, and now that the immediate urgency had lessened, looking at him more closely.

  She pushed the blanket off his shoulders, away from his chest and abdomen, realizing as she did, as her fingers brushed clothing that was torn and the exposed, hair-dusted skin beneath, that she must have been out of her mind to think she could move him. She had, yes, but owed her success in doing so to an obvious adrenaline high.

  He seemed much larger now than he'd seemed then. Much, much larger. Much, much ... more. His chest, his shoulders, his hands and arms and neck were all proportioned in a way that made her feel small. She never felt small. And she hadn't even uncovered his legs.

  The instincts telling her for weeks to keep an eye trained over her shoulder now screamed at her to run. That she had no idea what she'd gotten herself into. That he was a man like none she'd ever known. That any threat he posed was a threat to her personally.

  And then, just as she was fumbling with the blanket below his waist, he opened his eyes.

  "Where am I?" he barely whispered, a raspy, throaty croak of a sound.

  "We're at Doc Hill's clinic. He's coming now with a gur-ney. You're going to be fine." On what she based her encouraging words, she had no clue.

  "And if you're not," Ed walked up to say, "you can always hire Nevada here to sue me for malpractice."

  "Jesus, Ed. Don't scare him like that." Her gaze traveled from the downed man to the other and back. "And don't call me Nevada."

  "Not scared," the man beneath her grunted thickly. "Thirsty."

  Neva looked up from his glazed and tortured eyes. "Ed? Is water okay? I've got a cooler with bottles behind the truck seat."

  Ed nodded, left the gurney near the tailgate, and opened the driver's-side door. He returned with a bottle, handed it off but didn't immediately let go. "Not too much. Slowly. No gulping."

  "Okay," she agreed, adding, "1 promise," to get him to give her the bottle. When one of his dark gray brows went up and he still held tight, she mouthed back, "Not funny." jerking it from his hand, she unscrewed the cap as he moved to attend briefly to the dog. "His name is FM."

  "Like the radio?" Ed asked, running his hands over the dog's head and body.

  "No, mate. Like the bloody fucking mutt he is."

  Neva frowned at the man between her legs, unconscionably glad to hear him speak, though wondering at the Aussie vernacular that didn't come with the Aussie accent. She gave him a bit of an encouraging smile. "Tell me. Is that sense of humor supposed to be wicked or warped?"

  "Both," he said, and then reminded her what she was supposed to be doing. "Water."

  "Oh, hell. Right. Sorry." She moved to kneel at his shoulders, slipped a hand beneath his neck, cupped the base of his skull, and lifted his head, fingers crossed that she wasn't doing him any more damage. Heat seemed to roll from his body—she prayed it was the blanket and the sun and not a spike in temperature—as he formed his lips to drink, pressed them to the bottle.

  She watched his mouth work, watched his throat, saw the relief in his eyes before he closed them, and she lowered him again to lay flat. She wanted to clean his face, the dust and dirt in his eyebrows and beard, the lines of sweat streaking his cheeks. She wanted him to feel cool water on his skin, parched by the sun.

  She wanted Ed to get him into the clinic and take a look at the damage to his arm and everything else on his body. FM could wait. "Ed? Could we worry about the dog later and get him inside?"

  "Mick."

  She glanced away from the doctor and down. "Mick? Your name is Mick?"

  Eyes still closed, he nodded. "Savin. Mick Savin."

  It fit him, as did the timbre of his voice, a ric
h and resonant bass. "Hi, Mick. This is Ed Hill, who happens to do double duty as our local vet and GP."

  Mick gave an eyes-closed and painful-looking nod. "F took a hit to the jaw."

  "A hit?" Neva glance at the dog, her back teeth aching. "What, with a car?"

  "A boot." He grimaced. "Seems we worked our way onto a piece of property where the owner wasn't kidding when he posted his 'no trespassing' signs."

  Dear Lord. Was he serious? Her heart thudded hard. "Someone did this to you for trespassing?"

  "It's not as bad as it looks." His lashes fluttered as his eyes came open. They were a silvery shade of hazel. "Bumps and bruises. Shoulder's dislocated, couple of ribs cracked, but that's about it."

  "I'll be the judge of that," the doctor put in. "The dog needs stitches, antibiotics, and fluids. X rays and blood work will tell me more." Ed gave FM a last scratch for good measure, then turned to Mick. "I'll use the blanket to slide you onto the gurney, Mick, so hang on. Neva, you grab his legs."

  "Okay." She moved from Mick's head to his feet, pulling away the blanket completely and feeling his gaze following her movements as she exposed the length of his legs. She re-fused to look up. She didn't want to catch him watching her, or have him catch her studying him. He left her uneasy in a way she didn't like and couldn't describe. She simply wanted to finish her Good Samaritan duty and leave him in Ed's capable hands.

  And she was minutes away from doing just that when she discovered the knife and the gun.

  The first she was only marginally worried about; she didn't know anyone who didn't carry a knife in the course of their work day even if this one was as illegal to possess as cocaine. But the second . . . Her hand stilled there above his ankle, and her gaze crawled the length of his body to make reluctant contact with his. The shake of his head was almost imperceptible, but the favor he was asking her couldn't have been more clear. Oh, dear. Oh, my.

  Oh, hell.

  Her heart beat so loudly in her ears it was the only thing she could hear. She looked quickly, briefly in Ed's direction. Then, while he positioned the gurney and snapped a lead onto the dog's collar, Neva slid the handgun from its holster, reached back, and shoved it between two of the boxes destined for Candy's studio.

  That done, she pulled Mick's pants leg down around the top of his boot and took hold of both ankles. "Ready when you are, Doc," she lied.

  She wasn't sure she would ever be ready for what the man beneath her was all about. In fact, she was quite sure she wasn't prepared in the least.

  Three

  Her name was Nevada. And if she wasn't sleeping with the good doctor now, she had been. That much had been easy to figure based on the other man's tension as he'd worked with the woman to move Mick into the clinic from the t ruck.

  He'd regained full consciousness earlier in the day to the roar of the ocean in his ears. He'd tried once, twice to open his eyes, finally looking up and straight into the sun. Turning his head then, he'd found himself squinting into a pair of wide brown eyes beneath ears with the tips flopping over.

  FM's chin had come up just as Mick realized they were in the bed of a pickup, he was trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, flames were licking the right half of his torso, and his ass cheeks burned like hell on wheels. Groaning hadn't been so easy. His tongue had been—and still was—the size, feel, and taste of a moldy summer sausage. Yeah. Damn disgusting.

  It was after he'd made where he was that he'd remembered the woman. Her truck. Her trussing. She'd done a damn good job getting him off the ground and up that ramp like she had. She obviously wasn't connected to the Spectra thugs who'd tried to dismember him or she wouldn't have hauled his banged-up butt to the doc.

  And bloody hell but his banged-up butt ached. Bounced like chum through water behind those ATVs for who knew how far. Another day or two, he'd be a black and blue canvas, one big fat tribal tattoo. Before that happened, however, before local law enforcement started questioning him or the hinky information on the hunting lease, he needed his clothes and his ride, his gun and his dog, and to hit the road.

  Adios. Sayonara.

  Right. He winced, his shoulder throbbing from the reduction, his midsection pounding and waiting to be taped, his head roaring with the force of a typhoon blowing through. Like he'd be hitting anything but a morphine drip anytime soon. Not good, but not the end of the world. No one—including his fellow SG-5 operatives—would come looking for him until he signaled for help. Which brought to mind thoughts he wasn't too keen on thinking.

  If he hadn't been seen, if no one had stopped, he'd have baked to death, a dehydrated, shriveled corpse wearing combat boots and fatigues, no dog tags, no government-issued I.D. That had been the way he'd lived for so long, the very way he'd expected to die, that it shouldn't have been but a bug on his mortality radar. Instead, it was a fullblown attack.

  The only reason he could figure was that he owed his survival, his life, his future to the woman. Nevada. The redhead. With the big eyes. The freckles. The great rack. The mouth that reminded him how much he loved women. Especially those who had the wits and the snap this one did. Her resourcefulness impressed him all to hell.

  If she'd been scared, she hadn't let on. If she'd been panicked, the same. All that was left to do now was follow her lead . . . though right now the idea of following her anywhere left him dizzy. He was lying on the gurney in a big examining room, and she was pacing around and around like she was trying to spin the cement floor below into but-ter—or however that kids' story went.

  "Hey. You mind doing your laps over there?" He indicated the far side of the room with a lift of his chin. The lights in the ceiling fifteen feet overhead had been dimmed while he waited for the doctor to finish stitching the dog's jaw and get back with the drugs. "My head's spinning, and I'd prefer not to puke up my guts."

  She came to stand at his side, and he sensed her fingers on the edge of his stainless steel bed, sensed her stroke the loose folds of his T-shirt. "You're awake, good. Because now you can tell me why the hell you didn't let the doctor move you into one of the smaller rooms and bandage you up. You'd be so much more comfortable there."

  Mick did his best to focus on her face, on her eyes which refused to meet or hold his. "Like I told the doc, getting bandaged and comfortable can wait. I need him to fix up the dog."

  She laughed, a sound that seemed a bit hysterical. "You need to have Ed fixing up you."

  "I'm fine." Relatively speaking. And keeping FM in good working condition was more vital than having his own bumps and bruises diagnosed as bruises and bumps. He wasn't going anywhere. The doc would be back soon enough to tape and patch him to death. "The shoulder I needed taken care of. The ribs and the scrapes can be done when he gets back. The rest is all a matter of time and taking it easy."

  "Lying on this gurney is hardly taking anything easy." She knocked twice on the shiny surface. "This thing is hard as a rock."

  The echo of the ringing metal clanged in his ears. "All the better to be lying on when he hoses me down to get rid of the dirt and the blood."

  She looked over at him then, making eye contact at last, even if it was a wary regard. "Hoses you down?"

  He nodded, enjoying the show of nerves breaking her voice. A strong competent woman uneasy at the idea of his taking a shower out here in the wide open spaces. "Sure. Like any large animal. The concrete floor. The drain. The showerhead on the retractable hose." He gestured up toward the ceiling. "If it works for a horse, it'll work for me."

  For a long moment, she stood still, frowning up at the contraption Mick was pretty sure the doctor used to clean the room after surgery. And so he was watching her when the truth dawned, when she realized he was kidding, doing what he could to break the ice that had frozen between them since he'd handed her his gun.

  She crossed her arms, stepped back and lifted a brow, no longer incredulous, aghast, or even marginally amazed— much less intrigued. "Comparing yourself to a horse, are you?"

  He did his best to grin. "
Only in the most flattering way."

  "I see." She let her gaze drift the length of his body. "So, should I get you ready? I could lend Ed a hand and ditch what's left of your clothes."

  If he hadn't been halfway concussed, he would've had the presence of mind to say no. Or to insist she get out of her own clothes, as well. But he wasn't thinking straight. He wasn't thinking at all. Not even to fully remember how much trouble accompanied a sexually charged dare.

  Besides, having a woman touch him, undress him, even if it was a twisted, kinky nurse and patient fantasy, hit every one of his buttons just then. "Sure," he said, and could tell by the ice age of the next few moments that she'd never expected him to say anything but no.

  He wasn't sure what that said about her, whether it meant she was all talk and no action, that her low, throaty, and very hot bark was worse than her bite, or that she simply didn't like men. Could be it meant she was a thinker, slow to respond until she knew the lay of the land.

  It was when she moved to his feet, however, when she began unlacing one of his boots, that he realized one thing— how quick she was to thaw. And it was a damn good thing he hurt too much to feel anything else, because what he wanted to feel—what he thought about feeling—would be next to impossible to accomplish in his condition, much less in this time and place.

  She had both of his boots unlaced and loosened before she looked up and fully met his gaze. "Do you want to tell me about the gun?"

  Uh, no, not really. He really didn't want to talk at all. "What do you want to know?"

  "Why you have it." His first boot hit the floor.

  "Protection." Simple enough.

  "From what? Gangbangers? Drive-bys?" Her fingers were deft and comforting. "That's not a gun you'll find used out here to take down coyotes or rattlesnakes."

  Gangbangers and drive-bys. Interesting how those were the first directions her mind traveled. "You're not from around these here parts, now are you, ma'am?"