Kelton's Rules. Peggy Nicholson

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СКАЧАТЬ his down-bent head. He had thick, straight hair of that color men call dirty-blond and women call wheat or tawny. His eyes were gray, she noted, as he peered up at her from under bristly brows, two shades darker than his hair.

      “I’m no doctor, but I’d guess it’s a sprain.” Idly, absently, his finger returned up her foot as he held her gaze.

      For too long.

      He looked into her too deeply.

      Something leaped between them before she could lower her lashes. Awareness. It triggered an echoing flutter in her stomach, a flow of warmth. Between one breath and the next, Abby felt as if they were toppling toward each other. Gripping the sides of her chair, she fought down the urge to smack his hand aside. I don’t need this. Don’t want it. “I seem to be able to—oo-oh—move it. Sort of.”

      “Your call, Abby. I’ll be happy to drive you into Durango if you want to go to the emergency room. Or I suppose I could ask Doc Kerner, our local vet, to come over, give us his opinion.”

      Was he kidding?

      He wasn’t. The town of Trueheart, what she’d seen of it, seemed to be less than a mile square. No motel. Apparently no real doctor. “Why don’t I give it till morning?” Forty miles to Durango and back again in Jack’s unnerving company was more than she could face at this point. He’d been coming on to her, hadn’t he?

      “That’s what I’d do,” he agreed with a relief that assured her she must have been mistaken. Rising with an easy grace that belied his big-boned build, he reached into the pot. “I was a bit low on ice cubes myself, but I’ve got frozen peas and corn a-a-nd wild mountain blueberries.” He draped a plastic bag of each across her ankle as he spoke. “Give it half an hour, if you can sit still that long.”

      He was a fine one to talk. Jack was halfway to the exit already, speaking as he moved backward. “I’ve got to drive this little, um, a baby-sitter home and then I have to find Kat. But after I’ve rounded her up, can we take you and Sky to supper? Nothing fancy—Michelle’s will be closed by then. But Mo’s Truckstop has the best steak-burgers in a hundred miles and Mo keeps the grill fired up all night.”

      A baby-sitter. So Jack and his wife had a child or children. And the banished cowboy with the truck is the baby-sitter’s boyfriend, Abby hazarded a silent guess. That was a better scenario than her first one. Meanwhile Kat, Jack’s wife, must be out on the town. This was too many players to follow. “That’s awfully kind of you, but please don’t trouble yourself. We’ve got sandwich makings right here.” She nodded at Skyler, edging past the man with his arms full of a big plastic cooler. “I think we’ll eat in, then go straight to bed.”

      “Probably just as well,” Jack said readily. “In that case, sleep tight, and don’t worry about the bus. Whitey and I will look after it first thing tomorrow.”

      And he was out the door before she could make the man see that she’d rather handle her own problems.

      SUNLIGHT and the sound of birdsong awoke her the next morning, cool pine-scented air wafting in an open window. Abby smiled, stretched luxuriously…and let out a yelp as her injured foot brushed the footboard.

      “Oh!” She lurched to a sitting position, memory tumbling back in a jumble of sharp-edged images. Her ruined sketchbook. Steve’s infidelity. A blue columbine she’d picked somewhere recently. Her mother’s fretful face, matching her querulous voice on the phone. Steve’s new wife, Chelsea—pridefully, astoundingly pregnant when Abby had run into her at the mall. The plunging crimson bus. The pain in her side as she chased it.

      A man’s hand on her aching foot.

      Piece the puzzle together, and here she sat on a lumpy bed in the middle of nowhere. Her wincing gaze swept the tiny bedroom with its minimal furnishings. A scratched maple bureau and an ancient pine wardrobe; she’d bet there was a twin to that piece next door. And what time was it? Her faithful old wind-up alarm clock must be ticking away back in the bus.

      If it hasn’t been stolen by now.

      A second wave of panic washed through her. All their belongings out there on a mountainside! Jack had promised her they’d be safe, but Jack struck her as the type to whistle through hurricanes. Hardly a worrier.

      Shower. Coffee. Get out there, girl! Abby threw off the covers.

      TWENTY MINUTES LATER, she stood lopsidedly at the kitchen sink, washing dishes. There was a jar of instant coffee tucked in her cooler for waking in motels. But there was no way she’d boil water in any of the utensils she’d found in the cupboards before she’d thoroughly scrubbed them.

      Meanwhile, where was Jack? He’d said something about helping her early this morning. But when she’d looked out her front door and across their adjoining fence, she’d seen no sign of his Jeep.

      Maybe he’d forgotten his offer? Went off to work, wherever and whatever that was? He seemed to be a short-attention-span kind of guy, superb in a crisis, too restless to be good with the follow-through.

      Or possibly he’d sensed her discomfort last night and had left her to handle her own affairs.

      “Careful what you wish for,” she told herself wryly. Without his help, how would she get out to the crash site? A town with no doctor would hardly have a taxi service. And then how to contact this Whitey person, the mechanic?

      “Coffee first,” she decided, then she’d cope. Somehow.

      “Arrrr…” Skyler trudged into the kitchen, DC tiptoeing hopefully at his heels.

      “Morning, love.” She smoothed his pillow-tossed hair, the same pale ash-blond shade as her own. “Sleep well?”

      “Mmmph.” He took after her in appearance, and in most other ways, as well. But unlike her, Sky was no morning person. He sat heavily at the table, his glasses wobbling on the end of his nose, the cat winding around his bare shins. “What’sferbreakfast?”

      Abby tried for a note of enthusiasm. Think of this as an adventure, will you? “Tuna fish sandwiches.” All that was left. She’d meant to replenish their traveling snacks when they reached Cortez last night.

      “Yech-hh! Why can’t we have oatmeal?”

      As she usually gave him back home, was the unspoken accusation, but if Sky mentioned New Jersey one more time, she’d throw something. “When we get to Sedona I’ll buy some, sweetie, but this morning—”

      Knock knocka knock knock! A cheery rap sounded on the back screen door, which Abby had opened to air out the kitchen.

      Relief surged through her chest, mixed with an odd sense of wariness. She hobbled across the room, wondering: Could the man have half the impact in daylight that he’d had on her last night? Or had the shock and disorientation of the bus crash made her unusually—and temporarily—vulnerable?

      She’d have to wait to find out. Their visitor was a child—a girl roughly Skyler’s age—all long spindly legs and reed-thin golden arms. She stood on the back stoop, fist lifted to knock again. “Um, hi.”

      “Good morning.” Her ponytail was two shades lighter than the wheat color it would probably be when she was grown. Still, Abby knew who’d bequeathed her that tiny cleft in the chin. And those enormous gray eyes. She opened the screen door with a smile—and СКАЧАТЬ