Unbridled. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ he stayed with her as well. Their grandmother had always worn dresses to church and funeral homes, and she instilled that custom in Sunny from childhood.

      It had been a blow when the old lady fell suddenly to the floor with a stroke and nothing known to medical science could save her. She’d died in the Hal Marshall Medical Center, in fact, next door to the children’s hospital with the same name where Sunny worked. The woman had been a fixture in San Antonio society, the widow of one of the city’s best loved police officers who’d died on the job. Her funeral had been attended by dozens of people, and the flowers had covered the area around the pulpit. It had made her family proud, to see how much people loved and respected her.

      In fact, Sunny’s family had been some of the first settlers in south Texas, immigrating from Georgia in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Wesleys were a founding family.

      All those thoughts buzzed in her mind, all those memories tugged at her heart, while she watched the candles burn bright in the darkness of the great cathedral, the oldest in the city. It was founded in 1731 by Canary Islanders, although construction of the great edifice only began in 1749. It had an amazing history.

      She heard the heavy front door open, but she didn’t turn. Many people who weren’t even Catholic came to light candles in memory of lost loved ones. It was rare for anyone to be alone for long in the church.

      She heard a deep, melodic voice calling to a priest, and deep laughter following as the men conversed. Sunny couldn’t hear what they were talking about. Her mind was drifting into the past, into happier days, happier times, when the holidays had meant shopping for a special Christmas tree and cooking cakes and pies and turkey in the little house outside the city where her family had lived before her father’s death.

      She said a silent prayer as she stood at the altar, her brown eyes sad and quiet.

      Footsteps sounded just behind her, echoing in the cavernous depths of the church. She knew the sound of footwear. Those were boots. She smiled to herself. A cowboy, probably, stopping to light a candle for someone...

      “A strange place to find you, rubia,” came a familiar laughing voice. It was oddly soft, almost affectionate.

      She turned and looked up, her breath catching. It was the man in the shepherd’s coat, the gorgeous man who’d taken her onto the dance floor at the Christmas party.

      “Oh,” she stammered, flushing. “Hello.”

      He studied her for a moment before he replied. “Hello.” He glanced at the candles. “I come here every Christmas season to light them, for my people,” he said quietly. “You, too?”

      She turned her attention back to the candles, nodding. “Yes. My mother and father. And my little brother,” she said softly.

      He scowled. “All of them?”

      “Yes,” she said quietly. “My whole family.” She forced a smile. “My father went here all his life. My mother was Methodist. They were both stubborn, so I went to services at both places when I was little. I learned the Mass in Spanish, because that’s how la Santa Misa is said here.”

      “My father brought me here when I was a boy, too,” he replied. He didn’t add that he’d once brought his own son, Antonio, who was eleven. But now, the boy didn’t want any part of religion. He wasn’t keen on his father, either. Since the death of Ruiz’s wife, three years ago, the relationship between him and his son was difficult, to say the least.

      “It wasn’t because you’re, well, because you’re Latin,” she stammered. “The dance, I mean. I...I...”

      He looked down at her with an oddly affectionate expression. “I know. It was because you didn’t think such a gorgeous man would want to dance with somebody like you, is what you told one of the nurses,” he said outrageously.

      Her face went scarlet. She turned, her only thought to escape, but he was in front of her, towering over her.

      “No, don’t run away,” he said softly. “I’m not embarrassed, so why should you be?”

      She looked up, her eyes wide and turbulent.

      “And there’s nothing wrong with you,” he added in a deep, tender tone.

      She bit her lip. “The room was full of pretty women...”

      “They all look alike to me,” he said, suddenly serious. “Young men look at what’s on the outside. I look deeper.”

      She could smell the cologne he wore. It was as attractive as he was. She kept her eyes down, nervous and uncertain.

      “You work at a children’s hospital,” he said, by way of explanation.

      “Yes. The night shift, on the pediatric ward.”

      “That’s why I haven’t seen you before,” he mused. “I spend most of my time at the hospital in the emergency room, either there or at the general hospital next door.” His face hardened. “We see a lot of children injured by gangs and parents.”

      That brought her eyes up, wide and questioning on his handsome face. “Gangs?” she blurted out.

      He pursed his sensual lips and pulled back the shepherd’s coat over his broad chest to reveal a silver star.

      “Oh,” she stammered. “You’re a Texas Ranger!”

      “For six years,” he said, smiling. “Didn’t you notice the gun, when we danced?” he teased, nodding toward the .45 automatic in a holster on his wide, hand-tooled belt.

      “Well, no,” she said. She was lost in his black eyes. They shimmered like onyx in the light of the candles.

      “Who are you?” he asked gently.

      “I’m Suna,” she said. “Suna Wesley. But I’m called Sunny.”

      He smiled slowly. “Sunny. It suits you.”

      She laughed self-consciously. “You’re Ruiz,” she said, recalling what one of the physicians had called him.

      He nodded. “John Ruiz,” he said.

      She studied his face, seeing the lines and hardness of it. It was a face that smiled through adversity. It had character as much as male beauty. “Your job must be hard sometimes.”

      “Like yours,” he agreed. “You lost a patient on your ward yesterday.”

      She fought tears. She managed to nod.

      “I have a cousin who works in the hospital,” he said, not adding that his son spent a lot of afternoons after school in the cafeteria until his cousin-by-marriage got off work and could drive him down to Ruiz’s ranch in Jacobsville. The cousin, Rosa, lived in a boarding house in nearby Comanche Wells. She, like John, commuted to San Antonio to work. “She said that the whole nursing staff was in mourning. It’s sad to lose a child.”

      She twisted her purse in her hands. “We’re supposed to stand apart from emotion on the job,” she said.

      “Yeah. Me, too. But you get involved, when people are grieving. I’ve got a widow right now СКАЧАТЬ