One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ Cappie did. She wasn’t exactly willing at that—her brother forced her to, when she got out of the hospital. Bartlett beat her bloody and broke her arm. She said that she’d probably be dead if Kell hadn’t managed to knock out Bartlett in time.”

      He felt as if his throat had been cut. He’d believed the man. How could he have done that to Cappie? How could he have suspected her of such deceit? She’d been the victim. Bentley had believed the lying ex-boyfriend and fired Cappie. Now she was in danger and it was his fault.

      “Where is she?” he asked heavily.

      “She told us not to tell you,” Dr. King said quietly. “She doesn’t want to see you again. In fact, she’s got her old job back in San Antonio and she’s going to live there.”

      He felt sick all over. No, she wouldn’t want to stay in Jacobs County now. Not after the job Bentley had done on her self-esteem. It had probably been hard for her to trust a man again, having been physically assaulted. She’d trusted Bentley. She’d been kind and sweet and trusting. And he’d kicked her in the teeth.

      He didn’t answer Dr. King. He looked at his watch. “Get to work, people,” he said in a subdued tone.

      Nobody answered him. They went to work. He went into his office, closed the door and picked up the telephone.

      “Yes?” Cy Parks answered.

      “Where’s Cappie?” he asked quietly.

      “If I tell you, I’ll have to change my name and move to a foreign country,” Cy replied dryly.

      “Tell me anyway. I’ll buy you a fake mustache.”

      Cy chuckled. “Okay. But you can’t tell her I sold her out.”

      “Fair enough.”

      Cappie was worn-out. She’d been in the waiting room around the clock until Kell was through surgery, and it had taken a long time. The chairs must have been selected for their comfort level, she decided, to make sure nobody wanted to stay in them longer than a few minutes. It was impossible to sleep in one, or even to doze. Her back was killing her. She needed sleep, but she couldn’t leave the hospital until she knew Kell was out of the recovery room.

      Beside her, two tall, somber men sat waiting also. One of them was dark-eyed and dark-headed, and he never seemed to smile. The other one had long blond hair in a ponytail and one pale brown eye and an eye-patch on the other. He was good-natured about his disability and referred to himself as Dead-Eye. He chuckled as he said it. She didn’t know their names.

      Detective Sergeant Rick Marquez had dropped by earlier in the day to talk to her about Frank Bartlett’s family and friends. She did know about Frank’s sister, but she hadn’t met any of his friends. Detective Marquez was, she thought, really good-looking. She wondered why he didn’t have a steady girlfriend.

      Marquez had assured her that he was doing everything possible to track down Frank Bartlett, and that a friend of his who was a news anchor was going to broadcast a description of Bartlett and ask for help from the public to apprehend him. There was a two-thousand-dollar reward being offered for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

      Brenda came with her to the hospital and stayed until she was called into her own office for an emergency surgery on a dog patient. She’d promised to return as soon as she could. She was upset that Cappie wasn’t going to stay with her. She could borrow a gun, she muttered, and shoot that two-legged snake if he came near the apartment. But Cappie smiled and said she hadn’t been thinking straight when she’d called and asked for a place to stay. She wasn’t risking Brenda. Besides, she had security. Brenda gave the two men a long, curious glance. She did mention that she wouldn’t want to mess with them, if she was a bad man. The one with the ponytail grinned at her.

      After Brenda left, Cappie sat with her two somber male attachments while people came and went in the waiting room. She drank endless cups of black coffee and tried not to dwell on her fears. If Kell could just walk again, she told herself, the misery of the past few days would be worth it. If only!

      Finally the surgeon on Kell’s case came out to speak with her, smiling in his surgical greens.

      “We removed the shrapnel,” he told her. “I’m confident that we got it all. Now we wait for results, once your brother has time to heal. But I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll walk again.”

      “Oh, thank God,” she breathed, giving way to tears. “Thank God!”

      “Now, will you please go and get some sleep?” he asked. “You look like death walking.”

      “I’ll do that. Thank you, Dr. Sims. Thank you so much!”

      “You’re very welcome. Leave your cell phone number at the nurses’ desk and they’ll phone you if they need you.”

      “I’ll do that right now.”

      She went to the nurses’ desk with her two companions flanking her and looking all around them covertly.

      “I’m Kell Drake’s sister,” she told a nurse. “I want to give you my cell phone number in case you need to get in touch with me.”

      “Certainly,” a little brunette replied, smiling. She pulled a pad over to her and held a pen poised over it. “Go ahead.”

      Cappie gave the number to her. “I’ll always have it with me, and I won’t turn it off.”

      The brunette looked from one man to the other curiously.

      “They’re with me,” Cappie told her. She leaned over the counter. “You see, they’re in terrible danger and I have to protect them.”

      The two men gave her a simultaneous glare that could have stopped traffic. The brunette managed to smother a giggle.

      “Okay, guys, I’m ready whenever you are,” she told them.

      The one with the eye-patch pursed his lips. “Want a head start?” he asked pointedly.

      She grinned up at him. “You want one?” she countered.

      He chuckled, and indicated that she could go first. He turned and winked at the little brunette, who flushed with pleasure. He was whistling as he followed Cappie out through the waiting room.

      “You, protect us,” the other man scoffed. “From what…bug bites?”

      “Keep that up,” Cappie told him, “and I’ll show you a bite.”

      “Now, now, let’s try to get along,” Dead-Eye murmured as they waited for the elevator to come back up.

      “I’m getting along. She’s the one with the attitude problem,” the other man muttered.

      “Says you,” Cappie told him.

      He stared at Dead-Eye and pointed at Cappie.

      “I never take sides in family squabbles,” Dead-Eye told him.

      “She is not a member of my family!” the other man said.

      “A likely story,” Dead-Eye СКАЧАТЬ