A Match Made in Texas. Arlene James

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СКАЧАТЬ the moment. It was time to go. And yet, she lingered, oddly reluctant to leave the injured man alone. Brute he might be, but to a nurse an injured man was an injured man. Period. At least that’s what she told herself.

      As soon as Aaron had gone, Kaylie Chatam started tidying up the place. Stephen had dropped a towel on the floor the evening before, along with a trio of little pillows that had decorated the bed. Too weak to retrieve them, he’d simply left them where they’d fallen and collapsed, exhausted after the drive from Dallas, the climb up the stairs and a cursory scrubbing. Nurse Chatam folded the towel and laid it atop the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed. The pillows she moved to one of a pair of window seats with gold-on-gold-striped upholstery, both of which overlooked the front of the house. Stephen followed her every movement with his wary gaze.

      Petite and gentle, with big, dark brown eyes and thick, straight hair a shade somewhere between sandy brown and red, she was pretty in a painfully wholesome way. That put her a far cry from his usual type, beautiful and somewhat flamboyant. After all, if a guy was going to put up with all that female nonsense, Stephen figured that he ought to get something flashy out of it, something noticeable.

      This Kaylie Chatam didn’t even appear to be wearing makeup, except perhaps mascara, as her lashes were much darker than her delicate brows, and a touch of rose-pink lipstick. He couldn’t help noticing, however, that the creamy skin of her slender oval face seemed almost luminous with good health. He noted that she shared with her aunts a high forehead and faintly cleft chin. That little dip in her almost pointy chin somehow called attention to the plump, rosy lips above, not to mention those enormous eyes. They were so dark they were almost black, startlingly so with her light hair. He wondered just how long her hair was and what she’d do if he managed to pluck the pins from that loose, heavy knot at the nape of her slender neck. More to distract himself from that line of thought than for any other reason, he broke the silence.

      “Aaron explain about the press?”

      “He said you’re hiding from them.”

      “I’m not hiding!” Stephen frowned at the notion. “I’m keeping a low profile.”

      “Ah.”

      “It’s necessary,” he grumbled defensively, rubbing his right hand over his prickly jaw and chin and wishing he could shave. “You wouldn’t understand.”

      “No, I guess not.”

      Something about those softly spoken words irritated him, and he barked at her. “Your aunts swore they would protect my privacy, and I made a hefty contribution to some single parents’ charity to guarantee it.”

      She gave him a look, the kind she might give a little boy who stretched the truth. It made his cheeks and throat heat. He mentally winced at the thought of the curse words that he’d spewed earlier.

      “My aunts never swear,” she told him with the absolute authority of one who would know. “But if they said they would protect your privacy, then they will. And any donation you may have made to one of their charities has nothing to do with it. Trust me. They may have promised, but they didn’t swear.”

      “What’s the difference?” he wanted to know, sounding grumpy even to his own ears.

      “‘But I tell you,’” she quoted softly, “‘Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is His footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.’”

      Stephen gaped at her. Had she just quoted the Bible to him?

      “It’s from Matthew, chapter five, verses thirty-four and thirty-five.”

      She had quoted the Bible to him!

      “So what are you,” he demanded, scowling, “some kind of religious nut?”

      Folding her small, delicate hands, she regarded him serenely. “Yes, I suppose you could say that, if ‘religious nut’ is code for Christian.”

      Realizing that he’d insulted her, he deepened his frown, muttering, “No offense.”

      “None taken,” she replied lightly, smiling that smile again.

      He had the distinct impression that she felt sorry for him and that it had nothing to do with his physical condition.

      “Guess your aunts are religious, too?”

      “Yes, of course.”

      Disconcerted, he said nothing more on the subject, just lay there frowning at her. What on earth, he wondered sourly, had he gotten himself into now?

      Aaron had touted Chatam House as a bona fide mansion, a posh throwback to an age of bygone opulence, owned and maintained by three dotty old maids with more money than sense, a trio of do-gooders so far out of the loop that they wouldn’t know a juicy news item if it bit them. He had seemed right on the money, going by yesterday’s brief impressions. In truth, Stephen had been so exhausted and in such pain from the nearly fifty-mile trip from the Dallas hospital down to the smaller city of Buffalo Creek in Aaron’s luxury sedan that he’d barely registered the old ladies’ names or faces. Before making the laborious climb up the curving staircase behind Chester, their balding butler, they had informed him that he was to be installed in the “small suite,” so called because the sitting room was the smallest in the house.

      Stephen supposed Chatam House was opulent enough, provided one admired antiques and crystal chandeliers, but he missed his own place and especially his spacious private bath, complete with sauna, walk-in shower, television and music system. This room didn’t even have a closet, for pity’s sake, just an enormous antique wardrobe, not that he had many clothes with him, just baggy shorts and sweatpants and cutup T-shirts to accommodate his injuries. Now he learned that he’d landed smack-dab in the middle of a pack of “godsdienstige ijveraars,” as his stepfather would say, otherwise known as “religious zealots.”

      Stephen had been acquainted with other Christians, of course, his American grandmother, for one. She’d died after his parents had divorced when he was eight and his mother had taken him back to Holland with her to live. Some of his friends back in Groningen, where they had lived with his mother’s parents before her remarriage, had been professing Christians, but they’d never talked about it much. Even some of the guys on the hockey team were Christians, but none of them had ever gone so far as to quote the Bible to him! The most any of them had done was invite him to church, though he’d never gone.

      He had enough problems now without finding that he’d landed in the midst of a bunch of religious eccentrics. In fact, he’d say that the very last thing he needed right now was to land in the midst of a bunch of religious eccentrics.

      The thing was, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Any hotel large enough to accommodate his needs would also leave him open to the sharp eyes of the press. He had considered convalescing at Aaron’s house, but that, too, was under constant surveillance by the local sportswriters. Plus, Stephen couldn’t quite bring himself to impose on the newlyweds. Chatam House had seemed like the answer, with Buffalo Creek being close enough to allow Aaron easy access but far enough from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area to keep the press off his scent.

      At this point, his only hope was that the press would not make a big deal of the circumstances of the accident that had knocked him out of the playoffs so that management of the Blades hockey team would not feel duty-bound to activate the good conduct clause of his contract and cut him from the team.

      That СКАЧАТЬ