White Christmas in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ right boot. Then he realized his toes were bare. He wore no socks. His boots were gone.

      He opened his eyes and tried to rise on his elbows to look around. He had trouble because he had a bandage around his chest, and one arm was tangled up somehow. He wasn’t in the humble hospital where he’d spent weeks after being wounded that last time in Afghanistan, though. The knowledge made him relax. The walls here were painted a light pink and the windows were intact. His boots were beside his bed. He slumped back against the pillows. He even smelled a hint of coffee in the distance.

      A cotton blanket had been draped around him, but the air was cool. There was no hint of food and he wondered if he had missed breakfast. He had a headache, but he could easily move his left hand and reached over to the bandage on his side. His arm was in a sling. He remembered now that they’d brought him here in what seemed like the middle of the night.

      He looked at the machine next to his bed and pushed the call button. The events of last night were coming back to him. He was amazed he’d headed for the Elkton ranch like a homing pigeon when he was in trouble. His mother had always said Mr. Elkton had the best ranch around. It had made his father furious, but Rusty agreed with her. He’d been ten years old when they’d first had that argument.

      Now he just shook his head. He didn’t have time for memories—good or bad. He was anxious to get out of here and find out what kind of trouble his brother had gotten mixed up in.

      Rusty was reaching for his boots with his good arm when his eye caught a furtive action near the open door. He glanced up just in time to see a dark shape move out of view. He hadn’t seen much, but he knew there was no white or pastel color on the figure, so it wasn’t a nurse.

      “Who is it?” he demanded, realizing why he’d flashed back to Afghanistan. Someone had almost killed him last night and he didn’t know why. He could still be in danger. He’d never been as scared in his life as he had some nights in the army. He wondered if fear would always pull him back there.

      He dragged his right boot close and slipped his hand down to the small pocket in the interior of the leather where he kept his knife. It was empty.

      He moved to the wall beside the door anyway and lifted the boot. The heel was hard enough to knock someone out. Even clad in this threadbare hospital gown and with only one arm working, he could do enough damage to slow someone down if he had to get away.

      “Rusty,” someone whispered and he relaxed. He recognized that voice. He put his boot down at the same time as his angel peeked around the corner of the doorway. He hadn’t realized last night that she was so slender and slight. Just a wisp of a woman.

      “Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly. “The nurse said you were still sleeping.”

      “Not anymore.” He grinned for no good reason.

      Then he stopped and just looked at her. She’d been all golden and shining last night. Today she was subdued and more copper than gold. Maybe it was the difference in her hair. It wasn’t spread out in a halo this morning; she’d pulled it back into a smooth braid. The hair still captured the light, but it was deeper, more intense. And her face was paler than it had been last night. But that didn’t make sense. She wasn’t scared of him today the way she had been then.

      At least, he didn’t think she was afraid today until he saw her blink. That was the exact moment she’d gotten a clear look at him.

      “Someone messed with my boots,” he tried to explain, hoping that would be enough to make the sight of him seem normal as he stood hunched by the wall with his hospital gown open in the back, his boot clenched to his chest and a blanket caught in the loose ties of his gown.

      “Oh.” She nodded uncertainly.

      She had freckles on her nose. He wondered how he had missed that last night. And her face looked drawn, as if she was worried about something and had been for some time.

      “How’s your little girl?” he asked, realizing as he said it that the woman must be married since she had a daughter who thought her father was a king.

      Not that it was any of his concern if she was married.

      “Fine.”

      Rusty knew so little about family life. His mother had left a few months after she’d made her comments about the Elkton ranch. Then it had been Rusty, baby Eric and their father doing the best they could. It didn’t take them long to forget all of her housewife ways. They ate from tin cans when they were hungry and slept in beds without sheets when they were tired. He knew boys were expected to like that kind of life, but he would have traded it all to have his mother come back to visit, even if it was just one time.

      Rusty felt the weight of the blanket and looked down long enough to untangle it and wrap it around him like a toga.

      “Are you Mrs. Elkton?” he asked his visitor as he then knotted the hospital gown ties around his back so everything was secure.

      Mr. Elkton had been a widower when Rusty was a boy, but a lot could have changed since then.

      The woman shook her head as though what he’d said was unthinkable. “I’m the cook for the ranch hands. My daughter and I live in our own place behind the bunkhouse. We’re just taking care of the main house while the Elktons are gone. We don’t own it or anything like that.”

      “Oh.” Rusty was uncomfortable now that he seemed to have made the woman feel as if she was less than he had expected. Not that he knew why she felt what she did. He must look like a deranged drifter, so she shouldn’t be worried about impressing him.

      It was a reminder, though, of why he avoided pretty, delicate-looking woman like her. He never understood them and he’d had a few relationships where he’d tried. He preferred women who were uncomplicated. If they had any emotion, they kept it to themselves. Serviceable was what they were, he thought. Good soldiers. If he ever hooked up with a woman, it would be with one like that.

      “I’m sorry,” Rusty finally mumbled.

      Just then a nurse sailed into the room, a clipboard in her hands and a small frown on her face. She assessed the situation in a glance. “If you’re looking for that knife of yours, the sheriff took it out of your boot. We don’t allow weapons in the hospital.”

      “Of course you don’t.” Rusty was more comfortable with a woman like that. The nurse was starched and disapproving, without a hair out of place. She knew how to take orders and give them. She couldn’t be hurt or dismayed by anything he did.

      “The sheriff also said you’re free to go when we’re finished with you,” the nurse added.

      “Thanks,” Rusty said.

      “You had a knife?” his visitor asked then, apparently still shocked. “All that time last night, you had a knife?”

      The woman’s voice rose in hysteria. She made his spine tingle. He felt an urge to promise he’d never touch a knife again, not even to cut his steak. Or butter his bread, if it came to that.

      “I wasn’t going to use it,” he assured her as best he could. It didn’t seem to do much good, if the outraged expression on her face was any indicator.

      “Honestly,” he added. “I left my military blade in the hospital back east and bought the kind of knife the ranch hands usually have. It’s more to СКАЧАТЬ