He Calls Her Doc. Mary Brady

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СКАЧАТЬ shredded on the bottoms. Tail of her smudged pink T-shirt almost covering her belly and a riot of red curls mashed in on one side. She wore a deep scowl, just like her father had all those years ago when he’d run away from home and shown up at Guy’s college apartment.

      A fist of grief punched Guy in the gut. He took it and smiled at his niece.

      “Lexie.” He should be shocked or horrified she’d found her way, probably by herself, from Chicago to Montana, but he was oddly glad to see her.

      “Uncle Guy.” She glared at him, large blue eyes narrowed in challenge.

      He reached for her bag, but she pulled away, so he stepped back to let her drag the purple duffle into the timbered living room. The last time he had tried to hug her, she’d slugged him.

      “Does your mom know where you are?”

      She shrugged one shoulder. “Kelly’s too busy with the baby.” She hefted the huge bag and hugged it to her. “Maybe she knows by now. I’m supposed to be at my friend’s house until tomorrow.”

      Red streaks scored the whites of her eyes. “When was the last time you ate?”

      She lifted the shoulder again.

      Dirty, tired and hungry.

      “Leave the bag. Go wash your hands.”

      She dropped the bag with a thud on the hardwood floor and headed down the hallway toward the bathroom.

      “Eggs or cakers?” he called after her.

      “Cakers.” She turned for a moment and smiled sadly at him. Her father, his brother, had called pancakes “cakers,” after a character in a kids’ book. “And coffee.”

      “And orange juice,” he muttered.

      As she closed the bathroom door behind her, he took a second to feel the renewed ache spiraling through him. Maybe coming to his brother’s ranch hadn’t been such a good idea. Maybe he should have stayed in Chicago?

      Twenty minutes later, Guy sat across the table and watched red curls bob up and down in rhythm to the forkfuls of pancakes being shoveled into the child’s mouth.

      “I called Kelly,” Guy said of Lexie’s stepmother. “She told me to tell you she’s sorry you were unhappy.”

      She nodded and continued to fork in the fuel.

      Her stepmother’s exact words had been, “With the baby here I can’t do this anymore. Keep her with you. Even I’m not uncaring enough to send her to your parents.” Poor kid, if he was her last hope.

      The whistle and choo-choo chugging of the ludicrous clock above the stove told him he was late for the startup of this morning’s executive training program. “Leap of Faith,” Henry had named crossing a small canyon on a zip wire.

      “I’ve got people to see. Will you be all right by yourself for a while?”

      “I’m a kid, not an idiot.” She forked in the last bite.

      He smiled. So like her father.

      She sat in front of the plate pooled with syrup, empty orange juice glass in her hand, and stared out the window at the sun-sprayed shadows in the pine trees behind the house.

      “I wish I had more than a couple of years with him.”

      “I wish you did, too. Sleep might be a good idea right now. Your room is still there.”

      “I guess I could sleep a little.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. She turned her big blue eyes, pooled with unshed tears, on him. “Kelly said you restarted Dad’s business.”

      He gave her a grim nod. “Bessie and her daughter’ll be back from shopping soon, so you won’t be alone long.”

      She swiped the back of her hand at the tears and smiled. “I hope she got Twinkies.”

      He frowned.

      “What? I already had two apples today. No, wait, that was yesterday, sometime.” She did her shoulder thing. “I’ll go up and sleep for a little while, and then you can tell me whether or not you’re going to keep me.”

      “Lexie, this is your home anytime you want it to be.”

      “Yeah.” She turned away.

      Guy watched her bounce off as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her home. She’d had many in her short life.

      “I’ll be back by noon,” he called after her.

      UP ON A RIDGE a half mile away from the ranch house at the edge of a small canyon, Guy snugged the strap of the aerial-runway seat across Cynthia Stone’s flabby abdomen.

      “I don’t want to be hurled across that damn canyon in this—this thing.” Her voice scratched at his eardrums.

      He crouched down beside her. “It’ll be over soon.”

      “Let me out!” Little fat bulges stuck out here and there as she squirmed in her pale aqua warm-up suit.

      “You won’t go across unless you want to.” He wasn’t sure how his brother did this job, but right now it beat trying to practice medicine.

      “Come on, Cynthia. Don’t be a chicken. The fox won’t bite,” one of the executives called from the other side of the canyon.

      “Fox? What fox? I wasn’t told about any foxes.” She jerked around to glare at Guy.

      He checked a reply. He knew her well enough to know the “fox” distress was a delay tactic.

      “An aerial-conveyance system like this is sometimes called a flying fox.” Or death slide. “Aerial runway works for the purposes of Mountain High Executive Services. It’s a kind of pathway from your old self to your new leader-conqueror self.”

      “My old self is just fine.” She yanked on the harness. “How do I know this is safe?”

      “Aircraft-grade wire.” He pointed up to the wire above her head spanning the canyon. “Safety harness and a hand-activated braking system. You can’t fall unless you try really hard, and you don’t have to go fast.” She’d be a piece of work on the high ropes tomorrow.

      “What if it doesn’t have one more crossing left in it?”

      “Ms. Stone—”

      She gave him a tired look, so he leaned in. “Cynthia—” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper.

      She studied him as if seeing him for the first time.

      “There are times when we have to take a leap, or we’ll never know how far we can go.” Guy tried to make the words sound sincere. He knew Henry would have.

      “I didn’t want to come here.” Her tone was almost timid now. Apologizing. “My father made me.”

      “Where СКАЧАТЬ