Just Down the Road (37 page)

Walking to the window, he stared out into the sleepy town. Today would be a great day. Autumn’s baby was born and Kate was safe. All his worries over the baby being late or Kate not coming home washed out of his thoughts. He knew trying to get any sleep would be a waste. It was time to plan his day.

The women would come up straightaway after they were called. Then he’d clean up, transfer all calls to his cell, and go shopping. He and Kate had already decided they would be grandparents to Autumn’s baby, and a grandparent should buy things.

Tyler was thinking a swing set for the square of grass off Autumn’s apartment would make a nice gift. Maybe he could rip up ten feet of the driveway out back and make the yard bigger. And, of course, he’d need to plant a tree for shade. He thought he’d have a circle walkway poured so the little girl could ride her bike.

As he strolled back to his place in the waiting room, he thought maybe the walkway was something he could wait on.

Sitting down in the middle of a long empty row of plastic-covered chairs, he held his cell, wishing Kate would call back and give him a little advice. She might be in her forties also, but surely she’d been to baby showers over the years. Maybe she’d know what to buy.

As he planned, his eyes grew heavy and he closed them while he thought. The room was warm and still. Within a few minutes he was fast asleep, the smile still lingering on his face as the morning warmed into day.

N
OAH HAD BEEN PACING THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE
T
INCH’S
room for ten minutes. Each time he passed the windows, he looked in on Jamie, sitting next to Turner’s bedside. The kid looked so small as he held his uncle’s hand. He was too young to be mixed up in such trouble.

Hell
, Noah thought,
I’m twenty-one and
I’m
too young.

A nurse from down the hall passed by, frowning at him, about every fifteen minutes. Each time she reminded him that Tinch was being carefully observed and didn’t need visitors.

Noah ignored her comment. He wasn’t a visitor and neither was Jamie. If she wanted them out, she’d have to bring more than a frown to the fight.

The elevator door rattled and Noah moved close to Tinch’s door. He didn’t care how many deputies were downstairs watching for the drug dealer, Noah planned to stand his guard until they caught the guy who did this to Tinch and Jamie was out of danger.

His sister had phoned in that the two thugs he’d seen running from Tinch’s place were now in custody, but the little weasel leader had slipped past them somehow. She’d told Noah that Reagan hadn’t been at the house when they made the arrest. He already knew that much. If she’d been home, she would have answered the phone and he wouldn’t have had to call Big to go check on her.

Noah stared at the elevator, wanting it to be news of Reagan, but half wishing it would be the guy named Memphis. Noah wouldn’t mind pounding on him for a while. Noah was a man who ate adrenaline for breakfast, and right now he was starving.

Big stepped off the elevator, and for a second Noah was furious that he hadn’t protected Reagan, and then he saw her walking a step behind Big.

Noah felt the tug on his heart that he always did when he first saw her. He thought he fell in love with her that first day he saw her, the new kid in high school with no one to talk to and a chip on her shoulder so big she could barely carry it around. She wasn’t tall and long legged like a beauty queen, but darn if she wasn’t adorable.

As she ran toward him, he noticed her clothes were all muddy and she looked like she’d been crying. As always her wild red hair circled around Reagan like her very own cloud of fire.

Noah waited until she looked up when she was almost to him, and then he took one step and swept her into his arms. She was the one woman he’d ever known whom he couldn’t get enough of. The one girl he couldn’t hold tight enough.

“You all right, Rea?” he whispered against her ear.

“I look worse than I feel.” She smiled.

“That’s good.” He smiled, thinking he’d seen men dragged around the arena by a horse who had less dirt and mud on them than Reagan Truman had.

She tried to explain what had happened, but there were too many pieces to the puzzle she didn’t understand. “Big said he’d better bring me right here or you’d be fit to be tied.”

Noah looked around to thank the huge man, but Big was nowhere in sight. “Where’d he go?” Noah had trouble believing three hundred pounds of muscle could disappear.

“He said as soon as I was with you, he’d go find someone to take a look at my hand. I told him not to bother. I’ve been hurt worse, but he just said he’d be back in a minute.”

Noah hadn’t noticed her hand until now. As he looked at the small cut running across her palm, he frowned. “Looks bad, Rea. I think we’ll have to amputate.”

“Shut up.” She pouted. “It hurts.”

Looking around, Noah saw his options as few. He couldn’t leave Tinch and Jamie, and he didn’t plan on Reagan stepping out of his sight. Somehow this one hospital room had become their bunker. “Come on.” He opened Tinch’s door. “You need to wash up before that hand gets infected. There’s a sink in here and Tinch is too out of it to care.”

They moved as silently as possible across the room and around machines until they reached the small sink.

While Reagan tenderly patted around the cut with a paper towel, Noah walked over and put his arm around Jamie. “How you doing, kid?” Noah whispered.

Jamie shrugged. “He’s not going to die, is he?”

The man in the bed closed his fingers around the boy’s hand. “I’m not going to die, son. I swear, so there’s no need to worry or ask again.”

Noah couldn’t help but grin at the boy’s smile. A Christmas morning smile in the middle of this was a welcome sight.

“Noah,” Tinch added, his eyes still closed, “any chance you could get someone over to my place to feed and water the horses? I may be able to tomorrow, but I could use the help today.” His voice was slowing. “Maybe leave some food out for the kittens and dogs. Look out for one that may be injured.”

“I’ll see that it’s done.” Noah knew it took a lot for a man like Tinch to ask for help. He also knew that somewhere
down the line Tinch would return the favor. “Just got word that the sheriff’s department has two of the trespassers who beat you in custody. She’s taking them in now and will be over as soon as they’re locked up.”

Tinch seemed to relax, and a smile touched his swollen lip. “One more,” he whispered before seeming to doze off.

Jamie moved up on the side of the bed, waiting for Tinch to say something else. “One more what?” the boy asked.

“One more man to catch,” Noah finished the sentence.

“How about we let him sleep, Jamie,” Noah whispered as he lifted the boy over to a recliner near the windows. “We’ll be here when he wakes up, and you can talk to him more then.” He covered Jamie with a blanket and added, “Why don’t you sleep for a while. When the sheriff gets here, I’ll go find us a couple of breakfast burritos; till then I’ll watch over you, and I promise if Tinch wakes I’ll give you a shake.”

Jamie didn’t argue. He was asleep before Noah finished tucking him in.

For a moment, Noah stood watching the sunrise over the roofs of Harmony. He hadn’t been to bed in twenty-four hours, but he didn’t care. He was home and needed. It felt good.

When he lived on the road from one rodeo to another, time passed in events and not days. After months, the memory of how it felt to be part of a town, a family, seemed to fade. An old man in a bar told him once that rodeo wasn’t a way of life, it was a way of dying one piece at a time. He’d said that in the end a man can end up broken and alone if he’s not careful.

Noah watched a very tall nurse walk through the door and head straight for Reagan. She had that all-business look about her. One brief glance at him made it plain that she didn’t want to talk to him. If he wasn’t the patient, he was near invisible to her.

When he noticed that Big followed her in, he asked, “You go get that one?”

“She’s a friend of mine. She’s on duty downstairs, but I talked her into taking a break to help Reagan.” Big shrugged as he watched the nurse. “Or, at least she
would
be my friend if it weren’t for you.”

“Me? I don’t even know the lady.” Noah frowned at his almost-friend. “By the way, what is that you got on? You look like a side of beef wrapped in felt.”

“It’s a jogging suit.” Big spread his arms. “I think it was supposed to be a birthday gift for Ester’s brother, but she gave it to me an hour ago, so of course I had to wear it. Looks great, don’t you think?”

Noah grinned. “Since when have you ever jogged?” Big probably burned a few thousand calories a day working. He wasn’t the type to need more exercise.

“I’m thinking of taking it up.” Big did his best to whisper, but he wasn’t a man who practiced the habit. “Ever since a certain lady”—he pointed toward the tall nurse with his head—“gave this suit to me. She says it’s just right for me to wear when we’re cuddling.”

Noah slapped himself on the forehead trying to get the picture of Big cuddling with anyone out of his head. “You and cuddling fit together about like a runway model and spurs.”

He wore such a silly grin that Noah fought the urge to slap Big, but he had the feeling if he did, the construction worker would stomp all over him even if he was wearing a jogging suit made for cuddling.

The tall nurse ended their pointless conversation when she turned from the sink and held up Reagan’s hand. “It’s not really a cut, more like a scrape. She didn’t need stitches, just some antiseptic cream and a Band-Aid.” The nurse smiled at Reagan and added, “I think there are some at the nurses’ station. I’ll go pick up a few and be right back.”

When she walked past Big, Noah didn’t miss the way she brushed his shoulder like she couldn’t keep her hands off his jogging suit. He doubted the gift would have had the same effect on her if the nurse had given it to her brother.
For some odd reason, the woman seemed to think Big was as cute as a toy bulldozer.

Reagan held up her hand as she joined them by the window. “All better,” she said, then narrowed her eyes. “Were you two fighting?”

Noah and Big both tried to look innocent.

Reagan shook her head at them and went back to the sink to try to get some of the mud off her clothes.

Noah leaned closer to Big. “What do you mean, if it weren’t for me that nurse would be your friend?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“No, you started this. If you won’t tell me, I’ll go ask that pretty nurse. She looks like a sweetheart.” Noah would have added something about even if she was a couple of inches taller than him and outweighed him by fifty pounds, but he figured if he said anything about her size he’d be lying next to Tinch in the hospital. Big had always been a little touchy about size. Noah had the feeling Big didn’t think of himself as huge; rather, he saw himself as normal size, with the rest of the world too small.

“All right. I might as well tell you.” Big groaned as if being forced to open up. “Ester will anyway when she gets back. She says it’s something I need to deal with.”

“Ester who?” Noah felt like he’d missed something.

Big looked angry. “Try to keep up, cowboy. I know you’re brain dead from riding bulls, but keep it together enough to follow a conversation. Ester is the nurse who just helped Reagan. We kind of met and hit it off right away.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You and Reagan are interfering with us. She’s the first girl I’ve seen in a long time who might be interested in me and I can tell you from the moment I saw her, I was interested in getting to know her, but you and Rea haven’t made it easy.”

“What?” Noah needed sleep. He was lost again. He thought of mentioning that he needed air, but he wouldn’t put it past Big to toss him out the third-story window.

Big tried to get him up to speed. “When we met, I had to leave our first dance because you and Reagan were fighting in the bar. Then I had to hang around to keep you both out of trouble. Now, this morning, when Ester took me home for breakfast, we’d just started getting nice and cuddly when you call again.”

“But this time …”

Big shook his head. “Every time with you two is an emergency. There’s no getting around it. If I’m ever going to have a full date anytime in this life, you two have got to break up. Swear never to see each other again and maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a night off from babysitting you both.”

“You’ve got to be kidding if you think you can break Rea and me up just so you can have a date. That’s about the dumbest thing you ever said, and to my way of thinking, dumb things have been dribbling out of your mouth since birth.”

“Why not break up? It shouldn’t be all that hard. You guys have been together since high school, and near as I can tell you’ve spent more time
not
talking to each other than talking.”

“I’m not buying any of this, Big.”

“Then buy this: If you don’t leave Reagan alone, I swear the next time you see me you’ll wish you’d run headlong into a bull. I hate to have to do this, but I got to have a life and it doesn’t seem to be a possibility with you two as friends.”