Miss Impractical Pants (46 page)

Sidney rose to his feet. “Penny is as much a part of Lucas’s family as anyone. She’s no more a servant than I am your father—thank God for that. You’ll not fare very well at
a reconciliation
if you continue to look down your nose at everyone he loves.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Sidney.”
Lottie gathered her shredded wits. “Damn your bloody politeness!”

She confronted Olivia with all the ferocity of a mama bear. “No more!” she roared, the rough, menacing sound out of character for her tiny frame. “No more will I let you ridicule and scorn my family. For three years I’ve stayed silent, for my son’s sake. No more! Bloody English propriety
be
damned! Get your delusions of superiority and your skinny arse out of my sight! And the next time you want to turn your plastic nose up at someone—just remember
,
it could be their vote that keeps you draped in Gucci.”

Covering her nose defensively, Olivia stood, mouth gaping. She looked to Andrew to come to her rescue. He swept his bangs across his forehead, rolled his eyes, and turned his head from her. Her baby blues welling with indignant tears, she stamped her foot and made her way to the door, stumbling as she dragged her luggage. “Excuse me, I’m going home now.”

“Bon voyage! It’s going to be a long way back to hell!” Charles yelled in response to the slamming door.

Lottie clapped her hands approvingly. “Ducky, you’ve just had a major breakthrough! How does it feel to say something naughty for once?”

“It feels bloody great!” Charles replied, flushing only slightly.

Afraid to open her eyes, Katie lay on the hard surface and listened to the sounds of chaos ping-ponging around the room. She sniffed and almost wretched at the myriad foul odors her lungs were forced to intake: bodies—stinky bodies, blood, vomit, and bad breath all broiling under the sweltering heat to create a perfectly nauseating concoction.

Having to squinch one eye shut in order to peek with the other, she made a Cyclops reconnaissance of her surroundings. A large crack ran in the plaster on the ceiling and down half of the far wall of what seemed to be a makeshift triage unit. Janek, she could tell by the cheese curds in his ear, lay, possibly naked—
eeeww!
—on a table next to her, groaning. Sunlight streamed through a large broken window that had been mended back together with multiple crisscrosses of medical tape that had since begun to fade and crumble away.

She snapped her eye closed in response to someone’s piercing, incoherent screams and was suddenly transported to the hospital scene in
Gone with the Wind
, where the putrescent filth and stink and helpless wails of the soldiers provoked Scarlett O’Hara to flee into the dangerous Atlanta streets. Only in this fantasy, she wasn’t Scarlett. She was one of the soldiers—the one whose screams drive through Scarlett’s sanity as the doctors, administering bourbon in place of anesthesia, amputate his gangrene leg.

“
Noooooo
!
I need my leg!” Piercing the room, the stench, and multiple sets of eardrums with her shriek of terror, she jerked herself upright. Staring intently at nothing in particular, her breaths came rapid and shallow. Someone rushed to her makeshift hospital table and she slapped savagely against the hands that tried to touch her.

“Katie, it’s me. Everything is all right.”

She recognized that velvety accent: Lucas. She allowed his gentle touch as he pushed back a strand of sweat-plastered hair from her head. She turned her glossy gaze to him; he was bare-chested and on his side wore a bright white gauze bandage splotched red in the center. Focusing on the small patch of curls just below his collarbone, she followed the contours of his taught, smooth skin over his deliciously defined pectorals, across his gently rippling abdomen, and down to another sparse growth of hair just below his navel. Heating up another hundred degrees, she let herself be carried away into a much happier fantasy.

Stanley, dripping sweat and shirtless, but not wearing a Speedo—thank the heavens and all the glorious angels above—stood over her, shoulders hunched from exhaustion, torturing her afflicted leg.

Stab.
Oww.
Stab.
Oww.
Stab.
Oooww.
Stab. Stab.
Yeeeoooww!
She squeezed the strong hand Lucas had placed in her grip. “Why won’t he let my poor persecuted leg have a moment’s peace?” she whispered pathetically.

“Because poor persecuted leg needs stitches,” Lucas replied as if speaking to a young child.

She
flopped
her head to the side and watched the shallow rise and fall of Janek’s chest and played back her memories of the morning.

“What happened?” She gingerly caressed the bandage at Lucas’s side before pointing her chin toward Janek.

The muscle at the back of Lucas’s jaw twitched as he began grinding his teeth, shaking his head at the remembrance. “He was shot in the shoulder.”

Katie swallowed. “Is he going to be all right?”

Lucas nodded.

“What happened to you?” She picked the edge of her fingernail into a couple tiny squares of his bandage.

“Mensur got off one last shot after Janek took him down. It just grazed my side.” Craning his neck, he looked down at his wound. “I’m fine. I promise,” he added in response to her worried stare.

“Marko?”

“He’s fine.”

“And Mensur...did he get away?”

His face turned somber and he shook his head. “He fell on his knife.”

“Is he dead?” Clenching his hand tighter, she worried that she didn’t want to know the answer.

He shook his head again. “He’s just on the other side of Janek.” He jerked his head in that direction. She strained to hear his slow, gurgled breathing. “Stanley doesn’t think he’ll make it.”

She gulped. She didn’t know why, but she felt sorry for her young, crazed captor.

Lucas wiped the tear running down her cheek and she concentrated on the slow, jerky movements of Stanley’s thread as she tried to sort through her emotions. What would happen to them when the hostage taker died just two men down from her? Would they be able to go home? She didn’t really even have a home…only a large, empty basement that belonged to her absentee parents. She took in the pungent stench of the room and wondered if it were the smell of death. Traumatized by the thought of death fumes entering her lungs as much as anything else, she finally broke through the wall built up over
multiple frightened, sleepless nights and bawled. She tried to silence herself, but all she managed to do was choke on her sobs.

“Don’t cry, Katie, pretty lady.” Stanley clipped the thread. “Everything will be fine.” She wanted to give him her good-little-trooper grin, but she couldn’t. Instead, she flipped her head to the side, only to find the apologetic eyes of Janek staring at her. Jerking her head in the other direction, she found Lucas’s troubled stare. Self-conscious under their concerned scrutiny, she felt certain she was going to combust right there on the folding-table gurney.

“I know just the thing to make you feel better,” Stanley exclaimed, eyes brightening. “Would you like to take a shower? I have some nice Biolage shampoo I bought in bulk at the Walmart salon.”

The corners of Katie’s mouth twitched. She remembered his gusto for Walmart; he was bestowing her with a great honor. Even if she didn’t want a shower—though thankfully she did, almost more than she wanted to keep her leg—she knew she couldn’t refuse his offer.

Stanley was already digging through his medical bag. Retrieving a roll of waterproof medical tape, he rolled it out across her wound. “We must be careful not to get these stitches wet,” he directed animatedly, obviously eager to help her wash away her troubles.

She wobbled to a stand and instantly lunged toward Lucas for support. It was as though even her good leg wanted to atrophy from the days of nonuse. With Lucas’s help, she relearned to walk. Half dragging her injured leg, Katie leaned on Lucas as they followed Stanley down the corridor over the threadbare rugs that were no doubt fabulous in their prime.

Stanley flipped on the bathroom light, pointed out the fresh towels, and offered her a crisply packaged bar of soap.

“Thank you Stanley,” she uttered, feeling like she might start crying again.

He flashed his Rembrandt-white teeth. “Take your time. When you’re finished we can meet upstairs and discuss how we’re going to get you home safely.” Patting Lucas’s shoulder, he trudged back to the swelter where his patients waited.

“Um…right then. Are you sure you can manage from here?” Lucas seemed reluctant to release his hold on her.

“I’ll be fine. There’s not much here to manage.” She gestured to the fallen straps of her dirty tank and flimsy pajamas, now split up the entire length of the leg; only the thin elastic waistband remained intact.

He traced a thumb along the path on her cheek where the tears had cleansed a streak through the blood. “Right, of course, I’ll leave you to it then. I’ll be just outside the door.”

She waited until he was gone. Pulling back the yellow daisy-
clad shower curtain, she adjusted the water before gingerly removing her clothes. After a moment’s hesitation, she bent over to retrieve her turquoise and yellow polka-dotted panties, and carried them into the shower with her. Spending nearly half the bar of soap, she scrubbed the panties and her body with all her might. She watched with morbid fascination at the rusty brow
n colors streaming off her body
and got lost in a daze waiting for the water to drain clear.

Only when her leg began to ache and the water ran tepid did she reluctantly turn off the faucet. Shimmying herself dry, she secured
a towel turban to her head and spied her panties flung over the shower curtain rod—still dripping wet.

As she made her way over to her pajama bottoms, her stomach lurched into her throat. “Oh crap! Oh no, oh no!” she squealed in hushed tones. The result as she tried on her pants was just as she’d feared: The open leg left nothing about her left bottom half to the imagination.

Stripping off the pants, she flounced in place, naked, shaking her hands in front of her as if to draw inspiration. She wrung the underwear into the shower with all her strength. When no more water could be extracted, she rummaged the cupboards unsuccessfully for a blow dryer.

Lucas rapped lightly at the door.
“Rabbit?
Just checking to see how you’re doing.”

Katie balled her fist and bit down on her knuckles to silence her flustered scream.

“Everything all right?”
His voice rang with concern in response to her silence.

“Umm...just a second!”
She heard the panic rising in her voice. Pulling the towel off her head, she secured it around her body.

Struck with a sudden flash of genius, she hooked the underwear around her pointer finger and whirled it above her head with the skill of a Harlem Globetrotter, the fabric shedding tiny droplets of water as it gained momentum.

She was certain she was making progress with her drying technique. Then suddenly, startled by Lucas’s unexpected entrance, she lost focus—and control—of her underwear. Wet polka-dotted panties propelled with helicopter speed—
shwock
!
—
onto his unsuspecting
face. Mortified, both her hands flew up to cover her face, triggering her towel to drop and land effortlessly at her ankles.