23
“
W
hat are
you doing?” Faith asked.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about you. Too much, dammit.” He ran his palm over the shoulder of the white parka. “Back there, in my office, when your sweater slid off your shoulder?”
“It did?”
“Yeah. It did. And I wanted to bite you. Right here.” His hand tightened. “Not hard,” he assured her when her eyes widened with what oddly looked like fear. “Just enough to get your attention.”
“You already had my attention.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“I’m not. I want to really, really hate you.”
“I don’t blame you.” His gaze locked with hers, wanting, needing her to believe him. “It would serve me right if you never wanted to have anything to do with me again.”
“That’s what I should do.”
“Maybe.” His hand trailed down her arm. She stiffened when he linked their fingers together, but Will was
encouraged when she didn’t pull away. “My dad has this saying.”
He turned their joined hands over, unfolded her fisted fingers, touched his mouth to the center of her palm, and was amazed when her warming flesh didn’t sizzle.
“About not cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
“I’ve heard it.”
The air surrounding them was so charged Will could feel the electricity sparking beneath his skin. Fortunately, the building was old, the elevator small. Which meant that he had her just where he wanted her.
With her back against the wall.
“Tell me you don't feel it.” He skimmed a kiss along her jaw, knowing just where to nip to make her moan. “That connection we’ve had from the beginning. When I walked into that campaign office and felt as if I’d been poleaxed.”
Gripping his shoulder for balance, she tilted her head back. “It d
oesn’t matter what I feel…
Oh, God,” she nearly whimpered as his lips trailed down her throat. “I spent the drive into town worrying you might try something like this.”
Sighing, she linked her arms around his neck. “And worrying that you might not.”
His answering laugh was rough, relieved.
He dipped his head down, planning—despite that they were in an elevator between floors, with a horde of reporters gathered outside waiting to attack him with a barrage of questions—to take his time. To savor what
he’d been thinking about, fantasizing, since returning to Hazard.
No, longer than that. Since he’d watched her walk out of that Savannah courtroom and out of his life.
But the moment his lips touched her, the tight rein he’d been keeping on his emotions snapped.
Every nerve, every atom in his body, instantly spiked; he wanted her, so badly he ached.
Worse yet, he needed her.
Without taking his mouth from hers, Will hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her up onto her toes.
Her head fell back on a low, throaty moan of pleasure that vibrated from her mouth to his, shooting directly down to his groin. Her long, lean, sexy body arched against him as Will feasted on her. And she on him.
Her leg twined around his thigh, she was plastered against his erection,
her hips writhing, bucking, des
perate.
He was actually considering dragging her down to the floor, sinking deep into her, taking them both to oblivion, and beyond, when some tattered vestige of sanity kicked in.
He pulled back. Struggled to breathe. To think.
“We’re going to finish this.”
Lingering passion swirled hotly in her eyes, her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed. He braced for her to deny what had just happened.
“Yes.”
On second thought, he wasn’t surprised she didn’t
play coy. Faith had never been one to play
games. That’d always been his thing.
Now, wonder of wonders, despite his having betrayed her in the worst way, it looked as if she was going to give him a second chance.
This time, Will vowed, as he punched the button to send the elevator continuing on its way, he was going to get it right.
24
O
kay, another thing Sal hated:
hospitals.
He hated the odors of disinfectant, disease, and despair; he hated the lights, which blazed twenty-four hours a day, the indecipherable announcements coming over hallway loudspeakers, the moans, the weeping, the incessant beep beep beep of the machines monitoring various bodily functions.
Speaking of which, what he was discovering he hated most was bedpans.
“I just wanna take a damn leak,” he complained to the Nurse Ratched clone.
“Which you’re welcome to do,” the blond ballbuster said with a steely smile as cold as her heart. “You’re just not going to get out of bed to do it.”
“I realize, not having a penis yourself, you don’t quite grasp the concept that men—real men—piss standing up,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.
“Really?” Glacier blue eyes widened. “Gracious.
Next time I meet a real man, I’ll have to ask him about that.”
Sal nearly bit his tongue off as he forced himself to count to ten, slowly, taking a deep breath between numbers, the way the anger-management counselor had taught him to do.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t, he found, nearly as satisfying as the fantasy of strangling the bitch.
“Look, sweetheart, if you want a pissing contest, we’ll go outside and see which of us can write our name in the snow.”
He’d never met a chick who personified Freud’s penis envy theory more than this one.
“Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d get the hell out of my way.” Fed up, he yanked the IV needle from the vein in the back of his hand.
“That’s it,” she shot back. “I’m calling security.”
When she lunged for the call button pinned to the overly starched, pink pillowcase, Sal made his move. Grabbing the front of her shirt, he yanked her onto the bed, and before she knew what was happening, he’d rolled over on top of her, effectively pinning her to the mattress.
At which time Ratched began cursing like a sailor and jabbed a bony elbow into Sal’s rib cage.
“That’s it,” he grunted. “You’ve just lost any chance you might’ve had for this year’s Florence Nightingale award, sweetheart.”
Her response was to bite his earlobe.
“Do we have a problem?” a calm voice asked from the doorway before he’d backhanded the bitch across the room.
If the white-jacketed doctor was at all surprised to see a patient and a nurse playing WrestleMania on the narrow hospital bed, he didn’t reveal it.
“Mr. Sasone was trying to get out of bed,” the nurse said with a great deal of dignity for someone whose blue scrub pants had somehow been yanked down a good six inches on her scrawny scarecrow hips.
She scrambled off the bed, pulled the pants back up, and retied the waistcord. “I was merely attempting to restrain him when he pulled me over the railing.”
“That must’ve taken some doing, given that he only has one good arm at the moment,” the doctor observed mildly.
“I’ve played a little semipro ball. And I still work out.” It was important, in the bounty hunter business, to stay fit.
“Well, it’s an impressive move, though a bit ill- advised, given that you could have risked reinjuring your elbow.” The doctor, whose name tag read
JACK
DAWSON, M.D., turned toward the nurse. “I believe we have everyone under control now, Nurse Hoffmann.”
“Yes, Doctor.” She shot a final killing glare at Sal, then marched from the room.
“I would’ve expected a goose step,” Sal muttered.
“Nurse Hoffmann is one of our most senior floor nurses. She runs the surgical ward with admirable precision.”
“Yeah, and Mussolini got the trains rilnning on time, too. But look how he ended up.”
The orthopedic surgeon called in by the ER physician after the sheriff had dropped Sal off last night wasn’t about to be drawn into the fray between nurse and patient.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Sasone?” He plucked the metal chart from the holder on the foot of the bed.
“Other than my back teeth floating up to my eyeballs from all that saline solution being pumped into me, I’m doing great, Doc,” Sal lied.
If he ever found that guy on the snowmobile who’d caused him to run his rental SUV into that tree, he was going to shoot him. Then run over him like he should’ve last night on the way to the radio studio.
Gray eyes scanned the chart. “All your vital signs seem normal.”
“That’s me. Mr. Normality. So, if you’ll just sign a release form, as soon as I take a leak, I’ll be out of here and free up the room for another victim. Uh, patient.”
“You’ve only been out of surgery three hours.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a constitution like a horse.”
“
Hraram
.” More perusing of the chart.
Having been a good cop, hell, better than good, one of the goddamn best, Sal knew enough not to push too hard. Finesse had never come naturally, but he could, when necessary, employ it to his advantage.
“Let’s get that bladder taken care of,” the doctor decided. “Then we can discuss our options.”
Sal didn’t like the sound of that, but also wasn’t
about to argue when
at least one thing was going his way.
At least he thought it was. Until his feet hit the f
loor. And his head began to spin.
“Feeling a bit dizzy?”
“Nah.” Black and whi
te spots were doing the tango in front of his eyes.
“Because, if you are, I can help you back into bed.” “
“I can make it to the can.”
“Okay. But since the hospital attorney gets a little uptight about malpractice lawsuits, why don’t you let me call for a wheelchair?”
“I don’t need any…
” The specks were now a damn shitstorm of a blizzard.
“Sorry. It’s either the chair or the bedpan.”
Sal sagged back against the bed. “Since you put it that way, Doc, I’ll take the damn chair. But I’m standing to pee.”
“Fortunately, there’s an orderly on this floor who used to play defensive linebacker for UW and still holds the school record for blitzes in a season. He’s more than capable of providing support. Don’t go away; I’ll get him.”
Like he was capable of going anywhere.
Sal realized he’d been expertly played when, five seconds after he’d left the room, the doctor returned with a six-foot-five moose wearing size triple-X, butter yellow scrubs who was pushing a wheelchair.
“Quite the coincidence, him being so close by,” Sal observed.
“Isn’t it?” Jack Dawson smiled with satisfaction. Admiring the way t
he doc had manipulated the situ
ation, although he’d ended up on the losing side, Sal tipped a slight salute as he was wheeled away.
While he’d throw himself off the top of that mountain looming over town before admitting it, Sal was grateful for the moose’s assistance in holding him upright so he could pee standing up like a man.
The doctor was waiting when they came out of the adjoining bathroom.
“You may as well get comfortable,” he said. “Given that you’re going to be here for a while longer.”
“I’ve got business to take care of.”
“Which will have to wait.” The doctor folded his arms across the wh
ite lab coat. Beneath the unbut
toned coat he was wearing a brown T-shirt announcing DANCES WITH MOOSE.
“Most people don’t pay all that much attention to their elbows, until they have a problem,” Jack Dawson said. “But in fact, it’s a very complex joint.
What you have, Mr
. Sasone, is a radial head frac
ture, which is a fairly common fracture resulting in approximately twenty percent of acute elbow injuries. A common cause of radial head fractures is dislocation.
“When the upper-arm bone slides back into its appropriate place after a dislocation, it can chip off a piece of the radial head, which is shaped like a round disk, resulting in a fracture, which I believe is probably what happened in your case.”
“Yeah. That’s what you said.”
Having been in the kind of pain that was threatening to take his head off when the sheriff had brought him to the ER, Sal didn’t remember a lot about their presurgery talk, but he did recall that much.
“In your case, the bone fragment was large enough to fix it with metal screws. I also repaired some soft-tissue ligament tears."
“So, I’m good to go.”
The doctor shook his head. “Not exactly. Not yet. Even if I were to release you while you’re still under the influence of a narcotic—which, to save you breath on making an argument, I’m definitely not—you need to understand that if you’re not extremely careful for the next few weeks, you can experience malunion.”
“You want to explain that, Doc?”
“Sure. It’s merely a two-dollar medical word meaning the bones might grow back together in an abnormal way, which would require another operation to repair them.”
“I’m willing to take my chances,” Sal said grumpily.
“That’s quite a gamble. Let’s try this: you also have three nerves running through the elbow that can be cut, kinked, or pulled by an injury, which could cause damage.”
“Which could be fixed, right?”
“Not necessarily. The damage could be permanent. Believe me, Mr. Sasone, this is not something you’d want to happen.”
“I’m right-handed. I can handle a little nerve damage in my left arm.”
“I’ve no doubt you’re an iron man,” the doctor said drily. “However, there's one last thing I believe you should understand.” He took a pen from his jacket pocket, pulled out a notepad, and quickly sketched a diagram.
“This is your elbow. This line here”—he tapped the point of the pen against the paper—“is an artery that runs very near your elbow joint, which supplies blood to the forearm. Certain injuries can cut or kink this artery. Which in turn cuts off the blood flow.”
Okay. He’d finally gotten Sal’s unwilling attention. He also didn’t have to draw another damn picture.
“Are you saying I could lose my arm?”
“I’m saying that’s a remote possibility. And, I wouldn’t think, a very appealing one.”
“Christ on a crutch.” Sal flopped his head back against the rock-hard pillow. “You win this round, Doc.”
“The goal is for you to come out the winner, Mr. Sasone.”
Damn. Could things be more screwed up? Sal took another deep breath and reminded himself that this doctor, who may have saved his arm, wasn’t responsible for the fact that he was up shit creek. Seemingly without a good arm to paddle.
“How long do I have to stay here?”
“At least until the Demerol wears off. Perhaps, if the pain is manageable, later this evening I’ll sign the release form then.”
“Nobody can stop me if I decide to walk out without a damn piece of paper.”
“That’s true. But I believe the operative words are
walk out.
I don’t know what business you have here in Hazard that’s so urgent, Mr. Sasone. But I doubt you’d be very effective when you can’t even stand up without risking falling on your face.”
Sal hated that the guy who looked like he could’ve played a doctor on some TV soap opera was right. He was trying to think about what to do next when Dawson came up with a new suggestion.
“Let me offer a compromise. Stay here for another four hours. That should give us time to ensure you’re not going to have any complications from the surgery. Then, after I check your elbow one more time, I’ll have one of the interns drive you back to”—he flipped to the front page of the chart—“the lodge.”
It wasn’t Sal’s first choice. Hell, it wasn’t even his second or third. But the doc had a point. How effective would he be dealing with Faith if he couldn’t stay on his damn feet?
“Four hours,” he agreed reluctantly.
“You won’t regret it, Mr. Sasone.”
Now that’s where the doc was flat-out wrong. Because Sal was already regretting everything about this trip.
Beginning with the cockamamy idea to come to Hazard, Wyoming, in the first place.