Rodeo Nights by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online Page A

my God,” Mary whispered. “Jeff!”
    Walker straightened. But his face held none of what Kalli feared.
    “It’s all right, Mary. Everything’s all right. Jeff’s talking.”
    “Talking?” Mary repeated.
    She moved to her husband’s side, the young doctor backing up to give her room.
    “Not much volume yet,” said Walker with that half grin, “but the vocabulary’s ’bout the same. First thing he said was ‘Mary.’ I called in the doc. And Jeff got right down to business with ‘rodeo.’ And somethin’ about somebody’s parentage not being quite on the up-and-up.”
    The doctor’s discreet throat-clearing managed to convey humor. “I believe Mr. Jeffries was addressing me.”
    “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Mary said with great fondness as she held Jeff’s hand between both of hers.
    “But now Mr. Jeffries needs his rest,” the doctor added in a different tone.
    “I’m not going—”
    “You may stay awhile, Mrs. Jeffries,” he allowed.
    Which, Kalli thought, was rather like someone telling the Mississippi River it could flow. “But everyone else, out.”
    In a surprisingly short time, Kalli was walking with Walker across a concrete plain interrupted only by a pair of pickups and three cars. After the hospital’s bright stillness, the parking lot was dark and mysteriously alive with currents of the night.
    Walker turned with her as she headed to her car. He didn’t so much as brush her jacket. He tucked his fingers into his jeans pockets, hunching slightly into the wind that tugged at his cotton shirt. Leaving a pool of light, they dipped into darkness.
    “Must have some cutting horse in him.”
    “What?” How could his slow voice throw her when she’d been so aware of his physical presence?
    “The little doc. The way he rounded us up and chuted us right out the door.”
    “He was efficient.”
    A smile drew up the one side of his mouth. Irritation pulled at her. This lopsided stuff was getting old. Who would have thought he’d adopt such an affectation? Maybe someone who hadn’t known what his smile was supposed to look like would accept it as genuine. Not her.
    “Did Jeff really talk?”
    He didn’t bristle at her demand, but a shifting of shadows indicated a lift of his eyebrows.
    “Yes.”
    She’d known him too long and had once known him too well not to decipher the conflicts in that syllable. Her next word softened.
    “But...?”
    Reaching her car, they faced each other under the spotlight from a nearby pole. Walker propped his right hip against the back door, adjusting his hat to shade his face.
    “He made noises. Calling them words came more from knowing what he’d want to say. If I got Mary’s hopes up... Maybe I shouldn’t have made it sound so good.”
    “Anybody would have done that under the circumstances.” Needing to persuade him, she cupped a hand around his arm just above the elbow. “Besides, Mary told me the doctors said the important thing is the ability to vocalize. Words will come, and they’ll get clearer.”
    A warm movement of air that might have been his sigh touched her cheek. He dipped his head, then straightened, pushed his hat back with a forefinger and grinned.
    “Thanks, Kalli.”
    The stark light illuminated the lines and planes his face had acquired. And under that artificial glare, Kalli recognized what she hadn’t before—a shallow indentation of scar tissue above the right side of his mouth. The corner that no longer lifted when he grinned.
    Sharp tears scraped at her throat as she swallowed. His grin faded and his face stilled. She became aware of her hold tightening on his arm. The breeze-cooled cotton of his shirt provided her hand no protection from the solid fire of his skin.
    How could she have forgotten that about him?
    Even as a boy, his skin had run hotter than anybody else’s. As a child, she’d found it odd, and saw it as raw material for teasing. As a young woman, she’d found it fascinating, and recognized it