Wild Raspberries by Jane Davitt Read Free Book Online

told its own story.
    Betty stood. “Mira, I’ll deal with your follow-up appointment in a moment. Poor Mr. Edwards here has to be seen right away. It’s an emergency.”
    It really isn’t, Tyler wanted to say. I fell off a fucking roof. I need a few painkillers and a couple of stitches. I can wait. He swallowed back the words; no sense getting Betty mad at him.
    Mira gave Tyler an incurious look. “I guess I can wait.”
    Clucking under her breath, Betty wheeled Tyler over to Doctor Collins’ office, his file tucked under her arm. “I guess she can wait,” she murmured. “Seeing as she’s going back to do nothing but sit and stare at that TV of hers. If I was a germ, I’d pick someone a mite livelier to live off.”
    Betty rapped at the door, and Tyler let himself get pushed through and positioned by the doctor’s desk on a wave of exclamations, explanations, and greetings he pretty much tuned out.
    The door closed behind Betty, and Tyler and the doctor exchanged rueful glances. “She’s good at her job,” Anne Collins said quietly. Her dark hair was drawn back in a neat bun and her hazel eyes, though tired, were amused. “And she’s right; you need to be seen to. Are you sure it’s not broken?”
    “Yes. I broke it last time, though, which is why it hurts so goddamn much now, I suppose.”
    She grimaced sympathetically. “Ouch. What happened?”
    He told her and finished with a terse list of his other injuries. Her eyebrows rose. “I think I’d better check you over.”
    He bit back a sigh and nodded reluctantly.
    It took her a while to finish with him, and he felt like hell when she had, even though the painkillers she’d given him there and then, with a prescription for more tucked into his pocket, were nibbling away at the raw, ragged edges of the pain and reducing it to something more bearable. She stitched and bandaged his hand and strapped his ribs lightly, telling him to unwrap the bandages the next day. “It’s more to remind you to take it easy,” she said as she strapped up his ankle. “Hmm. Bad sprain.” Like he hadn’t already figured that out. “It’s swollen, so you need to keep doing the ice and rest. I’m sure you know the drill.” She frowned. “How did you get here? Tell me you didn’t drive yourself.”
    “No.” He hesitated, habit making him reticent, but after all, for once, there was no harm in telling the truth. “This morning I found a boy in my raspberry bushes.”
    “Not a baby in the gooseberries?” She grinned. “Sorry. A boy? How old?”
    “Twenty.”
    “And what was this enterprising young man doing?”
    He gave her an abbreviated, expurgated version, leaving out anything he’d learned on his computer search and the way Dan had been paying for his rides.
    Anne screwed up her face. “Well, I don’t like it, but if he’s twenty, there’s not much we can do about it.”
    “Nope.” Not a damned thing.
    She began to write in his file. Without looking up, she said casually, “Are you going to ask him to stick around and help you for a day or two? You really need to rest that ankle, you know.”
    “And while he’s with me, apply some gentle persuasion to get him turned around and headed home?” Tyler said dryly. “No. In the first place, he’d drive me insane, and that’s harder to get over than a few cracked ribs and a sprained ankle, and for all I know, he had a good reason to leave.”
    “True.” She glanced up. “Then I’ll assign a nurse to come by in a few days and check up on you.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “ Mr . Edwards —”
    “ Doctor Collins.”
    She slapped his file closed. “Tyler, he needs somewhere to stay and regroup, from what you told me, and you need someone fit to do the work around the place. I’ve seen your garden; this is one of the busiest times of the year for you, isn’t that right?”
    “Fall’s busier. So’s spring.”
    “Are you going to keep arguing with me, or are you going to say, ‘Yes, doctor,’