2000 Kisses (9 page)
“Sounds high to me,” TJ. said;
“Not life-threatening.” The doctor brushed her skin. “Cool to the touch. She's starting to sweat, and that's good, too. Any signs of nausea?”
“It happened too fast for that.”
“Help me elevate her feet.” Together, they slid a pillow in place, then raised her ankles. “First stage of heatstroke, I'd say, along with dehydration. She looks strong enough, but you'd better get her hydrated. Keep wet cloths in place. Do you have any ice packs?”
T.J. nodded.
“Use them. Armpits and wrists. Ankles and groin. Give her water as soon as she comes around, but keep it limited.”
TJ. rubbed his jaw. As a law officer, he'd had his share of dehydrated tourists and lost hikers crazy from heat exhaustion. By now he knew the drill.
“I'll be back in an hour after I check on the Winslow sisters over at the nursing home.” The doctor frowned. “Fool woman has too many clothes on. You might want to do something about that, Sheriff.”
Like what—strip her naked?
wondered grimly.
After Doc Felton left, McCall slipped ice packs under her arms and ankles, then drizzled cool water into her mouth. When she gagged, he stopped and tried again.
But she still didn't come around. Her arm swept out
and she muttered hoarsely, as if caught in a bad dream. She spoke again, but the sounds were choppy and made no sense to T.J. As he put another cold cloth on her head, she twisted sideways, breathing hard, her fingers stiff. Something had left her badly frightened.
T.J. only wished he knew what.
Five minutes later, as T.J. held a damp cloth to her cheek, her eyes opened. He looked into them and got lost in a green smoother than cottonwood leaves in spring. Wind seemed to whistle past his face, cool and sweet.
And you're a damned fool, McCall
.
She blinked and tried to sit up.
“Take it easy, Ma'am.”
She closed her eyes, then took another long, hard look at him. “I loved you in
Braveheart
”
T.J. gave a long-suffering sigh. After a decade of being mistaken for Hollywood's azure-eyed superstar, he was resigned to the error. “How does your head feel?”
She tried to sit up, then sank back with a soft groan. “Like Apollo 13 just did a three-point turn on my frontal lobe.” She rubbed her forehead, frowning. “Do I know you? You seem … familiar.”
“If we'd met, Ma'am, I'd surely remember it. Probably just the aftereffects of the heat Serves you right for traveling through the desert without water.”
“What do you mean?”
T.J. shook his head in disgust. She really didn't have a clue. Then again, most visitors didn't. “Your body needs eight to ten glasses of liquid daily. In conditions of severe heat or exertion, the amount can double.”
Her teeth chattered. “Is that why I keeled over?”
T.J. nodded.
She sighed. “You still seem familiar.” She tried to
turn and then frowned. “Why are two bags of ice wedged under my arms?”
“I had to bring your temperature down.” TJ. offered her a glass of water with a straw; “Sip as much as you can. The sooner you replace your fluids the better.”
She didn't seem to be listening. “So you're really not Mel Gibson?” She sounded disappointed.
“No, Ma'am, I'm not.” TJ. tried not to take it personally. “I'm the sheriff here.”
She closed her eyes on a groan. “Don't tell me. You're McCall, the one Andrew told me about.”
She didn't appear too happy at the idea. As it happened, TJ. shared her sentiments completely. “So you're Tess. Welcome to Almost.”
“There weren't any signs that I could see.”
“Last one fell down a few weeks ago. We haven't had a chance to replace it yet.” TJ. frowned. The damned female was wearing way too many clothes, a heavy denim skirt and heaven knew what was beneath that. Probably silk and more silk. Doc Felton was right: something had to go.
Maybe his sanity, TJ. thought wryly. He placed another wet cloth on her head and fanned her face with a newspaper.
“I'm going to have to take off some of those clothes, Ma'am.”
She didn't seem to hear. TJ. decided this was as good a time as any to correct her overdressed condition. Hell, what was he supposed to take off first?
He unbuttoned her shirt lower, pushed up the sleeves and waited. Still no response.
Didn't she realize this was afternoon in the
deserft
No one marched around in the afternoon sun without water. Muttering, TJ. went to work on her boots and belt.
Why did
he
have to be the one dealing with this crazy female? He hadn't tackled a woman's buttons in six months.
TJ. frowned. Or had it been longer?
Damn, that was unnatural.
He wiped her face again. She had a redhead's delicate complexion, but she hadn't worn sunscreen or a hat. He meant to give her hell for that, too.
“Ms. O'Mara?”
She was out cold.
TJ. decided that her clothes were going to have to wait.
Two people stood in the shaded bow window across the street, watching T.J. stride out of the sheriffs office. One was the owner of the General Mercantile and cafe.
“That's odd,” Mae muttered.
“What's odd?” Doc Felton stood nursing one of Mae's famous butterscotch milk shakes.
“The sheriff. Man's fit to be tied. I haven't seen him that angry since that California promoter wanted to rent the town for an undertaker's convention.”
Doc Felton elbowed in beside her and had a view of T.J.'s stiff gait as he strode toward his dusty Blazer. He was muttering as he swung open the door, then closed it again. He jammed his hat down hard, took a dozen angry steps, and kicked at the rear tire, then turned and stalked back up the steps to the sheriffs office.
The doctor rubbed his jaw. “Definitely looks angry. Must have something to do with that woman who passed out in the street today. Heatstroke, most likely.”
“Who, TJ. or the woman?”
Doc Felton chuckled. “Maybe both of them.”
“You don't say.” Mae spread her hands on the spotless but worn Formica table beside the window. “She the one with all that red hair? Driving that fancy blue car?”
“That's the one.”
Mae chewed on her lip. “You don't say.”
The two stood at the window in companionable silence.
“Odd about T.J. being all stirred up like that,” the doctor said slowly. “He doesn't stir up easily. Especially over a woman.”
The two looked at each other.
“Then again, maybe not,” Mae mused. “The sheriff doesn't get a lot of social opportunities here in Almost. Big, strong man like that must miss spending a few pleasant hours with a female.”
More silence.
“Of course, if something went wrong with that fancy car, she wouldn't be leaving for a while,” the doctor murmured. “They'd have to send for parts from California. Maybe even from the East Coast. Just hypothetically.”
“Wouldn't want anything
terrible
to go wrong,” Mae said. “Maybe a distributor cap or a fuel line.” She stared out into the afternoon sun. “Might take a week to get a replacement part.”
The doctor stared at the sheriffs office. “A week should be just about right. For a car problem, that is.”
“And for two people to get to know each other.” Mae watched little eddies of dirt spin around the spiny branches of an ocotillo cactus. “Our sheriff could use some company in that great big house of his.”
“Does your brother still work at the Auto Palace?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seems to me,” the doctor mused, “that he might know how to repair a fuel line. Or maybe even how to detach one. Just hypothetically, of course,”
“Fuel lines happen to be his specialty.” Mae smiled as she picked up die phone. “Just hypothetically, of course.”
She was there again, amid narrow canyon walls filled with shadow, every rock familiar.
She stood on green ferns, the sun burning her shoulders. The wind carried the scent of silver sage and star flower as she slipped to the ground and drank from the still pool between the rocks, offering murmured thanks to those spirits who guard the precious water.
The sky curved in a vault of blinding turquoise from horizon to horizon, cut only by the glint of wings. Her heart moved, carried aloft like those swift, beating wings.
He would come for her.
She would wait.
She touched the painted figures on the nearby rock. The same patterns covered the fine clay bowls she built before the walls of her father's village. Always she worked with clean strokes, color balancing color, line matching line, lest her pictures bring shadows and disorder to those who looked upon them. Her pots were traded for turquoise and precious parrot feathers from the far south. Her father bargained carefully, swollen with pride at his daughter's work.
But if he knew she waited here for a man, he would drive her from his walls with his own hands and lay his curse on her blood.
Sunlight filtered between the canyon rocks, reflected off the small spring at her feet.
She shivered as a shadow fell across the ravine.
Raven and tortoise.
Swift sun and shining moon.
She whispered the old words for protection, her fingers tracing the stone figure worn knotted on a strip of leather at her neck.
His gift.
Bride token and totem.
Her fingers closed around the polished coyote worked by his own hands. She shivered at the touch, for the coyote is old and very clever, one who can trick as well as assist.
Why did her warrior not come?
She cradled his sun-warmed stone, wishing for his laugh, his hands loosening the feathers from her hair and the painted tunic from her shoulders.
Overhead the sun marched on, crossing rocks and ridge.
He would come as he had promised. Sometime before the rising of the moon he would stand before her, laughing as he drew off his bow.
But he did not come. And the fear grew in her chest like thorns.
Tess woke up feeling woozy.
She eased open one eye and winced at the light. Her throat burned, and she felt shaky when she tried to sit up.
She remembered trying to fold her blasted map, then standing up and—
And passing out cold. There had been a man somewhere nearby at the time. She tilted her head, still groggy, but not so groggy she didn't notice that someone had unbuttoned her shirt down to the lacy edge of her bra. And if that wasn't provocation enough, there was a cowboy with lazy blue eyes who had one callused hand wrapped around her thigh. And one of her stockings was
gone.
Tess shot upright. “What do you think you're doing?”
“Trying to take off your other stocking.”
“;Do it and you'll regret it.”
The cowboy's eyes narrowed. “I think we've got a communication problem here.”
His face was burned dark by the sun. Tess remembered him now. He was the sheriff her brother had said would protect her. Not with his hand on her thigh, he wouldn't.
“Get your hand off me.”
A vein pumped at his clenched jaw. “Don't go jumping fences until you get to them, Ma'am.”
He had a slow, mellow voice and his eyes were even more startling than Tess remembered. He also looked exactly like a roguish actor whose face regularly appeared on magazine covers around the world.
“You're sure you're not Mel Gibson?”
“I'm sure.”
“If you really are the sheriff, then you'd better explain why you had your hand up my skirt.”
Something glinted in his eyes. “Doctor's orders.”
“Oh, right.”
“Too many clothes, he said.”
Tess sniffed. She wasn't sure what a sheriff should look like, but it certainly wasn't
this.
She smiled icily as she pointed at his chest. “If you're the sheriff, where's your badge?” Even out here there had to be
some
dress codes.
He stalked across the room, yanked open his desk drawer, and shoved a tarnished, weather-beaten tin star into place on his shirt pocket. “Feel safer now?”