Chasing Trouble (Texas Trouble) (2 page)

If not for Ben Bowman
, Beau's dad, and his connections, she probably wouldn't have her license today.  He'd not only gotten her the best attorney in Texas, he'd called in favors from people on the hospital board.  That was why she'd been hugging him the day Beau's mother had walked in on them in his study.  The bitter woman had put a nasty spin on things and told Beau she was sleeping with Ben to pay for medical school.

Jenny owed the man her career and her life, even though she'd left his son because he
believed his delusional mother.  Well, that wasn't exactly why she'd left Beau, she had plenty of reasons to break their engagement, had been struggling over the decision for weeks, but that had been the icing on the cake.

When s
omeone came through the door of the break room, she turned, and she saw it was Terri and gave her a tight smile. 

"I have the suture kit set up for you, and Mr.
Rhodes is back from radiology," Terri told her.

Jenny took a deep breath then told her, "Thanks, I'll be in there in a second."

"Are you okay, Jen?" Terri asked her with concern in her tone.  Terri was more than her nurse, she was her friend too. 

Since she'd been in Henrietta,
Terri had done her best to help her adapt and fit in, and they'd grown close.  She was about the only female friend that Jenny had here...but Jenny hadn't told her about Beau.  It was something that she hadn't talked to anyone about, not even her family.  They just knew she'd broken it off with him. 

Not that anyone
in her family would notice or care, they were too focused on keeping her brother out of trouble.  It had always been like that.  The squeaky wheel got greased, and her younger brother, Nick, squeaked at nails-on-a-chalkboard pitch.  He just hadn't figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up, and so he was twenty-seven years old and living off of their parents, trying one get-rich-quick scheme after another, practically bankrupting them because they were desperate to help him find himself.

"Not really, but I will be, I just need a few more minutes..."

"You got it, sweetie...want me to give him the pain meds and I'll tell him you'll be there in a few?"

"Yeah, thanks,
Terri...can you let me know when the patient in Exam Room 9 is gone?"

"Jasmine Ramos?" she asked curiously.  "Something happen?"

"No, I just don't want to go in there again.  I gave her discharge instructions.  She'll leave if you bring her a scrub set, then I'll take care of Mr. Rhodes."

"Okay, but we are so going for a drink after work, and you are going to tell me what the hell is going on with you.
  Hiding isn't your style, and you know it." 

Terri
was right, hiding wasn't her style, but neither was confronting Beau and causing a scene in the Emergency Department.  She didn't need anymore trouble. 

Jenny nodded and turned her back and she heard
Terri leave quietly shutting the door behind her.

CHAPTER TWO

The pain in Chase's shoulder and head had eased some now, and his thoughts were starting to mesh together again.
  When his 'angel' walked through the examining room door with a tight smile on her beautiful face, he realized now she
was
his doctor.

"Feeling better?" she asked and widened her smile, until he almost believed it might be real.

"Yeah, thanks for the drugs, they helped," he said with a chuckle.

"My pleasure...I have good news for you.  Your head is harder than it looks," she teased then stood beside his bed.

"Funny, that's what my mama always says too," he told her his handsome face splitting with a wide smile, or trying to.  She imagined the drugs would explain the goofy wobble.  Wobbly or not, his beautiful smile did things to her.  Things she wasn't going to think about right at the moment.

"You have a concussion, but you didn't crack your skull.  Now, all I have to do is sew you up, and you'll be as good as new."

"Well, little lady, I think we might want a doctor to be handling that job," a gruff voice said from behind her.  Chase flinched and his lips pinched.

"She is a doctor, dad," he said with a groan and
tried to apologize with his eyes.  "Doctor Anderson, this is my father Jack Rhodes."

Jenny turned around and stiffened her shoulders
.  She stuck out her hand to the man whose head almost reached her shoulders.  How this rough looking good ole boy could have fathered such a handsome man, Jenny would never know.  The man was in a business suit, and a cowboy hat, and had enough bling on his fingers to blind someone, but it didn't hide his roughneck roots.  Chase had evidently hit the gene pool lottery.

He shook her hand with a little clasp like men who had no idea how to interact with women in the workplace often did, then dropped it quickly and looked at Chase.

"How the hell did you get shot, son?" Jack Rhodes asked his son gruffly.

"It's a long story, and I'm too worn out to tell you now
, dad...just let her sew me up, and we can get out of here before mom finds out."

"Your m
ama already knows, she's gonna meet Shauna here in a couple of hours.  I was in Dallas when they called me, so I was closer."

Chase groaned again and closed his eyes.  "Call them and tell them to turn around, I'm fine.  I'll probably be out of here before they get here."

"No, you won't...I'm keeping you," Jenny told him.  A small thrill shot through her when the double meaning of her words registered.

"Oh, please let me go home,"
Chase begged her in a low desperate tone. 

He must really not want to see his sister and mother, she thought, but he needed to be here overnight for observation.

"You need to have IV antibiotics, and we need to watch you because of the concussion.  I can't let you go," she told him with a shake of her head.  "I'm sorry."

"You'll be sorry," he mumbled and huffed out a breath.

"You know there's no stopping your mama when she works up a head of steam...and let me tell you, she's plenty worked up," Jack Rhodes roughly said with a grimace.

"Why the heck did you call her?" Chase asked in a frustrated tone.

"Because her baby boy has a bullet in him, and I want to stay married to her.  If I hadn't called, she'd have skinned me alive, and you know it," his dad told him with a chuckle.

"I guess you're right...but you didn't have to call Shauna, she's gonna miss class," Chase reprimanded.

"That was your mother's doings, not mine.  I'm sure if she didn't call her, they'd have a blowout too."

"You're probably right
there too," Chase admitted, although he didn't want to have to deal with the two women in his life right now.  It was hard enough dealing with them when he was at a hundred percent.  They both tried to smother him with love. 

Chase loved his family, every single
crazy one of them, his mother and sister especially, but sometimes their doting and nosing into his business sent him into family overload.  Being at the mansion where he'd grown up got claustrophobic at times, even as large as it was, and even though he rented the guesthouse out behind the mansion, and didn't actually live in the main house.  There wasn't enough space separating them. 

At thirty-two years old, it was time for him to find his own space away from them, no matter how much his mother would wail.  That was one reason he went to the lake so much, to have some time away from them.

He thought maybe that was why his brother Joel had gotten married and moved to Dallas.  Chase would think about getting married, he didn't have anything against the institution, his brother's seemed to be working out well, but a guy had to have a long term relationship and a willing woman, before he could get married. 

T
he best Chase could do with women these days was being a friend.  Sex or friendship was all they wanted from him.  While that was enough for most guys, Chase preferred more.

Yeah, he was a friendly guy, helped out where he could, but he couldn't figure out why none of the women he'd been interested in lately seemed to think he was a keeper.  Maybe he needed to be like the men th
ose women chose over him...an asshole.

"I hear your boat is shot up too?" his dad taunted.  He knew Chase loved that boat, and babied it.  When Chase had been carted off
from the lake he was unconscious and woke up dazed and in pain, so he had no idea what condition the She Devil was in.  He almost didn't want to know.

"I don't know dad, all I know is I got shot, slipped on the deck and hit my head.  Who told you she was shot up?" Chase asked him curiously.

"I called a friend of mine with the Rangers and got the scoop."  Of course he did, his dad had connections everywhere...knew everyone. 

"They impounded it for evidence, so it'll be a while before you can get it back," he informed Chase with entirely too much glee.

"I know you don't like how much time I spend at the lake, dad, but I can't work twenty-four hours a day...I deserve some down time too," Chase said the words again that he'd said to his workaholic father too many times lately.

"Yadda, yadda...gotta keep your eye on the prize son, or someone else will snatch it from under your nose."

"Money isn't everything, dad..." Chase told him.

"Speaking of money...I was in
Dallas for a reason, son.  I'm hiring a private investigator, something is up with our wells."

Concern
raced through Chase and he raised a brow.  "What's going on?"

"Well fires...we've had a rash of them lately.  You'd know that if you'd been inspecting them like you shoulda been
doing, instead of causing a ruckus at the lake."

Chase closed his eyes and swallowed down the nausea that suddenly returned with a vengeance.  He heard the angel doctor's voice, but this time it wasn't soft when she said, "Mr. Rhodes, I think you need to leave and let Chase get some rest.  His condition is stable now, but he's been shot
and rest is what he needs to get better.  You may want to call your wife and daughter and ask them to wait until tomorrow to come.  He probably will be out of here by tomorrow afternoon.  Maybe they can come and pick him up?"

Chase opened his eyes to gauge his daddy's reaction, because nobody talked to Jack Rhodes the way the angel
doctor had just done.  His dad's only reaction was a lift of his gray brows and a twist of his lips. 

"Well, aren't you a brazen little thing?" his dad said sarcastically, but Chase saw
grudging respect in his gray eyes.

"When it's in my patient's best interest, you da
rned right I am.  Now, I suggest you leave, so I can get him sewn up and moved to a regular room.  If you insist on seeing him after that, you can do it there.  Right now, you're in my way."

"Fine, I'll wait for your mother and sister in the waiting room," he told Chase then turned and left.

"I like your style, Doc...thank you," Chase told her with a wink, then managed to work his face into a grin.  From the drugs his head kind of felt disconnected from his body, smiling took some concentration.  When he saw her gorgeous smile in return, Chase figured the effort had been worth it.

She snorted, then told him,
"This isn't my first rodeo with overbearing relatives."

"Well, you better get ready for round two when my mom and sister get here," he warned
with what he hoped was another smile.  He couldn't feel his cheeks now, his whole face felt kind of rubbery.

"You don't worry about that, you just relax and I'm going to stitch up your
shoulder.  Roll over on your right side for me," she told him and he complied.  He would do just about anything the beautiful doctor asked him to do right about now. 

"I'm going to try to make it pretty, so it doesn't scar," she told him.  "Let me know if I hurt you."

Chase was vaguely aware of a nurse coming into the room to help her, but his brain was so foggy now, he wasn't real sure.  He felt the pinch of needles in his shoulder briefly, but he could tell she was being careful not to hurt him.  He appreciated the effort, but it was wasted, he thought, right before he succumbed to the heavy pull of a drug-induced sleep.

***

When Chase came around he was in a different room, and Jazzie had stopped by to check on him, before she left the hospital.  He was happy to see her no worse for wear after what happened to her.  The only drawback was that Beau Bowman was with her.  Chase took the opportunity to give the man some much deserved hell about leaving Jazzie on the boat alone, while he took off like Flipper to swim around the lake, when he was supposed to be guarding her. 

Jazzie was pissed that they were arguing, but she only gave Bowman hell for it.  She argued with him a few minutes, then whispered something in his ear that left the tough guy looking poleaxed. 
Chase would give anything to know what she'd said.  Whatever it was left Bowman's feet stuck to the floor, before he followed her out the door without a word.

Chase just couldn't see what
Jasmine saw in the guy.  The man sure didn't appreciate her, or treat her right from what Chase could see.  He hadn't even had the consideration to tell her the FBI had found her brother and had him in protective custody.  In Chase's opinion that was pretty unforgivable, because they all knew she was worried sick about her brother.

If the
argument he'd just witnessed was any indication, Chase figured those two wouldn't be together for long.  People in love just didn't argue like that.

But
that was Jazzie's call to make, not his. 

At the lake,
Jazzie had made it perfectly clear to Chase that she wanted them to be friends, and only friends.  That's what he was going to be to her...unless she changed her mind.  Chase didn't like it, but what choice did he have?  The heart was a fickle organ, and hers seemed to be attached to the man she'd just left with. 

H
oping to fade off to sleep again, Chase huffed out a breath and closed his eyes.  His shoulder was starting to throb, and his head was too.  Sleep wasn't going to happen though, because the door to his room seemed to be a revolving one.  It swished open and he looked up to see his sister poke her head around the door.  Her tortured green eyes were circled by big black mascara rings.  Next to his mama, the biggest drama queen in Texas, who also happened to have the biggest heart, had just arrived.

"Oh, god, Chase..."
Shauna wailed and her face pinched up, then she ran across the room and threw herself across his chest like a widow on a funeral pyre.  Tears plopped on his chest and Chase groaned, then he moved his hand to caress her hair. 

If there was one thing Chase couldn't take it was a crying female.  He felt like the most useless tool in the shed when
the waterworks started.

"I'm okay, sugar...stop crying," he said softly
rubbing her hair.  This week, her rich brown tresses were shot through with vibrant blue streaks.  His little sister was an artist, and she was damned determined to let everyone know it with how she dressed and wore her wild hair styles.  It drove his mother nuts. 

"Is mom with you?" he asked dreading her answer.

"Yeah, she's downstairs talking to daddy.  She'll be up here in a minute, so prepare yourself.  She's a wreck."

Chase sighed and closed his eyes.  "
Ya'll didn't have to come, I'm getting out tomorrow.  They only kept me for observation."

She snorted then squeezed him, "You're my brother, and you were shot, where else would I be?"

"School?  You're almost done, sugar, you can't mess this up," Chase reprimanded.  Shauna had been in school forever, she was twenty-seven and almost a professional student since she'd changed majors so many times.  She was a hairsbreadth from her fine arts degree, and he just wanted to see her finish something for once.

"Yeah, there's that," she said and pushed up off of his chest.
  "I'm thinking I might go a few more semesters and switch my major to graphic arts."