Stripped Down (12 page)

“True.” Wyn swallowed a mouthful of beer. “So we good?”

“I reckon. Be weird not havin’ Dad around day-to-day. I’m gonna miss him and those fucked up curse word combinations he uses when he’s frustrated.”

Wyn smiled. “I’m gonna miss him too. He and Mom deserve a chance to spend the money he’s been saving all these years. As for us…dividing the profits by two instead of by three will take some getting used to.”

Cres grinned. “That extra cash will come in handy for you since you’re playin’ house.”

“Asshole. What about you and Mick? Any thoughts of playin’ house with him?”

“It’s casual,” was all Cres said. “He’s comin’ to help load for the Denver trip tomorrow.”

“That’s an overnight trip.”

“Yep. If you gotta problem with that, let me know.”

Wyn shot him a
don’t be an idiot
look. “I don’t.”

“Good.” Cres exhaled. “Thanks. Christ. I don’t know fuck-all about havin’ a boyfriend, bro.”

“Mick keeps comin’ back around, so you must know how to do something right.” As soon as that left Wyn’s mouth, he groaned. “Shit. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Cres laughed. “How ’bout we don’t go there.
Ever.
”

“Deal.” He smirked. “Although…Melissa said you and Mick together…that’d be live porn she’d watch.”

“Jesus. No wonder you love her. She’s as perverted as you.”

* * * *

After almost three weeks of ranch life, Mel hadn’t gotten used to waking up at the butt crack of dawn and hauling her carcass out of a toasty bed.

So Wynton’s way-too-early, and way-too-chipper summons, “Up and at ’em, Kentucky,” as he beat on her door annoyed the crap out of her.

Mel forced herself to respond, “I’ll be there in five,” somewhat politely, instead of yelling at him to get the fucking battering ram away from her door.

Yeah. She was punchy and cranky.

After taking her shot of insulin, she shoved a glucose pill in her jeans, packed her coat pockets with snacks and filled her water bottle. The last day of shipping cattle meant everyone was in a hurry, so she didn’t have time for coffee or breakfast.

Mistake number one.

Once she’d saddled up and the sun had come out, she’d immediately overheated. She took her jacket off and tossed it over a fencepost.

Mistake number two.

Since this was the largest group of cattle going to market, of course everything went wrong. Which meant she spent four hours chasing down runaways and culling cows from the milling herd.

Four hours without a break, without water, and without her trusty snacks.

Mistake number three.

But rather than tell Wynton she hit the hypoglycemic stage and was about to crash, she decided it’d be better to just go off and crash alone.

Mistake number four.

The edges of her conscious began to shrink in on her like a camera viewfinder that starts out close, but objects get smaller and farther away until everything is fuzzy and ringed with black.

She rode to the barn and dismounted. If she could just have a few minutes of clarity to unsaddle her horse while those guys—loaded or unloaded the cattle?—she couldn’t remember, she could probably make it to the house before she collapsed.

Wait. The house was collapsing? Why?

She was so confused.

Where was she? What happened to her horse?

Mel spun around and that action caused a quick spike of pain. She tried to pat the top of her head to see if some asshole had buried an ax in her skull, but she ended up smacking herself in the face.

Fuck that hurt.

Take a pill for it.

Good plan. She dug in her pocket—why weren’t her fingers working?—and found a round, white thing. She squinted at it. After enclosing it in her fist, she went to find water. She took two steps forward and swayed.

Whoa. When had she gotten on the carousel? Why was everything spinning so fast it was blurred? What was that loud, whooshing noise?

She made it to a bale of straw before the darkness overcame her.

Chapter Nine

After the cattle truck rumbled down the driveway, Wyn did loading chute maintenance—his least favorite part of shipping cattle. But if he didn’t fix the problems now, they’d have issues the next time they used the chutes because he wouldn’t remember what needed done.

He’d welcomed Mick’s help today. Wyn was especially grateful that Mick was riding with Cres to the sale barn, so Wyn could catch up on the piles of paperwork that always accompanied selling cattle. Cres and Mick planned to stay overnight in Denver before heading home. He wouldn’t begrudge his brother a little personal time since he’d come to realize how much he needed that in his own life.

Speaking of…he wondered where his hot, redheaded cattle cutting expert had gone. She’d been acting a little weird toward the end.

He saw Plato in the corral, but it looked like he still wore a bridle and bit. Melissa would never turn him out like that.

“Melissa?”

No response.

An eerie feeling rippled down his spine. “Melissa?” he called into the barn.

No answer.

If his head had been turned the other direction, he might’ve missed her. But the red in her corduroy shirt snagged his attention. He sauntered up to the hay bale she sat on and noticed her eyes were closed. “Napping on the job, Kentucky? For shame.”

Melissa didn’t acknowledge him at all.

Man, she was really asleep. But as soon as he stood in front of her, he knew she wasn’t napping. Something was wrong with her.

He crouched down and took her hand. Holy shit, it was like ice. But he saw her forehead was damp with perspiration and her face was flushed. He tried to shake her. “Melissa?”

She mumbled something.

“Baby, you’re scarin’ me.” Wyn noticed her other hand was closed in a tight fist. He pried her fingers open and saw she’d clutched a white pill. He remembered her complaining of a bad headache last night before she’d gone to bed in her own room. How many of these had she taken?

When her body started to shake uncontrollably and even that didn’t wake her up, he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.

After he’d given them the information, hearing the word overdose—which he vehemently argued against, he decided to buck the operator’s judgment and move Melissa to the ground.

He’d just propped her head on his jacket when he heard the unmistakable sound of a cattle truck rumbling up the driveway.

His annoyance that Cres had forgotten something
again
, was immediately replaced with a sense of urgency. Mick had medical training.

Wyn carefully lifted Melissa into his arms and carried her out of the barn. He’d made it halfway to the house when both men jumped out of the cab of the truck and ran toward him.

“What happened?” Cres demanded.

“I don’t know. I found her like this. Mick, help her,” he pleaded.

“Completely unresponsive?”

“Yes. Then she started to shake, almost like she was having a seizure.”

“Take her in the house. You called 911?”

“Just got off the phone with them, but they said it’ll be at least fifteen minutes.”

Once they were inside, Wyn laid Melissa on the couch. He hovered over her as Mick poked and prodded her.

“Is she on any medication?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “Wait, she had this in her hand.” He passed over the pill.

Mick held it up to the light and frowned.

“What?”

“It’s a glucose pill.”

“What’s that?”

“Diabetics take them when their blood sugar levels are low.” Mick looked up at him. “Wyn, is Melissa diabetic?”

“I have no idea. She’s never mentioned it to me.”

“You haven’t seen her testing her blood sugar levels first thing in the morning? Or the last thing before she crawls in bed at night?”

Suddenly, her secretiveness, her insistence on sleeping in her own bed at night and even locking her damn door in the morning made sense. Wyn said, “Fuck. We don’t sleep in the same bed. She claimed she’s a restless sleeper and needs her own space, so she’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom. But obviously it was so she could keep this from me. Why would she do that?”

“Worry about that later. Right now, go into her room and see if you can find a blood glucose meter, some kind of insulin injection instruments. Hopefully she's got a Glucagon rescue kit.”

Wyn looked at Cres with utter confusion. “What did he say?”

“Mick, under the circumstances it’d be better for you to do it since you know what to look for,” Cres said.

“Where’s her room?”

“Last one at the end of the hallway.”

Mick took off.

Wyn dropped to his knees beside Melissa. He picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. “You and me are gonna have a serious talk when you’re not goddamned unconscious.”

“Promise me you won’t yell at her for this when she comes around.”

He turned and glared at Cres. “Why the fuck would you even say that to me?”

“For that reason right there. You get angry first and maybe you’ll try reasonable later. I’m askin’ you not to do that this time. There’s a reason she kept this from you. If you want to understand why, don’t scare her off with your blustering and accusations.” He softened his tone. “I know you care about her. And I know she’s crazy about you. So don’t wreck this. Just…tread lightly okay?”

Mick jogged back into the room. He held up a kit. “She’s got one.”

“You know what to do?”

“Yeah. You gotta move, man,” Mick said to him. “Oh, and I found her medic alert bracelet. She is diabetic. Type 1. She’s insulin dependent.”

Wyn was absolutely poleaxed. This woman that he’d bared his soul to, opened his home to, made love to and had fallen for…hadn’t trusted him enough to share this with him.

“This will help her out a lot,” Mick said.

“Should I call and cancel the ambulance?” Wyn asked.

“No. The paramedics will need to assess her. They might even take her to the hospital since it sounds like she might’ve had a seizure.”

Seizure.
That word twisted his guts into a knot. He couldn’t watch as Mick…did whatever he did, because Wyn would be tempted to ask a million questions. The time for questions would come later.

Time passed in an endless void as he paced.

Finally, he heard Mick say, “No, Mel, don’t try and sit up.”

Melissa said something too low for Wyn to hear. But Mick’s response was loud and clear. “Yes, he’s here.”

She was asking for him?

Wyn crossed the room and stood behind Mick. A sick feeling twisted his stomach again. Until he heard her whisper…

“Tell him I love him.”

Say what?

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate hearing that.” Mick sent Wyn an apologetic look. “She’s babbling.”

But I want her to mean it.

Mick kept up a running dialogue, if only to keep Melissa from talking. “It’s only been twenty minutes since we left. We had to turn around because Cres left the paperwork and his wallet in the tack room.”

“Wyn?”

What the hell? She never called him Wyn. She always called him by his full name. It appeared she didn’t know what she was saying. “Yeah, baby, I’m here.”

Melissa’s skin was blotchy, red in spots, pasty white in others. Her eyes were vacant. But when she saw him? Her eyes held fear. And then a film of tears. Her lips started to wobble after she mouthed “sorry” and then she turned her head into the couch cushion, away from him.

The fuck that was happening. She was goddamn
done
hiding anything from him. Wyn stepped in front of Mick and braced his hand on the wall above the back of the couch, so he loomed above her. He reached down and gently turned her face toward him. “Kentucky, look at me.”

“Wyn,” Cres warned.

“Butt out, bro. This is between me and my woman.”

That got Melissa’s eyes to open again.

He stroked his thumb over her cheek. “There she is, my beautiful, stubborn filly. Fair warning, darlin’. After the EMTs get here and tell me what steps I need to take to get you back to normal, you and me are gonna have a serious talk.”

“You’re mad at me,” she choked out.

“No, I’m scared for you. Big difference. Now I’m gonna let Mick do his thing. I just wanted you to know I’m here and I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

Her eyes teared up again and she nodded before she closed her eyes.

The paramedics arrived.

Wyn hung on the periphery and tried to decipher what they were saying as they spoke to her and Mick. Even when he knew it was ridiculous, he had a flash of annoyance that the EMTs were talking to Mick about Melissa’s condition when they should’ve been talking to him. He should know this stuff. Every single bit of it. He vowed he’d never be kept out of the loop again when it came to Melissa’s health issues. He’d read everything he could get his hands on so he knew exactly how to help her. And figure out how to prevent this from ever happening again.

The female EMT finally took Wyn aside. “We’re not admitting her to the hospital as long as you’re comfortable keeping a very close eye on her the next twenty-four hours.”

“Absolutely.”

“Mick indicated that you weren’t aware she was diabetic.”

“No, but I can promise you I’ll be up to speed on everything about this in the next few hours.”

“There’s tons of information online—most of it is excellent. Thankfully she had an emergency kit. You’d be surprised how many diabetics aren’t so well-prepared. Anyway, she said she took her dose of insulin this morning, so this…episode isn’t due to negligence—aka ‘forgetting’ to inject herself. It sounds like she overexerted herself the past few days.”

Wyn experienced a punch of guilt over that. He
had
been working her hard. “The tablet she had in her hand. Is that part of her daily medication?”

“No, it’s supposed to be a quick fix when she feels the effects of low blood sugar. That’s just one of many choices to get her glycemic index back in balance. She can fill you in on what foods/drinks/snacks usually work best for her when her body tells her she’s hypoglycemic.”