[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Sure. One, two
Ellie jammed the needle in and depressed the plunger.
Tyler swayed like a palm tree in a high wind. Jesus effing Christ! What happened to
three?
Ellie pulled the needle out and placed it on the table. While waiting for the anesthesia
to take effect, she explained, Three is where you tense up and a little shot ends up
feeling like a knuckleball hitting your muscle at ninety miles per hour.
Oh, well, thank you very much. That felt like eighty-five miles per hour, tops.
You re welcome. Using gauze, she dabbed blood away from the injury. Let s give it a
minute to work, and then I ll remove the bullet and you ll be as good as new in no time.
A skeptical grunt served as his reply.
She selected a long, slender pair of tweezers from the table and lightly touched the
wound. No reaction from the patient. Want to tell me how this happened?
Would you believe, self-inflicted?
She laughed. Not a chance. Nor will I believe your dog, cat, bird, or iguana accidently
discharged your gun. Nor, at this hour, will I believe it was a hunting accident.
Worth a try.
Try the truth, she recommended, enjoying a moment of triumph as she snagged the
small metal round between the tweezers and extracted it. She flushed the wound and
pressed more gauze to the site.
He sighed. I was down at Rawley s Pub, having a drink and, um, let s say chatting with
Lou Ann Doubletree.
Lou Ann had been a year ahead of Ellie in school, but she remembered the tall, sandy-
haired blonde well enough. The older girl boasted two particularly unforgettable features.
Lou Ann Double D?
For a girl who s not fond of her own nickname, you re awful quick to toss out someone
else s.
She liked hers. She was proud of the body parts inspiring it.
They are inspirational, you gotta admit.
So I m told, she said, doing a mental eye roll. What was it with men and mammary
glands? She tied off the thread on a surgical needle and prepared to start stitching. So,
you were at Rawley s, chatting with Lou Ann, and&
She s on-again-off-again with Junior Tillman. Remember him?
The name sounded familiar. Her memory called up a wide, burly guy with a booming
voice and a proclivity for smashing empty beer cans on his forehead whenever the
Buffalos scored a touchdown. She completed the first stitch. Beefy guy. Your year. Had a
voice like a bullhorn?
That s him. Anyway, according to Lou Ann, they re currently off, but Junior showed up
tonight with his drink most definitely on, and a slightly different recollection of where
they d left things.
So he shot you? I can t believe you haven t already called the cops. Despite her
agitation, she added another small, tidy stitch to the meticulous line. It would be a
travesty to scar such perfection.
No need to get all worked up. He went after me with the coon chaser he keeps in the
gun rack of his pickup. He wasn t aiming to kill me, just stake his claim.
Stake his& Oh my God, you re all hopeless. She tied off the final suture, cut the
thread, and tossed the scissors on the table.
Not my way of thinking, Doc. I m just trying to explain what was going through Junior s
half-rocked mind. He s going to feel real bad about this once he sleeps off the booze.
He can sleep it off in a cell, she said firmly.
Tyler made a negative sound. Junior s a damn good builder, plus he s got a four-year-
old boy with a baby mama over in Ashland. If he s in jail, it s going to be real tough for
him to make child-support payments. Then the kid suffers for Junior s bourbon-fueled bad
judgment.
He shot you. I m obligated to notify the authorities. It s nonnegotiable. Considering
the matter settled, she affixed a bandage over the stitches. You re done.
He craned his neck to look at his bandaged cheek, then hauled up his jeans and turned
around. Those hypnotic green eyes captured hers. His lips curved up in a slow, simmering
smile. Everything s negotiable.
Melody s words from the diner floated through Ellie s mind. Roger s ideal woman has a
whole lot of experience and very few boundaries.
Practicing medicine wasn t a gig for the easily shocked, so she didn t see boundaries as
an issue. But experience? That was another matter. Maybe the answer stood before her,
in the form of a walking, talking wealth of sexual know-how? Medically speaking, he also
qualified as a walking, talking female libido enhancer.
C mon Doc, what would I have to do to persuade you to keep this between us?
Acknowledgments
Getting this book ready for publication was like that reality show where the woman
doesn t know she s pregnant and then, BAM! She s havin a baby, and it s a mad scramble
for everyone to get where they need to be. Big, huge, eternal THANKS to Heather
Howland, editor extraordinaire, for being so steady, and dang-it, cool, when things
started to move fast. Same to Sue Winegardner. Not sure what I did right to score you as
an assistant editor, (or, hmmm& what you did wrong), but I thank my lucky stars and
offer you my condolences.
Another round of thanks to&
My sister, former LAPD and Irvine PD officer, and my LAPD homicide detective brother-
in-law, for answering my questions about police procedure and homicide investigations,
and not cringing too badly when I took unbounded creative license with all of it.
Maggie Kelley, for encouraging me to enter this story in the Cleveland Rocks Romance
Contest, and the contest judges, for liking it.
Author Lynne Marshall, my amazing, talented writing mentor, who gently and patiently
critiqued this story into something submit-table.
My husband, for responding, I don t know, honey, I ve never been, to all my strip-club
questions. You, sir, are a keeper.
Fellow Entangled authors Robin Bielman and Hayson Manning, for letting me hang with
you and pretend some of your awesomeness rubs off on me.
About the Author
Award winning author Samanthe Beck lives in Malibu, California, with her husband, their
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]