LITMIR.BIZ

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for that damned reporter,” she said gruffly. “He called me a cripple!”

      “Cherry and I will rush right in to town and beat the stuffing out of him for you.”

      That brought a pained smile to her face. “Cover him in ink and wrap him up in his newspaper and hang him from a printing press.”

      “They don’t have printing presses anymore,” Cherry said knowledgeably. “Everything’s cold type now…offset printing.”

      Jane’s blue eyes widened. “My, my, you are a well-spring of information!” she said, impressed.

      Cherry grinned smugly. “One of my new teachers used to work for a newspaper. Now he teaches English.”

      “She knows everything,” Todd said with a resigned air. “Just ask her.”

      “Not everything, Dad.” She chuckled. “I don’t know how to do barrel-racing turns.”

      “I hear a car,” Tim said, glancing out the window. “It’s him.”

      Todd frowned at the way Jane’s eyes fell when he looked into them. Did she have mixed feelings about the doctor and was trying to hide it? Maybe Tim had been wrong and Jane had been sweet on the doctor, not the other way around.

      Todd got to his feet as a tall man with red hair came into the room, carrying a black bag. He was dressed in a nice gray Western-cut suit with a white shirt and a black string tie. Boots, too. He removed a pearl gray Stetson from his head, and tossed it onto the counter. Pale blue eyes swept the room, lingering on Todd Burke, who stared back, unsmiling.

      “This is Dr. Jebediah Coltrain,” Tim introduced the tall, slim man. “When he was younger, everybody used to call him Copper.”

      “They don’t anymore. Not without a head start,” the doctor said. He didn’t smile, either.

      “This is Todd Burke and his daughter, Cherry,” Tim said, introducing them. “Todd’s going to take over the book work for us.”

      Coltrain didn’t say much. He gave Todd a piercing stare that all but impaled him before he nodded curtly, without offering a hand in greeting. He was less reserved with Cherry, if that faint upturn of his thin lips was actually a smile.

      “Well, what fool thing have you done this time?” Coltrain asked Jane irritably. “Gone riding, I guess?”

      She glared at him through waves of pain. “I wasn’t going to let them push me out into that arena in a wheelchair,” she said furiously. “Not after what that weasel of a sports reporter wrote about me!”

      He made a sound deep in his throat that could have meant anything. He set about examining her with steely hands that looked menacing until they touched and probed with a tenderness that set Todd’s teeth on edge.

      “Muscle strain,” Coltrain pronounced at last. “You’ll need a few days in bed on muscle relaxers. Did you rent that traction rig I told you to get?”

      “Yes, we did, under protest,” Tim said with a chuckle.

      “Well, get started, then.”

      He lifted her as if she were a feather and carried her off to her bedroom. Todd, incensed out of all reason, followed them with an audible tread.

      Coltrain glanced over his shoulder at the other man with a faintly mocking smile. He didn’t need a road map to find a marked trail, and he knew jealousy when he saw it.

      He put Jane down gently on the double bed with its carved posts with the traction apparatus poised over it.

      “Need to make a pit stop before I hook you up?” Coltrain asked her without a trace of embarrassment.

      “No, I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “Go ahead.”

      He adjusted the brace that lifted her right leg, putting a pleasant pressure on the damaged hip that even surgery hadn’t put completely back to rights. “This won’t work any miracles, but it will help,” Coltrain told her. “You put too much stock in articles written by idiots.”

      “He didn’t write it about you!”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “He wouldn’t dare,” he said simply.

      She knew that. It irritated her. She closed her eyes. “It hurts.”

      “I can do something for that.” Coltrain reached in his bag and drew out a small bottle and a syringe. He handed a package to Todd. “Open that and swab the top of the bottle with it.”

      He had the sort of voice that expects obedience. Todd, who never took orders, actually did it with only a lopsided grin. He liked the doctor, against his will.

      Coltrain upended the bottle when Todd had finished, inserted the needle into the bottle and then drew up the correct amount of painkiller.

      He handed Todd another package containing an alcohol-soaked gauze. “Swab her arm, here.”

      He indicated a vein in her right arm and Todd looked at him.

      “It’s not addictive,” the doctor said gently. “I know what I’m doing.”

      Todd made a rough murmur and complied. It embarrassed him to show concern for a woman he barely knew. Coltrain’s knowing look made it worse.

      He swabbed her arm and Coltrain shot the needle in, efficiently and with a minimum of pain.

      “Thanks, Copper,” Jane told him quietly.

      He shrugged. “What are friends for?” He took a few sample packages out of the bag and gave them to Todd. “Two every six hours for severe pain. They’re stronger than the others I gave you,” he told Jane. “You can push this to five hours if you can’t bear it, but no sooner.” Coltrain fastened his bag and gave Jane a reassuring smile. “Stay put. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

      “Okay.” Her eyes were already closing.

      “I’ll sit with you until you go to sleep,” Cherry volunteered, and Jane smiled her agreement.

      Coltrain jerked his head toward the living room. Tim and Todd followed. He closed the bedroom door behind them.

      “I want her X-rayed,” he told them without pre amble. “I think it’s muscular, but I’m not going to stake my life on it. The last thing she needed was to get on a horse.”

      “I tried to stop her,” Tim told him.

      “I realize that. I’m not blaming you. She’s a handful.” He eyed Todd openly. “Can you keep her off horses?”

      Todd smiled slowly. “Watch me.”

      “That’s what I thought. She isn’t safe to be let out alone these days, always trying to prove herself.” He grabbed his Stetson and started toward the door. “She’s in too much pain to be moved today. I’ll send an ambulance for her in the morning and make all the necessary arrangements at Jacobsville Memorial. She won’t like it,” he added wryly.

      “But she’ll do it,” Todd replied easily.

      For the first time, Coltrain chuckled. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall tomorrow when that ambulance gets here.”

      The telephone rang and Tim answered it. He grimaced, holding it out to Coltrain.

      The other man picked it up with a rough sigh. “Coltrain,” he said as if he knew who was calling.

      His face grew harder by the second. “Yes. No. I don’t give a damn, it’s my practice and that’s how I do things. If you don’t like it, get out. Damn the contract!” He glanced at the wide-eyed faces near him and shifted his posture. “We’ll talk about this when I get back. Yes, you do that.” He put the receiver down with a savagely controlled jerk of his lean hand. His eyes glittered like blue water on a snake’s back. “Call me if you need me.”

      After he was gone,

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