LITMIR.BIZ

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pat and addressed the woman who had had her ear on Jake’s chest. “Stay with him.” To which she nodded agreeably.

      Guy ran to where Ms. Stone lay sprawled on the ground. What a sight, all that aqua covered with dust.

      “My ankle. My ankle,” she cried when she saw him, and then moaned loudly.

      “Ms. Stone, it’s all right. I’ll help you.”

      “It’s broken. I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it was wrong to come here.” She waved a hand as if she were referring to all of Montana.

      She probably was.

      “Relax and let me have a look at your ankle.”

      “Don’t touch me. I want a doctor, not a seminar leader.”

      It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he nodded. “I’ll take you to the doctor.”

      He thought of the doctor in St. Adelbert, Dr. Maude DeVane. He should have let her take advantage of his younger brother’s good nature and generous heart all those years ago.

      He could have saved Henry from a gold digger.

      

      IN TOWN, Curly Martin held up his hot-pink cast. “Thank you so much, Dr. DeVane. This ought to set their tongues a waggin’.” He guffawed and stepped down from the table in the ortho room where he had acquiesced to sit so Maude could cast his arm properly.

      “I’ll walk you out, Curly,” Maude said. Her suggestion of keeping Curly for observation had been met with true mirth by the nonagenarian. “What’ll happen, Dr. DeVane?” he’d said. “I might die before my time?”

      The phone on the main desk rang as Maude and Curly passed. Abby snatched it up and began to write on a notepad.

      “Remember.” Maude walked beside the old man. “If there’s a problem, I want to see you within the hour, not the next day because you decided to wait and see what happened.”

      “Told ya, did he.”

      “Jimmy did the right thing to bring you here. And I want to check your arm in two weeks.”

      “I’ll be good, Dr. DeVane.”

      Curly’s great-grandson, who had been banished to the truck for “showing a bit too much concern for such a young fella,” jumped out and took his great-grandfather by his uninjured arm.

      Curly turned back toward Maude and rolled his eyes, but he let the boy help him as if he needed it.

      “Thanks a million, Doctor,” Jimmy called over his shoulder as he stuffed Curly into the cab of the truck.

      “Curly, either stay on the horse, or stay off it.” Maude smiled at the old man.

      He grinned and waved with the cast she had applied because she didn’t think he’d keep a splint on for any longer than he was in her direct sight. The pink had been his idea.

      As they drove off, an eddy of dust from their wake made its way across the town’s wide main thoroughfare and dissipated against the white-and-blue facade of Alice’s Diner. There had been many an “Alice” over the years. In the distance, a flock of birds flew above the trees with the sun glistening off the white of their feathers.

      “Home.” Contentment like she hadn’t known in years swept through her. Soon, it wouldn’t matter that she had once been the little girl everyone called Maudie.

      As she reentered the building, Abby came toward her with a paper in her hand. “There’s two more coming in, Dr. DeVane. An ankle. Not too serious, by the sound of it. The other was kicked in the chest.”

      “Any details on the second one?” Kicked in the chest by a horse or a steer was often life threatening. Broken ribs. Punctured lungs. Bruised heart muscle. “Kicked by what?”

      “They say he seems fine, but he was apparently kicked by the other one.”

      “Hard enough to hurt an ankle?” Maude gave a small shudder as she thought of how that might have come about. “How soon?”

      “A few minutes. And there’s one more thing.”

      “Yes?”

      “They’re coming from Mountain High.”

      “But—” Maude stopped as pain rushed in and nearly took her breath away.

      “I’m sorry, Dr. DeVane. I know Henry was your friend.”

      “It’s okay.” Maude waved off the nurse’s concern and turned into the office. Someone had restarted Henry Daley’s business. When the young entrepreneur had died last summer, she had thought Mountain High Executive Services had died with him.

      She sat down to enter notes in Curly’s medical record, but tapped a pen tip on the clipboard instead. The first time she met Henry, he had tried to die on her. Before she got the chance to make a diagnosis, his arrogant, older, M.D. brother whisked the younger man away to another hospital.

      Henry…

      “Dr. DeVane?”

      Maude cleared the tightness from her throat and faced Abby. “Are they here?”

      “The van’s coming up the street. Carolyn’s still here and we’ll call if there’s something you need to see right away.”

      “Thanks, Abby,” Maude said as Abby hurried away.

      Maude repositioned the squeezy clip in the back of her wavy, shoulder-length brown hair. The clinic was old-fashioned in some respects, but the nurses, like Abby, and techs, like Carolyn, were as good as those at big-city clinics.

      They had to be; they cared for their neighbors every day.

      After a few minutes, the automatic doors opened, and a loud wail filled the clinic. Maude leaped from her chair and stepped out into the hallway to see Carolyn pushing a wheelchair filled with a mildly obese, fifty-something woman.

      “Is that the doctor? Help me, Doctor.” The woman reached toward Maude with outstretched hands.

      Carolyn, a small woman with big red glasses, an X-ray technician by training and one of Doc Avery’s long-standing assistants, patted the woman’s shoulder. “Dr. DeVane will be in as soon as I get you more comfortable, ma’am.”

      The woman wailed again, and the tech hurried her off to a treatment room.

      The outside doors whooshed open and Abby entered, pushing an empty wheelchair. The second patient walked beside her. When he saw Maude, the man touched a finger to the brim of an imaginary hat. “Hello, Dr. DeVane.” Grief touched his look.

      She led him toward the treatment room. “Mr. Hancock, I’ll be in to see you after the nurse gets you settled.” Jake had been the one who’d called her in Chicago about Henry’s fatal accident, but true to his tacit nature, she got few details. Jake must have somehow restarted Mountain High.

      Maude turned away and as she did, she noticed a man in the clinic doorway standing with his back to her. The glare of the bright sun pouring in the doorway outlined his tall form, his broad shoulders and trim waist, a man of her fantasies, if she ever had time for those anymore. The man lifted a folded piece of paper and tilted his head like—

      “Guy Daley.”

      The name escaped as her heart began to pound. She forced a breath in and out…remembering.

      In spite of the cold, his kiss had made her feel as if she were riding a wind on fire. Dangerous and exciting, it had left her soul scorched. But whatever she had thought she felt for this man, he had killed on that rainy Chicago night.

      He stepped forward out of the halo of sunlight into the artificially lit hallway, dressed in ranch-work clothes, his challenging gaze fixed on her. She found herself staring into dark eyes. Eyes she once gazed into wondering if there were feelings for her buried somewhere in the deep shadows.

      A

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