Make You Mine, page 21
“Stop moving, will you? Your leg is stuck on a branch sticking out of this log and I can see”—she looked down his body at his lower extremities and her pallor grew even grayer—“oh crap, I can see a bone sticking out of your shin.” She plopped down next to him, heedless of the poisonous plants covering the ground, and pulled her phone out of her shorts pocket. “I’m calling 911.”
“You just sat in poison ivy,” he ground out, lifting his head again and biting the inside of his cheek to keep from adding idiot. He was pretty sure he owed her one. But on the other hand, he also needed some help here.
“It doesn’t bother me. I never get it.” She raked her fingers through her hair as she spoke to emergency services, relating what she believed happened, making him sound like a colossal dumbass as she speculated to the dispatcher that she thought he might have shot himself.
“I didn’t shoot myself,” he said as loudly as he could, given he’d dropped his face back on the ground because even the slightest movement sent red-hot fire through his leg and up into his thigh.
“Yeah, he says he’s not shot, but his leg . . . man, it’s pretty awful. Not bleeding too badly, but there’s a sharp piece of a stick stuck in his calf and his shin’s broken for sure”—she gulped—“I can see the bone. No, no, I won’t touch it. God, no!” She looked down at him. “What’s your address?”
He moaned, his mind a blank.
“It’s on Fourth Street behind Sudbury’s Nursery. Maybe the 2900 block?” she said into her phone.
“It’s 2917,” Joe managed.
“It’s 2917,” she repeated for the dispatcher, paused to listen, then asked, “What’s your name?”
“Joe Walker.” That came out stronger, but the effort exhausted him.
“Oh, crap! Joey? Joey Walker?” She bent her head to peer down at him, and her eyes, which were an unusual golden-brown color, were huge.
Those eyes . . . a faint memory of those eyes shimmering with tears . . . him, and was it Aidan Flaherty? Sitting in a cherry tree at Dykeman’s orchard, tossing . . . No, not stones, never stones, but hard, unripe cherries that resembled green olives at Tim Dykeman’s younger sister Vanessa and another little brown-haired girl in pink shorts and a grimy shirt. They’d run away, crying, but she’d turned around when they were too far for the boys to hit them and yelled, You’re mean, just mean, that’s all. I’m going to get you, Joey Walker! You just wait!
Well, hell. Little Kara Rose Sudbury. He closed his eyes, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, and clenched his teeth as another wave of pain washed over him. “I go by Joe now,” he gritted, not sure at all why it felt important to say that at that moment. It just did.
Kara untied the kelly-green gardener’s apron that was around her slim waist and carefully lifted his head and, as he moaned, spread the fabric over the foliage, getting as much of his face and neck out of the poison ivy as she could. “What were you shooting at?” Clearly, she was trying to take his mind off his pain.
“Fox.” He grimaced. Even speaking was painful. “Raiding my chicken coop.”
“So, you decided to shoot the poor little thing?” Her tone told him all he needed to know about her feelings toward woodland creatures.
“Poor little thing’s killed three hens.” He turned his head slightly on the apron, grateful for the relief from the brambles and weeds but uncomfortable as heck with her accusing expression.
Kara reached over and plucked a couple of thorns from his cheek. “Maybe she’s feeding kits.”
“Maybe she needs to find—ah, ow—her food in the woods, like all the other wild animals out there.”
“Lie still,” she ordered, smoothing his hair off the side of his face. “You’re going to pull that leg off the stick, and you’ll bleed out before the ambulance gets here. My socks are too short to make a tourniquet, and I’m not tearing up my Tower of London T-shirt or using my favorite bra to save your life.”
“Thanks.” Joe closed his eyes, a wave of dizziness swelling over him, then sudden nausea. He swallowed hard.
“Are you going to hurl?”
He swallowed again. “I’m con-considering it.” He thought he might hear sirens in the distance, but his mind was so fuzzy, he could have imagined it.
“Please don’t.” She raised her head, listening. Then Scout, who had been standing at attention since they’d arrived, suddenly started barking. “I hear it, Scout. They’re almost here.” Kara patted the dog’s head affectionately and tapped Joe on the shoulder. “Hey, is there someone I can call for you? Do you have a wife up there at the house?”
He shook his head, too sick and pained to even form words.
“How about your sister—Annabelle, isn’t it? She still around River’s Edge? Or your brother? Oh, here they are!” She rose from sitting cross-legged by his head, in one lithe move, shouting, “Over here!”
He pictured the ambulance, which had stopped the whining siren noise, driving across his lawn and wondered briefly if they had managed to stay out of the vegetable garden he’d so carefully cultivated—the zucchini were flowering and the tomatoes had buds. He opened one eye long enough to see flashing blue and red lights. Crap, he thought as darkness overtook him.
Find out what happens next in Make it Real…
If you enjoyed Make You Mine, you’ll love the next book in…
The Walkers of River’s Edge series
Book 1: Make You Mine
Book 2: Make it Real
Book 3: Made for Mistletoe
Book 4: Made to Love You
Coming soon!
More Books by Nan Reinhardt
The Weaver Sisters series
Book 1: Home to River’s Edge
Book 2: Meet Me in River’s Edge
Book 3: Christmas in River’s Edge
The Lange Brothers series
Book 1: The Valentine Wager
Book 2: Falling for the Doctor
Book 3: The Fireman’s Christmas Wish
The Four Irish Brothers Winery series
Book 1: A Small Town Christmas
Book 2: Meant to Be
Book 3: Christmas with You
Book 4: The Baby Contract
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About the Author
Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today bestselling author of sweet, small-town romantic fiction for Tule Publishing. Her day job is working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, however, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten and is still writing, but now from the viewpoint of a wiser, slightly rumpled, woman in her prime. Nan lives in the Midwest with her husband of 50 years, where they split their time between a house in the city and a cottage on a lake.
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Nan Reinhardt, Make You Mine
