Baby, Drive South (3 page)

“Marcus mentioned you saw some cars headed this way.”

“Dozens of cars,” Porter said, exhaling loudly. “All carrying…hot, young women. We’ll get down the mountain…just in time…to say hello.”

“You’re going to make a hell of an impression,” Marcus offered. “No one’s going to want a busted-up man to take care of.”

“I beg to differ,” Porter said, setting his jaw against the pain. “Women will be…lining up…to take care of me. In fact…that was my plan…all along.”

Marcus handed him a small stick. “Here, bite down on this.”

“For the pain?”

“No, so you’ll stop talking.”

Porter tried to laugh, but getting settled on the four-wheeler was more painful than he’d anticipated. Ditto for the trip down, although Kendall tried to take it easy.

By the time they rolled into the center of town, Porter was ready to be horizontal—and drugged. But the sight of cars of all makes and models pulling to a stop in front of the boardinghouse and diner and all along the narrow paved road sent a shot of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Blondes…brunettes…redheads…it was a veritable smorgasbord of female deliciousness.

Countless feminine faces peered at them questioningly through windshields and open windows. And from their four-wheelers, the Armstrong brothers peered back. Apparently the workers had noticed the caravan of cars passing by because a rickety supply truck chugged up behind them, with men packed in the back like cattle. The tension in the air was palpable, as if both groups knew the importance of this moment, each side sizing up the other.

Porter shot a glance at Marcus and at the panicked look on his older brother’s face. A pang of sympathy barbed through him. Poor Marcus. He hated situations he couldn’t control. By comparison, Kendall’s expression was anxious. He panned the sea of faces, willing…but wary.

Porter decided it was up to him to show these beauties what Southern hospitality was all about. Summoning his strength, he ignored the excruciating pain and pushed himself to a standing position on the four-wheeler.

“Ladies,” he shouted, lifting his arms, “on behalf of the Armstrong brothers and our friends, welcome to Sweetness, Georgia!”

Suddenly everything started to go dim. He vaguely heard the sound of whoops and car doors slamming just as he tumbled headlong from the four-wheeler. At least this fall wasn’t as far…but damn, his pride would be busted all to hell. Before he hit the hard clay ground, though, something broke his fall…Kendall. He heard Marcus’s voice, cursing, as always, coming to him through a tunnel.

“We need help!” Marcus shouted.

Porter was being laid on the ground. He felt the warm, baked dirt beneath his shoulder blades, sensed the crush of bodies closing around him. His leg was on fire.

“Is anyone a nurse?” Marcus repeated. “My brother fell off the water tower and might have broken his leg!”

Porter felt his equilibrium returning, blinked his eyes open, tried to bring the faces of the circle of women who surrounded him into focus. Alien female scents assailed his nostrils…fruity shampoos, floral perfumes…heaven.

“Will a doctor do?” a female voice said, distant, but strong.

Even flat on his back and fighting unconsciousness, Porter’s pulse spiked in anticipation of seeing his angel of mercy. Would she be blonde? Leggy? Busty? Tall?

The circle of onlookers parted to let her in and when she stepped into his line of vision, Porter fought a stab of disappointment.

None of the above.

3

D
r. Nikki Salinger had wondered how long it would take before she truly regretted this arduous trek to Sweetness, Georgia.

“That would be now,” she muttered under her breath as she crouched to study the rather large man who had delivered a magnanimous welcome to this so-called town in the middle of nowhere, then dropped like a sack of potatoes. She thought she’d imagined the flutter of movement she’d seen at the top of the water tower when she was driving in. Little did she know it was this fool testing gravity.

The day-long drive from Broadway, Michigan, had left her tired, dusty, hungry and irritable. If the travel conditions weren’t wearisome enough, the prattling of the three women who had ridden along in her van was enough to drive her completely mad. Traci, Susan and Rachel could recite the newspaper ad they were responding to by heart:
The new town of Sweetness, Georgia, welcomes one hundred single women with a pioneering spirit looking for a fresh start!
Blah, blah, blah. The women were particularly excited about the part promising lots of single, Southern men. In fact, Rachel Hutchins, whom Nikki’d had to sidestep to reach the ailing man, seemed to view their adventure as one big manhunt.

Nikki pursed her mouth. She was probably the only woman in the caravan who wasn’t in the market for a husband, and here she was, the first one paraded out in front of the herd of men.

Not that it mattered. Next to most of the tall, curvaceous, ultra-feminine women like Rachel, she was boyish and plain in comparison. With her small stature, she knew she came up short, in more ways than one. A fact born out by the faint look of disappointment in her patient’s blue eyes when she’d walked into his view. No matter—she’d never been the prettiest girl in the room…but she was usually the smartest. And that would have to do for the big, strapping man lying flat on his back in need of her services.

“Please give us some room,” she said to the crowd as she set her medical bag on the ground.

Perspiration trickled down her temples, and energy hummed along her nerve endings—just like every time she handled a medical emergency, she told herself. It made no difference that the dark-haired man before her was shirtless and muscle-bound and bronze from working in the Southern sun. His torso was peppered with bloody scrapes and smudges, presumably sustained in his fall.

She reached out to brush aside damp, thick hair to feel his forehead, but dismissed the expected warmth to the day’s blazing heat—he didn’t have a fever. Then she pressed her finger to the underside of his thick wrist to check his pulse…not as strong as she’d like, but steady. He was conscious and breathing, but his eyes were slitted.

“What’s his name?” she asked the two men hovering nearby who had the same cobalt-blue eyes as the injured man.

“Porter, ma’am,” the younger-looking of the two responded. “Porter Armstrong. I’m Kendall and this is Marcus—we’re his brothers.”

Nikki nodded then leaned closer to her patient’s ear. “Mr. Armstrong, I’m Dr. Salinger. Where does it hurt?”

“My…ankle.”

“Anywhere else?”

He grimaced. “My pride.”

That made her smile. “Are you allergic to any medications?”

He gave a laborious headshake.

“Okay, hang in there and I’ll try to make you as comfortable as possible.”

She withdrew a syringe and a vial of painkiller, even as her gaze darted back to the man’s face to check his coloring. During her inspection, she took note of his thick eyebrows, broad nose and strong, clefted chin. She ignored the growing murmur of concern and appreciation moving through the crowd of women, as well as the elevation of her own pulse. Porter Armstrong was a patient. The fact that he was better looking than most of her patients back in Broadway was of no consequence—good-looking bodies were beset with sickness and injury the same as average-looking and below-average-looking bodies.

Still, when Nikki gripped his impressive biceps to swab it with alcohol, then stabbed the smooth brown skin with a hypodermic, she acknowledged clinical appreciation of a healthy muscle for accepting and disseminating the painkiller more effectively. But her admiration ended there.

Within a few seconds, the tension in her patient’s face eased and a sigh escaped his lips. “That…feels…better…little…lady…doc.”

Nikki bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Good.”

Satisfied the injection was enough to take the edge off his pain, she unfastened the neoprene wrap to survey his ankle. The skin was purple and had swollen over the top of his lace-up work boot. At best, it was a nasty sprain. At worst…well, she’d reserve judgment for now, but the swelling was worrisome. Nikki removed a pair of scissors from her bag and cut his jeans leg up to the knee, eliciting more hums from the crowd.

“Nikki, is there anything I can do to help?” Rachel asked, her cotton-candy pink mouth a bow of mock concern.

With great effort, Nikki resisted rolling her eyes. Rachel seemed to think they had something in common because the woman once had been a receptionist in a dermatology office. She’d gushed about their mutual medical “expertise” the entire drive south.

“No, thank you,” Nikki chirped, then turned her attention back to the leg that had all the women atwitter, and loosened the tie of his boot. The swollen joint ballooned into the extra room provided. For now she left the boot on to support his injured ankle. The skin wasn’t broken, but a hematoma encompassed the ankle and disappeared into his heavy sock. She palpated the skin gingerly, sensitive to her patient’s sharp intake of breath.

“I need to take an X-ray to determine if anything’s broken.” She looked up at the other Armstrong brothers. “Where is your medical facility?”

When the two men avoided her gaze, she got a sinking feeling. “You don’t have one?”

“We have a first-aid station with basic supplies,” Kendall said. “But no X-ray equipment.”

“We were planning to drive him to Atlanta,” Marcus offered. “Or we could call for an airlift if you think it’s serious.”

Nikki was starting to realize how primitive this “town” really was. The shrinking multi-doctor family practice she’d left back in Broadway suddenly didn’t seem so bad. She swallowed hard. “Does your first-aid station have a place for him to lie down?”

“No,” Kendall admitted, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “But we can move him to the boardinghouse.”

It would have to do. “There’s a portable stretcher in the back of my van,” Nikki said, “along with a mobile X-ray machine, and other supplies.” She nodded toward the workers who were still standing in the back of the supply truck like livestock. “Could some of your friends give me a hand unloading?”

Kendall put two fingers in his mouth and gave an ear-piercing whistle. Men began pouring out of the truck, waiting for direction. Nikki tried to stand, but a tug on her wrist held her back. Porter Armstrong had wrapped long, strong fingers around her wrist. “Little lady doc?”

Unbidden, his touch made her heart race. His lopsided smile grabbed at her. His bright blue eyes, even hazed with painkiller, were riveting and so, so sexy.

“Yes?” she managed to say.

He pulled her closer until his breath brushed her cheek. “Did you bring any pretty nurses with you?”

Nikki blinked at the dig, but was saved from responding when his eyes fluttered closed. With an irritated sigh, she checked his pulse again. The brute had passed out.

Nikki stood and strode to the back of her extended van. At a signal from one of the Armstrong brothers, workers began lining up at the rear of her vehicle, although they were visibly distracted by all the eye candy around them. The men openly ogled the preening women standing around their vehicles, and blonde, hair-twirling Rachel Hutchins was getting more than her fair share of attention. Giggles and elbow pokes ensued. Nikki groaned inwardly at all the coupling to come, then chided herself. The other women had come looking for love, not to escape a cheating fiancé. She couldn’t begrudge them their fun simply because she didn’t plan to have any.

She’d always wanted to build her own practice, she reminded herself. Here was her chance. While the men unloaded box after box of supplies from her van and headed toward the obviously just-built “boardinghouse,” Nikki took a minute to look around the town of Sweetness.

Which, as far as she could see, consisted of the boardinghouse and some kind of eatery—both constructed with a patchwork of materials—and a hut the Armstrong brothers indicated was their “first-aid station,” all sitting at the crossroads of the paved road they’d driven in on and a red dirt road leading somewhere unknown. The white water tower they’d seen on their long approach, Nikki realized, was a veritable flag warning visitors how far back in time they were traveling. Even in decline, the manufacturing town of Broadway, Michigan, was a bustling metropolis compared to this place.

She’d been duped by a marketing ploy. The name “Sweetness” conjured up lush shade trees, tall glasses of lemonade and white wicker swings. Instead, it was a hot, sticky, dirty, bleak little spot in the road. On a mountain. And from the way the men and women were looking at each other, Sweetness was about to become one big speed-dating pool. And if Porter Armstrong’s reaction to her was any indication, she would be the odd person out.

Which was just as well, since she wasn’t looking for a man.

Really, she wasn’t.

Nikki was suddenly beset with a pang of homesickness for the town and the people she’d left behind. Hot tears stung her eyes. It was the “looking for a fresh start” part of the ad that had caught her attention. But what had she gotten herself into?

Was this what Southerners meant by the saying “out of the frying pan and into the fire”?

Panic gripped her and Nikki considered jumping behind the wheel of the van and peeling out of there—the little nothing of a town was welcome to the supplies already unloaded. She even took a step toward the driver’s side.

Then she caught sight of Porter Armstrong being eased onto a hard plastic stretcher, with his brothers on either side, their body language fraught with concern. And something about the looks that passed between the three men stopped her. It was more than sibling obligation—it was apprehension born of deep affection, an unbreakable bond. And the way the workers responded to the Armstrong men, it was clear their relationship went beyond that of employers and employees—they were family.

Nikki’s heart squeezed. Family—something she lacked. She was all alone in the world. She’d thought her engagement was the first step toward creating her own family, something she craved desperately. It was the main reason her fiancé’s betrayal had shaken her to the core. What the Armstrong brothers were trying to do here—bring together disparate people from different regions of the country to build a community from scratch—was a concept that appealed to her on a base level. She wanted to be a part of this grand experiment. This might be her last chance to form her own family, if not in the traditional sense, then a family of friends and neighbors.