ClarenceBN (13 page)

“Jesse!” Tara said in a voice that was just one small step below shouting. “What did you do now?”

“Give me a hand, will you?” Fun in Cowboy Boots called back to Clarence. He pivoted just a little, revealing the other man who was leaning all of his weight on Fun’s right side.

Not good. The second guy’s leg was being held together with what looked like broomsticks and duct tape. His right arm hung limp, and his scratched face was contorted in pain.

“Damn, Rebel, what happened?” Clarence was already hefting the broken man—Jesse?—onto the nearest free table, leading to a volley of clenched grunts from the injured man. “I thought we might get through this month without you trying to kill yourself, you know.”

Did Clarence really just call this guy
Rebel
? Well, it was official. She’d heard it all today.

Rebel—if that was his real name—was shaking his head when he caught her staring. He had beautiful black eyes, the kind of black that didn’t so much show you the window to his soul, but reflected yours back on you. Those eyes widened in surprise. “You know how it goes, Clarence,” he said, his gaze bearing down on her with enough heat that the rest of the clinic felt suddenly cool by comparison. “Life with Jesse is always an adventure.”

Tara was next to the exam table now, holding Jesse’s hand as she felt his head. “Do I even want to know?”

“Not really,” Rebel replied, taking his time as he looked her over. His thumbs were hanging from his belt loops, which only made the shifting thing he was doing look more intentional. Aside from the long hair, he looked like every cowboy fantasy she’d ever had. Did he have a horse, or was her imagination way out of control? “You must be the new doctor, ma’am.” He took off his hat and nodded. All that black hair, so straight it made her jealous, flowed around him like a cape.

Oooh, her first
ma’am
. From an honest-to-God cowboy, no less. She felt the sudden urge to curtsey, but then realized what he’d said right before the ma’am. She was the doctor, and she had a job to do. Wrenching her eyes from the caramel-colored cowboy to the patient, Madeline tried to regain her professional composure. “Dr. Mitchell, please. And this is Jesse?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That wasn’t helpful. “I need to know how this happened, Mister…”

“Rebel,” he said, those hips still moving.

She was
not
staring like a schoolgirl at this man. “Excuse me?”

“Just Rebel, ma’am.”

A shiver ran down her spine. One more ma’am and she might swoon. “Dr. Mitchell,” she said with more force as she turned to her patient.

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Nobody (Men of the White Sandy #3)

 
©
2014 by Sarah M. Anderson

Nobody Bodine is a nobody who came from a nobody and will always be a nobody.
 

He disappears into the shadows—no one sees him if he doesn’t want them to. He exists in neither the white man’s world nor the tribe’s, dispensing vigilante justice when he sees fit. There’s no other place for a man like him in this world.

Until Melinda Mitchell shows up on the rez. From the first moment he lays eyes on her, he can tell there’s something different about her. For starters, she’s not afraid of him. She asks where his scars came from, and why he has so many. But more than that, she sees him. For the first time in his life, Nobody feels like a somebody in her eyes.

Melinda has come west to run the new day care on the White Sandy Reservation. She’s intrigued by this strange man and his tattered skin, and when she discovers that he’s a self-appointed guardian angel for the boy in her care, she realizes that there’s more to Nobody than meets the eyes. But how far will he go to keep the boy safe? And will she be able to draw him into the light?

Excerpt from
Nobody

Nobody stood in the shadows, watching her.

She wasn’t leaving. Melinda Mitchell normally closed up shop and drove off by this point in the evening, but not tonight. It had to be close to eight—two hours after she normally left. Was that because it was Friday?

What was she doing? Light streamed out of both the front and back doors of the center as she did something inside. He was tempted to edge closer and steal a look in.
 

She couldn’t be painting. In the two weeks since she’d left him the last note, the inside of the center had gone from concrete gray to plain white to rainbows. Maybe that’s what she’d meant by creative chaos? Because it was still chaos. He wasn’t sure if it was beautiful, but it was definitely wild.

The rainbow colors went vertically up over the walls—even over the foam she’d managed to hang from the ceilings. The foam covered the top four feet of the walls. Not that Nobody made a lot of noise, but even he could tell that the center was more hushed now. Less echo-y.

At the height he’d come to think of as her eye-level, she’d hung bulletin board strips. Papers, splashed with finger paint and crayon scribbles, were tacked up along the wall now, some with kids’ names neatly printed at the bottom, others with names that were barely readable.

Then, at kid level, the wall had been covered with tiny handprints. Each set of prints had a name and an age painted onto the wall underneath it. Jamie’s hands were up there—no last name, though.

He’d been right. Melinda had taken the boy in. Good.

But that didn’t explain what she was doing here now. Didn’t she know this wasn’t the safest place on the rez? True, he hadn’t caught any junkies trying to break in recently, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try again.

She appeared in the front door. Light streamed from behind her, giving her an otherworldly glow.
 

He felt himself breathe at seeing her again. The two weeks since she’d almost walked right into him at Rebel’s place had felt long. Time, as marked by days and weeks, didn’t have much meaning for him. His world was divided into light and dark, warm and cold. He cleaned the clinic every day. There were no Mondays, no weekends.

But the last two weeks had moved by at such a slow pace that he’d begun to feel . . . uneasy about it. Not his usual sense of when someone was in trouble. This had been different. He’d wanted to see her just because. Not because he had to keep her safe or anything. Just . . . because.

But he’d forced himself to stay away from Rebel’s. She’d looked right at him, walked right toward him as if he were standing in broad daylight. If she hadn’t gotten distracted . . . no. He didn’t believe she could actually tell he was there. Something else had attracted her attention. That was all.

Backlit, she stretched, her body reaching for the dusk sky. Something else began to make Nobody feel uneasy and that something was obvious—Melinda Mitchell had a hell of a body. Part of what had been bothering him had been those curves—those generous breasts, those hips.
 

How would her body feel? Would she be terrified if he filled his hands with those breasts? Would she be afraid of him if he grabbed her hips and pulled her into him?
 

Onto him?

Or would she like it? Would she think it exciting to do it with someone dangerous? Would she moan or cry out?

He got hard just thinking of it. Of her.
 

Then she did something that snapped him out of his thoughts.

She looked at him.

There was no mistaking this—she looked right at him. And smiled.
 

What the hell?

He started to shrink back, but she turned away from him, gathering up something off the floor. Did she know he was here or not?

He should go.

He didn’t.

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