Her Leading Man (18 page)

“
What?” Orozco yelled
.
“What
did you say to
me?”

Christina huffed. “For Pete’s sake.” Even though
she knew she was
asking for a rebuff, she walked
up to the sofa. Ignoring Orozco, she asked
the doctor,
“Need some help? I’m a trained nurse.” She elected
not to tell the man
she aimed to be a doctor one
day. He’d only scoff.

He didn’t scoff now. In fact, he wiped his brow
with a handkerchief
he pulled from his jacket pocket.
“Thank you, Miss—” He looked
confused.

“
Mayhew,” Christina supp
lied
with a sweet smile.
She did earn a good deal of money as an
actress,
after all. She could smile when she needed to—and
even pretend to be
sweet. “Christina Mayhew. I’m
this blockhead’s costar.” She hooked a thumb
at
Orozco,
who glared at her with offended dignity. It
was, in Christina’s considered
opinion, way too late
for dignity. He’d already made an ass of
himself
twenty times over.

“
Miss Mayhew.” Dr. Wetherby smiled at her,
and
it
even looked like a genuine smile.
Christina felt sorry for the poor guy,
imagining that
he’d never had to deal with the likes
of Orozco before.

“
What would you like me to do?” She’d
be
happy to sit on him
.
Or hog-tie him, as
she’d seen
folks do in cowboy pictures.

“
I’ve been trying to remove those cactus
spines
from his leg. but he keeps kicking me. You don’t
look awfully strong
. . .” The doctor’s voice trailed
off.

Christina turned. Good, Martin was still there. She
gestured to him to
come over. “Can you give us a
hand here, Martin? We need to hold Orozco
down
so the
doctor can do his job.”

“
Fah!”

When she squinted down at him, Christina was
amazed to note that
Orozco didn’t even have the
grace to look embarrassed. What a gold-plated
egomaniac
the
man was.

“
You
want me to help?”

She saw Martin swallow and allowed herself to be
surprised. She’d
never have pegged Martin Tafft for
a squeamish person. A frisson of
disappointment
smote her. She tried to stuff it away and reminded
herself that not
everyone in the world was as fascinated with human physiology and
as immune to
blood and guts as she was.

“
If you wouldn’t mind.” She smiled at him to
show
him that she didn’t hold his reluctance against him—even
though she sort of did.

“
Thank you, Mr. Tafft,” the doctor added. “We
do
need some more help here.”

“
Sure,”
Martin said.

It
appeared
to Christina as if he had to force
himself
to
walk away from the wall. When he got to the sofa,
he swallowed once
more and gave Orozco a somewhat
sickly smile. “How are you doing,
Pablo?”

“
I’m wretched,” the actor announced, looking
bitter
and not altogether unlike someone who might have
been stabbed during
a sword fight. If one walked into
the
scene
without prior
knowledge of what had really
happened, one would never guess he’d fallen off
a
camel
because he’d been behaving like a naughty
child. He looked more like he was
dying. Not,
Christina thought wryly, unlike a male Camille or
something.

An actor to the end, she thought. After surveying
Martin critically
for several
seconds, she decided he
wasn’t in too much danger of fainting, so
she transferred
her attention to the doctor. “Want us to hold
his legs down, Dr.
Wetherby?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, please. That would be
a big help.” He
frowned again at Orozco. “I really
need to get those spines out of his leg
before the
wounds fester.”

“
Fester?” Orozco shouted.
“
Fester
? My God, I’m
going to lose my leg. I’m going to die! I’m
going
to
—”

“
Oh, shut up, will you?” Christina snapped.
She
clamped a strong hand onto his right ankle and
jerked
her
head at Martin. “Take his left one, Martin, and
let’s get this over with. I’m
sure the doctor has better
things to do than spend his day pampering a
spoiled
brat.”

Martin didn’t say a word, but Christina clearly saw
the look of
astonishment he shot
at her. Nevertheless
,
he took Orozco’s
other ankle without argument.

Thank God
, Christina thought bitterly. Maybe
they’d get this done and get on with
the picture. Taking
a critical survey of Orozco’s moderately unclad
body, she was
pleased to note that
his legs were
skinny and hairy and not at all what she’d
consider
ideals of
masculinity
.
She was glad because she
hadn’t wanted him to
look good.

She wanted to ask Martin if he’d considered who
might take Orozco’s
place in the picture, but Orozco
set up a steady stream of moans, groans,
shouts, and
bellows, so she didn’t have the opportunity.
Removing
the
cactus spines didn’t take long, however, and
soon the doctor straightened
with a sigh of satisfaction.

“
There,” he said, “that’s finally done. Now
I’ll
clean the wounds and disinfect them. We’ll wrap the
leg now, and I’ll
come back later today to check
hi
m.”

He spoke to Christina. He’d apparently given up
talking to Orozco
since Orozco wasn’t in the mood
to be practical. Christina, all business,
nodded.
“Good. You already set the arm?”

The doctor’s face fell. “Not entirely. I splinted
it,
but have
to come back to build the cast and put it
on.” The doctor sighed heavily. “He
was in such a
state, I thought I’d take care of the cactus spines
first.
I gave
him some laudanum drops and hoped he’d
drop off to sleep so I could cast the
arm in peace,
but
—”

T
he remainder of the sentence was
drowned out
by
Orozco’s bellows. “Peace?
Peace
? How can there
be peace when I’m suffering
so?”

His head whipped back and forth on the sofa cushion,
and he reminded
Christina of a woman in labor,
but with a far poorer reason. What a
sissy
.

Suddenly Orozco’s gaze locked on Martin.
“
Martin!
I’m dying here! Call Los Angeles. Get me another
doctor. Please! This
man is a butcher.
”

D
r. Wetherby straightened as if Orozco
had threatened
him at gunpoint. “No
w,
just wait a minute
here,
young
man—”

Again the doctor’s protest was cut short. This time
it was Christina who
did it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,
Orozco, get a grip on your senses and use
your wits,
if
you have any. Dr. Wetherby is as competent as
any other doctor to set a broken
bone. For heaven’s
sake, I could set the damned bone for you!”

She oughtn’t to have said it. Women not only
weren’t supposed to
make extravagant claims for
themselves—whether they were true or
not—but
women
never cursed. Silence fell like a wet blanket
in the room, smothering all
sounds. She cast a frustrated
glance at the ceiling and wanted to swear
some
more.

Where was Gran when Christina needed her? In
bed, taking a nap,
is where she was, drat it.

Peeved with herself for exploding, with Pablo
Orozco for being a
baby, with Martin Tafft for no
sensible reason, with the doctor for practicing
medicine
as
she wanted to do, with the medical profession
in particular, and with society
as a whole, Christina
muttered, “Oh, never mind.” She gestured at
Orozco.
“Have
at him, Doctor. You might want to chain and
muzzle
him before
you try shaping the cast.”

With that, and with Orozco’s incoherent protests
following her, she
left the room
and stormed over to
the resort’s elegantly appointed saloon, where she
ordered
herself a pink gin fizz and sat in a corner.
Christina seldom
drank alcoholic
beverages, but she
figured she owed herself one after that stupid
scene.

Martin had been in a good deal of distress when
Christina stalked
out of the room, leaving the three
men in it to shift for themselves. Even
though she
shocked him sometimes, appalled him at other times,
and puzzled him all
the time, her presence had been
soothing to him When she left and he had
to deal
with
the doctor and Pablo
Orozco
on his own,
he
felt
abandoned.

Not only that, but he was terrible in a sickroom,
and he knew
it
.
The mere thought of broken bones
and pain and blood
made him feel lightheaded and
sickish.

It was ridiculous and embarrassing and even,
perhaps,
shameful, but there it was
.
He hated
being
around
sick or injured people.

However, after the
doctor had dosed Orozco with
more laudanum, and the actor had
finally quit making
such a blazing jackass of himself, things progressed
more smoothly. It
didn’t take more than another
forty-five minutes or so to disinfect Orozco’s
leg,
bandage
it up, and get the plaster cast on his ann.

While Martin had felt queasy during the whole of
it, he hadn’t passed
out or done anything else that
might have humiliated him. He was relieved that
he’d
come
through the ordeal relatively unscathed. He was
even more relieved when he was
able escape the
room entirely.

Then he went in search of Christina. He wasn’t
sure why, but he
felt an intense compulsion to apologize
to her for
—
well,
for
something. He didn’t know
what, or why he felt
she deserved an apology. All
he knew for sure was that he needed to talk to
her.

He didn’t find her anywhere he searched. He even
went
outdoors, into the debilitating heat, and
searched
for
her among the date palm oases that had been
strategically planted around the
resort. Off in the distance,
he could see hundreds of date palms in tidy
rows, shimmering in
the heat, but those were for real.
That’s where the Indio farmers grew and
harvested
the
dates they sold all over the country
.

As much as he admired Christina Mayhew and believed her to
be a stronger,
healthier, and lovelier
specimen of womankind than most of her
sex, he
couldn’t imagine
her walking as far as the date orchards
in this heat.
Not
on
purpose. Therefore, he
concluded glumly, she must have
retreated to her
room. He didn’t dare follow her there.

Not, of course, that he had anything of a scurrilous
nature in
mind;
he
only wanted to talk to her and
apologize for—well,
for something. But he didn’t
have the strength of purpose at the moment to
tangle
with
her grandmother, and he knew he’d have to if
he followed Christina to her
room.