Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (15 page)

Nobody stared him down, barely even moving an eyebrow. Yeah, there was that damn stoicism again. “They’re gonna do it again,” he finally said in the tense stillness. “Gun?”

Have you considered the possibility that it’s not the flu?
Madeline hadn’t, but Rebel had. The rancher to the north of the rez was up to something, but no one knew what. Hell, no one else even suspected something wasn’t right—except Nobody. He’d been watching, waiting for his chance to get some proof.

“At the camp. Do we have time?”

Nobody nodded as he whistled for his horse. They needed the gun. Nobody had gone unarmed and alone last time, and see where that had gotten him? They mounted up and took off.

They didn’t have a moment to lose.

Chapter Nine

Mondays suck. That’s all there is to it
, Madeline thought as she hefted another box out of the Jeep.
Mondays just suck.

Especially since it wasn’t even seven in the morning yet. It wasn’t even seven, and yet here she was, frantically unpacking box after box.

No, no, she wasn’t frantic. Not at all. She was
not
frantic, panicked, or even nervous. She wasn’t agitated in the least about losing her head around a naked Rebel. No, what she was concerned about—yes, that was it, concerned—was his dangerous belief that being a medicine man somehow qualified him to practice actual medicine.

She wasn’t perturbed about the fact that she’d let herself get into a vulnerable situation with a man who wouldn’t know reality if it smacked him upside the head. She was more concerned that, by blowing that much cash on one of his bags, she was merely supporting his megalomaniac worldview.

She was certainly
not
worried about dysentery. She’d already started an emergency course of antibiotics, just to make sure nothing had taken up residence after her little dunking. No need to panic there.

She wasn’t alarmed by the fact that she didn’t know where her boots were. Good heavens, she wasn’t even the least bit tense about the fact that she was wearing her beat-up sneakers today, because it had been either that or those ridiculously soft moccasins. And she was quite certain that waltzing around the clinic in handmade footwear was akin to just going ahead and announcing that she lusted after
that man
on national television, and she didn’t even want to admit to herself that she lusted after that man.

Which did not explain why she was having heart palpitations about the state of her hair. Its curly state. Its
un
straightened state. And, what with all the hefting and carrying and unpacking she had been doing since six this morning, her hair was huge. Bigger than Texas.

It was bad enough when Clarence lumbered in and did a double-take, but it didn’t get God-awful until Tara arrived.

“Dr. Mitchell!” she gasped, like Madeline had stuck her with a needle. A sharp one. “Your
hair
!”

“Um, yeah.” Her hands flew to her mop. Lord, it was worse than a mop. Her hair had nothing on Medusa right now, it was so insane. This whole thing was insane. What the hell was she doing? She was letting her hair take over the planet for what? For that man—Jonathan Runs Fast, for God’s sake? He endangered patients’ lives on what seemed like a daily basis, completely disregarded her medical authority, and lived in a freaking tent down by the river—and she was wearing her hair down? For
that man
?

He drove her crazy. And the hair was living proof.

“I, um,” she sputtered at Tara, whose mouth hadn’t gotten near closing again. Madeline’s hair was more than a mistake—it was about to become the blunder of the century. “My flat iron died. This morning. On me.” Yeah, that’s it. A mechanical failure that had nothing—
nothing
—to do with Rebel. Or any of his muscles. “It, um, does this on its own.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, and Madeline cringed. Here it came. “It’s so beautiful! I
love
it.”

Now it was Madeline’s turn to do a double take. Was she mistaken, or was that admiration? Lots of it?

No one had ever just admired her hair. Back in school, she’d been tormented by all the perfect little princesses who had Barbie’s hair and the attitude to match. Happiness had been the day in seventh grade when Mom finally gave in and took her to the salon to get her hair
un-permed
, as Mellie had described it. Madeline had finally walked through school feeling normal.

But this was different. With what could only be described as jealously, Tara sighed and looked at Madeline longingly as she ran her hands through her own big hair. “I wish mine could do that. The perms never seem to get the curls just right, and it just goes limp on the hot days.” The note of disgust was obvious.

“Really? I always wanted it to be so straight...”
Limp
had been a dream, long held and chased at any cost. She’d wasted all that time, all that effort to be something that wasn’t real. And just like that, she felt right. All it had taken was the courage to be who she really was.

And damn it all, it was because of Rebel. Again.

Tara’s smile was wide. “That grass, it’s always greener, yeah?”

Madeline returned the grin. To hell with Rebel. She didn’t need him to make her feel special. She was doing just fine on her own, thank you very much. “Yeah. How’s Nelly?”

And just like that, the day slid into normal. People—a lot of people—told her they liked her hair, and no one said anything that wasn’t complimentary. Tara’s mom dropped Nelly off, and the little girl giggled with sheer kid delight when Madeline let her touch it.

It all seemed perfectly normal. Even the part where Nobody slunk in during the late afternoon and attempted to smile politely as she read him the riot act for entrusting his recovery to Rebel seemed normal—by rez standards, anyway. Just another day.

Except for the part where Rebel didn’t show up.

As the shadows got longer and longer, the antsiness took hold of her. She’d worn her hair like that for him, whether she wanted to own up to it or not, and he hadn’t even bothered to show up and look at it? After all they’d shared—the skinny dipping and the trying to seduce her and the riding bareback in the dark and the hot kisses against a car—and he wasn’t even going to come and
see
her?

Damn that man. All of him. Even the good parts.

It was Wednesday before he showed up. Almost five complete days, she thought as he waltzed right into her waiting room at ten ‘til five and plopped down in a chair like he’d been waiting on
her
. Five days.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped after the last patient had driven off the lot and Tara was out the door.

“Albert’s not feeling well.” He sounded the same, but his eyes were huge as he stared at her hair. “He wanted me to come in and give you a...hand.”

I wish I’d straightened it today
, she thought. Just to piss him off. “That’s it? That’s the only reason you’re here?”

“No.” His eyes didn’t leave her hair, and her face grew warm. She ignored it. He could just look. Touching was out of the question. “I have something I need tested.” As he stood, he held out a handful of baggies, each containing a swab smeared with something dark and icky looking.

“Drink too much river water?” she snapped, not touching the bags, and certainly not touching him.

“Not mine.” He managed to look a little embarrassed. “Something I...found. I want to see if there’s anything in it. Anything that could make someone sick. But I don’t have access to labs or anything like that. That’s why I need you.”

“That’s why you need
me
?” Maybe she had suffered heat stroke, because she was beginning to think that imagining the whole naked-in-the-river thing would be preferable to the embarrassment she was being swamped by right now. He was acting like he could care less that she’d almost lost her head—and a whole lot more—to a man who she would never, ever figure out. “That’s it?”

Everything about him changed. His hips began to sway as his voice dropped. “Madeline,” he said. It almost sounded like an apology. It almost sounded like seduction.

He could shove both.

“Hiya, Rebel.” Clarence appeared out of nowhere. Madeline jumped. She’d completely forgotten the big man was still here. “Albert okay?”

“Hiya, Clarence.
Ektawapaya ki hi unkis woglake
.
”

Madeline didn’t think it was possible to get any madder at the man, but all of a sudden, she was quite ready to strangle him personally. He knew damn good and well she couldn’t understand what he was saying—what the hell was he trying to hide from her?

“Yeah,” Clarence said with a nod as his eyes darted between Madeline and Rebel. God only knew what the Mitchell sneer looked like now, but it had to be a good one. Clarence began to retreat toward the door without turning his back to Madeline.

“See you then,” Rebel said, not in the least disturbed by the sneer.

“If you make it that long,” was Clarence’s parting shot, and then only after he was safely outside the clinic.

Rebel just grinned as the sound of Clarence’s engine faded. “I like your hair.”

“Go to hell.”

One eyebrow notched up in surprise. “Are you mad at me?” He asked it like the very concept was foreign to him.

Men.
This
man. “No,” she snapped as she turned around and stomped off to one of the exam tables. If Albert wasn’t coming in, she might as well get started on getting everything ready for tomorrow. And the day after. And the rest of her pissy life out here. She would not rely on someone named Rebel. “Of course not. I have no reason to be mad. None whatsoever. And I certainly don’t care if you go to hell or not. Just go.”

Silence met this announcement. She couldn’t even tell if he was still in the building, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to turn around and look. Instead, she focused on the job. That was why she was here, right? She had a job to do. Sheets in a pile, supplies on the trays restocked. She made a mental note that they needed more iodine the next time she went for supplies.

Her eyes were watering. She blinked, determined not to rub them. Rubbing was a dead giveaway. Of course, telling him to go to hell had been a dead giveaway too. Shit, she was so screwed. She only had four months to go until she beat the last guy’s record. She didn’t know if she could make it.

“I was busy.” Suddenly he was at her side, one hand resting on the small of her back, already moving in small circles.

Her heart wrenched left as her stomach torqued right, and the collision made her more than a little nauseated. She lurched away from his touch, because the mere thought of his hand on her body threatened to take her furious head of steam and throw it right out the window. “I’m sure.”

“I’m not used to being certain places at certain times,” he went on, taking another step closer.

“I’m not interested in your apologies,” she snapped, cutting around an exam table to put something solid between them. “You have nothing to apologize for, as far as I’m concerned.”

He was ignoring her. At least that hadn’t changed. She kept on walking. The sound of his boots on linoleum drowned out the soft sound of her sneakers. It occurred to her that the clinic wasn’t very large. In short order, they’d be doing laps around the damn place.

“I had to go with Nobody. We had to...check on something.”

“So?” She cut around another table.

“The something in the bags.”

That’s it
, she thought as she spun around to face him. “And what the hell is in those bags, huh? What’s so important that Nobody Bodine had to sneak up on us? What’s so important that you disappear for days on end? What’s so fucking important?”

He swallowed. “I went to Rapid City after...that. To see if I could get the samples processed myself. I picked up my check from the gallery. I did Albert’s grocery shopping for the month. I went to a drugstore. I got some...” This was a first. He looked deeply, horribly embarrassed. “Supplies.”

Son-of-a... He wouldn’t even answer a direct question. If he thought he had another shot at her, he had another thing coming. “I’m sure you’ll find someone who needs
supplies
. I certainly don’t.”

“And then Albert wasn’t feeling good,” he hurried on. He took two quick steps, so that there was nothing but the table between them. And she had the feeling that if she tried to bolt, he’d grab her. “He needed me.”

“Oh, he needed you? Or he needed a medical professional? Why didn’t you bring him in if he was so damn sick? No—” she cut him off with a wave of her hand, “—don’t tell me. I couldn’t do anything for him. It’s not like I know anything about curing people. It’s not like I’m a trained professional who’s dedicated the last twelve years of my life to helping people. It’s not like you respect me a damn bit.”

“That’s not true,” he shot back, and for the first time in a long time, she saw the wolf in him, ready to attack.

She knew how to outflank him now. She wasn’t scared of the wolf. “The hell it isn’t. If you respected me even just a little, you’d let me do my job,
Jonathan
. You’d tell me what’s in those bags that’s so damned important. You’d stop driving me crazy.”

He flinched at his name, but it didn’t last. Within a second, he had a cold stare fixed on her, and his face was unreadable. “No one else even knows about those bags.” His voice was low and serious, but the edge made him sound dangerous. And most certainly not in the good way. “No one else knows that Nobody came looking for me. No one else thinks that maybe it’s not the flu. No one else, Madeline. Just you.”