A Match Made in Texas

His pale gaze skimmed over her with acute curiosity even as he followed her instructions. After a moment, he swallowed and rasped, “Who are you?”

“Kaylie Chatam. Hypatia, Odelia and Magnolia Chatam are my aunts.”

“Kaylie’s a nurse,” Aaron Doolin put in helpfully. “How about that? The old biddies, er, our hostesses had one in the family. Go figure.”

Gallow’s gaze abruptly shifted to his agent. Kaylie shivered. Had she been the recipient of that suddenly furious, frigid, accusatory glare, she’d have ducked. Doolin just ratcheted up his grin and spread his hands.

“Hey, Stevie! That’s my boy. How you feeling there, huh?”

“How do you think I feel?” Gallow gritted out. “And don’t call me Stevie.”

“Sure. Sure. Doc says you reinjured those ribs last night. Must be killing you.”

Literally baring his teeth, Gallow revealed a pair of spaces on the right side where his upper and lower second molars should be. Something about those empty spaces pricked Kaylie’s heart. He was no longer the impossibly handsome sports figure or the angry brute but a mere man at the mercy of his own injuries. Until he snarled.

“Reinjured my ribs? You think? That ba—” He slid a gaze over Kaylie. “That bozo ball of lard you hired to take care of me threw himself on top of me! That’s what reinjured my ribs.”

Doolin lifted his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Hey, calm down, will you? How was I to know the guy would do that? I mean, he’s a nurse, right? He said you were all over the place and that he was trying to pin you down so you wouldn’t fall off the bed.”

“He was trying to pin me down, all right, and enjoyed every second of it, until I kicked him in the—” Gallow broke off there and gave Kaylie an irritated look.

Doolin chuckled. “You gave him an anatomy lesson he didn’t get in nursing school, that’s for sure.”

Kaylie stepped back and folded her arms, appalled. This man was a powerhouse of lithe physical strength and jagged emotion that ranged far beyond her personal experience. Stephen Gallow sent her a cool, challenging look. She felt frozen and singed at the same time. A sense of foreboding shivered through her as she watched him take his agent to task with little more than a glare and growl.

“Where’s the bozo now?”

“Fired him last night.”

“And you think he’s going to keep his mouth shut after this?”

“He signed a nondisclosure, and I sent the attorney to remind him of that in person this morning, along with a check for his trouble.”

In other words, Kaylie thought, shocked, they’d paid off the man! Whether to keep him quiet or forestall a lawsuit, she didn’t know. Most likely both. Obviously she had stumbled into a situation that was well beyond her depth.

Gallow dropped his eyelids, his right hand sliding lightly over his left side. Kaylie could tell that he was still in great pain, and the nurse in her could not stand by and watch it, no matter how rough and tough a character he might be. She looked to Doolin.

“Where is his pain medication?”

The agent reached into his coat pocket and drew out a prescription bottle. “Brooks says anything stronger has to be given by injection, and that requires a professional,” Doolin said pointedly. “Until we hire another nurse, this is the best we can do.”

She took the bottle and read the prescription before going to the bedside table, where a crystal pitcher of water and matching glass stood. She poured water into the glass, uncapped the pill bottle and shook two huge tablets into her palm.

“These should give you some relief, but you’ll have to sit up to take them. Will you let me help you?”

Gallow ignored her, demanding of Doolin, “What have you told her?”

Aaron shrugged. “Just what she needs to know.”

“Will you let me help you?” Kaylie repeated.

Gallow slid her a dismissive glance. “I don’t like being knocked out all the time.”

“Taking the meds regularly is the best way to prevent that. Regular doses will keep your pain under control while allowing you to gradually build up a resistance to the narcotic effect. Take them irregularly and they’ll knock you out every time.”

He glared at her for a moment, but then he held his breath and slowly pushed up onto his right elbow. Kaylie quickly pressed the first tablet between his lips and lifted the glass. He gulped, tilted his head back and swallowed. They repeated the process with the second tablet before he collapsed once more upon the pillow, panting slightly.

Kaylie heard his stomach rumble. Setting aside the glass, she began to reposition the pillow and smooth the covers, trying to make him comfortable until the medication kicked in. As she worked, she spoke briskly to Doolin.

“Please go down and ask my aunts to have Hilda prepare a breakfast tray.”

“Okay. Sure. But I thought the staff had the day off.”

“They do, but she’ll fix something anyway.” The aunties took care of their own meals on Sundays, but Hilda had always been a compassionate woman.

Kaylie smoothed the covers over Stephen Gallow’s feet with gentle hands. They were enormous feet. Not even Chandler had feet the size of these. She tried to imagine the size of the skates that he would need.

Stephen rumbled out an order. “Coffee.”

“Oh, that may not be possible,” Kaylie interjected apologetically. “My aunts don’t drink coffee, but maybe they’ll have some in the kitchen anyway.”

Gallow grimaced as Aaron scuttled out of the room. Kaylie told herself that she had done all she could for the moment. It was time to go. And yet, she lingered, oddly reluctant to leave the injured man alone. Brute he might be, but to a nurse an injured man was an injured man. Period. At least that’s what she told herself.

As soon as Aaron had gone, Kaylie Chatam started tidying up the place. Stephen had dropped a towel on the floor the evening before, along with a trio of little pillows that had decorated the bed. Too weak to retrieve them, he’d simply left them where they’d fallen and collapsed, exhausted after the drive from Dallas, the climb up the stairs and a cursory scrubbing. Nurse Chatam folded the towel and laid it atop the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed. The pillows she moved to one of a pair of window seats with gold-on-gold-striped upholstery, both of which overlooked the front of the house. Stephen followed her every movement with his wary gaze.

Petite and gentle, with big, dark brown eyes and thick, straight hair a shade somewhere between sandy brown and red, she was pretty in a painfully wholesome way. That put her a far cry from his usual type, beautiful and somewhat flamboyant. After all, if a guy was going to put up with all that female nonsense, Stephen figured that he ought to get something flashy out of it, something noticeable.

This Kaylie Chatam didn’t even appear to be wearing makeup, except perhaps mascara, as her lashes were much darker than her delicate brows, and a touch of rose-pink lipstick. He couldn’t help noticing, however, that the creamy skin of her slender oval face seemed almost luminous with good health. He noted that she shared with her aunts a high forehead and faintly cleft chin. That little dip in her almost pointy chin somehow called attention to the plump, rosy lips above, not to mention those enormous eyes. They were so dark they were almost black, startlingly so with her light hair. He wondered just how long her hair was and what she’d do if he managed to pluck the pins from that loose, heavy knot at the nape of her slender neck. More to distract himself from that line of thought than for any other reason, he broke the silence.

“Aaron explain about the press?”

“He said you’re hiding from them.”

“I’m not hiding!” Stephen frowned at the notion. “I’m keeping a low profile.”

“Ah.”

“It’s necessary,” he grumbled defensively, rubbing his right hand over his prickly jaw and chin and wishing he could shave. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“No, I guess not.”

Something about those softly spoken words irritated him, and he barked at her. “Your aunts swore they would protect my privacy, and I made a hefty contribution to some single parents’ charity to guarantee it.”

She gave him a look, the kind she might give a little boy who stretched the truth. It made his cheeks and throat heat. He mentally winced at the thought of the curse words that he’d spewed earlier.

“My aunts never swear,” she told him with the absolute authority of one who would know. “But if they said they would protect your privacy, then they will. And any donation you may have made to one of their charities has nothing to do with it. Trust me. They may have promised, but they didn’t swear.”

“What’s the difference?” he wanted to know, sounding grumpy even to his own ears.