Healing Hearts

The bird, picking up Drake’s sudden tension, squawked and started dancing.

Tessa scooped up the bird, wincing when he dug in his claws.

“Thank you—” Liam began.

“Why don’t we go inside,” Tessa offered. “Your brother is looking tired.”

Drake scowled at them both. What had happened to the smile the man had just worn? Where had it gone?

“Which way?” Liam asked.

Tessa took that as her cue and went back up the ramp, which the carpenter was just finishing. Even with her back to Drake, the spell over her emotions was still in full force. She wondered if there was such a thing as meeting someone who you just knew was going to play an important part of your life—like God saying, look here, don’t miss this. He’s important to you.

If so, then Tessa was certain that was what just happened to her. She didn’t know how or why but this man… She had met her destiny in some way or another.

In Your hands, Father, she silently prayed, giving Him control in this situation. She had learned what she didn’t understand and couldn’t control she had to allow God to control. She saw a young woman come out of her kitchen and head toward a gray van on the side of the house, in which Liam must have just arrived.

“That’s Kellie, the cook. She’s a great girl. She cooks for us out at the ranch. Her mother cooked there before she did,” Liam said.

Tessa nodded at his words. The young Hispanic woman was beautiful, Tessa thought, but didn’t say so. Instead, she continued up the ramp and into the house.

“We’re worried about infection so I hope you keep a clean house,” Liam said now.

Tessa glanced around, surprised. “I would think you’d have checked all of that out before you agreed to let me be a keeper.”

Drake growled. It startled Tessa. She thought at first he was choking, until she caught the anger in his eyes. “I don’t need a keeper.”

Liam scowled at her then tried to soothe his brother. “Yes. You do. You still aren’t well enough to come home. Tessa will be working with you as will your nurse, and Kellie will be here to cook for you. Soon, Drake, you’ll be well enough to boss me around again.” To Tessa’s ears Liam didn’t sound like he really believed that, though.

Drake shoved at his brother’s hand, his look downright dark.

Oh dear. She couldn’t help but feel she was back in the schoolroom with a group of rowdy third graders as she watched the two brothers interact. Taking a breath she decided it might be best to break up the tension before it got any worse.

Crossing the kitchen she reached for the door to the bedroom. In a bright voice, she said, much like a Realtor trying to sell a man seeking a simple abode the house of his dreams, “This room right here is where Drake will be staying. It has its own facilities. There’s an outside door.” She paused, listening. “As a matter of fact, I think I hear the carpenter working on the entrance right now.”

Glancing around she realized suddenly that Drake’s chair wouldn’t fit through the area between the sink and the table. “I see we’re going to have to make some adjustments,” she said, laughing nervously when she realized the way the table was positioned wouldn’t allow him to get into the living room. “We’ll work all of this out. Let’s look at your room first, shall we?” she continued, simply wanting the tension in the room to ease.

She pushed the door open, smiling at them. Instead of smiles, however, the two gaped past her. Slowly, in unison, two green-eyed stares turned to her, tension still very evident in the stunned looks.

“What?” she asked. Surely they didn’t hate the room. This was one of her favorite rooms. It was like a playroom for her. She had decorated it herself. Hardly anyone ever stayed in it so time and again she found herself going by an antique store and picking up some cute piece of furniture or knickknack to add. It was quite a nice room.

Or it had been. When she turned her head to point out the features she found herself gaping, too, just before she burst out with, “Oh my heavens!”

Disaster had struck the formally picturesque room. The beautiful blue, green and yellow quilt, which had covered the bed, straggled off the end of the four-poster at an odd angle, trailing onto the floor. The tiny lace pillows, which had lain on top, now decorated the braided carpet. The small throw rug she had positioned in front of the dresser was no longer there. Instead, it curled up crazily against the far, papered wall. But the worst thing she could see that had happened to the room was the toilet paper. It adorned everything. At least everything that was within leaping distance for a small puppy. The chair, the small nightstand, the bed all had their share of adornment.

And where was the perpetrator of the mess?

In the middle of a box of tissues was Hubert, his tongue lolling out. He yipped at the new arrivals and then went back to tearing up the carton.

The loud burst of laughter from Drake encouraged her, until she heard him say, “Great going, brother. I have a keeper, all right. A zoo keeper.”

Chapter Three

D rake couldn’t believe everything that had just happened in his short time in this strange household. He’d been going insane in the hospital. Between the looks from the doctors and the people who had come to visit and the worry from his brother, he’d been certain they were going to pray him right into a grave.

They had no hope for him. Each look they had given him had made him all the more determined to prove to them he could live. Live for what, he didn’t know. He had no idea. As badly torn up as he was from the barbed wire and the damage that bull had done to his head, Drake was certain he’d never be much good at anything again.

He’d had a cerebral hemorrhage, they’d told him, from all the damage. But that had been minor compared to what the bull had done to him. It was a miracle he’d lived, they told him. They couldn’t believe he was making progress at all, they’d say. The darkness that had settled on him from all of the negative comments and looks in the hospital had been nearly debilitating at times.

The only one who hadn’t been gloom and doom had been Dr. Susan McCade and her husband, called Dr. Hawk in affectionate terms by his wife. Dr. Susan would look in on Drake, it seemed, and know what to say. She made him smile. She’d been the only person in that forsaken place that had been able to do that. But this Stanridge woman had, in just a few short minutes, accomplished that and more. He felt alive again.

Liam tried to pretend as if nothing was the matter, that in no time Drake would be well. However, it was his fearful looks that he wasn’t suppose to see that made Drake feel like he was on death’s door.

When Liam had told him he wanted to move Drake to a house for recuperation and training, Drake had been in total disagreement. The way things had gone so far, he didn’t want to take any more advice that anyone might give him. After all, if Liam really thought he was going to die, just what type of place might those others suggest for Drake? The only thing that made him agree to try was that Dr. Susan McCade assured him she had made the arrangements and that his brother really was worried only like a little brother might be. Besides, he really couldn’t argue with someone who had access to the phone, truck and outside contacts like his brother did.

He supposed throwing the tray at that nurse when she’d brought him that latest batch of pills had been what had decided this move. But he was restless. He wanted to do more than they would allow.

He was over the pneumonia that had complicated things and was functioning again…somewhat. He was angry and frustrated that he could look at words and have no idea what they said, whereas a few months ago he could have read them. Now, they didn’t make the least bit of sense.

Drake wasn’t an idiot. And he hadn’t been kidding the first few times Liam had brought him something to read. He couldn’t understand it. He was determined to relearn how to read and write and especially how to walk again. Supposedly only the doctor, Liam and Drake knew what was going on here—that this woman had agreed not only to let him stay close to the hospital, but to teach him the rest of the time. It was humiliating. It had been, at least. Until the woman had peeked between her legs at him, the bird hanging on to her shoulder upside down, his beak grasping her hair like he was certain his life was over if he let go.

When she’d turned around, her face red, her cheeks flushing with her embarrassment and not even realizing that the bird was unraveling the lace around her shirt, he couldn’t help but laugh.

For that short time he’d forgotten he was an invalid, that he couldn’t read, that he looked like a cross between Frankenstein and Dracula.

For that short time he’d felt like a man again, noticing the shapely curve of the woman’s legs, the way her brown wavy hair bounced around her face as she had turned to face him. And the way those piercing blue eyes had studied him.

Then he’d realized she was staring at his scars. It’d all come painfully back to him.

And if his brother said one more thing about his condition he was going to get out of the chair and show him just who was still the boss.

Keeper indeed. The woman had a lot to learn, he thought sourly. Still, he couldn’t resist a crack about the golden little puppy. “I hope you don’t expect the lion king there to share my room with me.”

“Oh dear,” she said very low, so low he almost missed it. “No. Of course not. It’s been um, a busy morning. I have to…that is…you can sleep in the cook’s room and I’ll get this cleaned up and then we’ll move you in here later. How’s that?”

He watched her hurry over and shove the table out of the way, making room for his chair to slip through into the next room—the living room, from what he could see sitting where he was.

Drake heard Liam’s phone ring and heard him answer it, but he didn’t take his gaze off the woman’s attempts to put things right.

As she moved back and forth, shoving a chair here, moving a footstool there, he saw another cage past the door with something running around in it. The old wooden boards of the floor lacked a polish but were sturdy just the same and echoed her hurried steps loudly.

He heard his brother say something about calling the vet and then hang up. “Another cow sick. I have to go, Drake. I’ll call this evening and if you want I’ll find you somewhere a bit more sane.”

Tessa had slipped into the living room and continued shoving her furniture around, making sure he had room to get through. Watching her he slowly shook his head. “If I need a keeper, here is as good a place as any.”

Liam sighed. “It wasn’t meant like that, Drake. We’re all worried. You’ve recovered so quickly that if you go back out to the ranch I’m afraid—the doctors are afraid—you’ll have a relapse. Just consider this a halfway house of recovery.”

Drake nodded. “And I am going to recover, Liam.”