Undercover Groom

The laconic question shattered the tension that gripped Chloe. More concerned now with the fact that her employer had dragged herself out of bed against her doctor’s vehement orders than with her response to the stranger’s kiss, she shook her head.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Funny way of handlin’ things, if you ask me,” the older woman twanged.

Chloe flushed, but she’d learned that Hannah Crockett’s tart tongue came part and parcel with a heart wider than the blue Dakota sky. She’d wandered into town only a few days after the general store proprietor had tumbled off a ladder and crawled into the street on her belly to get help, dragging her shattered ankle behind her. The cantankerous invalid had hired Chloe on the spot to tend the shop while she was laid up. Hannah had brushed aside such piddling trifles as references and identification. She was good at sizin’ up people, she informed Chloe testily. It didn’t matter a horse’s spit where the girl had come from, or where she was driftin’ to. The job was hers, if she could handle it. A spare bedroom came with it, and any meals she wanted to fix up. Otherwise, she could order for them both from the café in town.

Chloe had snatched at the offer, assuming that her duties would center primarily on ringing up sales in the old-fashioned brass cash register that dominated the counter. Three weeks and countless hours of stocking shelves, sweeping floors, breaking down boxes and scuttling fifty-pound sacks across the floor had taught her differently. The work was back-breaking and seemingly endless. With the store open from eight in the morning until nine at night, she earned every penny of the salary Hannah paid her in addition to her room and board. She’d also taken on the duties of nurse and companion, despite Hannah’s grumbling that she could take care of herself.

Worried by the deep white lines grooved on either side of her reluctant patient’s mouth, Chloe hurried around the counter. “We need to get you back to bed. The specialist in Rapid City said you should stay off that ankle until he takes the pins out.”

“If I listened to him and laid on my backside for six weeks, I’d sprout carbuncles the size of Idaho potatoes.” Keeping the shotgun level with the ease of one used to its heavy weight, she shifted her stance and gave the stranger another once-over. “What did you say your name was?”

“Chandler, Mason Chandler.”

“Hmmmm. You go around kissin’ up every girl you happen to come across, Chandler, or is there something special ‘bout our Chloe here?”

Mase debated how best to answer that one. He’d already blown any need for a cover by giving Chloe his name...not that his real identity seemed to matter to her. The absurd thought occurred to him that she might be putting him through the hoops for the scene in his office with an elaborate pretense of not recognizing him. He dismissed that thought as soon as it formed. To all intents, it appeared Chloe really didn’t know him.

A trickle of cold sweat formed between Mase’s shoulder blades. His medical training as an undercover operative had consisted of such useful field techniques as packing gunshot wounds, administering antisnakebite serum and treating frostbite. The little he’d read about amnesia made him hesitant about blurting out her identity. He needed expert medical advice, and fast. In the meantime, he owed Hannah an answer.

“There’s definitely something special about Chloe,” he said with perfect truth. “Any man with eyes in his head could see that. But I shouldn’t have come on to her the way I did.”

“Hmm.”

The woman’s watery blue eyes held his for another second or two, then she lowered the shotgun and uncocked the hammer with an agile flick of her thumb.

“Did that sound like an apology to you, Chloe?”

“Close enough,” she bit out, obviously unimpressed. “Come on, Hannah, let’s get you back to bed.”

“In a minute, girl, in a minute.”

The older woman angled a head haloed by short, feathery, white wisps of hair. Her flyaway hair might have given her a pixielike appearance if it hadn’t topped a face toughened by wind and sun and shrewd blue eyes.

“So what brings you to these parts, Chandler?”

“Hunting ”

“Elk season doesn’t start for another two days.”

“I thought I’d get in some fishing first.”

“You did, did you?”

Impatient now to get to a phone, Mase brought the inquisition to an end. “I came in to buy a fishing permit. I’ll come back later, after you get off that ankle.”

“I never turn away a payin’ customer, boy.”

All brisk business now, Hannah laid the shotgun on the counter and hobbled toward a slotted wooden box...or tried to. After only a single step, her crutch hit an uneven patch of floor. Her good leg buckled. She grunted in pain and started to topple backward. Mase caught her just before she hit the hard wooden floor.

With Chloe hurrying ahead to show the way, he carried a muttering, thoroughly disgusted Hannah through the cluttered storeroom and down the hall he’d glimpsed earlier. The hall gave onto a kitchen on one side and a combined living room and office that had been converted into a downstairs bedroom for the invalid. A narrow flight of stairs led, Mase guessed, to the upstairs bedrooms.

Edging sideways to avoid any contact between the bulky cast encasing Hannah’s ankle and the door frame, he deposited her gently on the blankets mounded on the sofa. By the time she’d stretched out and propped her leg on a pillow, the blood had drained from her face.

Chloe clucked in concern. “You’d better take one of your pain pills. I’ll get some water.”

“I’m not taking those damned pills,” her patient snapped. “They make me feeble-minded.”