Protector

“I suppose so. Me and my dinosaur.” That tickled Hayes, and he laughed. “Right. Me and my dinosaur.”

* * *

Once he was dressed, a nurse came in with a wheelchair. Hayes got into it with rare docility and she put his few possessions in his lap, explaining the prescriptions and the care instruction sheets she handed him on the way out the door.

“Don’t forget, physical therapy on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” she added. “It’s very important.”

“Important.” Hayes nodded. He was already plotting ways to get out of it. But he didn’t tell her that.

* * *

Minette was waiting at the door with her big SUV. It was black with lots of chrome and the wood on the dash was a bright yellow. The seats were tan. It had a CD player and an iPod attachment and automatic everything. There was an entertainment system built in so that the kids could watch DVDs in the backseat. In fact, it was very much like Hayes’s personal car, a new Lincoln. He drove a big pickup truck to work. The Lincoln was for his rare nights out in San Antonio at the opera or the ballet. He’d been missing those because of work pressure. Maybe he’d get to see The Nutcracker next month, at least. It was almost Thanksgiving already.

He noticed the signature trademark on the steering wheel and chuckled. The SUV was a Lincoln. No wonder the dash instruments looked so familiar.

He was strapped in, grimacing because the seat belt hurt.

“Sorry,” Minette said gently, fumbling with the belt to make it less confining.

“It’s all right,” Hayes said through his teeth.

She closed the door, got in under the wheel and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Hayes was tense at first. He didn’t like being a passenger. But Minette was a good driver. She got him home quickly to the big beautiful white Victorian house that had belonged to her family for three generations. It was surrounded by fenced pastures and a horse grazed, a palomino, all by itself.

“You’ve got a palomino,” he mused. “I have several of my own.”

“Yes, I know.” She flushed a little. She’d seen his and loved the breed. “But, actually, I have six of them. That’s Archibald.”

His pale, thick eyebrows rose. “Archibald?”

She flushed a little. “It’s a long story.”

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

Chapter 2

In another pasture, Hayes noted milling cattle, some of which were black-baldies, a cross between Black Angus and Herefords. Most mixed-breed cattle were popular in beef herds. The Raynor place was a ranch.

Along with the ranch, when her stepmother and stepfather died just a few months apart, she inherited two siblings, Julie and Shane. They weren’t actually related to her, but they were hers as surely as if they’d been blood siblings. She loved them dearly.

The children were school-age now. Julie was in kindergarten and Shane was in grammar school. Minette seemed to take that responsibility very seriously. No one ever heard her complain about the kids being a burden. Of course, they also kept her single, Hayes mused. Most men didn’t want a ready-made family to support.

Minette’s great-aunt, Sarah, a tiny little woman with white hair whom Minette always addressed as “Aunt” instead of “Great-Aunt,” was waiting on the front porch. She rushed down the steps as Hayes climbed laboriously out of the SUV.

“Here, Hayes, you lean on me,” she said.

Hayes chuckled. “Sarah, you’re too little to support a man my size. But thanks.”

Minette smiled and hugged her aunt. “He’s right. He needs a little more help than you can give.” She got under Hayes’s arm and put her arm around his back. Her hand twitched when she felt a cavity under his shirt.

“It’s another wound,” he said quietly, feeling her consternation. “I’m pockmarked with them. That one was from a shotgun blast a few years back. I didn’t duck fast enough.”

“You’re a walking advertisement for the perils of law enforcement,” she muttered.

He was trying not to notice how nice it felt to have her close to him. They’d been adversaries for years. He’d blamed her for Bobby’s death. He still blamed her family for that, but she didn’t know who she really was. She had illusions, and he was hesitant to shatter them. After all, she’d given him a home when nobody else offered.

“Thanks,” he said stiffly as they went up the steps and into the roomy, high-ceilinged house.

She paused and looked up at him. She was trying not to let him see the effect his nearness had on her. She’d always adored Hayes Carson, who hated her for reasons that were incomprehensible to her.

“For what?” she stammered.

He searched her black eyes far longer than he meant to. He wondered if she ever questioned the color of those eyes. Her mother had had blue eyes. But he wasn’t going to ask.

“For letting me stay here,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” She hesitated. “I’m afraid all the bedrooms are upstairs...”

“I don’t mind.”

She sighed. “Okay.”

Sarah came bustling in behind them and closed the front door. “I changed the bed in the guest room and turned on the heat,” she told Carson. “It’s not the warmest room in the house, I’m afraid,” she added apologetically.

“Not to worry. I like a cool bedroom.”

“We need to get some fresh clothing for you,” Minette said, appalled by the gunshot wound in the fabric of the shirt he was wearing, and the blood on it.

“I’ll call Zack and have him bring some over,” he said, naming his chief deputy. “He’s been feeding Andy and Rex for me.”

“Okay.”

She helped him into the guest bedroom. It was decorated in shades of blue, brown and beige. The walls were an eggshell-blue, the coverlet was quilted and included browns and blues. The carpet was a soft beige. The curtains matched the coverlet. The windows, two of them, overlooked the pasture where the palomino was grazing.

“This is very nice,” Hayes remarked.

“I’m glad you like it,” Minette said gently. “You should call Zack.”

He nodded. “I’ll do that right now.” He eased onto the coverlet and laid back on the pillow, shivering a little from the exertion and the pain and the weakness that was still making him uncomfortable. “That feels so good.”

Minette hovered. He was pale and he looked terrible. “Can we get you anything?”

He looked at her hopefully. “Coffee?”

She laughed. “They wouldn’t give it to you in the hospital, I gather.”

“They did give me a little hot brown water this morning. They called it coffee,” he scoffed.

“I make very good coffee,” she said. “I have a machine that uses pods, and I get the latte pods from Germany. It’s almost sinfully good.”