A Match Made in Texas (9 page)

Hypatia set aside her teacup, making an uncharacteristically unladylike snort. “The cause relates to some trauma in that young man’s past.”

“Rooted in an unhappy childhood, no doubt,” Odelia said, clasping her hands together, a lace hanky caught between them. “Oh, that poor dear boy.” She was dressed almost solemnly today in a double-breasted, royal-blue pantsuit with gold buttons and earrings the size of small saucers. Kaylie could imagine demitasse cups sitting in their centers. Still, for
Odelia, this was positively funereal, especially as compared to the backdrop.

The sunroom at the rear of the house was a large, glassed-in space right next to the kitchen. Filled with pieces of bamboo and wicker furniture upholstered in a vivid floral pattern, it was a bright, restful space. A ceiling fan rotating lazily overhead stirred the fronds of palms and ferns scattered artfully about the room in large pots.

“There is more,” Magnolia pronounced thoughtfully, munching on a gingersnap, “to our young Stephen than meets the eye.”

Smiling wanly, Kaylie said nothing, glad that professional strictures prevented her from mentioning to her aunts what Stephen had said in the ambulance. It would only confirm their assumptions. On the other hand, their concern for him was genuine.

Hypatia sighed. “We’ll just have to continue praying for him as best we can.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” Kaylie said, rising to her feet. “Now I’d better get home. Dad is probably anxious. I just wanted to check in with you.”

“And when will you see Stephen again?” Odelia wanted to know.

“Sometime tomorrow.”

“Give him our very best wishes,” Magnolia said.

“And tell him,” Odelia chirped, “that his room here is waiting for him.”

“I will. It shouldn’t be long before he’s back,” Kaylie assured her. “Day after tomorrow at the latest, I imagine.”

“Yes, they don’t keep anyone in the hospital very long these days,” Hypatia said disapprovingly.

Kaylie let that go and passed out farewell kisses. “In case
I haven’t told you,” she said, on her way out of the room, “I admire what you’re doing for Stephen.”

“Oh, we’re thrilled to do it,” Odelia trilled, causing her sisters to aim very pointed looks at her. Subsiding into a meager smile, she waved her hanky at Kaylie, who went out mentally chuckling to herself.

She marveled that the sisters had agreed to take in an injured professional hockey player who was a complete stranger to them, but surely the whole thing had been directed by the caring hands of God.

“This is no good to me!”

Kaylie heard Stephen’s voice raised in anger even before she pushed through the heavy door to his room early the next morning. A dark-haired nurse in violet scrubs straightened from a bent position and turned. She had a folded newspaper in her hands and an exasperated expression on her face, a face that Kaylie knew well.

“Hi, Linda. Problems?”

Linda Shocklea was an old schoolmate and a fine nurse. She rolled her eyes at the bed, flourishing the newspaper. “His Highness asked for a newspaper. I brought him a newspaper.”

“There are no hockey scores in that local rag!” Stephen snapped. “I need a
real
newspaper.”

Linda slapped the offending paper under her arm, saying, “I have explained that the local paper is all we get delivered up here and I cannot leave my post to go downstairs to find him a Fort Worth or Dallas paper.”

Stephen ignored her, gesturing heatedly toward the television mounted high in one corner of the room. “They don’t even have a sports channel on the TV!”

Kaylie smiled apologetically at the other nurse. “I’ve been hired to care for Mr. Gallow. Leave this to me.”

Heaving a relieved sigh, Linda pulled open the door. “Gladly.”

Obviously, Stephen had been making a nuisance of himself. Kaylie turned to face her employer, her hands linked together at her waist. For a long moment, he would not meet her gaze, just sat there in the bed fuming.

And to think,
Kaylie mused,
that I had such a difficult time staying away last night.

It hadn’t helped that her father had been in such a surly mood. He had started out sounding concerned and solicitous, his earlier pique ameliorated by his delight that she had returned home in time to see to his lunch. He had even asked about Stephen’s condition. She had answered as well as she was able, mindful of Stephen’s privacy concerns. The problem had come when her father’s queries had turned to Stephen himself, or, more to the point, when she had answered them, particularly the question about Stephen’s age.

“So young?” her father had said, frowning. “I thought Mr. Gallow to be an elderly individual.”

She had been somewhat taken aback by that, but even more so by her father’s rapidly darkening mood. By dinner, she had resorted to keeping out of her father’s way, and she had quickly found herself thinking that she could serve better at the hospital. But she had stayed at home, judging it the wiser action. Evidently, she had been right to come this morning, however, rather than wait until the afternoon.

“I’ll go down and get you a paper,” she told Stephen quietly.

He folded his arms mulishly. The gesture lost something due to the fact that his left arm was already bent at the elbow, set in a cast and strapped to his chest. She disciplined a smile. Suddenly his hand shot out.

“Forget the paper. Give me your phone. I’ll look up the scores on the Internet.”

“No,” she said calmly, “you can’t.”

His face, already shadowed with two days’ growth of beard, darkened. “Why not? I bought that phone. I can use it if I want.”

“Cell phone use is strictly forbidden in patient and treatment areas, no matter who owns the phone.”

He glared at her, slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead and literally growled. “Raaaaagggh!”

“I’ll go now so I can get back before the doctors make their rounds,” she said.

“Fine,” he snapped. “Go. Go! You’re good at that.”

That hit home. Obviously, he had missed her yesterday. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or troubled. Ducking her head, she quietly slipped from the room. Hurrying down to the gift shop, she picked up both the Dallas and the Fort Worth papers, then swiftly returned to Stephen’s room. He seemed somewhat mollified when she handed over the newspapers. At least he didn’t bite her hand.

Digging through the pile, he found the sports section of one paper and clumsily began spreading it out on the bed. Kaylie stepped in and turned the pages for him until he found what he wanted. Then she folded the paper, with the story exposed, and placed it in his good hand. He read earnestly for several minutes. Finally, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the pillow.

“You’re pleased,” she said, smiling as a warm glow filled her chest. It seemed ridiculous to feel so delighted at evidence of his pleasure, but she couldn’t help herself. He thrust the paper at her. Taking that as an order to read it, she did so.

From what she could gather, the team had lost the first
game of a series, despite some excellent penalty killing and other things she didn’t understand. Finally, she hit upon the paragraph that she thought might have so pleased Stephen.

“Most said it would be enough for this young team to make it to the playoffs for the first time in their short history,” she read aloud. “Today, despite this loss out of the starting gate, expectations are building. The one flaw in that scenario is the position of goalie. Abel Kapimsky, 24, is a promising young goaltender and shows flashes of pure brilliance, but he’s no Stephen Gallow. Then again, who in this conference is?”

She went on to read in silence how Gallow’s goaltending had lifted the general level of play for the whole team and been instrumental in winning that first playoff berth. The writer noted that the mysterious injury which had taken Gallow out of the lineup could have also taken the wind out of the team’s sails. That, to the team’s credit, had not happened. After the loss, the team captain had, in fact, admonished his team to go out there and win the next one for the Hangman.

Smiling, Kaylie tossed the paper onto the bed. “Well,” she said blithely, “that ought to lighten your mood.”

Those gray eyes tried to freeze her where she stood. “I have good reason for my mood.”

“Mmm, and I suppose the same goes for your attitude,” she ventured softly. Those icy eyes narrowed, but for some reason Kaylie found herself smiling.

“What’s wrong with my attitude?”

“Oh, please. A little honesty, now.”

“Meaning?”

“Has no one ever told you that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“Has no one ever told you that you look better with your hair down?” he sniped.

Kaylie’s hand went automatically to the heavy twist of
hair at her nape. She almost always confined it when she was working. Otherwise, it got in the way. Self-consciously, she dropped the hand, dismayed to find that her first impulse had been to dig out the pins and clips that maintained the chignon. She didn’t know what was worse—that he thought her unattractive with her hair confined or that she cared what he thought about her looks.

“Sorry,” Stephen muttered, having the grace to shoot her a sheepish glance. “You look fine. I only meant that you have gorgeous hair. How you wear it is none of my business.”

He thought she had gorgeous hair! Her hand once more sneaked up to touch the offending chignon, and she quickly turned away, unwilling to let him see how much his opinion affected her. “Thank you,” she murmured, trying not to feel too pleased.

“I said I’m sorry, all right?” he grumbled.

Nodding, she bent to check the drip rate on his intravenous unit. “No problem.”

“Arrrgh!”

She turned to find him beating his fist against his forehead. Alarmed, she asked, “Are you in pain?”

He dropped his hand, glaring at her. “No, I’m not in pain. Not much, anyway. I am in a foul mood. I admit it. Okay? I hate hospitals, and I hate not being able to get out of this bed! I’m bored out of my gourd and I’m worried—” He broke off.

“Worried about your career,” she surmised.

“Wouldn’t you be?” he shot back.

Kaylie didn’t bother answering that. Instead, she sent up a silent prayer as she sifted through the second newspaper on the bed. Finding the sports section, she thumbed through it until she came to the hockey report. Quickly scanning the article, she saw that this reporter was not nearly as sanguine about the loss and the team’s chances, for one pertinent
reason. Reading aloud from the article, she pitched her voice to a strong, authoritative level.

“As thrilled as the fans may be at the team’s long overdue entry into the playoffs, the hope of the Blades began and ended with goalie Stephen Gallow, who has had his problems off the ice in the past but rarely on it. Hurry back, Hangman! We need you.”

She looked up in time to catch a look of raw emotion on his face. It was an expression of relief and pride and abject longing. Understanding struck. In an instant, she saw what Stephen Gallow would likely never admit even to himself, that like everyone else in this world, deep down, he needed to be needed. That’s what playing for the Blades was really about for him. He just wanted someone to need him. She, who had felt the needs of so many and counted them a burden, felt suddenly ashamed.

F
olding the paper neatly, Kaylie passed it to Stephen for his own perusal. He seemed to soak in every word. A faint smile curved his lips, but the face that he presented to her clearly showed concern.

“This helps, but sports writers and team management are not the same.”

“No, they’re not,” she agreed, “but neither one is God. Why don’t you leave the future to Him and concentrate on getting well?”

“Easy for you to say,” Stephen muttered, looking at the article again.

“Yes,” she said meaningfully. “Yes, it is.” When he made no response to that, she changed the subject. “When’s the next game?”

The frown came back to Stephen’s face. “Tomorrow night.” He glared at the television in the corner. The folded sheet of newspaper dropped to the bed. “You think there’s any chance I can get out of here before then?”

Kaylie smiled. “We’ll see what the doctors say.”

“It helps that I have you, right?” he pressed, sitting up a
little straighter. The pillow slid down behind him, and Kaylie reached around to pull it back up. “I mean, you can take care of me at home, uh, Chatam House, so why stay here? Yeah?”

“We’ll see,” she repeated, smiling.

Stephen leaned back. “I need you, you know.” Kaylie blinked, more than merely surprised. “No, really. Yesterday, for instance. What would I have done without you?”

“Someone would have called an ambulance,” she told him.

“Yeah, maybe, but who would have held my hand throughout one of the worst days of my life?”

She said nothing to that, but when he held out his hand, she placed her own in it.

“I need you, Kaylie,” he said softly. “That’s why it’s so tough when you cut out on me.”

Warmth spread throughout her chest, radiating from her heart. “I’ll do my best for you, Stephen,” she told him, “I promise you, my very best. But I do have other obligations, you know. My dad needs me, too.”

His smile flattened. “Sure,” he said, letting go of her hand. He glanced around the room. “So what now? We stare at the walls until the docs show up?”

Sighing, Kaylie gathered up the newspapers. “Why don’t we start by taking a look at the news?”

“Oh, that’ll cheer me right up,” he grumbled, but he lay there and listened to her read, commenting from time to time and offering reasoned, if sometimes sarcastic, arguments when she disagreed with him. In truth, they agreed more often than not, and Kaylie found some of his comments to be surprisingly insightful, informed, no doubt, by his life on two continents.

His foul mood seemed to lighten considerably, and his pain level remained low. The nerve block administered by the surgeon would wear off sometime in the next thirty-six to
forty-eight hours, and his pain would return to previous levels, but she trusted that they could manage it successfully. Though mercurial, Stephen in a better mood and not in pain was a delightful experience, and it pleased her to be responsible for that in some small way.

Perhaps it pleased her too much.

“In the Netherlands,” Stephen pointed out in response to an article on highway gridlock, “if you live more than ten kilometers from your job—that’s just over six miles—your employer must provide you with a bicycle.”

“A bicycle!” Kaylie exclaimed. “Oh, yeah, that would work. I can just see it now, bicycles fighting all those pickup trucks for space on our freeways. Yikes!”

“The bicycles don’t go on the freeways,” Stephen pointed out. “They go on the city streets, which have special bike lanes, and that frees up space on the highway.”

“Bike lanes aside—and I’ve never seen a bike lane on a Texas street—what about heat stroke? We get triple-digit summers here, not to mention other extreme weather.”

“The weather’s not the issue. They get freezing weather in the Netherlands. The issue is distance. Here, everybody lives an hour’s drive from work.”

“Not everyone can live where they work,” she argued.

He started to reply, but just then the door swooshed open and Brooks Leland strode into the room. Tall and fit with a touch of distinguished gray at his temples, a stethoscope about his neck and a white, knee-length lab coat in place of a suit jacket, the general practitioner was both genial and handsome. Stephen had liked Leland from the first moment they’d met only days earlier, but the instant the other man’s eyes lit on Kaylie, Stephen knew the good doctor’s likeability was about to take a nosedive.

The plummet began when Kaylie hopped up from the bedside chair and rushed toward Leland, calling out, “Brooks!”

It dropped like a rock when the doctor grinned and opened his arms. “There’s my favorite nurse.”

The two didn’t just embrace, they hugged, rocking side to side in their exuberance.

“Kaylie darlin’,” Brooks Leland drawled, pulling back slightly to gaze down at her, “it’s been too long.”

“That’s what you get for being such a stranger,” she scolded playfully. “Why don’t you ever come by anymore? Dad would love to see you.”

“I’ll make a point of it. Soon.”

“You better.”

The door opened again, bumping Leland in the back, and another white coat slipped into the room. Stephen recognized the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Craig Philem. So did Kaylie. Worse, he recognized her.

“Kaylie, Kaylie, Kaylie,” he admonished with mock censure, reaching out an arm toward her. “Don’t you know that our Dr. Leland makes time with
all
the best-looking nurses?”

“None of whom will give Craig here the time of day,” Leland said with a wink, one arm draped casually about Kaylie’s shoulders.

“You wish,” Philem smirked, as Kaylie, to Stephen’s disgruntlement, laughed and reached out to slide her free arm around the young surgeon’s waist so that the three of them stood linked.

Both shorter and thicker than Leland, with receding sandy brown hair, the orthopedist was, nevertheless, an attractive man. His eyes alone commanded attention, being a bright, intense blue. Stephen glumly supposed that some women might find those dimples adorable, too.

Kaylie said something clever and chummy, no doubt, but
Stephen tuned it out, wondering sourly if she was on hugging terms with every doctor in the hospital. Targeting the two physicians, he decided that it was past time to get down to business.

“If you two are through pawing my nurse, I’d like to get out of here.”

“Great!” Philem exclaimed. “How does tomorrow morning sound?”

“Right now sounds better.”

“Not happening, champ,” Leland said, strolling forward and lifting his stethoscope from around his neck. “Maybe if this was the first or only broken bone we had to worry about…As it is, though, I have to agree with Dr. Philem.” Waving Stephen into silence, he popped in the earpieces of his stethoscope and slipped the bell beneath Stephen’s T-shirt. After several seconds, he motioned Stephen forward, shifted and listened to his back. “Lungs are clear,” he finally announced.

Philem stepped up, lifted the bedcovers and checked the color of Stephen’s toes. “How’s your pain level?”

“Eh,” Stephen said with an unconcerned shrug of one shoulder.

Philem chuckled and glanced at Kaylie. “These hockey players are tough cookies. But seriously, is the leg bothering you?”

“Only when I move it,” Stephen said.

“It’ll get worse as the nerve block wears off,” Philem warned. “But we’ll do our best to get on top of it and stay there. Isn’t that so, Kaylie?”

“Yes, sir. I just have one concern,” she said, smiling at Stephen. “He’s been having nightmares.”

“Kaylie!” Stephen snapped, appalled.

“That’s why this happened,” she went on, ignoring him. “He broke the leg again when he fell out of the bed.” She
shifted her gaze to Brooks, adding, “I suspect that’s what led to his rib injuries the other night, too.”

“Kaylie!” Stephen barked again.

“Is that right?” Leland asked him. Then, without waiting for an answer, he shook his head. “I should have picked up on that.”

“Those are some pretty violent nightmares,” Philem noted.

“What happened to my right to privacy?” Stephen demanded. To his surprise, Kaylie turned on him.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t breached any confidentiality. These are your doctors. They need to know how the drugs are affecting you.”

“The drugs?” Stephen echoed uncertainly.

“She’s right,” Leland agreed, consulting a PDA that he’d drawn from a pocket. He rattled off several familiar-sounding drug names. “In combination, any two of those can, in some cases, induce nightmares. In a small number of patients, one of them can even cause hallucinations.” He drew a prescription pad from a pocket, produced an ink pen and began to scribble. “Let’s change the anti-inflammatory and the oral analgesic.” After a few moments, he tore off the top sheet and handed it to Kaylie. “You can adjust the injections, too. May take a little tweaking, but I trust you to keep him comfortable without producing side effects.”

Kaylie slid the prescription into her own pocket and nodded at Stephen. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Lucky stiff,” Philem cracked. He launched into a series of instructions that Kaylie probably didn’t need to hear and Stephen ignored.

Instead, he watched her, the classical lines of her profile drawing him like a lodestone. He understood now what she’d meant yesterday when she had mentioned “taking care of” his nightmares. He understood, too, that she had become indis
pensable to his well-being. When he’d said earlier that he needed her, he hadn’t been exaggerating. Maybe he had been trying to schmooze her a bit, but the truth was that he didn’t see how he could do this without her now.

Truth be told, Philem was right. He was lucky to have found her, and every instinct he possessed dictated that he hold on to her, which was why he didn’t like watching these two white-coated mashers drool over her. Not that he was jealous or anything. It was just that, well, she was
his
nurse. That meant she was with
him.
Right? He was determined to make that clear to her at the first opportunity.

Her thoughtfulness and kindness touched and soothed him, and selfish as it might be, that was not something he meant to forego. She didn’t need to know that his nightmares were all too real, though, so real that no drug in the world could possibly make a difference.

Predictably, Stephen’s mood had soured again. Kaylie felt his disappointment at this new setback and sensed his need to be up and moving around. When she suggested that he take a ride in a wheelchair just to get out of the room, however, his horror was almost laughably palpable.

“I’m not getting into any wheelchair!”

“Oh, I do fear that you are,” she said calmly. “How do you expect to get around otherwise?”

He glowered. “The same way as before.”

She shook her head. “You can’t put an ounce of weight on that leg until you get the walking cast, and I think you’ll find that the length of this one changes your center of gravity so that even hopping around on one leg will be very difficult. Trust me on this. You aren’t going farther than a few feet unless it’s in a chair.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Great. That’s just great.”

“It won’t be forever,” she pointed out, but he heaved a sigh and looked away.

Searching for some way to lighten his mood again, she made small talk and scrolled through the channels on the TV, none of which elicited more than a grunt of disdain from him. Then inspiration struck. She walked over to the bedside table and picked up the receiver of the telephone there. After checking the note in her pocket, she punched in a number and waited for the call to be picked up on the other end. A male voice answered almost immediately.

“Carter.”

“Hello, Carter. It’s Kaylie Chatam. Just thought I’d let you know that today would be a good time to stop by.”

“Great! We’ve finished our shift, but I think the guys are all still around. I’ll get them together, and we’ll head over to the hospital. What’s the room number?”

“Three-thirty.”

“Give us fifteen minutes.”

“Looking forward to it,” she told him. Aware of Stephen’s glower, she hung up, cocking an eyebrow at him in silent question.

“So now you’re arranging dates on my time?” he demanded.

“What?”

“It’s not enough that my doctors fall all over you? Now you’ve got to set up meetings with your other boyfriends when you should be taking care of
me?
” He stabbed a finger downward.

Kaylie gaped at him. Was he jealous? She laughed in answer to her own silly question. Jealous? Of little old her? No. The man was spoiled. He wanted her there to wait on him hand and foot. That was all. She parked her hands at her waist.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” He tossed out a hand. “I’m not blind. I saw with my own eyes how they greeted you. Leland especially
seems to think he has some claim on you. Isn’t he a little too old for you?”

She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Brooks Leland is my older brother Morgan’s best friend, if you must know. He’s like a member of the family, another brother almost.”

“Oh.” Stephen pondered that for a minute, his frown easing, but then the frown deepened again. “What about Philem? And don’t tell me he’s like a member of the family because I saw the way he looked at you.”

Kaylie felt heat blossom in her cheeks. “We’re friends.”

“Baloney. There’s something going on between you and Philem.”

“We’re not dating, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Stephen’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But he’s asked, hasn’t he?” Suddenly, he grinned. “He asked, and you shot him down. Ha!”

“I didn’t ‘shoot him down,’” she insisted. “My father was very ill,” she added defensively, “and I didn’t feel I could be away from him.”

Stephen’s grin grew. “It’s because Philem’s going bald, isn’t it?”

“It is not! I told you—”

“Yeah, yeah, Daddy was too sick at the time. And what’s your excuse now?”

Kaylie blanched. “And now, we’re friends,” she told Stephen firmly, “
not
that it’s any of your business.”

The truth was that she and Philem had dated for a while, and she had liked him very well—still did like him—but when he’d kissed her, she’d suddenly found herself wanting to run in the opposite direction. After her father’s heart attack, she’d used his physical condition to allow the relationship to wane. They had remained on friendly terms, but that’s as far as it had gone. And as far as she would allow it to go.