Following the two men, she waited while they loaded Cain into the chopper, then climbed aboard and settled herself beside him. Then the pilot was lifting the chopper away, swooping into the air, veering off toward the hospital in Prescott.
Jenny bent over Cain and pressed a soft kiss on his lips. She didn’t want to believe she was in love with him. But the tears in her eyes, the way her heart was aching, the way her insides trembled with fear for him, she couldn’t fool herself any longer.
She prayed that he would be all right and clung to his hand as the chopper flew toward town.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CAIN AWOKE SLOWLY, DRAGGING HIMSELF FROM THE DEPTHS OF Aheavy, drugging sleep. His eyes felt gritty, his mouth dry. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the curtains were drawn, and it was dark in the room. The sound of beeping drew his groggy attention to the monitor hooked up to a stand beside the bed. There was an IV in his arm, a bag of fluid dripping clear liquid into his veins.
Little by little, memories returned—riding Gladiator over the ridge, getting ready for a picnic by the stream, the echo of gunshots. The pain and the blood.
The bastard who had shot him.
He turned his head a little, saw Jenny curled up asleep in a chair next to the bed, her head propped against her shoulder. She looked uncomfortable and exhausted, and the knowledge she was there tightened something in his chest.
Eased by her presence, he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.
* * *
Night turned into morning; the hours slipped past and it was noon. Jenny sat with Nell and Emma in a waiting room down the hall from Cain’s hospital room. There was a row of vinyl-cushioned chairs along the wall, more placed back-to-back in the middle of the room. Sunlight streamed in through the window.
After the shooting, Cain had been flown to the Yavapai Regional Medical Center in Prescott and taken directly into surgery. Doctors had dealt with his loss of blood, torn ligaments, and tendons, removed the bullet, and stitched up the wound.
Emma had driven Nell down yesterday as soon as Jenny had called to tell her about the shooting. After the doctors had assured her that Cain was going to be all right, she had gone home for the night, but came back early this morning. According to Emma, nothing could dissuade her.
Jenny thought of the mother she had barely known. It was good Cain understood how lucky he was.
At the Copper Star, Jenny had relied on Troy, Barb, Heather, and the rest of her employees to take care of things while she was gone. The Cross Bar ranch hands had all shown up at the hospital, including Maria. The men stayed in shifts, one of them outside Cain’s door at all times.
Someone had tried to kill their boss, who was also a friend. The men were there to protect him until he could protect himself.
Jenny checked the time on her phone. Currently, hospital staff were finishing the paperwork needed to release Cain.
“They’d better hurry this along,” Nell grumbled. “Cain’ll be chomping at the bit to get out of here.”
“I doubt he likes hospitals any better than the rest of us,” Jenny said.
“He spent some time in ’em off and on. Got beat up pretty good when he was a kid. He was runnin’ with a bad bunch. Found trouble one night with another bad bunch. Took four of them to take him down. Cain spent three days in the hospital that time. Turned out to be a good lesson.”
“I knew he had problems when he was a teen.” Jenny glanced toward the door, hoping the nurse walking down the hall was coming to tell them Cain was ready to leave, but the nurse kept walking, heading farther down the corridor.
“What about the scars on his hands?” Jenny asked. “Those are burn scars, aren’t they? How did it happen?”
“He never talks about it,” Nell said. “Happened in a mine he was workin’. There was an explosion, then a fire. One of the miners got pinned beneath some heavy timber. The other men took off and left him, but Cain stayed behind. Boy’s strong as a bull. He managed to free the man before the fire swept over them, but his hands got badly burned. My boy was a hero.”
Jenny’s throat tightened. The more she learned about Cain, the more she was drawn to him. It worried her. Getting more deeply involved was the last thing she wanted.
“After the way he protected me, I’m not surprised. I’m glad you told me. What about the tattoo on his arm?”
One of Nell’s silver eyebrows went up. “The skull wearing a hard hat? He was just young and dumb.”
Jenny laughed.
Another hour passed before the nurse finally came in to tell them Cain was ready to leave. Jenny headed down the hall, while Emma pushed Nell in her wheelchair.
When Jenny shoved open the door, Cain was getting dressed. Apparently, the nurse had helped him into the gray sweatpants that Denver had brought, but he was naked from the waist up.
Her pulse thrummed. He had the most incredible body, his arms and chest heavily muscled, his waist narrow and flat. She had never liked muscle jocks, but there was something about a man who had earned all those sexy muscles by doing actual hard work.
