She burst out laughing. It was such an outrageous thing to say.
“That’s better,” he said when he saw her face. “Stiff upper lip, now.”
“I’m not British.”
“You aren’t?” he exclaimed. “Why, what a coincidence…neither am I!”
She punched his broad chest, laughing. They walked together to the emergency waiting room.
* * *
Furious, helpless to do anything for her friend, Winnie took refuge in the only thing she could think of that might help—revenge. She phoned Boone and gave him hell.
“Slow down, slow down!” he complained. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Wait…” He cut off the engine on the tractor he was using to help with the harvest. “All right, what was that about Keely?”
“She was walking home, thanks to you, and she got bitten by a rattlesnake! She’s at Jacobsville General… Boone? Hello? Hello? Damn!”
She hung up, even more furious now, because he wouldn’t listen to her. She called Clark. “Where are you?” she asked when he didn’t answer for almost a minute.
He sounded out of breath. “I’m, uh, I had to run to catch the phone,” he said lamely. In the background, music was playing and there was a faint protest, which sounded as if it came from a feminine throat.
“Oh, hell, never mind,” she muttered and hung up. She didn’t need to ask where he was. He was almost certainly with that damned Nellie again. So much for restraint.
But he phoned her back ten minutes later, while she was waiting, hoping, for some sort of report about Keely. She stopped nurses, who promised to go and check but never came back. She was getting frustrated.
“What did you want?” Clark asked.
“Never mind. Go back to Nellie,” she muttered.
“Don’t hang up!” he grumbled. “I’m not with Nellie. I’m over at Dave Harston’s place helping him move a piano. His wife’s making us lunch.”
She felt her face go red. “Sorry.”
He laughed. “I guess the sounds must be similar, but I swear I’m not doing anything I’d mind being seen doing. What’s up?”
“Keely got bitten by a rattler,” she said miserably. “I can’t find out what’s going on and I’m worried sick. Her arm was almost black, Clark. I’m scared—” Her voice broke.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. She’ll be all right, sis. I know she will.”
“Thanks,” she said huskily, and hung up. She prayed that he was right.
A commotion at the desk caught her attention. Boone was bulldozing right past a nurse and a police officer—Kilraven—on his way back to the emergency room. Winnie almost cheered. If anybody could cut through red tape, it was her big brother. They could threaten, but they wouldn’t stop him.
“Coltrain!” he bellowed.
“Over here,” came a deep, resigned voice.
Boone hid it well, but he was terrified. Winnie’s phone call made him feel guilty as hell, and he’d hardly managed to breathe as he rushed to the hospital. One of his cowboys had died from a rattler bite the year before. He was scared to death that Keely might not have reached help in time. If she died, he’d never forgive himself, never!
“Where is she?” Boone demanded, dark eyes flashing, face flushed. He’d come straight from work to the hospital in his work clothes, and never noticed how disheveled he was.
Coltrain nodded toward a cubicle where they were working on her. He knew better than to try to stop Boone. It would mean a brawl, where he could least afford one.
Boone walked into the cubicle and stopped dead. Everything seemed to go out of focus except for Keely’s left arm. They’d bared her to the waist, pulling the sheet only over one breast, leaving the left one and her shoulder bare while they pumped antivenin into her in an attempt to save her life. She was unconscious. Her arm was almost black, swollen out of recognition. But it wasn’t the swelling that Boone was fixated on. It was her shoulder. There were huge scars, which looked as if something with enormous teeth had taken a bite right out of her. The damage was staggering to look at. The pain she must have suffered—
He knew at once that his photographs had been faked, and later he was going to give somebody hell over that botched, so-called investigation. But right now, his whole focus was on this slip of a girl whom he’d misjudged, whom he’d almost killed with his outrage.
“What in hell happened to her?” Boone bit off.
