Maddie took out her wallet and flipped it open. The very first thing she saw was the snapshot of her brother. “Mark,” she whispered, and studied the handsome features of her older brother. With their parents gone, Mark was all she had. Oh, there were plenty of Kincaids living in the Whitehorn, Montana area, but none of them meant to her what Mark did.
Loneliness suddenly beset her. She needed to talk to Mark. Maybe she needed to hear him say something sympathetic, something kind and loving that would bring tears to her eyes and joy to her heart.
No, she didn’t want sympathy, not even from Mark. But she really would like to talk to him, and years ago he’d made her promise that if she was ever ill or injured she would let him know. He didn’t entirely approve of her unsettled lifestyle, and no doubt she’d get a brotherly lecture on the dangers inherent in her chosen career. But he’d be sweet, too, once she told him about the accident.
There was a telephone on the bedstand, and she tried not to jostle her sore and aching body while reaching for it. She needed a pain pill badly and knew that she should have taken the one offered by the nurse this morning, even though her own sheer bravado had convinced everyone that she was ready to go home. Truth was, if she knew for a fact that Fanny was being properly cared for, she would gladly stay in this bed for another night.
After dialing Mark’s home and getting no answer, Maddie looked up his work number in the little address book she carried in her purse. Mark was a detective for the Whitehorn police department, and Maddie doubted that he’d be sitting at a desk hoping the phone would ring. To her surprise—which was accompanied by a sudden attack of nerves—the man who answered her call asked for her name and then told her to hang on a minute. Raising his voice, he said, “Hey, Mark, your sister’s on line three.”
Almost at once Mark’s voice was in Maddie’s ear. “Hey, this is a nice surprise. Where’re you calling from?”
“Austin, Texas. How are you?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
“Marriage agrees with you then.” Mark could still measure his marriage to Darcy Montague in weeks, and Maddie was extremely happy that he’d fallen head over heels for a woman who seemed so perfect for him.
“More than I ever thought possible. So, what’s up with you?”
“Uh, I had a little accident,” Maddie stammered, suddenly very uncertain about the wisdom of this call. “In the arena.”
The tenor of Mark’s voice instantly changed, from that of a glad-you-called-just-to-say-hi brother to that of the protector he’d been to his baby sister all her life. Mark was thirty, seven years older than Maddie, and from the day of her birth he’d watched over her. That protective side of him was undoubtedly the reason he didn’t like her driving her truck all over the country, pulling her trailer and happily heading for the next rodeo.
“How little is ‘little’?” he asked suspiciously.
“Um…no major bone breaks…just a couple of tiny bones in my right hand.”
“And that’s all?”
“No,” she said weakly. “I’m pretty badly bruised. The doctor wants me to take it easy and to stay away from rodeo for a month, which is rather extreme, I believe, and—”
“And nothing! Maddie, you do exactly as that doctor says, do you hear me? In fact, if you have to take it easy for a whole month, I want you to come home and do your recuperating in Darcy’s and my guest room.”
“Well, of course,” Maddie drawled. “That’s exactly what newlyweds need, to share their little love nest with the groom’s sister. Mark—”
“Stop right there! You’re at least fifteen hundred miles away and alone. Damn it, Maddie, if it were the other way around and it was me laid up and alone, you’d be here so fast my head would spin. Hey, I just thought of something. Are you calling on your cell phone from your trailer? We’ve got a really clear connection, which doesn’t usually happen when you call on your cell.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. Mark was a natural born detective. She should have known he’d recognize the difference between her cellular calls and this one. She’d had no intention of telling him everything, but now she had no choice.
“I’m not using my cellular phone,” she said quietly. “I’m…calling from the hospital.”
“You’re in the hospital! Maddie, you said a ‘little’ accident. What really happened?”
After a heavy sigh, Maddie related the fall she and Fanny had taken. “I have no idea what caused it, but there it is. Apparently Fanny wasn’t injured, but the medics took me to the hospital. I can’t be too bad off because I’m being discharged sometime today. That’s the whole truth.”
“Except for what the doctor told you to do.”
“Mark, I can’t do nothing for a whole month!”
“You could if you were under my roof. Look, why don’t you put Fanny in a good stable, leave your truck and trailer in a safe place—I’m sure a city the size of Austin has rental spaces available for RVs and such—and fly home? I hate the thought of you limping around that little trailer you live in and trying to fix yourself something to eat. With one hand yet. And surely you’re not thinking of taking care of Fanny yourself. Maddie, it’s just not sensible for you to stay in Texas.”
He was making sense, and Maddie’s resolve to take care of herself was weakening. But fly to Montana and leave Fanny in Texas? No way, Maddie thought, and avoided that topic entirely by asking, “Mark, are you sure Darcy wouldn’t mind? You have to think of her first now, you know.”
“I know Darcy wouldn’t mind. She’s a very special lady, Maddie. So, have I convinced you? Are you coming home?”
“I…guess so.”
“Great! Phone me with your flight schedule.”
“It’ll probably be a few days before you hear from me. It will take, uh, some time to do everything here that will need, uh, doing before I can leave.” She wasn’t exactly lying to the brother she adored, she told herself. She simply wasn’t telling him everything she was thinking and planning.
“That’s fine. Just call when you know something.”
“Bye, Mark.”
“Bye, Maddie. Take care.”
Maddie hung up and, completely done in, she closed her eyes and wished with all her heart that she would fall asleep in spite of the pain racking her body.
She really shouldn’t have phoned Mark, she thought hazily, because now she had to go home to Montana, and she was not going by herself. She wouldn’t leave Fanny behind for all the oil in Texas, which Mark would have thought of if he hadn’t immediately started worrying about Maddie’s condition instead of looking at the whole picture.
“The hits just keep on coming,” Maddie whispered while wondering how on earth she was going to manage to drive fifteen hundred miles when she could just barely move without pain medication, which she certainly couldn’t take and then do any driving.
Chapter Two
Checking
