Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Her family crowded the Gringo right out of her little place, but she never saw headlights through the front windows or heard his Jeep leave. Maybe he was hanging outside where it was less…Brand-y.
“You should stay down at the house where I can take care of you,” her mom said. She laid a blanket over Willow where she sat on the sofa, even though it was still eighty degrees outside.
“No freakin’ way, you guys aren’t going to miss your big trip for me,” Willow said. “Mom, that would make me feel terrible. I’m fine. And…Lily’s an RN, and Gringo knows about PT, and…” She pressed a hand to her head. “Honest to goodness, I just need some rest and quiet.”
Taylor sent a look toward Lily, her cousin Ethan’s pretty wife. Ethan had gone outside, she realized.
“I thought you quit being a nurse,” she said.
Lily did not take offense, though she probably should have. “One doesn’t just quit being a nurse. Besides, I’ve been taking on per diem shifts at the ER when they’re short-handed,” she said. “Keeps me from gettin’ rusty.”
Willow knew Lily’s confidence in her nursing skills had been restored after she’d saved Uncle Garrett’s life last summer. She liked seeing it in her cousin-in-law.
“Honestly,” Lily said, “all they’d be doing at this point is watching her and keeping track of her vitals. They’ve already run all the tests they could think of, and they all looked good. As long as there are no complications, she’s probably right. All she needs is rest and, you know, quiet.”
Wes Brand took the hint. “Okay, I got you.”
Garrett said, “Willow, anything you need—”
“You too, Taylor,” Chelsea added. The others echoed their sentiments as the Elder Brands headed outside, no doubt to begin an emergency family meeting. Again, no headlights told her no one was leaving, so no doubt about it.
And the Gringo was out there, ripe for the questioning. The poor guy.
Her cousins didn’t look like they were in any hurry to leave.
Orrin, and Baxter were sitting on opposite sides of the edge of the hearthstone in front of the fireplace she hardly ever used, a pair of blue-eyed blonds.
Between them, standing, was Trevor with his dark curls and swarthy skin.
People often mistook him for her brother, but his coloring was from Spanish ancestry, not Comanche like hers.
He had his hands in his pockets, and sent her a sorry smile when he caught her looking at him.
Drew had dropped onto the sofa beside her.
Maria and cousin-in-law-Lily took the easy chair and the rocker respectively, Maria’s hubs, Harrison, stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders.
Ethan was outside with the seniors, probably asking Jeremiah to explain what the hay he’d been doing at the hospital after visiting hours.
Willow glanced at Lily’s belly, and said, “Dear Lord, your baby bump is bigger! Are you sure I was only out for two days?”
Lily ran a hand over her belly. “Our kid seems to be in a growth spurt.”
Willow counted backwards, sighed and shook her head, realizing the window-smashing bandit was probably long gone.
She sucked at being a peace officer.
“Are you hungry? Can we fix you something?” Drew asked. And when Willow scowled, her youngest cousin beamed at her, “You might as well enjoy bein’ waited on while you recover, right?”
She bit back her objection, relaxed deeper into the sofa, and said, “I could eat.”
Drew headed to the kitchen, apparently happy to have a mission.
Lily got up. She had a little bag in one hand. “You care if I check your vitals, Will?”
“I do, yeah. I feel fine.”
“Well, I can check them here, or they can check them back at the hospital where we’ll be taking you.”
“Yup,” said Baxter from his fireplace seat. His dirty blond mane needed a trim. He wore khakis and loafers instead of jeans and boots like the others, and round, silver wire-rimmed glasses. “And there’s too many of us to fight. Seven to one.”
That made her think of Jeremiah, being so badly beaten in prison by other men. It made her stomach clench.
She shook the image away because Lily was taking out a blood pressure thingie.
“Fine,” she said, and held out an arm.
While she pumped the device, Lily said, “Jeremiah drove you home, huh?”
“Yep.”
Lily let the air out of the thing and said some numbers and nodded. “A little high, but probably because we’re all up in your business. I know you don’t like that.”
“It comes with the family, though,” Drew called from the kitchen. “Did you call him for a ride, or—”
“No! Why would I call him? He just happened to be there.”
“At the hospital,” Maria said. “After visiting hours.”
“After we all went home,” Drew added.
“Guys.” Lily popped a digital thermometer into Willow’s mouth, preventing her from having to answer. But it didn’t matter. The gang were quiet, waiting, every one of them trying to read her face.
She rolled her eyes. The device beeped and Lily removed it. “Perfect. You feelin’ any dizziness?”
“No.” Yes, she did.
“Pain?”
“Yes, you all are a pain.” And so was her head.
Lily just arched her eyebrows a little higher, and she capitulated. “Mild headache and general ouchies.”
“Where?”
“Kind of all over.”
Lily said, “You can have ibuprofen.”
“If I need it.”
She nodded and put her things back into her bag.
“So?” Maria asked. “What do you think, Lil?”
“Someone should talk to her neurologist and provider. I think they’ll say that as long as someone’s watching over her for the next couple of days, who’ll notice and bring her in if there’s any change, she’ll probably be fine at home.”
“I’ll talk to them myself. Or make my mother do it,” Willow said. “And I don’t need anyone watching me.”
“Too bad,” Lily said.
Willow started to panic. She didn’t want cousins moving in, and racked her brain to think of how to prevent it.
“Lily, you can’t sleep on the sofa pregnant.
It would be bad for the baby. Drew, you have those PI classes starting up, and Orrin has work.
Ethan has to run the honky tonk, Maria has the vet clinic, and Harrison’s got a project.
Trevor, you can’t let your ESL kids down. They count on those classes.”
She swept her gaze over her cousins. “I, on the other hand, am fine.”
Lily shook her head. “Maybe one of the elders, or—”
“No. No, I’m not havin’ it. There’s nobody in this family with the free time to babysit me.”
The door opened and Jeremiah walked in.
Everyone looked at him. Willow shrugged and went for broke. “Fine. He can do it.”
Jeremiah had gone outside to get away from the probing, curious looks being sent his way by every Brand crammed into Willow’s tiny cottage. He had not expected them to follow him out.
Ethan came first. He’d been expecting that. And his brother didn’t waste any time before launching the interrogation.
“So how did it happen that you were the one drivin’ her home?”
“I was the only one there when she decided to leave.”
Ethan waited for more. Jeremiah didn’t offer it. Eventually, Ethan sighed, and said, “You shouldn’t have let her do that. Sign herself out like that.”
“And how, exactly, should I have stopped her?”
Ethan looked at him, shrugged, then narrowed his eyes. “I knew somethin’ was brewin’ between you two. Just how far have things gone?”
That was when the flood of elders came pouring out of the cottage. Jeremiah was not up to the third degree, but they were all discussing Willow, her accident, her health, her stubbornness, which her mother said she’d got from her dad, and most of all, whether she should be out of the hospital.
As if they had anything to say about it. How well did these folk know their niece, anyway? Jeremiah didn’t think anybody could force Willow Stands Alone Brand to do anything she didn’t want to do.
Ethan joined the family throng, and as soon as his attention was distracted, Jeremiah wandered into a shadowy part of the little yard, near a short, broad tree with plants growing under its sheltering limbs. The flowers that were usually there were all closed up for the night.
He lingered there for a minute, looking at the stars. Willow wouldn’t be much help getting inside info on his old man, now that she was laid up. She wouldn’t be back at work for a little while. No access to anything he needed.
He saw Ethan notice his absence and start looking for him, so he decided it was time to go home.
Beans would be lonesome by now. But he ought to let Willow know he was leaving.
He didn’t want to just disappear. So he headed back inside, and as soon as he opened the door, Willow met his eyes and said, “He can do it!”
“I can do what?” he asked. And then he realized every set of eyes in the place was on him.
Behind him, Ethan stepped inside, looking around in a what’s going on sort of way, and Willow said, “Will you do it, Jeremiah? Spend the next coupl’a days or so watchin’ me in case I die?”
He grinned at her joke, “Yeah, sure, I’ll even prop my eyes open with toothpicks and watch you sleep. He-heh…heh.” Nobody was laughing.
Drew, Maria, and Lily exchanged laden looks, and then the redhead said, “I think it’s the perfect solution. Will won’t feel guilty for making one of us change our plans—which would be fine with any of us, by the way. And you don’t really have anything goin’ on, do you, Gringo?”
He sought an answer. He had a lot going on, hunting for his father’s hidden treasure mostly, but it wasn’t like he could tell them that.
And then he found a reason. Beans! Already pulling his weight. “I’d have to bring my dog—”
“Ohmygod, Beans? Yes, bring Beans,” Willow said, and realized it was the first time she’d smiled since being carried through her own front door.
He looked around at all those sets of eyes, and everyone with different but similar thoughts going on behind them. What was up with him and their cousin? Was she safe with an ex-con, even if he was sort of related?
Did they trust him with their girl?