Chapter Twelve #3
“If you can find that snake,” Keely told Boone, trying to lighten the somber mood, “we can arrange the same sort of funeral for him. Of course, if he didn’t die from biting me, we’ll have to kill him first.”
Boone managed a chuckle. “I’m glad to see that you’re better.”
She smiled weakly, grimacing as she moved her arm.
“Coltrain says she can go home tomorrow, so we’ll have her with us,” Boone told Carly. He pulled out his wallet, got out a business card and handed it to her. “If you need help with the arrangements, let me know.”
“Okay. If we cremate her, we can schedule a memorial service when this is all over,” Carly told him. She glanced at Keely worriedly. “You’re not going to be able to manage a funeral in the condition you’re in right now.”
“I have to agree,” Keely said. She caught her breath. “Oh, my gosh! My job! I didn’t even call Dr. Rydel! He’s going to fire me!”
“I phoned him,” Boone said at once. “He’s got a temp filling in for you. He and the staff send their best wishes. They sent you a big fruit basket. It just came, so the nurses gave it to me, but I took it out to the car. I’m taking it home. You can have it tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” she told him. “I was afraid of losing my job. I was too sick to call and tell them what was going on.”
“Oh, everybody in Comanche Wells and Jacobsville knows everything that’s going on already,” Carly said. She glanced amusedly at Boone. “And I mean everything.”
Boone’s eyes actually twinkled, but Keely didn’t see it.
Carly said her goodbyes and left Boone alone with Keely. He stuck his hands in his slacks’ pockets and stood over her, his eyes soft and quiet.
“You look a little better,” he commented.
“I wish I felt it. I’m still sick at my stomach and my arm throbs,” she said huskily. She looked up at him. “I hate snakes.”
“They don’t like people sitting on them,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t. He was just all of a sudden there. I didn’t even look at him sideways. He just rattled his head off and struck at me.”
“Nervous.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Rattlesnakes are nervous. They rattle to try to scare people into going away.”
It had never occurred to her that a snake could be nervous. She said so.
He sighed. “Anyway, we got him.”
“You got him? You did?” She was excited.
“The boys found him about twenty feet from where you were sitting when he bit you.”
“What did they do with him?”
He pursed his lips. “Do you like cowboy hats?”
“I guess so. I don’t wear them much, except when I go riding.”
“You’ll wear this one. It’s just your size and it’s got a nice new rattlesnake hatband. Or it will have, when the skin’s tanned out.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.” He grinned down at her. “We’ll go riding, when you’re better.”
“We will?”
One eye narrowed. “You go riding with Clark and Winnie all the time. You can go riding with me now,” he said with faint belligerence.
“Okay,” she said, fascinated. It almost sounded as if he were jealous of her. That was ridiculous, of course.
“I had a television put in your room. You can watch movies on pay-per-view. We’ve got satellite, too, so you can watch programs from all over the world.” His eyes twinkled. “Then, there’s the national news, with the presidential race on every channel, every hour, every day.”
She sighed. “I haven’t watched the national news for weeks. I can’t stand the monotony. The only news they report is on the presidential election and every detail of the private lives of celebrities.”
“The Spanish channel has the real news,” he pointed out. “If you want to know what’s going on in the world, that’s where to find out.”
She smiled. “I can’t speak Spanish.”
“I’ll teach you,” he said quietly, and his eyes were insinuating that he had in mind teaching her other things, as well.
She flushed a little. Her life had been a closed, painful book, her future a dream that she never thought would be realized. Now, here was this dishy man with whom she’d been in love for years, looking at her with acquisitive eyes and smiling at her. It felt as if her heart might burst from joy.
He smiled. “Mrs. Johnston has an assistant cook, Melinda. She’s from Guatemala. She’s teaching us Mayan. You can learn, too.”
“Mayan?” She caught her breath. “Their culture had astronomy and the concept of zero and raised beds for planting and irrigation while Europeans were knocking each other over the head with rocks.”
“I know.” He chuckled. “You spend your time off at the library reading books about them. Or so I hear from the head librarian.”
She flushed. It flattered her that he’d learned things about her. “I’d love to go and see some of the Mayan ruins,” she said. “I’d love to go to Peru and see the Inca ruins, too.”
“So would I,” he told her. “Maybe we can both go, one day.”
For her, that was a pipe dream. She’d never save enough to pay for a plane ticket even to south Texas for a vacation. Her smile was wistful.
He saw that. “What else do you like?”
She smiled. “Ancient history.”
“The Caesars, the philosophers, the politicians…?”
“Don’t mention politicians!”
“What sort of history?” He chuckled. “And which historians do you read?”
“Tacitus. Thucydides. Strabo. Arrian. Plutarch. Those ones.”
“Deep authors for a young mind,” he commented.
“You listen here, I may be young, but I have an old mind,” she told him.
“I was pretty much on my own when my father took me out to west Texas to live in an animal park, and I was really on my own when I came back here, because Mama was drunk so much.” Mama.
The thought sobered her, made her aware of her recent tragedy.
“I can’t believe my own father would kill her,” she said.
“He was a little out of the bounds of law sometimes, but he never hurt anybody.”
“He sold drugs,” Boone reminded her. “That does hurt people.”
“Yes, but you know what I mean,” she replied. “He isn’t a killer.”
“Baby, all people are killers, given the right incentive,” he said. “Anybody can kill.”
She sighed. “I suppose so,” she said sadly.
He bent and kissed her, gently, on her mouth. “I’m going to get a cup of decent coffee. What can I bring you?”
“A nice juicy steak with hash browns?” she asked hopefully.
“No chance I could get that past the nurses’ station, unless they were all wearing nose plugs. Try again,” he invited.
“I guess I’ll wait for supper here,” she said with resignation.
“When you’re well again, I’ll fly you up to Fort Worth and take you to this little steak place I know,” he said.
Her heart jumped up into her throat. “You mean it?”
He drew in a long breath. “I had to date Misty to feed information to Hayes, and I gave him hell twice a day about it. I was over her years ago. But I had to put on an act, to keep her from getting suspicious.” His eyes darkened.
“Hayes has a lot to answer for. She’s vindictive.
She set you up, and I was too angry to think straight when I saw those photographs. ”
Keely recalled that Misty had promised to get even with her. She’d done a good job of it. “She’ll get her just deserts one day,” Keely replied.
“We all do,” he said philosophically. He glanced at his watch. “I have to make a few phone calls and get something to eat, then I’ll be back.”
Her eyes lit up. “Okay.”
He smiled slowly. Disheveled, her hair uncombed, her face devoid of any makeup, she was beautiful to him. So easily, she could have been dead. He’d never have been able to live with that, knowing he caused her death.
He bent and kissed her again with breathless tenderness. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
He chuckled as he walked out.
Ten minutes later the phone rang. She answered it, thinking it must be Carly or Winnie or Clark.
“Keely, is that you?”
It was her father’s voice.