Mystic Cowboy(12)

Rebel was immediately reminded of a mad scientist. Her cornsilk hair was working its way loose from the same bun thing she’d had it tied up in yesterday and looked like it was standing straight out from her head, which made the elegant length of her face look deranged. Her cheeks were flaming red, but her eyes flashed with nothing but ice. Ice notwithstanding, she looked like a woman who had just gotten everything she wanted from a man. Images of her naked, twisted in sheets in a bed or bare to the air under the night sky, flashed in his mind. Against his will, his pulse picked up a notch. It had been a long time since he’d tried to give a woman what she wanted, but he was starting to think he might like to give it another go.

At least she wasn’t looking at him. That reduced the chances of her noticing his sudden state of discomfort. Instead, she slammed the broken whatever-it-was down on the desk. Her voice came out exasperated—and tired. Two days, and this place was already wearing on her. “Add plastic speculums to the dam—”

“A-hem,” he said, cutting her off mid-curse word. Nelly didn’t need to be hearing that—not more than Jesse already said it, anyway. “Dr. Mitchell.”

Her mouth still hung open with the unspoken word as she shot straight up. Her hands flew to her hair, the same thing she’d done yesterday, practically the first reaction she’d had to him. “Oh. Uh…”

Damn, Dr. Mitchell flustered was only making him more flustered. To cover for what was becoming an embarrassing situation, he got behind the computer monitor. “Dr. Mitchell, this is Nelly Tall Trees.”

“Oh. Hello there.” Dr. Mitchell did a half wave from a safe distance, as if she was afraid of a little girl. She looked like she was under arrest, what with her hands behind her head like that. She wore no jewelry, he noticed. No bracelets dangled off either slim wrist, no necklace hid behind the collar of her shirt. She didn’t even have stud earrings. She was unadorned. Naked.

Nelly buried her face in her mom’s shoulder. “This is just a one-time thing.” Tara looked like she’d been busted mid-cookie snatch. “My mom had something to do, and Jesse was supposed to watch her…”

“Well.” Rebel could see Dr. Mitchell forcibly getting herself back under control. Her mouth snapped shut, her hands dropped away from her hair and she picked up that broken thing and jammed it into her pocket. “Yes, Jesse. How is he today?”

“He’ll have to stay off of dirt bikes from here on out,” Rebel said, shifting his weight so his zipper stopped intruding. “But he’ll live.”

“Well.” She looked down at Nelly, who had graduated to cautious peering at the new white woman on the rez. “Hello. I’m Dr. Mitchell. I’m the new doctor.”

The last three doctors who’d thought they could save the world had all told the kids to call them Dr. Jerry, Dr. Blaine, and Dr. Nate, but not the new doctor. She seemed almost as afraid of Nelly as Nelly was of her.

What was her name? He was dying to find out. He wanted to wrap his tongue around it, and then maybe wrap his tongue around a few other things.

Ow. His zipper was intruding again. Damn white women.

Dr. Mitchell waited, but she got no response from Nelly. Unexpectedly, a warm smile broke out on her face. “Tara, this shouldn’t be a problem. And please add...speculums...to the list.” She turned fire-red again.

His zipper was going to kill him.

“Rebel came in to get his bill,” Tara said. She turned demanding eyes to him. “Didn’t you, Rebel?”

“Sure.” He took the bill and looked it over. And looked again, because he was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. “One thousand dollars?”

“I understood that you paid your—horse!”

“What?”

But then he heard the rest of the waiting room gasp as Nelly squealed, “Blue Eye! Get out!”

Rebel spun to see that Blue Eye was straddling the fan, no doubt enjoying the breeze as she checked out what all the hubbub was about.

“Horse!” Dr. Mitchell screamed again. “Horse in the clinic!”

“Get, shoo, Blue Eye.” Finally, the chance to get his pants adjusted. He grabbed the mare’s lead and backed her out of the clinic. “Stay out here, or you’ll have the mad doctor after you.”

Blue Eye knocked his hat off his head and sniffed his hair, which was her way of saying, “Can we go now?”

Rebel knew she’d become an increasingly large pain in the ass until they got the hell out of town and back to the wide open spaces again. “Give me a second,” he muttered as he cinched the lead down tight and went back in. If he was lucky, he had five minutes before the horse figured her way out of the tie again. But he wasn’t ready to leave, not just yet.