Read the book: «The Cop»

Chapter One

“Pull off your pants and lie down,” she repeated.

Cole Younger Outlaw turned from the bedroom window, and his eyes swept her with a slow, clothes-stripping scrutiny that sucked the air from her lungs. One corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Tell you what, Red,” he said in a low rumble that sent an acre of goose bumps racing over her skin. “I’ll pull off my pants if you’ll pull off yours.”

For a nanosecond she actually considered taking him up on the offer. He was without a doubt the most…phenomenal man she’d ever encountered. Even in ragged sweats and with several days’ growth of dark beard, sex appeal oozed from his pores and wafted across the room like nitrous oxide. Hard. Dangerous. Survival instincts would have sent a lesser woman screaming from the room, which, she was sure, was what he intended.

She was made of sterner stuff.

“That’s not an option, Mr. Outlaw. And please don’t call me Red. My name is Kelly Martin. Dr. Kelly Martin.”

His dark brows lifted a tad, and he gave her another slow perusal. “You sure don’t look like any doctor I’ve seen lately.” He flashed a full-fledged grin, and her knees almost buckled. “The offer still holds.”

“Look, Mr. Outlaw—”

“Call me Cole, darlin’.”

She ignored the “darlin”’ part. “Look, Cole, I have an office full of patients waiting, and I don’t have time for games. Dr. Ware is in surgery all day, and I’m here as a favor to your mother. She and your dad are worried sick about you, and so are your brothers. You’ve holed up in this room and refused to go to physical therapy. You won’t cooperate with anybody who’s trying to help you. You haven’t—”

“Put a sock in it, Red.” He scowled and turned back to the window which was festooned with a bright holiday swag.

Kelly was torn between clobbering him with her medical bag and stalking from the room. Instead she tossed the bag and her jacket on the bed and walked closer to him. “Exactly what is your problem?”

“My problem?” He glared at her with storm-cloud gray eyes. “Besides losing a chunk of lung, getting my hip and leg shot all to hell and being a cripple the rest of my life, you mean?”

She waited only two beats before she shot him a cheeky grin. “Yeah, besides that, flatfoot.”

He ducked his head, but not before Kelly saw a hint of a smile. When he looked up a few seconds later, he was scowling again. “I’m not a flatfoot. I’m a cop. Was a cop.”

“You can be a cop again—if you’ll go to therapy.”

“Sorry, Red, it won’t wash. There’s no way in hell I can work homicide again, and I’m not cut out for being a desk jockey. You got a cigarette on you?”

Kelly patted all her pockets. “Nope. Fresh out.” She fished a small sucker from her purple lab coat. “This is the best I can do.” When he reached for it, she popped it back into her pocket. “The examination comes first. Take off your pants.”

“Don’t try to play games with me, Red,” he growled. “I eat little gals like you for lunch.”

Kelly burst into laughter. His scowl only deepened. “Try it,” she said, then deepened her voice to add in her best Dirty Harry imitation, “Make…my…day.”

She thought the corner of his mouth twitched upward again, but she couldn’t be sure because he suddenly hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his faded sweats and stripped them off. Next the shirt landed on the floor beside the pants, and he turned to her. “Examine away.”

Her woman’s breath caught for less than a heartbeat before the physician kicked in. “I see the incisions seem to be healing nicely. Let me get my gear.” She retrieved her bag from the bed and took out her stethoscope. Automatically she held the diaphragm in her fist and blew on the metal, warming it before she placed it on his chest. “Take a deep breath.”

After listening to his heart and lungs, she carefully checked the surgical sites and damage to his chest and back. The scar from the exit wound was more vicious than the one from the surgeon’s scalpel. She knew that things had been touch-and-go with him for several days after he was shot and that he had spent weeks in a Houston hospital before his folks had brought him back home with them to finish recuperating. Naconiche was a small town, and everybody had known about his gun battle with a murder suspect. Too, she shared an office suite with Noah Ware, the surgeon who was Cole’s local doctor.

When the time came to check his left hip and leg, Kelly pulled up a nearby straight chair and sat down to examine the places.

“Ugly looking mess, isn’t it?” Cole asked.

“I’ve seen much worse. I worked in Ben Taub ER in Houston for a year. I saw more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. Bet this hurt like a son of a gun,” she said as she gently probed the sites, which were now patched with pins. Kelly asked him to move and bend, then walk a few steps.

He had to use his walker and limped badly.

“Your injuries are healing properly, but it’s imperative that you go to physical therapy daily,” Kelly said. “I can’t find any reason to contraindicate PT, and it will do wonders for your recovery.”

“Sure you haven’t got a cigarette?”

She took a patch from her bag, peeled off the back and slapped it on his right hip.

“What’s that?”

“A nicotine patch. I’ll have the drugstore deliver some more. You’re not to smoke a cigarette under any circumstance, and don’t pester your folks to buy any for you.” She retrieved the sugar-free lollipop from her pocket. “Suck on this. It’ll help some.”

He scowled at the smiley face on the plastic-wrapped candy. “Like hell it will.”

She glanced at her watch. “Okay, hardcase, I have to get back to my office, and you need to keep your PT appointment at the hospital.”

“No.”

“No? For goodness’ sakes, why not?”

He glared at her for several seconds, but she didn’t so much as blink. Finally he turned away and mumbled something.

“Say again.”

“I said I can’t get down the damned stairs, and I’m not going to have my brothers carry me down like a baby.”

Pride. Big time. She nodded. “I understand.”

“I should have never given in to my folks and come here. I should have stayed in Houston. Mama’s hovering is driving me nuts.”

And his recalcitrance was driving his mother nuts. She nodded again. “I’ll work on a solution, Cole. You can get dressed now.”

He glanced down at his nakedness. “Bother you, Red?”

“Nope. But you might look a little better if you’d shave.” With that perfect exit line, she turned and walked from the room.

“Red,” he called after her.

She stopped at the door.

“Forget something?”

Kelly turned and saw Cole standing there, still naked, with her medical bag dangling from his fingers.

She stalked back, grabbed her bag and hurried out. His laughter followed her as she clattered down the stairs.

Miss Nonie, Cole’s mother, waited for her at the foot of the stairs that ended in the back of the Double Dip ice-cream parlor. Nonie and Wes Outlaw lived in the apartment upstairs from the business that Nonie had run since she retired from teaching and Wes retired as sheriff of the East Texas county. Two or three years before, the couple had divided their extensive ranch property among their five children, leaving their big house to their son Frank and his twins, and moved into town.

Miss Nonie looked worried. “How is he, Dr. Kelly?”

Kelly patted Nonie’s back. “He’s doing very well considering what he’s been through. He simply needs time and physical therapy.”

“But he refuses to go to physical therapy. His father and I have talked to him. His brothers have tried to talk to him. He won’t listen to any of us, and we’re all at our wit’s end.”

Kelly smiled. “He is a little hardheaded. Let me work on an idea that I have, and I’ll get back to you later today. How about an ice-cream cone for the road? Butter pecan would be good.”

Between the ice cream and leaving her coat in Cole’s room, Kelly nearly froze before she got to her car. An early December norther had blown through the day before, and the morning temperatures were in the forties. But she’d sooner be switched with a peach limb than go back for her jacket. She’d pick it up later.

COLE STOOD at the window and watched Kelly Martin drive away. Now there was a woman. And a doctor of all things. Tall, long-legged and gorgeous. Any man would give a month’s pay to have that curly tumble of red hair spread across his pillow. With those snapping green eyes and kiss-me lips, she revved his motors more than any female he’d run across in years—for all the good it did him now. Hell, he couldn’t even dress himself without breaking out in a sweat.

He snagged his clothes from the floor and hobbled the few steps to his bed. Sure enough, by the time he’d pulled on the pants and shirt he was breathing hard and dripping wet. He wasn’t any use to himself or anybody else like he was. If he hadn’t been so doped up on painkillers, he would never have agreed to come to Naconiche.

Of course, his apartment in Houston was on the third floor, but he could have made out with pizza delivery and a few groceries from one of those online places. Here, he was worried about his mother. She ran up and down those stairs a dozen times a day checking on him, and she was no spring chicken anymore. Cole thought again about taking his brother Frank up on his offer to stay with the twins and him, but he didn’t want to impose, especially now that Frank was engaged. J.J.’s place was out—stairs again—and he was engaged, too. In fact, J.J. and Mary Beth were getting married in a few days. They had plenty going on without having to worry about their gimpy brother.

Nope, that wasn’t an option.

Hell, he knew he needed to go to PT. The sooner he got able to tend to himself, the sooner he could be out of everybody’s hair. Cole wasn’t used to being dependent on anybody, and he didn’t like being helpless. Not a damned bit.

He was just going to have to try to get down those stairs by himself.

KELLY DROPPED BY the Twilight Tearoom at the end of the lunch hour and had a quick bite as she sometimes did when she had time. In the odd spare moments she’d had since she’d seen Cole Outlaw that morning, thoughts of him had preyed on her mind. In some ways he looked very much like his brothers, J.J. and Frank, both patients of hers. Tall, dark, handsome. But life had carved a different character into his features, his bearing—and she found him stunningly seductive. Odd, since she’d never had such feelings about a patient before—not that he was actually her patient.

Of course she’d noticed that his brothers were good-looking guys, but being around them had never assaulted her senses and jolted her libido. The family patriarch, old Judge John Outlaw, thought naming his sons for notorious characters was politically smart—they’d have a leg up on opponents or in business. The tradition had continued through his grandsons. Of all the current crop of Outlaws named for famous desperados, Cole Younger Outlaw came closest to living up to his name. He might have been a cop, but he was as menacing as any gunslinger who ever lived. And, she admitted, turned her on like crazy. Interesting. Very interesting. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to pursue these unusual feelings or not.

When Kelly finished her chicken quesadillas, the tables were almost empty, and she went back into the kitchen to talk with Mary Beth Parker. Mary Beth owned the tearoom and the adjacent Twilight Inn, a small motel she had restored. She and J. J. Outlaw, the current county sheriff, were getting married on Saturday.

“Got a second?” Kelly asked as she stuck her head in.

“Sure,” Mary Beth said, wiping her hands and coming to the door. “What’s up?”

“Do you have a vacancy at the inn?” she asked quietly.

Mary Beth grinned. “Need a place for a rendezvous?”

Kelly rolled her eyes at her friend and patient. “I wish. No, I’m trying to find a place for Cole to stay while he recuperates.”

“I thought he was staying with Miss Nonie and Wes.”

“He is, but he needs to be on the ground floor…and he needs a place where he feels some independence but where his family could drop in with casseroles occasionally. The inn would be ideal. And I thought that since he’s family…well, that the cost wouldn’t be too prohibitive.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem, but we’re full. Besides our regular guests, tomorrow I’m expecting out-of-town friends for the wedding.”

Kelly sighed. “So much for that.”

“Wait a minute. I may have another solution.”

When Mary Beth told her the idea, Kelly grinned. “Perfect. Can you talk to him this afternoon? And maybe it would be best to present the notion to him in a…delicate way.”

“The male ego thing, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Gotcha.”

COLE HADN’T MADE IT past the third step when he had to sit down on the stairs and catch his breath. Three steps was one better than he’d done that morning. Shaking and sweating from his effort, he muttered a string of oaths that would have shocked his mother if she’d heard them. He felt as useless as hip pockets on a hog.

After resting several minutes, he was about ready to try again when he saw J.J. and Mary Beth coming upstairs.

“Hey, big brother,” J.J. said. “Whatcha doing sitting out here?”

“Waiting for a bus,” Cole said.

“Need any help?”

“Nope.”

“Mary Beth wants to ask you something.”

“Ask away.”

“It’s a big favor,” Mary Beth said, “and if you don’t feel up to it, just say so. I have a problem. You know that I own the Twilight Inn and Tearoom.”

She looked as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, and Cole tried not to grin at his future sister-in-law, a pretty blonde who J.J. had been crazy about since they were kids. “Yes. Heard that you inherited it and fixed it up.”

“Right. It was a mess. The problem now is that Katy and I—you know my daughter, Katy?”

He smiled. “The little blond imp who wanted to see my bullet holes.”

“Yes, sorry about that, Cole. Anyhow, Katy and I are moving from the manager’s apartment to the new house. We’re trying to get settled before the wedding, but the person who was supposed to move in and take over as night manager has backed out, and I’m in a predicament. I was wondering if—oh, no, forget it. It’s too much of an imposition.”

“What is?” Cole asked.

“She was hoping that you might be able to fill in for a few weeks,” J.J. said.

“Just till after the Christmas holidays,” Mary Beth said. “I’m sure I can find another college student then who’ll take over the job for room and board. But you’re probably not up to it yet, Cole. It was a crazy idea. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“Whoa, darlin’,” Cole said. “What does a night manager have to do?”

“Not a lot, actually,” Mary Beth said. “Answer the phone in the evening and check in an occasional traveler who rings the bell for a room at night. You don’t even have to stay up. Basically just be there for security and to handle emergencies. The only emergency we’ve had was when the toilet overflowed in Unit Three. I had to call the plumber at midnight. The domino bunch takes care of the day shift.”

“The domino bunch?”

“Four old geezers who work around the motel for lunch and a place to play dominoes,” J.J. said. “I imagine you know all of them.”

Cole was naturally suspicious, but he didn’t care if it was a put-up job or not. Mary Beth’s offer sounded like an answer to his prayers. “I’ll be your temporary night manager.”

“Are you sure you feel like it?” Mary Beth asked.

“I’m sure.”

Mary Beth knelt on the stairs and threw her arms around Cole. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, planting kisses on his face.

“Hey, there,” J.J. grumbled, “that’s enough of that.”

Cole laughed for the second time that day. “When do I start?”