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His pale gaze skimmed over her with acute curiosity even as he followed her instructions. After a moment, he swallowed and rasped, “Who are you?”
“Kaylie Chatam. Hypatia, Odelia and Magnolia Chatam are my aunts.”
“Kaylie’s a nurse,” Aaron Doolin put in helpfully. “How about that? The old biddies, er, our hostesses had one in the family. Go figure.”
Gallow’s gaze abruptly shifted to his agent. Kaylie shivered. Had she been the recipient of that suddenly furious, frigid, accusatory glare, she’d have ducked. Doolin just ratcheted up his grin and spread his hands.
“Hey, Stevie! That’s my boy. How you feeling there, huh?”
“How do you think I feel?” Gallow gritted out. “And don’t call me Stevie.”
“Sure. Sure. Doc says you reinjured those ribs last night. Must be killing you.”
Literally baring his teeth, Gallow revealed a pair of spaces on the right side where his upper and lower second molars should be. Something about those empty spaces pricked Kaylie’s heart. He was no longer the impossibly handsome sports figure or the angry brute but a mere man at the mercy of his own injuries. Until he snarled.
“Reinjured my ribs? You think? That ba—” He slid a gaze over Kaylie. “That bozo ball of lard you hired to take care of me threw himself on top of me! That’s what reinjured my ribs.”
Doolin lifted his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Hey, calm down, will you? How was I to know the guy would do that? I mean, he’s a nurse, right? He said you were all over the place and that he was trying to pin you down so you wouldn’t fall off the bed.”
“He was trying to pin me down, all right, and enjoyed every second of it, until I kicked him in the—” Gallow broke off there and gave Kaylie an irritated look.
Doolin chuckled. “You gave him an anatomy lesson he didn’t get in nursing school, that’s for sure.”
Kaylie stepped back and folded her arms, appalled. This man was a powerhouse of lithe physical strength and jagged emotion that ranged far beyond her personal experience. Stephen Gallow sent her a cool, challenging look. She felt frozen and singed at the same time. A sense of foreboding shivered through her as she watched him take his agent to task with little more than a glare and growl.
“Where’s the bozo now?”
“Fired him last night.”
“And you think he’s going to keep his mouth shut after this?”
“He signed a nondisclosure, and I sent the attorney to remind him of that in person this morning, along with a check for his trouble.”
In other words, Kaylie thought, shocked, they’d paid off the man! Whether to keep him quiet or forestall a lawsuit, she didn’t know. Most likely both. Obviously she had stumbled into a situation that was well beyond her depth.
Gallow dropped his eyelids, his right hand sliding lightly over his left side. Kaylie could tell that he was still in great pain, and the nurse in her could not stand by and watch it, no matter how rough and tough a character he might be. She looked to Doolin.
“Where is his pain medication?”
The agent reached into his coat pocket and drew out a prescription bottle. “Brooks says anything stronger has to be given by injection, and that requires a professional,” Doolin said pointedly. “Until we hire another nurse, this is the best we can do.”
She took the bottle and read the prescription before going to the bedside table, where a crystal pitcher of water and matching glass stood. She poured water into the glass, uncapped the pill bottle and shook two huge tablets into her palm.
“These should give you some relief, but you’ll have to sit up to take them. Will you let me help you?”
Gallow ignored her, demanding of Doolin, “What have you told her?”
Aaron shrugged. “Just what she needs to know.”
“Will you let me help you?” Kaylie repeated.
Gallow slid her a dismissive glance. “I don’t like being knocked out all the time.”
“Taking the meds regularly is the best way to prevent that. Regular doses will keep your pain under control while allowing you to gradually build up a resistance to the narcotic effect. Take them irregularly and they’ll knock you out every time.”
He glared at her for a moment, but then he held his breath and slowly pushed up onto his right elbow. Kaylie quickly pressed the first tablet between his lips and lifted the glass. He gulped, tilted his head back and swallowed. They repeated the process with the second tablet before he collapsed once more upon the pillow, panting slightly.
Kaylie heard his stomach rumble. Setting aside the glass, she began to reposition the pillow and smooth the covers, trying to make him comfortable until the medication kicked in. As she worked, she spoke briskly to Doolin.
“Please go down and ask my aunts to have Hilda prepare a breakfast tray.”
“Okay. Sure. But I thought the staff had the day off.”
“They do, but she’ll fix something anyway.” The aunties took care of their own meals on Sundays, but Hilda had always been a compassionate woman.
Kaylie smoothed the covers over Stephen Gallow’s feet with gentle hands. They were enormous feet. Not even Chandler had feet the size of these. She tried to imagine the size of the skates that he would need.
Stephen rumbled out an order. “Coffee.”
“Oh, that may not be possible,” Kaylie interjected apologetically. “My aunts don’t drink coffee, but maybe they’ll have some in the kitchen anyway.”
Gallow grimaced as Aaron scuttled out of the room. Kaylie told herself that she had done all she could for the moment. It was time to go. And yet, she lingered, oddly reluctant to leave the injured man alone. Brute he might be, but to a nurse an injured man was an injured man. Period. At least that’s what she told herself.
As soon as Aaron had gone, Kaylie Chatam started tidying up the place. Stephen had dropped a towel on the floor the evening before, along with a trio of little pillows that had decorated the bed. Too weak to retrieve them, he’d simply left them where they’d fallen and collapsed, exhausted after the drive from Dallas, the climb up the stairs and a cursory scrubbing. Nurse Chatam folded the towel and laid it atop the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed. The pillows she moved to one of a pair of window seats with gold-on-gold-striped upholstery, both of which overlooked the front of the house. Stephen followed her every movement with his wary gaze.
Petite and gentle, with big, dark brown eyes and thick, straight hair a shade somewhere between sandy brown and red, she was pretty in a painfully wholesome way. That put her a far cry from his usual type, beautiful and somewhat flamboyant. After all, if a guy was going to put up with all that female nonsense, Stephen figured that he ought to get something flashy out of it, something noticeable.
This Kaylie Chatam didn’t even appear to be wearing makeup, except perhaps mascara, as her lashes were much darker than her delicate brows, and a touch of rose-pink lipstick. He couldn’t help noticing, however, that the creamy skin of her slender oval face seemed almost luminous with good health. He noted that she shared with her aunts a high forehead and faintly cleft chin. That little dip in her almost pointy chin somehow called attention to the plump, rosy lips above, not to mention those enormous eyes. They were so dark they were almost black, startlingly so with her light hair. He wondered just how long her hair was and what she’d do if he managed to pluck the pins from that loose, heavy knot at the nape of her slender neck. More to distract himself from that line of thought than for any other reason, he broke the silence.
“Aaron explain about the press?”
“He said you’re hiding from them.”
“I’m not hiding!” Stephen frowned at the notion. “I’m keeping a low profile.”
“Ah.”
“It’s necessary,” he grumbled defensively, rubbing his right hand over his prickly jaw and chin and wishing he could shave. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“No, I guess not.”
Something about those softly spoken words irritated him, and he barked at her. “Your aunts swore they would protect my privacy, and I made a hefty contribution to some single parents’ charity to guarantee it.”
She gave him a look, the kind she might give a little boy who stretched the truth. It made his cheeks and throat heat. He mentally winced at the thought of the curse words that he’d spewed earlier.
“My aunts never swear,” she told him with the absolute authority of one who would know. “But if they said they would protect your privacy, then they will. And any donation you may have made to one of their charities has nothing to do with it. Trust me. They may have promised, but they didn’t swear.”
“What’s the difference?” he wanted to know, sounding grumpy even to his own ears.
“‘But I tell you,’” she quoted softly, “‘Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is His footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.’”
Stephen gaped at her. Had she just quoted the Bible to him?
“It’s from Matthew, chapter five, verses thirty-four and thirty-five.”
She had quoted the Bible to him!
“So what are you,” he demanded, scowling, “some kind of religious nut?”
Folding her small, delicate hands, she regarded him serenely. “Yes, I suppose you could say that, if ‘religious nut’ is code for Christian.”
Realizing that he’d insulted her, he deepened his frown, muttering, “No offense.”
“None taken,” she replied lightly, smiling that smile again.
He had the distinct impression that she felt sorry for him and that it had nothing to do with his physical condition.
“Guess your aunts are religious, too?”
“Yes, of course.”
Disconcerted, he said nothing more on the subject, just lay there frowning at her. What on earth, he wondered sourly, had he gotten himself into now?
Aaron had touted Chatam House as a bona fide mansion, a posh throwback to an age of bygone opulence, owned and maintained by three dotty old maids with more money than sense, a trio of do-gooders so far out of the loop that they wouldn’t know a juicy news item if it bit them. He had seemed right on the money, going by yesterday’s brief impressions. In truth, Stephen had been so exhausted and in such pain from the nearly fifty-mile trip from the Dallas hospital down to the smaller city of Buffalo Creek in Aaron’s luxury sedan that he’d barely registered the old ladies’ names or faces. Before making the laborious climb up the curving staircase behind Chester, their balding butler, they had informed him that he was to be installed in the “small suite,” so called because the sitting room was the smallest in the house.
Stephen supposed Chatam House was opulent enough, provided one admired antiques and crystal chandeliers, but he missed his own place and especially his spacious private bath, complete with sauna, walk-in shower, television and music system. This room didn’t even have a closet, for pity’s sake, just an enormous antique wardrobe, not that he had many clothes with him, just baggy shorts and sweatpants and cutup T-shirts to accommodate his injuries. Now he learned that he’d landed smack-dab in the middle of a pack of “godsdienstige ijveraars,” as his stepfather would say, otherwise known as “religious zealots.”
Stephen had been acquainted with other Christians, of course, his American grandmother, for one. She’d died after his parents had divorced when he was eight and his mother had taken him back to Holland with her to live. Some of his friends back in Groningen, where they had lived with his mother’s parents before her remarriage, had been professing Christians, but they’d never talked about it much. Even some of the guys on the hockey team were Christians, but none of them had ever gone so far as to quote the Bible to him! The most any of them had done was invite him to church, though he’d never gone.
He had enough problems now without finding that he’d landed in the midst of a bunch of religious eccentrics. In fact, he’d say that the very last thing he needed right now was to land in the midst of a bunch of religious eccentrics.
The thing was, he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Any hotel large enough to accommodate his needs would also leave him open to the sharp eyes of the press. He had considered convalescing at Aaron’s house, but that, too, was under constant surveillance by the local sportswriters. Plus, Stephen couldn’t quite bring himself to impose on the newlyweds. Chatam House had seemed like the answer, with Buffalo Creek being close enough to allow Aaron easy access but far enough from the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area to keep the press off his scent.
At this point, his only hope was that the press would not make a big deal of the circumstances of the accident that had knocked him out of the playoffs so that management of the Blades hockey team would not feel duty-bound to activate the good conduct clause of his contract and cut him from the team.
That alone would keep him where he was here in Chatam House, godsdienstige ijveraars or not.
Chapter Two
Kaylie Chatam walked around the bed and gathered up the other pillow, saying, “You’ll need to sit up a bit in order to eat.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stephen muttered on a sigh, grateful for something to think about besides his predicament. He began struggling up onto his right elbow again.
Kaylie swiftly moved back around the bed, her flats slapping lightly against the gleaming hardwood floor. She reached his side and wedged the pillow beneath his head and shoulders, but it still wasn’t enough to allow him to eat without decorating himself with his food.
“Let me help you move up on the pillows a little more.”
Leaning across him, she slid her hands into the crevices between his torso and arms. He was surprised at the wiry strength that allowed her to actually be of help. After he got settled again, she briskly straightened his T-shirt so that it didn’t bind his shoulders and neck. Next, she spread the towel across his chest. Embarrassed by his helplessness, Stephen mumbled, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her soft, rather husky voice sent an odd shiver through him.
“Would you like for me to examine your incisions?”
He shook his head, his right hand going to the spot on his right side where they’d opened him up. “The doctor took a look last night. Said everything seemed fine.”
Nodding, she seemed to cast about the room for something more to do. Stephen’s gaze followed her.
Despite the lack of certain amenities, he decided that this was really a very elegant room. The cool creams and warm golds, set against a milky brown background, showed off the expensive antiques, rich brocades and matching stripes to perfection.
From where he lay, he could look straight through the open doorway to the gracefully proportioned, brown velvet sofa, placed squarely in the center of a large, truly beautiful cream-on-gold rug positioned in front of an ornate plastered fireplace. He recalled an armchair upholstered in striped satin and a writing desk of some sort, as well as crystal lamps and gold-framed paintings.
It was all a little Victorian for his personal taste, but he couldn’t deny the beauty of it. His own home was as sleek and modern as it was possible to be, all shiny blacks and bright colors. It seemed rather cold and pedestrian in comparison. Maybe he ought to rethink that. Be easy enough to make some changes while they were rebuilding the place. Just the thought of what had to be done to make his house on the west side of Fort Worth habitable again—and how it had come to be in need of repair—pained and exhausted him, so he shoved it out of mind.
Thankfully, Aaron returned just then with a laden tray, announcing gaily, “Hey, they got a dumbwaiter. Imagine that. Comes up out there on the landing. It’s like an elevator for food, but Hilda says she sends the laundry up that way, too. Pretty slick, huh?”
Stephen nodded and shrugged. “There’s one in my stepfather’s flat in Amsterdam, where the houses are very old. It works on a pulley.”
Kaylie took the tray and placed it on Stephen’s lap, asking, “Older than this place? Chatam House is almost a hundred and fifty years old, you know.”
He smirked at this. “My stepfather’s flat is in a converted herenhuis built in 1632.”
She blinked. “My, that is old.”
“Sixty percent of the houses in Amsterdam were built before the eighteenth century,” he muttered, mentally cataloging the contents of the tray. He identified orange juice; eggs scrambled with parsley and diced onion; toast with butter and strawberry jelly; four slices of crisp bacon; a baked apple sprinkled with cinnamon and swimming in cream; and what appeared to be a cup of strong black coffee.
“Mmm,” he said, inhaling appreciatively.
Kaylie smiled. “You’ll find the fare at Chatam House on an entirely different plane than that of most hospital food.”
“No kidding.”
He picked up the ridiculously delicate china cup from its matching saucer and touched it to his lips for a quick sample, then made a face. Hot tea. Yuck. He’d never developed a taste for it, and his mother had not pressed him to. He set the cup back onto the saucer and reached for the orange juice instead.
Kaylie chuckled and said to Aaron, “There’s a chain coffee shop down on North Main, about a block south of the highway. They have a drive-through window, but I’m sure that if you pick up his favorite grind, Hilda will be happy to make it for him.”
“All right,” Aaron said, digging into his pocket for his keys. “Be right back.”
“I have to be going, too,” Kaylie said, swinging toward the door.
Both Aaron and Stephen spoke at the same time.
“What?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she answered, turning to face them.
