Joanna Wayne - Son of a Gun

“Okay,” she agreed. “As soon as I finish feeding Belle.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t wait that long,” Carolina said. “You may still be losing blood. Sybil and I can handle feeding Belle or at least get started at it while Damien checks your injury. There’s a fully stocked first-aid kit in the hall bathroom.”

“Tague, how about taking care of King for me?” Damien asked. “I left her just outside the back door.”

“No problem. I’ll tuck her in for the night.”

Reluctantly, Emma unwound Belle from the folds of cloth so that she could hand the baby to Carolina. Placing Belle in Carolina’s hands made her uneasy, though Carolina surely knew more about tending to a baby’s needs than Emma did.

What she knew about babies could be composed in a tweet.

A tweet. It had been months since she’d even thought about that social form of communication. Caudillo had made sure she hadn’t had access to the internet, a phone or anything else that could have connected her to the outside world.

He, on the other hand, came and went freely on his yacht and small plane as if he were your ordinary multibillionaire CEO.

When Emma looked up, her nerves tightened to coiled steel. The look in Damien’s eyes said he had more on his mind than first aid.

He hadn’t given her away, but he was not fooled by her performance. She’d be lucky if he didn’t call the sheriff and have her picked up before he bandaged her arm.

Chapter Three

Emma followed Damien down the hallway to the sounds of Carolina crooning to Belle behind them.

She glanced around the room. Heavy wooden bookshelves lined two walls, and bulbs of blooming paper-white narcissus rested on a wide window ledge. The drapes were open, revealing a glimpse of falling snow.

Emma suspected it was Carolina’s taste that spilled so gracefully over the decor—soft, earthy colors, intricate moldings, paintings of hunting dogs on the walls. Silver-framed family pictures were scattered like valuable trinkets among the books.

Damien motioned her to an overstuffed armchair in a muted plaid that sat near the window next to a beautifully crafted antique end table. She rearranged the throw pillows and settled into the chair, certain her web of lies was going to spin out of control at any minute.

“There’s no use for you to bother with this,” she said. “If you’ll point me to the bathroom and give me a Band-Aid and a tube of antiseptic, I can take care of it myself.”

“Remove the shawl.”

Damien’s tone suggested he was used to being in control, or perhaps he was just tired of playing rescuer. She yanked impatiently at the wrap, tightening instead of loosening the knot that had secured Belle.

“Let me help you with that,” Damien said, his tone not quite as brusque as before. Before she could protest, he leaned in close and his hands brushed hers as he took hold of the looped fabric.

His touch ripped along her nerves, partly the automatic cringe she’d developed to the nearness of Caudillo. But there was also a heady factor involved that she couldn’t explain, perhaps an instinctive reaction of a desperate woman to her rescuer.

“You’re as tangled as a calf in a downed mesquite tree,” Damien quipped.

“I’m sorry. Just cut it. It’s going straight to the trash anyway.”

“Good idea.” He walked to a mahogany desk on the other side of the room and took a pair of scissors from the top drawer. “You might have bled a lot more if you hadn’t had the shawl putting pressure against the cut.”

“I’m surprised it bled as much as it did,” she said. “I’m sure the cut isn’t bad or I’d be in a lot more pain.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll just clean the injury, apply some antiseptic, bandage the tear and you’ll be back in business. But I’m guessing it’s going to need stitches.”

Stitches were not an option. She couldn’t deal with all the questions the E.R. personnel would ask. Besides, she no longer had health insurance, and even if she had, she couldn’t give them her real name.

The money she’d stolen from Caudillo wouldn’t last long if she started paying for visits to the E.R.

“Stitches at this time of night would require a trip to an emergency room,” she argued. “You said yourself it’s not safe to drive the roads.”

“I’m not planning to drive to an E.R. Doc Benson lives on an adjoining spread. We can get there by a four-wheeler if we have to.”

“I’m sure the doctor doesn’t work from his living room.”

“He usually works from my barn, but he’ll likely make an exception in your case.”

“From your barn?”

“Yep. He’s an equine vet, best one in the county. Sewing a few stitches in you would be easy work. I’m guessing you don’t have the kick of a pissed-off quarter horse.”

The vet would no doubt provide better medical care than she’d have gotten with Caudillo. She’d contracted some type of viral infection in September that had sent her fever soaring so high she’d become delusional. Even then he hadn’t taken her to a doctor.

Fortunately, the sickness ran its course and she recovered with no lasting effects except a stronger determination than ever to escape the monster.

Damien cut through the fabric and the shawl finally fell loose—all except the last layers of cotton that were soaked with blood. Finally, even that was removed and she got her first look at the injury.

The wound gaped open, revealing exposed tissue. She swallowed hard, fighting off a wave of nausea.

“You definitely need stitches,” Damien said. “But I’ve never seen a tear from barbed wire that was this clean-cut. It looks more like it was done with a surgeon’s scalpel or at least a very sharp knife.” Suspicion edged his voice.

“My one small glimmer of luck,” Emma said. “A clean cut will make it easier to stitch and heal.”

She tried to sound confident, although she was shaking inside. Julio could have easily killed her and Belle in that truck or in the woods if he’d caught up with her. Now that she was thinking more clearly, she found it almost impossible to believe she’d escaped him or Caudillo.

She was a living miracle, and she planned to do whatever it took to keep on living. If that meant lying to Damien, so be it. If it meant spitting in the face of the devil himself, she’d do that, too.

Damien leaned in closer. “How did you really wind up in my pasture tonight?”

“I explained all of that. I was searching for help.”

“Look at me, Emma.”

She forced herself to meet his steely gaze.

“Tell me the truth. Did someone do this to you?”

“No one attacked me,” she said.

“You don’t have to be afraid to tell the truth.”

Maybe not in Damien’s world. “I’ve told you the truth.”

“Okay,” he acknowledged, although it was clear he wasn’t buying it. “I’ll give Doc Benson a call. It may be a while before he can see you, so we should go ahead and clean and bandage the wound. Have you had a tetanus booster lately?”

“Last March.”

“Was that because of an injury?”

“No. I was traveling out of the country. …” Another slip. There was nothing to do but finish the statement. “I was just going on vacation, but my doctor checked my records and recommended the booster.”

“Where did you go?”

“Italy,” she lied. Too bad she hadn’t gone there like she’d originally planned instead of letting her friend Dorothy talk her into island-hopping in the Caribbean.

“Okay, let’s go to the bathroom and get this cleaned up.”

Once in the bathroom, Damien excused himself for a minute to make a quick call to his vet friend. She stared out the window, thinking how changed the world looked when coated with snow. That’s what she needed—a way to white out the ugliness she’d endured these past months, a chance to go on with her life.