Linda Goodnight - Rancher's Refuge

“Yeah, we get a lot of calls for those in Whisper Falls,” he said wryly, and she wasn’t sure if he joked or not. “Where to from here?”

She held out the prescription, feeling like a bum. She’d imposed on this man enough, but what else could she do? This wasn’t exactly familiar terrain. “Do you know where a pharmacy is?”

“Not a pharmacy. The pharmacy. Jessup’s. Like Dr. Ron’s clinic, the only one in town.”

Annalisa followed broad shoulders to his truck, grateful that this man had been the one to find her in the woods. A little taciturn, he was a take-charge kind of guy who saw what needed doing and did it. Maybe she should worry about that, but right now, she had no choice except gratitude.

As she got into his truck for the second time that day, a troubling thought struck her.

“Oh, no,” she breathed, fingers pressed to her lips in dismay.

“What?” Austin hooked an arm over the steering wheel and shifted in her direction.

“I can’t fill the prescription.” She swallowed, gut fluttering with a new anxiety. Her situation had just become more dire.

Black eyebrows dipped. “Why not?”

“I—I must have lost my handbag when I fell.” A total lie. James had her purse in his car. When he’d shoved her out, she’d had no time to grab anything. Her phone, her money, her ID. Everything was in her purse. In time she could replace most of it, but that didn’t get her beyond this very awkward moment.

“You’re saying you don’t have any money?”

A flush of heat rushed up her neck and burned her cheeks. “Not at the moment. I have money back in...at home. Just not with me.”

Intelligent and already suspicious, he jumped on her slip of the tongue. “Back where, Annalisa? You’re not from Whisper Falls, so where’s your car? Where’s your hiking gear? People don’t just drop out of the sky and start hiking through miles of woods and hills to a waterfall in sissy shoes like that.” He gave her feet a scathing glare.

Acid burned in her stomach. Like the doctor, the cowboy was no fool, and her story was as thin as nylon.

“Forget the prescription. I’ve been too much bother already. Please, just take me to the nearest hotel.”

“How you gonna pay for that?”

She opened her mouth, only to shut it again. How indeed? The receptionist at the doctor’s office had taken her insurance information on nothing but faith in her promise to scan and send the card at a later date. She doubted a hotel would be as forgiving.

“I don’t know.” She pressed a hand to the dull headache drumming at her temples. “I’ll think of something. Let me think a minute.”

The cowboy apparently hadn’t a minute to spare because he started the engine and aimed the truck down the narrow, curving street. She had no idea where they were going and at the moment, didn’t care. She was stuck in the rural Ozarks without a dime or a credit card or a checkbook. And calling James to retrieve those items was out of the question.

She would rather live under that waterfall for the rest of her life and eat bugs.

Annalisa leaned her throbbing, hot head against the side window. Her whole face ached and she wondered if bruises were starting to appear. James was usually more careful. A slap here or there or cold intimidation, but not all-out battering.

She shivered and pressed closer to the door. An angry man was a powerful thing. And no matter how hard she’d tried, she’d not been always been able to pacify James.

Annalisa vowed not to make Austin Blackwell angry.

With a furtive glimpse at his dark, solemn profile, she wondered if she already had.

She’d gotten herself in this predicament. Now what? She could use her phone-a-friend option, but her friends were also James’s. They all considered him the catch of the day. Somewhere in their eight-month dating history, he’d steered her toward people in his circle and away from hers.

Unshed tears pushed at the back of her eyelids. If she had a family to rely on. If she wasn’t so terribly alone. If she hadn’t made such a mess of things.

Regrets. So very many regrets. What a fool she’d been to bend to James’s every whim, even to the point of drifting away from her church. God, forgive me.

Shame was an ugly companion.

Holding back frustrated tears, she focused on the streets of Whisper Falls and tried to think of anything but her predicament. The town was small with only a long strip of businesses on either side of about five blocks. The buildings were old, probably turn of the last century, and many had been renovated into darling shops. In other circumstances, she would have explored Auntie’s Antiques, Sweets and Eats, the old brick train station. A spired courthouse with a long pillared porch was fronted by the statue of a soldier and a tall granite memorial to Vietnam vets. The list of names engraved on the onyx plaque both stunned and saddened her. Whisper Falls may be small, but it had given of its best.

Some of the buildings were run-down, but perky rust and yellow mums in giant pots trimmed the street corners and proclaimed an effort to spruce things up. On one small lot between the Tress and Tan Salon and the Expresso Yourself Coffee Shop was an open area made into a concrete park. In the center perched a gazebo bracketed by two cement benches and more of the giant flowerpots filled with mums, a splash of vibrant color on a sunny day.

Whisper Falls was a town torn between the old and the new, the run-down and the revitalized. And she liked it.

With a start Annalisa realized they’d reached their destination—a pharmacy recessed into the walls of an old brick building but with modern plate glass along the front.

She lifted her face from the cool window to look at the cowboy. “I told you—”

“Give me the prescription.”

“You don’t have to...”

With a warning scowl, he took the paper from her fingers, slammed out of the truck and went inside a double glass door. Fancy script proclaimed Jessup’s Pharmacy alongside a stenciled mortar and pestle in black silhouette. The old red brick was a beauty with 1884 engraved on the gingerbread top and a turquoise tiled entry from the sidewalk to the doors.

A pair of women about her age entered the pharmacy behind Austin. One pushed a baby stroller. An older couple passed by, the man treading patiently beside a bent, crippled woman using a walker. Once, the tiny gray woman grinned up at her man, a flash of flirtation that touched Annalisa.

She watched the come and go of locals, noting the ease and simplicity of friendly folks greeting one another. A teenager opened a door for a woman. A skipping girl dropped a handful of change and when the coins flew in every direction, a family of three stopped to help. Car doors slammed and voices called out greetings. No one seemed angry or stressed or too busy to say hello.

A deep yearning pulled at the empty spaces inside her. Did places like this really exist anymore? Did anyone’s family remain intact? Did a man and woman have a chance of growing old together?

She was still pondering that question when the cowboy emerged from the pharmacy and came toward her. Some bizarre emotion—relief, confusion, attraction—bubbled up. Attraction? Where had that come from?

Austin opened the truck door and tossed a white paper sack onto the seat. Pills inside clicked together as paper rustled.

A battle raged inside Annalisa. The need for help warred with the need to get out of the truck and stop imposing on a stranger. An attractive stranger.

“Thank you. I’ll repay you as soon as I can.”

“Forget it.” He sat there for a full minute, staring through the windshield at the pharmacy.

Struggling with the uncomfortable notion that some twisted portion of her brain found any man attractive, Annalisa clutched the pharmacy sack like a life preserver. He’d rescued her from the woods, taken her to the doctor, bought her medication. Now what? Where did she go from here?