Julie Miller - Necessary Action

His red-haired rescuer picked up the heavy duffel bag before he could grab it and hefted it onto her shoulder. “Your bedside manner needs a little work. You sure you’ve got training for this?”

“I’m a registered EMT-paramedic. Uncle Henry’s goal is to make the farm a completely self-sufficient community. I’m what passes for health care here.” She crossed the yard, heading toward the row of cabins and bungalows on the other side of the gravel road that ran in front of the Fiskes’ house. “Come with me. I need to stitch up your arm. You could use an ice pack on that cheekbone, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She halted and spun around. “I don’t appreciate being mocked. You can call me Mel or Melanie or Miss Fiske. Save the ma’am for my aunt Abby, and the sweethearts and jokes for one of the other girls if you want to impress somebody.” With that bossy pronouncement, she turned and headed out again.

His gaze dropped shamelessly to the butt bobbing beneath his duffel bag as he fell into step behind her. She might dress and talk like a tomboy, but there was nothing but shapely woman filling out those jeans. Not that her curves made any difference to his assignment, but he wouldn’t be much of a man if he couldn’t appreciate the scenery around this place.

“Okay, Mel. I’m Tom. Tom Maynard.” Using his real first name and an old family name was supposed to make this undercover profile easy to remember so he wouldn’t slip and make a mistake that could give him away. But they still felt like foreign words on his tongue. That’s why he liked to blend his fake persona with a little bit of reality—to make the role he had to play as real as possible. “My friends call me Duff.”

“I’m not looking to make friends, Mr. Maynard.” With a tone like that, she didn’t have to worry. Surely, there’d be someone else at this place who’d be an easier mark for developing a relationship with to get the information he needed. He followed her to the cottage at the end of the crude neighborhood street and headed up the brick pathway bordered by colorful flowers. She pushed open the unlocked door and held it for Duff to enter before closing it behind him.

The blast of cool air that hit him after the heat and humidity outside raised goose bumps on his skin. For some reason he hadn’t expected to find air-conditioning at this remote location. He sought out the source of the welcome chill in the steady hum of a window unit anchored over a small shelf crammed with books beside an empty brick fireplace. He used his survey to also identify a small dine-in kitchen area and a pair of open pinewood doors that led into a bedroom and a bathroom. The flowered love seat and white eyelet curtains at the front window seemed to indicate Melanie lived alone.

She dropped his bag beside the love seat. “Welcome to the infirmary.”

“Quaint little place you’ve got here. Does everybody get his own house?”

“Married couples and families get their own place. Henry will probably put you up in the bachelor quarters near the equipment shed for now. You’ll be able to eat meals there, too. Phyllis Schultz, who runs our bakery, cooks a big dinner for anyone who doesn’t have his own kitchen.”

“How did you luck out?” He nodded toward her left hand. “You’re not married.”

“No. I’m not. I doubt I’ll ever be.”

Now that was an odd addendum to make. Melanie Fiske might not be a beauty like her cousin, but the woman had fire and plenty of curves that would tempt the right man. Not me, he reminded himself. But even in this backwoods Eden, a woman in her midtwenties surely didn’t think of herself as an old maid.

“I give people nicknames,” he explained, telling himself not to be curious about what her cryptic comment might mean. “Baldy. Old Man. I ought to call you Red.”

“You can call me Melanie,” she drawled, slipping into that invisible armor again. Amusing him with her sass more than she knew, she opened a glass-paned door that was also hung with eyelet curtains for privacy off the west side of the tiny living room. “In here.” She gestured to an examination table that looked as though it had come out of some old country doctor’s office. “This is why I get to have my own place. Since I have to be on call around the clock, it makes sense to live in the quarters where all the medical supplies and sickbeds are kept.”

He took in the two beds that were little more than metal cots made up with crisp white sheets and blankets, and the metal cabinets that were marred with rust around the hinges and corners. She washed her hands at a tiny porcelain sink before opening a dorm-size refrigerator and pulling out a vial of medicine. Then she opened drawers and the cabinet, which were, as she’d claimed, sparsely stocked and pulled out sterile gloves, alcohol, gauze bandages and a syringe packet. Duff was all for playing his part as a grizzled vet looking for some peace and quiet away from the crowds and noise of the city, but did he really want to get medical treatment from a woman who wasn’t even a registered nurse, much less a doctor?

She faced him again, frowning when she saw he was still standing. “You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”

He wasn’t. Duff leaned his hip back against the table and sat. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

Her chin came up and she pointed to the framed document on the wall. “I may not have all the medical training I’d like, but I have enough to do this job. There’s my certification from the Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City.”

So she’d been to school in KC. Someone commuting back and forth to classes could certainly smuggle a trunkful of guns into the city. He’d have to check to see if her schedule coincided with any of the suspected weapons deliveries. “When were you in Kansas City?”

But she wasn’t interested in getting friendly. “We’re talking a shot of topical anesthesia, cleaning the wound and eight, ten stitches, tops. I don’t have antibiotics on hand to administer right now, but if you show signs of infection, there’s a doctor in Falls City who does.”

There was also a medical team on call for the task force. Duff would ask for one of those doctors to check him out when he made his scheduled report to his handler later tonight. In the meantime, if he thought about how confident her hands had felt checking his wound outside, and not how iffy the modernity of this infirmary might be, he had a surprising degree of confidence in her ability to heal him.

“Do your worst, Doc. I can take it.” He reached for the hem of his T-shirt and peeled it off over his head, gingerly maneuvering the soiled material over his injured shoulder. By the time he’d wadded up the bloodied shirt and tossed it into the trash can, he had two big brown eyes staring at the center of his chest.

Well, I’ll be damned. Melanie Fiske wasn’t all cold and prickly and disinterested in men, after all. Although he could guess that a woman with medical training had seen a half-naked man before, her eyes seemed more than professionally curious about the particular dimensions of his bare chest and torso. He was built like a tank. Maybe she’d just never seen this much exposed male skin in her infirmary before.

“You, um—” she swallowed, and he watched the ripple of movement down her throat as a telltale blush moved in the opposite direction “—never answered my question about a tetanus shot. Is yours up-to-date?”

Maybe he could play off the innocence peeking through her tough tomboy facade and make a friend here, after all. “I’m good. That’s one thing the army does right.”

She tended to him for several minutes in silence, keeping her eyes carefully averted from bare-naked-chest land as she untied the bandanna and irrigated the wound. While she waited for the area where she’d given him the shot to grow numb, she shifted her attention to the tender swelling on his cheek and gently cleaned the scrape there. “How did it feel to punch Silas in the face?”