The Coyote's Cry

Jenna walked in and looked around. The whole house—or what she’d seen of it on her way in—was spotless and bore the unmistakable odor of disinfectant. Someone had done a thorough cleaning job, or was this almost sterile condition the norm for Bram’s home? She would never have thought so, but since she really didn’t know him in spite of her long-standing friendship with his sister, she could only guess at his housekeeping skills.

The paramedics were about to transfer Gloria from the gurney to the bed when Jenna said, “Wait a minute, please. Where will I be sleeping?”

Bram nervously shifted his weight from one foot to another. “The guest bedrooms are on the other side of the house.” Lord above, she’d be sleeping in the room next to his!

“Let me take a look.” Jenna handed the IV bottle to one of the paramedics and left the room. “Bram? How about giving me a quick tour?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, again having trouble with the simplest words. He walked past her, got a whiff of her clean, mildly floral smell and felt his face grow hot. Clenching his teeth, he led her through the house to the other two bedrooms.

Jenna took a quick peek into each and declared, “I’m sorry, but this won’t do. I need to be much closer to your grandmother at night. How about moving one of those twin beds into her room for me? I’ll keep my things in here and use the other twin when I think she’s doing well enough for me to sleep away from her.”

“Great,” Bram muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. Tell the guys to put her to bed. I’ll move the twin.”

“And I’ll bring in my suitcase.”

“Uh, I’ll get it for you.”

Jenna smiled sweetly. He was unbelievably rude, but she wasn’t going to let him beat her up over nothing. After all, he didn’t know that he had the starring role in the sexual fantasies that occasionally passed through her brain.

“Thank you.” She left him standing there and returned to the master bedroom. “Put her to bed,” she told the two young men. Seeing that Gloria’s eyes had opened, she took her hand and smiled. “Do you know where you are, Gloria? You’re at the ranch, at Bram’s house. We’re going to move you to what looks to be a very comfortable bed now. Are you all right with that?”

“Ho…ho…home,” Gloria whispered hoarsely.

“Yes, Bram’s home.”

“N-n-no! Ho…home.”

Jenna sighed internally. It was always the same with patients released from the hospital. They always wanted their own home.

The men easily and expertly moved Gloria to the bed, and then made sure her IV was working and she was as comfortable as they could make her. They left then and Jenna was alone with her patient.

On the other side of the house, Bram had taken one of the twin beds apart. Tossing the bedding on the other twin, he shoved the mattress and then the box spring onto the floor and picked up the bed frame. He wore a scowl because this whole setup was almost more than he could handle, and he hated feeling helpless about anything. How dare Jenna come barging into his life like this?

Carrying the bed frame into the master suite, Bram set it down long enough to move a dresser over a few feet to make room for the twin.

“May I help?” Jenna asked.

“No, thanks,” Bram said curtly.

“Fine, do it all yourself,” she retorted.

Bram’s head jerked around so he could look at her. She looked back, and it was a stare-down that shook Bram’s very foundation. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t like her being there, and to ask her how in hell she expected him to sleep at night with her only a few feet and a thin wall away. But he couldn’t reveal the secret passion he’d harbored for her for so long, and what rational excuse did he have for not wanting her to be Gran’s nurse?

“I’ll get the spring and mattress,” he muttered darkly, finally breaking that unnerving eye contact and leaving the room.

Jenna took in a huge gulp of air and realized that she’d been holding her breath. Not only that, but her entire system was in chaos, all tingly and reminding her in the most erotic ways of her femininity, caused solely from looking directly into Bram Colton’s incredible black eyes.

Shivering from so much sexual energy charging through her body, she busied herself unpacking a bag containing a supply of hospital gowns and the medications for Gloria.

Bram hauled in the box spring and left again without a word or a glance. In a minute he was back with the mattress. Immediately he walked out again.

Jenna was surprised by the animosity she felt from Bram. He’d never been friendly, that was certain, but his attitude today bordered on actual dislike. Had she inadvertently trod on his toes at some time? She couldn’t think of an incident where they were ever together long enough for either of them to injure the other’s feelings. And heaven knew that she’d been open to a better relationship between them. At least she had tried smiling at him. If he ever deigned to show her a genuine smile, she’d probably faint dead away.

Bram returned once more with an armload of bedding. “It’s clean,” he said gruffly.

“Did you think I would accuse you of giving me soiled bedding?”

He couldn’t believe her icy tone of voice and insulting question. “No,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “I merely pointed out that this is clean bedding.”

“Anyway, we’re disturbing my patient.”

“Who just happens to be my grandmother,” Bram snapped, but in a husky whisper. He walked over to the bed Gran was occupying and looked down at her. She seemed small as a child in his big bed, and he’d never seen her as a tiny woman before the stroke. That shook him, for it was visible evidence of the changes in her.

He said brusquely, “Do you want me to make up the twin for you?”

“I’ll do it. I know there are going to be a lot of family members dropping in, which is as it should be. But I must insist on one rule.”

Bram’s eyes got even darker. “You brought your own set of rules to my house?”

“One for now. And don’t act so put-upon. It won’t kill you or anyone else to follow it. When that door is shut, no one is to come in. I will close it only during baths or other episodes of personal care. Now, is that really asking too much?”

Bram was embarrassed but would die before showing it. “I can live with that.”

“Well, thank you very much.” Disgustedly, Jenna turned away.

Bram wanted to pull a chair over to the bed and sit with Gran for a while, but with Jenna hovering and puttering—making up the twin bed, for one thing—and his every cell attuned to her every movement, he abandoned that idea.

“I’m going to work,” he growled as he walked out. “Call me if you need anything. You’ll find the phone numbers where I can be reached listed on a pad under the wall phone in the kitchen.”

“Thank you,” Jenna said stiffly. She couldn’t help feeling glad that he’d decided to leave, for he wasn’t being one bit nice, and a grouchy distraction—even the sexiest guy she’d ever seen—she didn’t need. She probably shouldn’t have acted so impulsively when she’d heard Dr. Hall saying that he needed a nurse to care for Gloria Colton in Bram’s home. What on earth had Jenna hoped would come from her actually living in his house?

Sighing when she heard Bram’s vehicle start up and drive off, she finished making the bed, checked Gloria’s pulse rate, temperature and blood pressure without waking her, and wrote the data and the time on the new chart started in the ambulance.

Gloria’s eyes were closed and she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Jenna took that opportunity to check out the kitchen and the food it contained. She would be preparing Gloria’s meals, and her own, of course. But she was not going to cook for Bram. He could eat at the greasy spoon café, for all she cared.

Two hours later Willow walked into the house carrying a covered pot of something that smelled good. The young woman had black hair like her brother, but her eyes were gray and she was tall and slender and quite lovely.

“Jenna!” Willow exclaimed, obviously taken aback. “No one told me you were Gran’s nurse.”

“No one knew until this morning. What’s in the pot?”

“Some homemade chicken broth for Gran.”

“You used very little salt, I hope.”

“Very little. Just a tiny pinch.”

“Wonderful. Take it to the kitchen and then come say hi to your grandmother.”

Willow returned in a minute and asked, “Is it all right if I sit on the bed next to her?”

“Of course.”

Jenna watched Gloria’s eyes follow her granddaughter until Willow was sitting on the bed. “Willow’s here, Gloria,” Jenna said gently.

“Hi, Gran,” Willow said, and took her hand. “Are you happy to be out of the hospital?”

“Ho…home.” Gloria slurred the word.

“Gran, you can’t go to your home yet. Here you have Bram…and Jenna. You remember Jenna Elliot, don’t you?”

Gloria turned her head and closed her eyes. Willow bit her lip and looked at Jenna. Then she mouthed, “What’s wrong?”

Jenna motioned her from the room, and when they were out of Gloria’s earshot she said quietly, “She’s not happy, Willow. She wants to be in her own home.”

“But she can’t be. Does she understand that she must get much better before she can go back to that apartment?”

“I don’t know what she understands,” Jenna said with an apologetic sigh.

“Jenna, is she really going to get better?”

“I don’t know that, either,” Jenna said softly. “I do know that she can improve speech and mobility through exercise. She’s not quite ready to begin that regimen, not today at any rate, but soon she should be. Right now she’s feeling terribly discouraged and…and lost.”

“How can we cheer her up?”

“By visiting as often as you can and talking to her. Tell her what you’re doing and what the rest of the family is doing. If she had any special interests, talk to her about those. If she read a lot, read aloud to her—the kind of books or magazines she enjoyed before this happened. Be yourself with her, and above all, don’t ever talk down to her, as though she’s now incapable of grasping what you tell her. She might not be as quick on the trigger as she was, but we still don’t know how affected her memory was by the stroke. And gradually, you’ll see some improvement in her attitude.”

Willow wiped away a tear. “I hope so.”

Before the afternoon was over, nearly every Colton had come by, each bearing a gift of food Gloria could eat in her present condition—homemade broth or a bowl of custard or a dish of raspberry gelatin, her favorite flavor.

But some also brought things for Bram and Jenna to eat. There was a delicious-smelling beef stew, a baked ham, several cakes and pies and numerous salads and casseroles. Jenna realized that neither she nor Bram would have to do any cooking for days.

At five Jenna warmed some of Willow’s chicken broth and prepared a tray for Gloria. She couldn’t quite manage to feed herself yet, and Jenna sat on the bed and gently spooned broth, gelatin and custard into her patient’s mouth. After a few bites of each, Gloria turned her head.

“You really must eat more than that,” Jenna said in a genuinely kind voice.

But Gloria closed her eyes, and that was the end of dinner for her. Frowning and troubled, Jenna carried the tray back to the kitchen. She was rinsing dishes for the dishwasher when she heard Bram’s SUV drive in and park.

Jenna had spotted Bram’s dog through various windows several times that day, and when she heard joyous barking, she went to the kitchen window to see what was happening. Bram had knelt to hug his black-and-white dog, a pretty little thing, Jenna thought, and Bram’s obvious affection for his pet revealed a side of him that Jenna had never seen. Actually, it made her wonder if her previous opinion about Bram avoiding her because of her father’s intolerance was on the mark or if he simply didn’t like her and never had.

But if he didn’t like her, why in heaven’s name was she so smitten by him? Couldn’t her hormones tell the difference between an interested and an uninterested man? Shouldn’t her own reactions to the opposite sex be more accurate than they apparently were with Bram?

Bram stood up and Jenna ducked away from the window so he wouldn’t catch her watching him. She heard him come in and then call, “Jenna!”

Leaving the kitchen, she hurried to the front door entry. “What?”

“Can my dog come in the house?”

“Why are you asking me?”

Bram thinned his lips. “Because you’ve got rules. Nellie is used to coming inside, but if you don’t want a dog in the house because of Gran—”

Jenna broke in. “Is Nellie going to jump on the bed and give Gloria fleas?”

“She doesn’t have fleas!”

“I was only kidding. Pets are very good medicine for people in Gloria’s condition. By all means, let Nellie come in.”

Bram opened the door and Nellie came bounding in. “Settle down, Nellie,” he said quietly, and the collie immediately obeyed.

“She’s awfully cute,” Jenna said. “Is she friendly with strangers?”

Nellie was, but Bram wouldn’t give Jenna the satisfaction of saying so. Her nervy intrusion on his quiet life galled him, especially when he was with her again and seeing those glorious blue eyes and that golden hair.

“Sorry, but no. I recommend you give her a pretty wide berth until she gets used to you being here.”

“All right,” Jenna said with a soft sigh that ripped through Bram like a buzz saw cutting wood. The cut was just as sharp and jagged, and he wished he hadn’t lied to her.

But it was done, and if Jenna had any backbone at all she’d discover Nellie’s love of mankind in very short order.

“What breed is she?”

“Border collie. They’re natural-born herders. What smells good?”

“Most of your family brought something to eat with them when they dropped in to see your grandmother. It’s all in the kitchen. Help yourself.”

So, she didn’t intend that they eat together. Fine, he didn’t want to eat with her, anyhow. “I’m not hungry,” he said gruffly. “I ate in town.” Bram walked off, leaving Jenna to cautiously keep an eye on his vicious Nellie, who was lying down with her nose on her front paws, closely watching Jenna. How was Jenna to know that the collie was so watchful because she never missed a chance to herd, and maybe this nice lady would run around the house and let Nellie herd her from room to room?

“Bram Colton,” Jenna whispered, “I absolutely, positively loathe you.”

Right at that moment, it was the truth.

Chapter Three

The chiming of the doorbell startled Jenna, who’d been so involved with Bram and his watchful dog that she hadn’t heard the arrival of another vehicle. But all afternoon the visiting Coltons had merely rapped once and walked in, some of them not even bothering to announce their arrival with that cursory knock. Thus Jenna was pretty certain that whoever had rung the doorbell was not a Colton. She glanced toward the master bedroom to see if Bram had heard the chimes, but it appeared that either he hadn’t or he was ignoring the caller.

Giving Nellie a warning look that Jenna hoped the dog would interpret to mean, “Don’t you dare move from that spot,” Jenna went to the door herself. Opening it, she could hardly believe her eyes.

“Dad!”

Carl Elliot’s face was dark red with anger. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Staying in a damn Indian’s house. Don’t you have any pride?”

“I’m working! I’m taking care of Mrs. Colton.”

“You’re living with an Indian man! This is his house!”

“I am not living with anyone, not in the way you’re inferring. I explained my job assignment in the note I left for you, which you must have read or you wouldn’t have known where I was. I’m very upset over this…this intrusion, Dad.”

“And I’m so embarrassed by your behavior I can’t hold my head up or look friends in the eye! Get your things and come home with me this instant.”

“I most certainly will not!”

“Jenna, I’m warning you…”

Jenna felt Bram’s presence behind her before he said a word. He stepped so close that her whole body became tense.

“What’s going on?” he asked, using that lethally quiet tone that never failed to deliver a thrill to every erogenous area of Jenna’s body. She took a quick, nervous breath and tried to ignore his overwhelming sexual magnetism so she could concentrate on minimizing the situation.

“I don’t want my daughter staying here,” Carl Elliot said coldly, proving that he was unafraid of Black Arrow’s sheriff, or any other man, for that matter.

“Well, I’m not all that keen on your daughter staying here, either,” Bram drawled, shocking the breath out of Jenna and possibly doing the same to Carl, who suddenly looked confused. “But Dr. Hall assigned her to care for my grandmother, and until another nurse appears on this doorstep to take her place, your daughter is working for me. Take it or leave it, but don’t come here looking for trouble or you just might find it.” Bram strode away with Nellie on his heels, heading, Jenna saw, for his bedroom.

“This is not the end of this,” Carl said angrily, shaking his finger at his daughter. But to Jenna’s immense relief, he left the front porch and walked—obviously in a huff—to his car.

“Dad,” she called, having second thoughts. She ran after him.

Carl stopped as he reached his car. “Did you change your mind?”

“No, but there’s no reason for anger between us. Try to understand. I’m only doing my job.”

“Your wonderful job embarrasses me, shames me. Thank God your mother isn’t alive to see how you’ve disgraced the Elliot name.”

Jenna gasped. “How can you stand there and say something like that? Mother didn’t have a biased or prejudiced bone in her body and you know it.”

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t always right, either. I’m not going to forget this, Jenna. How long are you planning to live with that big breed?”

Jenna’s spine stiffened. “I won’t listen to that kind of talk another second. Good night.” Spinning, she walked back to the house with her head held high, went in and closed the door.

But her courage was mostly bluff. Shaking all over, she leaned back against the door and fought tears.

Bram walked in. He had changed from his uniform to jeans, a blue cotton shirt and soft leather cowboy boots, and he looked so handsome to Jenna that her heart actually ached. If there had been the slimmest chance of him liking her before this, her father’s angry appearance just now had destroyed it.

“Why did Dr. Hall assign you to this job?” Bram asked brusquely.

Jenna’s anger, normally so controlled, flared up. Right at the moment she didn’t much care for Bram Colton or her father. “Because I’m the best nurse in town,” she snapped, and ducked around Bram to go to the kitchen.

Frowning, he pondered her answer and decided to believe her. In the first place, why would she make up something like that? In the second, she had no idea of his feelings for her, so why wouldn’t she take the assignment? As for Carl Elliot, he could go take a flying leap at the moon, for all Bram cared.

“Moronic jackass,” he muttered as he headed back to Gran’s room.

In the kitchen Jenna heated up a bowl of stew for her dinner and then could hardly get a bite down her tightly constricted throat, even though it was a delicious concoction of lean beef and vegetables. When was her father going to realize that she was a grown woman? she wondered. She was thirty years old and certainly intelligent enough to make her own career decisions.

This was really the final straw, she thought, exhaling a sorrowful sigh. She would start looking for her own place, and when she left this house she would also leave her father’s. He had gone too far this time. As for Bram, he had made it clear as glass what he thought of her, the big jerk. He didn’t like her and wasn’t at all happy that she was the nurse sent by Dr. Hall. What was the word he’d used so insultingly? Oh, yes—keen. He wasn’t keen on her staying in his house.

Well, she wasn’t particularly keen on Bram Colton anymore, either.

They moved as shadows around each other, never eating together, barely speaking, and when they did, only about Gloria. Jenna felt empty, as though something crucial to life itself had vanished. At the same time she knew that reaction was utterly ridiculous. She’d never had Bram, so how could she not have him now?

On Thursday morning, after Bram left for work, Roberta Shane arrived. She was the relief nurse and would care for Mrs. Colton on Thursdays so Jenna could have a day off. Roberta was around fifty, Jenna estimated, and had been in nursing all of her adult life. Rumor had it that Roberta had been very attractive when she married Jake Shane in her early twenties, but Jake had been a lazy good-for-nothing, and after supporting the bum for over twenty years, Roberta had kicked him out. She’d come out of the divorce a bitter, unsmiling, overweight woman with grown kids who had moved away and rarely came back to Black Arrow to see her. She was an excellent nurse, as far as the mechanics of the profession went, but she didn’t even try to hide her contempt for the human race, and very few patients warmed to her.

Jenna turned over Gloria’s chart to Roberta with a worried frown. Roberta would not have been her choice of relief nurses. Gloria wasn’t responding to much of anything, and Jenna did everything with kindness and smiles. The small gains Jenna had made—whether real or in her imagination—could be wiped out by one unsympathetic person. Jenna sighed quietly; she had to rely on Dr. Hall’s judgment.

Dr. Hall had phoned yesterday, and Jenna had given him a verbal report on Gloria’s progress—or in this case, lack of progress. The doctor had told her he would be out to see Gloria and check her over sometime during the coming weekend.

At any rate, Jenna hated leaving her patient in anyone else’s care, but especially Roberta’s. But there were things Jenna needed to do, and a day off was necessary. She’d had friends bring her car to Bram’s place within a day of her own arrival, so she had transportation. But when she got in her bright red sedan today and drove away, that frown of worry over Roberta Shane being the relief nurse was still furrowing her brow.

Jenna had to be back by eight that evening. Roberta never took home-care cases that entailed twenty-four-hour duty, and she’d made it clear that twelve hours was her limit. Jenna had told her to relax, that she would definitely be back by eight, if not sooner.

“Make sure you are,” Roberta had said coolly.

Truth was, Jenna didn’t like leaving Gloria for long, anyway. She had started trying to teach Gloria simple facial exercises that would strengthen the muscles needed for speech, though most of the time Gloria simply looked away and closed her eyes.

Every evening after work Bram sat in Gloria’s room and talked to her. Jenna wondered if he got more response from his grandmother than she did, but since she and Bram were hardly speaking themselves, and certainly avoiding all eye contact, she hadn’t intruded on his time with Gloria to see what went on during those sessions.

The other Coltons were in and out all the time, at least during the day, and Jenna did hover and listen and watch for signs that Gloria even cared that they were there. Willow seemed to spark something in Gloria’s eyes, Jenna noticed, and instinct—or practical experience—told her that Bram probably did the same. But there was no question in Jenna’s mind that Gloria could not be more despondent. Jenna had seen it before, where the victim of stroke or some other destructive malady had lost his or her will to live. No matter how often Jenna or some other nurse or doctor explained the power of proper diet, rest and exercise, the patient simply faded away. Jenna could see it happening with Gloria, and she planned to visit Dr. Hall today and talk to him about it.

Bram got home around six that afternoon and was surprised to see Jenna’s red sedan gone and a dark green one parked in his driveway. Concerned and curious, he didn’t stop to pet Nellie, but hurriedly walked to the house. He let Nellie come in with him, then told her to stay. The collie obeyed and lay down near the door while Bram strode directly to the master bedroom.