“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.
At once he saw the strange woman sitting in the rocking chair and knitting. “Where’s Jenna?” he asked.
“It’s her day off. I’m Roberta Shane. I’ll be working relief while she’s here.”
“You’re a nurse, too?”
Roberta looked indignant. “Of course I’m a nurse.”
“Sorry,