When Wymon returned to the cubicle, he could hear that Jasmine was crying. He stood outside the curtain until her sobs subsided. When he pulled it open, he could tell she’d fallen asleep. Good. It was what she needed. In fact, he was convinced she ought to be given a room for the night.
Before he drove back to the ranch, he asked to speak to Dr. Turner and waited in the lounge outside the doors of the ER until he showed up ten minutes later.
Wymon got to his feet. “I’m going home, but before leaving I wanted to suggest that Ms. Telford be given a room. She ate a good lunch, but went right back to her bed after. I have no idea if or when her parents are going to show up.”
“I already planned to keep her overnight after I went in to check on her and found her asleep,” Dr. Turner told him.
“Perfect. How is Mr. Farnsworth?”
“I haven’t talked to the neurologist since the CAT scan, but I trust I’ll hear from him soon. You’ve done everything you can do here, Wymon, and you need some downtime to relax, too. Leave your name and cell phone number with the receptionist in triage so we can reach you if needed.”
With a nod, he did as the doctor suggested before going out to his truck. Then he drove back to the ranch, passing the main ranch house and Eli’s. A little farther down the road was Luis and Solana’s home.
Luis had come to work for Wymon’s father years earlier. With his dad’s death just a year and a half ago, Wymon and his brothers relied on Luis, who was the best ranch foreman of anyone around. Solana, the housekeeper at the main ranch house where his mother lived, had become a permanent fixture in the Clayton household.
Wymon’s place was farthest up the road. After parking his truck next to the Audi at the side of his log cabin-style house, he headed for the kitchen. Once he’d pulled a cold beer from the fridge, he took the stairs two at a time to the loft.
When he’d moved into the two-bedroom house six years ago at the age of twenty-two, it was only one story. Since then he’d slowly had renovations done and it was now a two-story house with a bedroom, bath and loft on the second floor.
He loved sleeping upstairs in his modern bedroom where he could look out at the stars and the Sapphire Mountains while he lay in bed. The floor-to-ceiling windows made him feel as if he was sleeping outside.
The scenery drew him like a magnet. He took the lid off the bottle and drank half of it while he looked out at the vista that now included one crumpled blue-and-white Cessna. The sight of Jasmine Telford courageously trying to pull the pilot out of the cockpit would never leave him. Neither would the picture of her lying on the hospital bed, looking so beautiful. Those green eyes of hers had mesmerized him.
Over the last few hours he’d had time to put the pieces together. The two crash victims had been on their way to Seattle, no doubt in love and eager to get away for a vacation. With both of them coming from political backgrounds, they were well matched and well heeled. Particularly Robert Farnsworth, whose father and grandfather had made millions in oil.
She’d make a gorgeous wife for the aggressive Montana Representative. Give the man another eight to ten years and Wymon figured he’d have aspirations for something bigger in the future.
Was she as ambitious? Did she look forward to a life with him? Possibly in Washington, DC? Wining and dining with other One Percenters for the rest of their lives?
Wymon wished he didn’t want to know the answer to that question. He had to think back to his bull-riding days in high school to remember what it was like to be this attracted to a woman on sight.
Sheila Rogers, a popular, attractive girl from his high school, had been the daughter of a local rancher. Wymon had fallen hard for her. They’d planned to get married after college. But she’d enrolled in a study-abroad program in Italy and met a guy there who was on location making a Hollywood movie.
When she returned home she had stars in her eyes. She wasn’t the same girl who’d sobbed in his arms before leaving for Europe and had promised to email him every day and send pictures.
Sheila had broken up with Wymon, telling him she couldn’t imagine living on a ranch with him for the rest of her life. He knew she hadn’t intended to be cruel about it, just honest, but it had hurt him badly. Her honesty had broken his heart, but it also taught him a lesson. Before he knew it, Sheila had married the guy she met in Italy and moved to California, excited to embrace a brand-new way of life.
Since then he’d dated his fair share of women. But he didn’t like it that after all this time he once again found himself attracted to a woman who’d purposely put herself in a position to embrace an exciting life far away from Montana with a man of prominence and means.
Though Wymon didn’t have an idea of the perfect woman, he hoped one day to meet someone who wanted the same basic things from life that he did. So far she hadn’t come along. And if she never did?
He wheeled around and bounded back down the stairs, setting the half-empty bottle on the kitchen counter before leaving the house. Needing to channel his frustration, he raced up to the barn and saddled his quarter horse.
“Let’s get out of here, Titus. We both need a workout,” he said and headed off into the mountains to clear his head.
By midafternoon Jasmine’s parents had arrived at the hospital. She told them everything that had happened, leaving out the part about Rob proposing to her. Dr. Turner had transferred her to a room on the second floor and ordered her to rest. Her folks would be coming back in the morning to pick her up and drive her back to Philipsburg.
At six that evening, Rob’s parents showed up and asked her to walk with them to his room, which was four doors down the hall. Jasmine had met them on several occasions and was comfortable being in their company.
While the three of them congregated around Rob, their dinners were brought in and they ate. His folks shed tears and were overjoyed that they’d both survived the crash. She doubted Rob had told them about what had happened in the cockpit before the hawk had flown into the propeller.
They treated her as if she’d be a member of their family one day soon, adding to her consternation. Rob lay there with his head bandaged. A plastic surgeon had put in the three stitches needed. They’d given him pain medication after monitoring his condition all afternoon.
Hard as it was, Jasmine had to pretend everything was all right between them in front of his parents. “Rob? How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“Rocky—dizzy—” The way he stared at her between narrowed lids made it clear to her that he wanted to say, How the hell do you think I feel after you rejected me?
Guilt stabbed at her. “I’m so sorry you were hurt. Just remember that you saved our lives because of the miraculous way you landed the plane. What will happen to it now?”
“I’ll take care of it,” his father answered for him. “We just want him to get well and back on track as fast as possible for the big rally in three weeks.”
You couldn’t keep a Farnsworth down. “I want that for you, too.”
Rob grimaced at her remark. She knew how much emotional pain he was in. But she was in pain, too, because she knew in her heart she wouldn’t be changing her mind about him. He was a good man, but marriage to him wouldn’t work.
His mother turned to her. “Tell us about Mr. Clayton—I hear he came to your rescue after the crash landing.”
Jasmine didn’t dare look at Rob, knowing both men were political foes over the grizzly issue. “I undid the latch the way Rob told me to and tried to pull him out of the cockpit, but he was trapped. That’s when Mr. Clayton saw us. He carried me to the trees, then ran back to help Rob.”
“What