Long, Tall Texans: Bentley/Rick
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Diana Palmer
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23
CHAPTER ONE
CAPPIE DRAKE PEERED around a corner inside the veterinary practice where she worked, her soft gray eyes wide with apprehension. She was looking for the boss, Dr. Bentley Rydel. Just lately, he’d been on the warpath, and she’d been the target for most of the sarcasm. She was the newest employee in the practice. Her predecessor, Antonia, had resigned and run for the hills last month.
“He’s gone to lunch,” came an amused whisper from behind her.
Cappie jumped. Her colleague, Keely Welsh Sinclair, was grinning at her. The younger woman, nineteen to Cappie’s twenty-three, was only recently married to dishy Boone Sinclair, but she’d kept her job at the veterinary clinic despite her lavish new lifestyle. She loved animals.
So did Cappie. But she’d been wondering if love of animals was enough to put up with Bentley Rydel.
“I lost the packing slip for the heartworm medicine,” Cappie said with a grimace. “I know it’s here somewhere, but he was yelling and I got flustered and couldn’t find it. He said terrible things to me.”
“It’s autumn,” Keely said.
Cappie frowned. “Excuse me?”
“It’s autumn,” she repeated.
The older woman was staring blankly at her.
Keely shrugged. “Every autumn, Dr. Rydel gets even more short-tempered than usual and he goes missing for a week. He doesn’t leave a telephone number in case of emergencies, he doesn’t call here and nobody knows where he is. When he comes back, he never says where he’s been.”
“He’s been like this since I was hired,” Cappie pointed out. “And I’m the fifth new vet tech this year, Dr. King said so. Dr. Rydel ran the others off.”
“You have to yell back, or just smile when he gets wound up,” Keely said in a kindly tone.
Cappie grimaced. “I never yell at anybody.”
“This is a good time to learn. In fact...”
“Where the hell is my damned raincoat?!”
Cappie’s face was a study in horror. “You said he went to lunch!”
“Obviously he came back,” Keely replied, wincing, as the boss stormed into the waiting room where two shocked old ladies were sitting beside cat carriers.
Dr. Bentley Rydel was tall, over six feet, with pale blue eyes that took on the gleam of steel when he was angry. He had jet-black hair, thick and usually untidy because he ran his fingers through it in times of frustration. His feet were large, like his hands. His nose had been broken at some point, which only gave his angular face more character. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but women found him very attractive. He didn’t find them attractive. If there was a more notorious woman hater than Bentley Rydel in all of Jacobs County, Texas, it would be hard to find him.
“My raincoat?” he repeated, glaring at Cappie as if it were her fault that he’d left without it.
Cappie drew herself up to her full height—the top of her head barely came to Bentley’s shoulder—and took a deep breath. “Sir,” she said smartly, “your raincoat is in the closet where you left it.”
His dark eyebrows rose half a foot.
Cappie cleared her throat and shook her head as if to clear it. The motion dislodged her precariously placed barrette. Her long, thick blond hair shook free of it, swirling around her shoulders like a curtain of silk.
While she was debating her next, and possibly job-ending, comment, Bentley was staring at her hair. She always wore it on top of her head in that stupid ponytail. He hadn’t realized it was so long. His pale eyes narrowed as he studied it.
Keely, fascinated, managed not to stare. She turned to the old ladies watching, spellbound. “Mrs. Ross, if you’ll bring—” she looked at her clipboard “—Luvvy the cat on back, we’ll see about her shots.”
Mrs. Ross, a tiny little woman, smiled and pulled her rolling cat carrier along with her, casting a wistful eye back at the tableau she was reluctantly foregoing.
“Dr. Rydel?” Cappie prompted, because he was really staring.
He scowled suddenly and blinked. “It’s raining,” he said shortly.
“Sir, that is not my fault,” she returned. “I do not control the weather.”
“A likely story,” he huffed. He turned on his heel, went to the closet, jerked his coat out, displacing everybody else’s, and stormed out the door into the pouring rain.
“And I hope you melt!” Cappie muttered under her breath.
“I heard that!” Bentley Rydel called without looking back.
Cappie flushed and moved back behind the counter, trying not to meet Gladys Hawkins’s eyes, because the old lady was almost crying, she was laughing so hard.
“There, there,” Dr. King, the long-married senior veterinarian, said with a gentle smile. She patted Cappie on the shoulder. “You’ve done well. By the time she’d been here a month, Antonia was crying in the bathroom at least twice a day, and she never talked back to Dr. Rydel.”
“I’ve never worked in such a place,” Cappie said blankly. “I mean, most veterinarians are like you—they’re nice and professional, and they don’t yell at the staff. And, of course, the staff doesn’t yell...”
“Yes, they do,” Keely piped in, chuckling. “My husband made the remark that I was a glorified groomer, and the next time he came in here, our groomer gave him an earful about just what a groomer does.” She grinned. “Opened his eyes.”
“They do a lot more than clip fur,” Dr. King agreed. “They’re our eyes and ears in between exams. Many times, our groomers have saved lives by noticing some small problem that could have turned fatal.”
“Your husband is a dish,” Cappie told Keely shyly.
Keely laughed. “Yes, he is, but he’s opinionated, hardheaded and temperamental with it.”
“He was a tough one to tame, I’ll bet,” Dr. King mused.
Keely leaned forward. “Not half as tough as Dr. Rydel is going to be.”
“Amen. I pity the poor woman who takes him on.”
“Trust me, she hasn’t been born yet,” Keely replied.
“He likes you,” Cappie sighed.
“I don’t challenge him,” Keely said simply. “And I’m younger than most of the staff. He thinks of me as a child.”
Cappie’s eyes bulged.
Keely patted her on the shoulder. “Some people do.” The smile faded. Keely was remembering her mother, who’d been killed by a friend of Keely’s father. The whole town had been talking about it. Keely had landed well, though, in Boone Sinclair’s strong arms.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Cappie said gently. “We all were.”
“Thanks,” Keely replied. “We were just getting to know one another when she was...killed. My father plea-bargained himself down to a short jail term, but I don’t think he’ll be back this way. He’s too afraid of Sheriff Hayes.”
“Now there’s a real dish,” Cappie said. “Handsome, brave...”
“...suicidal,” Keely interjected.
“Excuse me?”
“He’s been shot twice, walking into gun battles,” Dr. King explained.
“No guts, no glory,” Cappie said.
Her companions chuckled. The phone rang, another customer walked in and the conversation turned to business.
CAPPIE WENT HOME LATE. It was Friday and the place was packed with clients. Nobody escaped before six-thirty, not even the poor groomer who’d spent half a day on a Siberian husky. The animals had thick undercoats and it was a job to wash and brush them out. Dr. Rydel had been snippier than usual, too, glaring at Cappie as if she were responsible for the overflow of patients.
“Cappie, is that you?” her brother called from the bedroom.
“It’s me, Kell,” she called back. She put down her raincoat and purse and walked into the small, sparse bedroom where her older brother lay surrounded by magazines and books and a small laptop computer. He managed a smile for her.
“Bad day?” she asked gently, sitting down beside him on the bed, softly so that she didn’t worsen the pain.
He only nodded. His face was taut, the only sign of the pain that ate him alive every hour of the day. A journalist, he’d been on overseas assignment for a magazine when he was caught in a firefight and wounded by shrapnel. It had lodged in his spine where it was too dangerous for even the most advanced surgery. The doctors said someday, the shrapnel might shift into a location where it would be operable. But until then, Kell was basically paralyzed from the waist down. Oddly, the magazine hadn’t provided any sort of health care coverage for him, and equally oddly, he’d insisted that he wasn’t going to court to force them to pay up. Cappie had wondered at her brother being in such a profession in the first place. He’d been in the army for several years. When he came out, he’d become a journalist. He made an extraordinary living from it. She’d mentioned that to a friend in the newspaper business who’d been astonished. Most magazines didn’t pay that well, he’d noted, eyeing Kell’s new Jaguar.
Well, at least they had Kell’s savings to keep them going, even if it did so frugally now, after he paid the worst of the medical bills. Her meager salary, although good, barely kept the utilities turned on and food in the aging refrigerator.
“Taken your pain meds?” she added.
He nodded.
“Not helping?”
“Not a lot. Not today, anyway,” he added with a forced grin. He was good-looking, with thick short hair even blonder than hers and those pale silvery-gray eyes. He was tall and muscular; or he had been, before he’d been wounded. He was in a wheelchair now.
“Someday they’ll be able to operate,” she said.
He sighed and managed a smile. “Before I die of old age, maybe.”
“Stop that,” she chided softly, and bent to kiss his forehead. “You have to have hope.”
“I guess.”
“Want something to eat?”
He shook his head. “Not hungry.”
“I can make southwestern corn soup.” It was his favorite.
He gave her a serious look. “I’m impacting your life. There are places for ex-military where I could stay...”
“No!” she exploded.
He winced. “Sis, it isn’t right. You’ll never find a man who’ll take you on with all this baggage,” he began.
“We’ve had this argument for several months already,” she pointed out.
“Yes, since you gave up your job and moved back here with me, after I got...wounded. If our cousin hadn’t died and left us this place, we wouldn’t even have a roof over our heads, stark as it is. It’s killing me, watching you try to cope.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” she chided. “Kell, all we have is each other,” she added somberly. “Don’t ask me to throw you out on the street so I can have a social life. I don’t even like men much, don’t you remember?”
His face hardened. “I remember why, mostly.”
She flushed. “Now, Kell,” she said. “We promised we wouldn’t talk about that anymore.”
“He could have killed you,” he gritted. “I had to browbeat you just to make you press charges!”
She averted her eyes. Her one boyfriend in her adult life had turned out to be a homicidal maniac when he drank. The first time it happened, Frank Bartlett had grabbed Cappie’s arm and left a black bruise. Kell advised her to get away from him, but she, infatuated and rationalizing, said that he hadn’t meant it. Kell knew better, but he couldn’t convince her. On their fourth date, the boy had taken her to a bar, had a few drinks, and when she gently tried to get him to stop, he’d dragged her outside and lit into her. The other patrons had come to her rescue and one of them had driven her home. The boy had come back, shamefaced and crying, begging for one more chance. Kell had put his foot down and said no, but Cappie was in love and wouldn’t listen. They were watching a movie at the rented house, when she asked him about his drinking problem. He’d lost his temper and started hitting her, with hardly any provocation at all. Kell had managed to get into his wheelchair and into the living room. With nothing more than a lamp base as a weapon, he’d knocked the lunatic off Cappie and onto the floor. She was dazed and bleeding, but he’d told her how to tie the boy’s thumbs together behind his back, which she’d done while Kell picked up his cell phone and called for law enforcement. Cappie had gone to the hospital and the boy had gone to jail for assault.
With her broken arm in a sling, Cappie had testified against him, with Kell beside her in court as moral support. The sentence, even so, hadn’t been extreme. The boy drew six months’ jail time and a year’s probation. He also swore vengeance. Kell took the threat a great deal more seriously than Cappie had.
The brother and sister had a distant cousin who lived in Comanche Wells, Texas. He’d died a year ago, but the probation of the will had dragged on. Three months ago, Kell had a letter informing him that he and Cappie were inheriting a small house and a postage-stamp-size yard. But it was at least a place to live. Cappie had been uncertain about uprooting them from San Antonio, but Kell had been strangely insistent. He had a friend in nearby Jacobsville who was acquainted with a local veterinarian. Cappie could get a job there, working as a veterinary technician. So she’d given in.
She hadn’t forgotten the boy. It had been a wrench, because he was her first real love. Fortunately for her, the relationship hadn’t progressed past hot kisses and a little petting, although he’d wanted it to. That had been another sticking point: Cappie’s impeccable morals. She was out of touch with the modern world, he’d accused, from living with her overprotective big brother for so long. She needed to loosen up. Easy to say, but Cappie didn’t want a casual relationship and she said so. When he drank more than usual, he said it was her fault that he got drunk and hit her, because she kept him so frustrated.
Well, he was entitled to his opinion. Cappie didn’t share it. He’d seemed like the nicest, gentlest sort of man when she’d first met him. His sister had brought her dog to the veterinary practice where Cappie worked. He’d been sitting in the truck, letting his sister wrangle a huge German shepherd dog back outside. When he’d seen Cappie, he’d jumped out and helped. His sister had seemed surprised. Cappie didn’t notice.
After it was over, Cappie had found that at least two of her acquaintances had been subjected to the same sort of abuse by their own boyfriends. Some had been lucky, like Cappie, and disentangled themselves from the abusers. Others were trapped by fear into relationships they didn’t even want. It was hard, she decided, telling by appearance what men would be like when they got you alone. At least Dr. Rydel was obviously violent and dangerous, she told herself. Not that she wanted anything to do with him socially.
“What was that?” Kell asked.
“Oh, I was thinking about one of my bosses,” she confided. “Dr. Rydel is a holy terror. I’m scared to death of him.”
He scowled. “Surely he isn’t like Frank Bartlett?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t think he’d ever hit a woman. He really isn’t the sort. He just blusters and rages and curses. He loves animals. He called the police on a man who brought in a little dog with cuts and bruises all over him. The man had beaten the dog and pretended it had fallen down stairs. Dr. Rydel knew better. He testified against the man and he went to jail.”
“Good for Dr. Rydel.” He smiled. “If he’s that nice to animals, he isn’t likely the sort of person who’d hit women,” he had to agree. “I was told by my friend that Rydel was a good sort to work for.” He frowned. “Your boyfriend kicked your cat on your first date.”
She grimaced. “And I made excuses for him.” Not long after that, her cat had vanished. She’d often wondered what had happened to him, but he returned after her boyfriend left. “Frank was so handsome, so...eligible,” she added quietly. “I guess I was flattered that a man like that would look twice at me. I’m no beauty.”
“You are. Inside.”
“You’re a nice brother. How about that soup?”
He sighed. “I’ll eat it if you’ll fix it. I’m sorry. About the way I am.”
“Like you can help it,” she muttered, and smiled. “I’ll get it started.”
He watched her walk away, thoughtful.
She brought in a tray and had her soup with him. There were just the two of them, all alone in the world. Their parents had died long ago, when she was ten. Kell, who’d been amazingly athletic and healthy in those days, had simply taken over and been a substitute parent to her. He’d been in the military, and they’d traveled all over the world. A good deal of her education had been completed through correspondent courses, although she’d seen a lot of the world. Now, Kell thought he was a burden, but what had she been for all those long years when he’d sacrificed his own social life to raise a heartbroken kid? She owed him a lot. She only wished she could do more for him.
She remembered him in his uniform, an officer, so dignified and commanding. Now, he was largely confined to bed or that wheelchair. It wasn’t even a motorized one, because they couldn’t afford it. He did continue to work, in his own fashion, at crafting a novel. It was an adventure, based on some knowledge he’d acquired from his military background and a few friends who worked, he said, in covert ops.
“How’s the book coming?” she asked.
He laughed. “Actually I think it’s going very well. I spoke to a buddy of mine in Washington about some new political strategies and robotic warfare innovations.”
“You know everybody.”
He made a face at her. “I know almost everybody.” He sighed. “I’m afraid the phone bill will be out of sight again this month. Plus I had to order some more books on Africa for the research.”
She gave him a look of pride. “I don’t care. You accomplish so much,” she said softly. “More than a lot of people in much better shape physically.”
“I don’t sleep as much as most people do,” he said wryly. “So I can work longer hours.”
“You need to talk to Dr. Coltrain about something to make you sleep.”
He sighed. “I did. He gave me a prescription.”
“Which you didn’t get filled,” she accused. “Connie, at the pharmacy, told on you.”
“We don’t have the money right now,” he said gently. “I’ll manage.”
“It’s always money,” she said miserably. “I wish I was talented and smart, like you. Maybe I could get a better-paying job.”
“You’re good at what you do,” he replied firmly. “And you love your work. Believe me, that’s a lot more important than making a big paycheck. I should know.”
She sighed as she sipped her soup. “I guess.” She gave him a quick glance. “But it would help with the bills.”
“My book is going to make us millions,” he told her with a grin. “It will hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list, I’ll be in demand for talk shows and we’ll be able to buy a new car.”
“Optimist,” she accused.
“Hey, without hope, what have we got?” He looked around with a grimace. “Unpainted walls, cracks in the paint, a car with two hundred thousand miles on it and a leaky roof.”
“Oh, darn,” she muttered, following his eyes to the yellow spot on the ceiling. “I’ll bet another one of those stupid nails worked its way out of the tin. I wish we could have afforded a shingle roof.”
“Well, tin is cheaper, and it looks nice.”
She looked at him meaningfully.
“It’s cheap, anyway,” he persisted. “Don’t you like the sound of rain on a tin roof? Just listen. It’s like music.”
It was like a tin drum, she pointed out, but he just laughed.
She smiled. “I guess you’re right. It’s better not to wish we had more than we do. We’ll get by, Kell,” she assured him. “We always do.”
“At least we’re in it together,” he agreed. “But you should think about the military home.”
“After I’m dead and buried, you can go into a home,” she assured him. “For now, you just eat your soup and hush.”
He smiled tenderly. “Okay.”
She smiled back. He was the nicest big brother in the whole world, and she wasn’t abandoning him while there was a breath in her body.
IT HAD STOPPED raining when she got to work the next morning. She was glad. She hadn’t wanted to get out of bed at all. There was something magical about lying in the bed with rain coming down, all safe and cozy and warm. But she wanted to keep her job. She couldn’t do both.
She was putting her raincoat in the closet when a long arm presented itself over her shoulder and deposited a bigger raincoat there.
“Hang that up for me, please,” Dr. Rydel said gruffly.
“Yes, sir.”
She fumbled it onto a hanger. When she closed the door and turned, he was still standing there.
“Is something wrong, sir?” she asked formally.
He was frowning. “No.”
But he looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She knew how that felt, because she loved her brother and she couldn’t help him. Her soft gray eyes looked up into his pale blue ones. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” she ventured.
A laugh escaped his tight control. “What the hell would you know about lemons, at your age?” he asked.
“It isn’t the age, Dr. Rydel,” she said. “It’s the mileage. If I were a car, they’d have to decorate me with solid gold accessories just to get me off the lot.”
His eyes softened, just a little. “I suppose I’d be in a junkyard.”
She laughed, quickly controlling it. “Sorry.”
“Why?”
“You’re sort of hard to talk to,” she confessed.
He drew in a long breath. Just for a minute, he looked oddly vulnerable. “I’m not used to people. I deal with them in the practice, but I live alone. I have most of my life.” He frowned. “Your brother lives with you, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t he work?”
She tightened up. “He was overseas covering a war and a bomb exploded nearby. He caught shrapnel in the spine and they can’t operate. He’s paralyzed from the waist down.”
He grimaced. “That’s a hell of a way to end up in a wheelchair.”
“Tell me about it,” she agreed quietly. “He was in the military for years, but he got tired of dragging me all over the world, so he mustered out and got a job working for this magazine. He said it would mean he wouldn’t be gone so much.” She sighed. “I guess he wasn’t, but he’s in a lot of pain and they can’t do much for it.” She looked up at him. “It’s hard to watch.”
For an instant, some fellow feeling flared in his eyes. “Yes. It’s easier to hurt yourself than to watch someone you love battle pain.” His face softened as he looked down at her. “You take care of him.”
She smiled. “Yes. Well, as much as he’ll let me, anyway. He took care of me from the age of ten, when our parents died in a wreck. He wants me to let him go into some sort of military home, but I’ll never do that.”
He looked very thoughtful. And sad. He looked as if he badly needed someone to talk to, but he had nobody. She knew the feeling.
“Life is hard,” she said gently.
“Then you die,” he added, and managed a smile. “Back to work, Miss Drake.” He hesitated. “Your name, Cappie. What’s it short for?”
She hesitated. She bit her lower lip.
“Come on,” he coaxed.
She drew in a breath. “Capella,” she said.
His eyebrows shot up. “The star?”
She laughed, delighted. Most people had no idea what it meant. “Yes.”
“One of your parents was an astronomy buff,” he guessed.
“No. My mother was an astronomer, and my father was an astrophysicist,” she corrected, beaming. “He worked for NASA for a while.”
He pursed his lips. “Brainy people.”
“Don’t worry, it didn’t rub off on me. Kell got all that talent. In fact, he’s writing a book, an adventure novel.” She smiled. “I just know it’s going to be a blockbuster. He’ll rake in the money, and then we won’t have to worry about money for medicine and health care.”
“Health care.” He harrumphed. “It’s a joke. People going without food to buy pills, without clothes to afford gas, having to choose between essentials and no help anywhere to change things.”
She was surprised at his attitude. Most people seemed to think that health care was available to everybody. Actually she could only afford basic coverage for herself. If she ever had a major medical emergency, she’d have to beg for help from the state. She hoped she could even get it. It still amazed her that Kell’s employers hadn’t offered him health care benefits. “We don’t live in a perfect society,” she agreed.
“No. Nowhere near it.”
She wanted to ask him why he was so outspoken on the issue, which hit home for her, too. But before she could overcome her shyness, the phones were suddenly ringing off the hook and three new four-legged patients walked in the door with their owners. One of them, a big Boxer, made a beeline for a small poodle whose owner had let it come in without a lead.
“Grab him!” Cappie called, diving after the Boxer.
Dr. Rydel followed her, gripping the Boxer’s lead firmly. He pulled up on it just enough to establish control, and held it so that the dog’s head was erect. “Down, sir!” he said in a commanding tone. “Sit!”
The Boxer sat down at once. So did all the pet owners. Cappie burst out laughing. Dr. Rydel gave her a speaking glance, turned and led the Boxer back to the patient rooms without a single word.
