Free 01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin by Susan Squires

for a book. She scanned
the next rack. They had maybe twenty titles. Not a romance. A guy
like that didn’t have a romantic bone in his body and wouldn’t be
caught dead with one of those. Mystery? Kinda complicated if he was
on pain meds. But hell, he’d been reading Kerouac. Okay. Mystery.
Sue Grafton? Maybe. Ah! There was a new James Lee Burke.
Hard-boiled Louisiana detective story. Masculine but with some of
the most beautiful language she’d ever read. Perfect.
    It wasn’t like it was expensive
or anything. $7.99 plus tax. So it wouldn’t mean much. “Can you
just send this up to room 808?” she asked the spiky-haired
cashier.
    “You don’t want to take it
yourself?” the kid asked.
    “No. No I don’t.”
    Like hell she didn’t. She wanted
to go back up to that room and take his good hand and stroke her
palm up the warmth of his forearm with its crisp hair to that
biceps covered with tats then up farther under the hospital gown.
Exactly how far did that pattern go?
    Instead, she was never going to
see him again.
    That was good. Disruption over.
Life back to normal. He would go on with his life like nothing
happened. Because for him nothing did. It was she who was
topsy-turvy right now, unable to get her bearings. She dashed
across the walkway to the parking building.
    She’d paused outside the room
waiting for her heart to stop pounding long enough to hear he was
going home Thursday. His family would pick him up day after
tomorrow. End of story.
    She stopped just at the stairs.
No, they wouldn’t. She’d be willing to bet he’d never even called
them. He’d probably just take a cab to a motel. Alone.
    Not her business. She was going home
tonight and taking her horses down to LA tomorrow, and that was
that.
    *****
    How long did this take? Damn it,
he’d been sitting in discharge for twenty frigging minutes in a
Goddamned wheelchair with the footrest up to keep his leg elevated,
waiting for the special paperwork he needed to be discharged
without anyone to claim him. The cab would be here any minute. He
hoped to God they didn’t tell the babe of a surgeon. He wanted to
be outta here before she could sic a social worker on him. He
juggled a plastic bag full of drugs to go, prescriptions for more,
and discharge instructions, along with crutches and a shopping bag
holding the stuff salvaged from his cycle and the new book. Teresa
had cut one leg off his jeans above the knee and helped him into
his shirt. Were orderlies supposed to make yummy noises while they
dressed patients? She’d admitted she bribed her male colleague to
let her have “dress Tris duty.” Highlight of her week, the way
she’d been grinning. Once he would have bedded her without a
thought. As it was, he was a dreadful disappointment to her. Join the club, Teresa.
    Maggie had sent up that book. It
must have been her, though there was no inscription and the nurse
who brought it in just said the clerk in the gift shop left it.
    It might mean she cared about
him. He liked that idea. $7.99 worth of caring anyway. He’d
finished the book. It was long but he was a quick reader. He was
going to keep it. Not because it reminded him of her, of course.
Just because it was a great book. He’d be reading a lot more James
Lee Burke. Man after his own heart, tight, a little closed. But one
who thought up language so beautiful it could make you grin.
    A boozy broad who could be
anywhere between fifty and seventy tottered in on high heels in a
low-cut red dress. She was smoking a cigarette.
    “I’m here for Tristram
Tremaine,” she announced to the girl at the desk in a voice hoarse
from years of smoking. Old enough to be his mother, but definitely
not his mother.
    Who the hell was this?
    “Put out that cigarette, ma’am,”
the volunteer admonished. “You’re in a hospital.”
    “Oh.” The woman seemed shocked
to see the cigarette in her hand. Was she drunk? “Oh, okay.” She
looked around for an ashtray, like there’d be one in a