Free Jodi Thomas by A Husband for Holly Page A

Lori Anne. Only God had played a trick on them. He’d made Lori Anne fragile and Tinch strong as a bull. She couldn’t make it to her thirtieth birthday and, with his bad luck, he’d probably live to be a hundred. Maybe, if he kept drinking and fighting, one night he’d get lucky and someone would put him out of his misery.
    The blood dripping off his forehead bothered him enough to make him climb out of his pickup and head for the emergency room door. He didn’t much care about the pain, but he hated bleeding all over everything. He’d get a doc to stitch up the cut, and then he’d go back to his farm and drink until he washed the memories away and finally slept.
    Through the blood, he saw Nurse Veasey. She was frowning at him. Hell, he thought, she was always frowning at him. “Evenin’, Georgia,” he said, thinking she had that same look when she first saw him sitting next to her in the third grade more than twenty years ago.
    “Shut up, Tinch. I don’t even want to talk to you.” She grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward the first little examining room. “Didn’t I tell you I’d beat you up myself if you came in here after a fight again? I swear if there were two like you in this town we’d have to build another wing onto the hospital.”
    Despite a headache the size of a mustang bucking in his brain, Tinch smiled. “You did threaten me last time, Georgia, and the fear of it kept me away for weeks, I swear.”
    She slapped him on the arm, and he thought of suggesting that might not be protocol for nurses, but Tinch decided to wait until he could see to run before he upset her more. He’d gone to school with her and her two sisters. All three were good girls determined to make the world a better place, or at least improve Harmony. Maryland taught school, Virginia married a preacher, and Georgia became a nurse. They were women on missions. The type Tinch had spent his life avoiding.
    “Sit down on the table and keep quiet,” Georgia said as she shoved his chin back and poked around the wound running half the length of his forehead. “It doesn’t look all that bad. If you had any brains, they would have dribbled out a long time ago. I’ll send in the doctor.”
    “Aren’t you going to give me something for the pain?”
    She shook her head. “Judging from your breath, you’ve already had enough.” She tossed him a towel. “Try not to bleed on anything.”
    Tinch grinned. “Thanks, darlin’.”
    “Don’t you dare
darlin’
me, Tinch Turner. You’re a walking one-man demolition derby. Stay here; I’ve got people who care about themselves so try and mend.”
    She was gone before he could bother her more. Tinch shrugged. He liked “the states,” as everyone called her and her sisters, but he had a feeling they were passing around a petition to have him banned from town. Maryland had told him the last time she saw him that the way he drove was a bad influence on her high school students, and Virginia had been praying for him for so long, her knees were probably callused.
    Tinch lay back on the examining table, wishing he’d brought the rest of the bottle of whiskey with him. When the door opened, he didn’t even look up. He was just about beyond caring for anything or anyone in his life.
    “Mr. Turner, I’m Dr. Spencer,” someone said as she moved close to the table.
    Tinch opened one eye, but he couldn’t see much through all the blood.
    “Lie still and I’ll take a look at that cut.”
    He didn’t move as she cleaned the blood away with a warm towel. “Any chance it’s fatal?” he mumbled.
    The all-business voice answered, “Afraid not. You allergic to anything?”
    He closed his eyes. “Work. Women. Hospitals.” He felt a shot poke into his arm. “Silence. Snakes. And Wednesdays. I hate Wednesdays. And kids. Strange little things, always running around screaming in stores.” He thought of more things he was allergic to, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out.
    For a