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“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told her. “Leaving the ranch now.”
I apologized to my sister for ditching the trail ride and told her to give my apologies to Tisha. By the time I pulled my truck into the hospital parking lot, I’d come up with any number of possibilities about why Darci had asked me to come get her instead of a friend or her family members. Maybe I was wrong and her parents were in the city. Maybe her closest friends at the hospital were on shift and couldn’t leave to run her home. I also couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing there in the first place. Had she been mugged? Or worse?
I quickened my pace as I made my way into the emergency room and saw her huddled in a corner with her face buried in her hands. Her blonde hair was halfway out of some kind of up-do, and she wore a pair of royal blue scrubs that seemed to want to swallow her whole.
“Hey,” I said quietly so as not to startle her. “I’m here.”
She lifted her face up, and it took all I had not to gasp at the black eyes and large bruise on one side of her chin.
“What the hell happened?” I asked, reaching out to cradle her chin so I could get a better look at it. I realized she didn’t have black eyes but a big mess of dark runny makeup from crying.
She burst into tears and reached up to hug me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck and burying the good side of her face in my collar. I held her and let her cry but noticed she smelled like the perfume she saved for special occasions. There was a white plastic bag on the seat next to hers, and I caught a glimpse of a black sequined number inside. Ah, that would explain why she was wearing strappy high-heels with her scrubs.
“C’mon, let’s get you out of here,” I said, pulling her off me as gently as I could. That was her workplace and I knew she wouldn’t want her co-workers to see her so out of sorts.
I led her out of there with an arm wrapped around her shoulder and her slim frame tucked into my side. Her sniffles tapered off as I sat her in the cab of the truck and made sure she was belted in. Over the hood of the truck I locked eyes with a male nurse everyone called Norm who was known for being the biggest gossip in the place. I saw the minute he realized who I was and what I was doing. So much for privacy. This part of small-town Texas wasn’t known for its discretion.
Once I pulled out of the lot, Darci turned to me. “Do you think I could stay with you at the ranch for a little while?”
I wondered what the hell had happened to make her not want to go home.
“You know you can, but are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
She sighed and looked out the opposite window. “I got mugged and some jerk stole my purse. Can I get some sleep before I tell you the rest? I’m running on fumes here, Hudson.”
I nodded and stayed quiet after that, letting her drift off in her head the way she clearly wanted to. When we got to the cabin, I helped her into bed and brought some toast and juice for her to have before going to sleep. Once she drifted off in the middle of my big bed, I closed the bedroom door and made my way to the small table in the kitchen to do some work on my laptop. It was a beautiful sunny day for January, and I longed to be outside, either riding horses with my siblings or prepping the kitchen garden for spring planting. I’d had to sacrifice those things to live in Dallas, and since moving back to Hobie for the pub project, I’d realized what a loss that had been.
A couple of hours later, there was a knock on my door. West and Nico stood on the front porch to ask if I wanted to come to Dallas with them for the night.
“We’re taking Charlie clubbing and then staying over at Saint’s place. He’s in town if you can believe it,” West said.
“Who’s watching Pippa?” I asked, stalling for time. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tag along and find an excuse to dance with Charlie. The idea of him on the prowl in one of the big clubs in the city without me set my teeth on edge. But I couldn’t leave Darci, and honestly, I had no business going to a dance club in the city just to sit and stew over someone who wasn’t mine.
