Boone tugged at the frilly pink dress that had ridden up around his waist. Under his stiff khaki pants, the pantyhose bagged around his knees and ankles. He resisted the urge to pull them up.
Across the road at the elementary school, Cub Scouts and their parents gathered at the front door, waiting for someone to unlock it.
He hated being late, especially when Scouts were depending on him. And even more so, when he’d talked Nixie into bringing Brad to watch the Cub Scout play rehearsal tonight. Maybe the kid would enjoy the camaraderie enough to join the pack.
Boone patted his overcoat pocket to check for the key and sprinted across the road.
Too late, he saw the blue sedan round the corner without slowing down. With the skill of a lifelong athlete, he leaped to avoid a direct impact. His body glanced off the front fender, then connected solidly with the hard pavement.
His world went black.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
Nixie had stopped at the rescue squad building to check the training schedule before heading home, and that was when the call came in about a hit-and-run accident.
Another had volunteer arrived while she was pulling on her jumpsuit. In a few seconds, they were on the road with sirens blaring.
This time the victim was lucky. Jeff pulled the ambulance up at the accident site just four minutes after they received the call. Nixie hoped this kind of luck would hold out until they could recruit and train more volunteers.
Jumping lightly down from the cab of the ambulance, she grabbed her bag and trotted back to where a dozen little boys in blue uniforms and neckerchiefs gathered around a man in an overcoat.
“Excuse me, coming through.”
Kneeling beside the unconscious form, she checked his pulse and respiration. Both were steady and strong.
Nixie touched the man’s cheek, and her breath caught in her throat. The blond-haired giant she tended was none other than Boone Shelton.
Briefly, she wondered if this was another elaborate setup for a joke at her expense. Fortunately, her paranoia left as quickly as it came. Boone would never joke about something as serious as this.
She took another look at his massive body lying so still on the pavement, and it scared her. She’d never seen him so helpless and vulnerable before. Boone had always been the protector, never the protected.
Nixie became aware of Jeff moving the crowd back, and she turned her attention to the lump on Boone’s forehead. She had to stay busy—partly to help Boone and partly to keep from reacting emotionally to the fact that the boy she’d grown up with was lying helpless before her and needed her more now than he ever had.
He appeared to have some slight road rash on his hands and across his cheek, but the lump—and his unconsciousness—was what concerned her most. She pushed the shaggy blond hair off his forehead to closer examine the injury.
Boone winced, and his eyelashes fluttered before they opened and focused on Nixie. “Well,” he murmured, “if it isn’t little Nixie Cordaire. Still taking care of people, aren’t you?”
Nixie let out a big breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Boone? What are you doing here?”
Boone cautiously glanced around him. “Presently? Lying in the middle of the road.”
Jeff knelt beside her. “How is he? Should I call for the chopper?”
“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Why don’t you get the gurney while I check for fractures?” Turning to Boone, she said, “Let me know if it hurts.”
“You’ll be the second to know.”
Aware of those pale-blue eyes watching her every move, Nixie felt almost shy as she ran her hands over his neck, shoulders, arms, and legs.
Just pretend he’s the dummy you worked on in training class.
But there was no way she could mistake his overdeveloped frame for a training dummy. Moving her hands to his abdomen, she pressed lightly to check for obvious internal injuries. He showed no sign of pain.
“If you’re finished poking me,” Boone said, attempting to rise, “those Cub Scouts are waiting for me. Ohhh.” He pressed a hand to his head and leaned back on one elbow.
“Don’t try to get up. You took quite a whack to your forehead. You ought to let a doctor look at that.”
“What about the dress rehearsal?” one of the mothers asked.
Boone fished a key out of his coat pocket and tossed it to the woman. “Go on without me. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Nixie gave a delicate snort. “When’s the last time you’ve been to an emergency room?”
It was a good thing Boone had regained consciousness because Nixie doubted whether she and Jeff and all of the Cub Scouts together could have lifted him into the ambulance. Well over six feet tall, the massive physique that had been easy to distinguish on the high school football field was now even broader than it had been fifteen years ago.
“What do you weigh these days, two thirty?” she asked after he lay down in the back of the ambulance.
“No, I’m kinda puny now. Down to two eighteen.”
“Puny” was hardly the word to describe Boone Shelton. His chest seemed big enough to land an airplane on, and his arms bulged against the sleeves of his overcoat.
Odd, but why would he be wearing an overcoat on such a balmy spring day as this? She adjusted the straps that secured him to the gurney and signaled Jeff to begin the drive to the hospital.
“This is a first for me,” said Boone.
“Riding in an ambulance?”
“Being tied to the bed by a beautiful woman.”
There had once been a day when his teasing would have reduced her to blushing and stammering. Fifteen years, one marriage, and two kids later, she didn’t blush so easily. But she would have stammered if she hadn’t clamped down on the inside of her bottom lip.
“No blushing? What happened to the pink cheeks Nixie Cordaire was always famous for?”
Nixie squirmed on the padded bench beside him. Why was it that, even though he was reclining, he seemed to tower over her?
Nixie busied herself by inspecting his forehead, determinedly ignoring the butterflies fluttering around in her stomach.
“You must be burning up in that overcoat. Let me help you.”
“No—”
Before he could stop her, Nixie unfastened the top button. Boone’s big hands closed around hers, but she already had two buttons undone.
Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped, and her fingers stilled. Holy moly, what was this?
Pink ruffles and white lace spilled from the vee of his coat. Dusty-blond chest hairs sprang from the frilly neckline. She’d seen stranger sights during her years as a volunteer rescue worker, but never had she been more surprised than now. Why in heaven’s name was he wearing a ballet tutu?
Dragging her eyes away from the froufrou, she met Boone’s gaze.
“Blue is more your color,” she said, immensely pleased to have caught him with his pants down, so to speak.
If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn Boone Shelton blushed. “I was on my way to a dress rehearsal for the Cub Scout play. Remember?”
Nixie gave up all hope of keeping the humor out of her expression. She raised one eyebrow. “What play is that?”
“I play the part of … Dorothy,” he said.
This was too much.
“Right,” she retorted, “and all those Cub Scouts are munchkins.”
“It’s not that play.”
This was too much, it was all she could do not to burst out laughing. Of course, she believed him. He would have better taste than to wear that awful tutu for kicks. But after all those years of putting up with his endless teasing, she could finally get even. She couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
“Listen, I know a couple of really nice guys. Maybe we could, like, double-date sometime.”
“Yeah, yeah, really funny.”
“Come over to my place, and I’ll show you how to shave your legs.”
The ambulance pulled to a stop at the hospital’s entrance. While Nixie unbuckled her seat belt, Boone refastened the top buttons of his coat.
Nixie released the gurney for Jeff, and Boone fumbled with the restraints that held him down. “I can walk.”
“Nope, you’re on the gurney, protocol,” Jeff said.
Once inside the hospital, Boone persuaded them to let him transfer into the wheelchair, and they pushed him to the ER nurse.
“Got a live one this evening, Virginia.” Nixie winked at the head nurse. “This is ‘Dorothy,’ who claims he was on his way to a dress rehearsal play.”
The woman quickly sized him up and burst out laughing. “Hello, Dorothy! What seems to be your problem?”
Boone shot Nixie a look of grudging admiration for zinging him with the kind of teasing he’d dished out to her over the years. Since the emergency room was unusually slow tonight, Boone was processed, examined, and x-rayed quickly.
Nixie told Jeff to take the ambulance back to the station. Then she called Uncle Jay to ask him to bring over one of his shirts and a pair of jeans. Uncle Jay was about Boone’s size, but he was proportioned differently.
Her uncle assured her that Aunt Lauren would give the children supper and tried to ferret out the reason for the shirt and jeans.
“It’s for a friend,” Nixie said, hoping he wouldn’t ask too many questions. Lying wasn’t one of her strong points, and even though she’d taken delight in serving Boone his own brand of teasing, she didn’t wish to get her uncle involved in the joke. “He was in an accident,” she added, hoping Uncle Jay would assume that Boone’s shirt had been bloodied or torn.
By the time her uncle arrived, Boone was ready to be released. Fortunately, he didn’t have a concussion—just a goose egg over his left eyebrow. After a brief reintroduction to Jay, he gratefully accepted the shirt and pants.
He tugged on the shirt.
Nixie noticed how his thick arms stretched against the short sleeves. Although buttons strained across the chest, the fabric fell lax over his trim abdomen. If the sight of his arms could undo her like this, she needed to get out of the room pronto before he shimmied into those jeans.
Virginia called out, “Hey, Dorothy, don’t forget your dress.” She held up a large paper bag.
Uncle Jay’s eyebrows shot up when Boone went back to retrieve the bag. “Dorothy?”
“Uh, let me carry that for you, Boone,” Nixie offered. “And we’ll leave you to put your pants on.”
Uncle Jay followed Nixie to the nurse’s desk while Boone finished dressing in the curtained ER cubicle. He eyed the bag she’d practically yanked from Boone’s hand. “A dress?”
“Uncle Jay, please don’t start.”
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Virginia reassured with a wave of her hand. “I’m sure his toes point the right way in a bathroom stall. He was wearing boxers under his leggings.”
Boone strolled from behind the curtain, fully clothed and grinning. It seemed he was enjoying the notoriety.
In the waiting room, an elderly woman pursed her lips and glared at him.
“You’ve changed a lot since we last saw you,” her uncle said. Then he started to laugh, his ample stomach bouncing in rhythm to his hearty chuckles.
Boone laid a hand on the older man’s shoulder as he and Nixie followed him out to the car. “And you haven’t, Mr. Cordaire. Not one little bit.”
“And after Uncle Jay learned about the dress, he was like a pit bull with a meaty bone. He wouldn’t let go,” Nixie told her aunt.
“That’s my Jay.” Lauren smiled.
“He offered to stop at the pharmacy on the way to Boone’s house so he could pick up cosmetics and leggings.”
“Sounds like a fun time.” Aunt Lauren giggled.
“Then Uncle Jay asked Boone whether he preferred to wear front or back-hook bras.” Nixie took a handful of popcorn, then passed the bowl to her daughter.
“How did Boone take it?”
“You know Boone. He was a good sport and dished it right back, but I was beginning to feel uncomfortable for him.”
“So, you still have feelings for him.” Aunt Lauren’s statement was more of an observation than a question.
Nixie shook her head. Her aunt and uncle had been like second parents to her since her father’s job had taken her parents away from the East Coast just months before Paul died.
In his own irrepressible way, Uncle Jay had sought to lighten her spirits with teasing and practical jokes. In the process, his infectious humor had shaped eight-year-old Brad into a relentless prankster who frequently made eleven-year-old Bethany the victim of his mischief.
Aunt Lauren, on the other hand, had provided a calm and steadying influence for Nixie and the children.
In the past eight years, since Paul’s death, hers had been the shoulders Nixie cried upon and leaned on. As well as being a pillar of strength for Nixie, Aunt Lauren was also the unwanted matchmaker in her life. Nixie considered the possibility that her aunt was now pointing a Cupid’s arrow at her high school nemesis.
“The only feeling I ever had for Boone Shelton was dread of being in the same room with him. He couldn’t stand me, and he let me know it by constantly picking on me.”
Lauren bestowed a loving smile on her husband, who had assumed his regular Friday night position in the wide recliner where he streamed movies. Bethany and Brad, perched on the padded chair arms, cuddled against their great-uncle and ate popcorn out of the bowl balanced on his stomach.
“Your Uncle Jay used to pull my hair,” Aunt Lauren said. “That’s how I knew he was interested in me.”
Jay looked up from the TV and grunted. “Your hair looked too thick and pretty to be real. I was just checking to see if it was a wig.”
The children giggled.
“Even if that was why he picked on me, which I doubt,” said Nixie, “it wouldn’t work. Boone’s not my type.”
“Why not?” asked Bethany, who was starting to take an interest in the opposite sex.
“Because,” Nixie said, trying vainly to put into words why she was opposed to a relationship with Boone. For lack of a better explanation, she said, “He’s a jock.”
“So?”
“So, she’s saying,” Uncle Jay piped in, “she’d rather have a couch potato like me.”
“What kind of man are you looking for?” Aunt Lauren prodded.
Nixie thought a moment and gave a little sigh before answering. “I want a man who reads and can carry on a discussion about a good book. My wish list is for someone who’s intelligent and sensitive to other people’s needs. And, of course, someone who would be a good father for Bethany and Brad.”
Aunt Lauren patted Nixie’s arm. “Honey, you’re not going to find another Paul. You ought to widen your horizons a little. Besides, that very well could describe Boone Shelton. He has a lot going for him, and he’s a successful businessman, what with being the new owner of the Bliss Crier.”
“Anyone can buy and manage a small newspaper.” She wondered if taking over the newspaper was all that had brought him back to his hometown. In a moment of peevishness, Nixie doubted he’d last more than six months with the print news dying quicker than a cactus in Alaska.
Aunt Lauren peered through the top of her reading glasses at Nixie. “Just as anyone can buy and manage a sign shop?”
Zing! Her aunt had ever so gently put her in her place. Paul had helped her buy the sign shop. Although it had been a healthy business when she’d bought it, it had nevertheless been a trial, not only to learn the system but to make the business grow. It had been a mental and physical challenge to make Cordaire Signs run like a well-oiled machine.
“Touché.”
“Mom,” Bethany interrupted, “Brad said he left Tarzan’s cage open so the bird could chase my cat.”
Brad smiled as if proud that he’d managed to goad his sister yet again. To make matters worse, Uncle Jay was doing a poor job of hiding his amusement at the sibling squabble.
The movie was over, and it was time to go home, anyway. “Come on, let’s go see if Tarzan is terrorizing the cat.”
Nixie hugged her aunt and uncle good night while Bethany sprinted across the lawn to their house next door.
When they entered the spacious tri-level home, everything seemed to be in order. She soon located a safe and purring Precious. Knowing the parrot’s favorite pastime, Nixie checked the Venetian blind cords to see if Tarzan was swinging on them. No sign of the feathered trapeze artist anywhere.
She found Brad in front of the cage that held its own special place in the living room. He was grinning devilishly. “I must’ve made a mistake,” he said. “Tarzan’s all locked up, nice and tight.”
“Mom, he knew it all along. You’ve got to do something about that little….” Bethany ranted on with a tirade of complaints about her little brother.
Nixie tuned out her daughter but continued thinking about what Bethany had said. She would have to do something about Brad’s antics. His pranks were becoming more frequent. None had been malicious, but they were growing in severity.
Her uncle’s encouragement hadn’t helped. Nixie recalled with a shudder the time she’d found fake vomit in her shoe. Brad had borrowed the prop from Uncle Jay’s “gag bag.” Yes, she definitely had to do something about her son. But what? She suspected that what he needed was a man’s firm guidance. A man other than Uncle Jay, that was.
Remembering her aunt’s matchmaking comments, Nixie knew she’d need a better reason than Brad’s discipline to get involved with a man.