Lost Highways (A Valentine Novel) by Curtiss Ann Matlock Page B

her teary vision and turned her thoughts to Harry.
    It was amazing to learn he was a doctor. And she was a little annoyed that he had not told her, although she could not honestly find a reason why he should have. Would she have been as astonished to learn he was an airline pilot, or an IRS agent? She saw now that in her mind, for some reason, he had absolutely been a stockbroker, which, in retrospect, made her very shortsighted.
    A sound reached her. Retching. From inside the men’s room.
    It seemed pretty silly, but she thought she recognized it as being Harry’s retching.
    She placed a tentative hand on the door and called through the crack, “Harry?”
    No answer, except a cough.
    She went inside and found him bent over a toilet. Immediately she soaked paper towels.
    “You are in a men’s bathroom,” he said, straightening.
    “I’ve been in one before.” She went to dab one of the wet towels over his face.
    “Why does that not surprise me?” Scowling, he snatched the towel from her hand and wiped his face.
    “I was only tryin’ to be of assistance,” she said, swallowing. The sense of needing to fall through the floor swept over her like a wave and made her angry.
    A man came through the door and stopped dead, staring at her in surprise, then checking the door plaque, as if to make certain he had the right to be there.
    “I was just leavin’,” she said, lifting her chin and breezing away from Harry and past the man, resisting the urge to shut his mouth for him.
    Harry was right behind her.
    “I brought Buck’s truck,” she said, thrusting his shirt at him and continuing on toward the exit at a pace just shy of running.
    She heard his boots tap rapidly behind her on the tile flooring.
    “Hey, what’d I say?” He grabbed her arm.
    She gazed into his eyes and felt all manner of forceful emotional turmoil, which was both perplexing and embarrassing.
    “Why do men always say that?” she asked, taking the offensive.
    “What?”
    “’What’d I say?’ Just by askin’, you know that you said an insulting and hurtful thing.”
    He stared at her with surprise. And then a nurse called to him. “Pammy would like to see you.”
    Confusion swept his face. Rainey told him that she would wait in the truck and hurried away, pushing out the glass doorway, tears threatening. She walked quickly, thinking. He certainly had not said anything to bring this on. And the child was okay—Rainey herself had had her leg badly broken and knew the child would recover and now have a story to tell.
    Her brother’s voice echoed in memory: You’re just too sensitive, Rain . He had told her that since she was a child and always said it with his condemning frown, as if being sensitive was a fault needing to be scrubbed away.
    Sometimes she thought that she had worked so hard at not being too sensitive that she had lost the ability to know what she felt at all.
    Looking up, she suddenly saw a purple truck in the place where she had thought she’d left Buck’s red one. Then she realized that it was Buck’s truck and that the light from the pole lamp made it look purple. She went over and got behind the wheel, stuck the key in and sat there thinking for several long minutes, all thoughts that, one way or another, ended up being, Well, I’ll be danged, he’s a doctor .
    She turned the key, and the truck rumbled loudly. She drove over to the doors, and a minute later Harry emerged, walking with his long-legged saunter out from the shadowed entrance into the dimly lit portico.
    “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” Rainey said, as he got into the seat, folding in his long frame.
    He nodded. “Her leg has two bad breaks but there’s no evidence of internal injuries. She’s young and will most likely heal fast.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his head.
    She searched his face surreptitiously, then looked awayquickly before he could notice. She thought he looked a little pale, but not terribly sick.
    She shifted