Page 50 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
“So?” Maria asked. “What do you think, Lil?”
“Someone should talk to her neurologist and provider. I think they’ll say that as long as someone’s watching over her for the next couple of days, who’ll notice and bring her in if there’s any change, she’ll probably be fine at home.”
“I’ll talk to them myself. Or make my mother do it,” Willow said. “And I don’t need anyone watching me.”
“Too bad,” Lily said.
Willow started to panic. She didn’t want cousins moving in, and racked her brain to think of how to prevent it. “Lily, you can’t sleep on the sofa pregnant. It would be bad for the baby. Drew, you have those PI classes starting up, and Orrin has work. Ethan has to run the honky tonk, Maria has the vet clinic, and Harrison’s got a project. Trevor, you can’t let your ESL kids down. They count on those classes.”
She swept her gaze over her cousins. “I, on the other hand, am fine.”
Lily shook her head. “Maybe one of the elders, or?—”
“No. No, I’m not havin’ it. There’s nobody in this family with the free time to babysit me.”
The door opened and Jeremiah walked in.
Everyone looked at him. Willow shrugged and went for broke. “Fine. He can do it.”
Jeremiah had gone outside to get away from the probing, curious looks being sent his way by every Brand crammed into Willow’s tiny cottage. He had not expected them to follow him out.
Ethan came first. He’d been expecting that. And his brother didn’t waste any time before launching the interrogation.
“So how did it happen that you were the one drivin’ her home?”
“I was the only one there when she decided to leave.”
Ethan waited for more. Jeremiah didn’t offer it. Eventually, Ethan sighed, and said, “You shouldn’t have let her do that. Sign herself out like that.”
“And how, exactly, should I have stopped her?”
Ethan looked at him, shrugged, then narrowed his eyes. “I knew somethin’ was brewin’ between you two. Just how far have things gone?”
That was when the flood of elders came pouring out of the cottage. Jeremiah was not up to the third degree, but they were all discussing Willow, her accident, her health, her stubbornness, which her mother said she’d got from her dad, and most of all, whether she should be out of the hospital.
As if they had anything to say about it. How well did these folk know their niece, anyway? Jeremiah didn’t think anybody could force Willow Stands Alone Brand to do anything she didn’t want to do.
Ethan joined the family throng, and as soon as his attention was distracted, Jeremiah wandered into a shadowy part of the little yard, near a short, broad tree with plants growing under its sheltering limbs. The flowers that were usually there were all closed up for the night.
He lingered there for a minute, looking at the stars. Willow wouldn’t be much help getting inside info on his old man, now that she was laid up. She wouldn’t be back at work for a little while. No access to anything he needed.
He saw Ethan notice his absence and start looking for him, so he decided it was time to go home. Beans would be lonesome by now. But he ought to let Willow know he was leaving. He didn’t want to just disappear. So he headed back inside, and as soon as he opened the door, Willow met his eyes and said, “He can do it!”
“I can do what?” he asked. And then he realized every set of eyes in the place was on him.
Behind him, Ethan stepped inside, looking around in a what’s going on sort of way, and Willow said, “Will you do it, Jeremiah? Spend the next coupl’a days or so watchin’ me in case I die?”
He grinned at her joke, “Yeah, sure, I’ll even prop my eyes open with toothpicks and watch you sleep. He-heh…heh.” Nobody was laughing.
Drew, Maria, and Lily exchanged laden looks, and then the redhead said, “I think it’s the perfect solution. Will won’t feel guilty for making one of us change our plans—which would be fine with any of us, by the way. And you don’t really have anything goin’ on, do you, Gringo?”
He sought an answer. He had a lot going on, hunting for his father’s hidden treasure mostly, but it wasn’t like he could tell them that.
And then he found a reason. Beans! Already pulling his weight. “I’d have to bring my dog?—”
“Ohmygod, Beans? Yes, bring Beans,” Willow said, and realized it was the first time she’d smiled since being carried through her own front door.
He looked around at all those sets of eyes, and everyone with different but similar thoughts going on behind them. What was up with him and their cousin? Was she safe with an ex-con, even if he was sort of related?
