Page 35 of Colton in the Wild
As she lay there looking up at him, she saw an odd sheen in his deep blue eyes. Tears? Why on earth would Spence Colton be tearing up?
He reached down and pressed a button on a cord that ran along the bed rail before he looked at her and said, “You crashed, Hetty. Pretty hard. Traumatic shock, they called it. From what they said, I guess once the adrenaline ebbed away, once you didn’t have to fight anymore, your body finally realized you weren’t doing so great.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t know what else to say. So she simply looked at Spence’s handsome face and, for the first time since they’d been kids, allowed herself to truly appreciate his good looks. Looks she had always had to pretend to assess scornfully as the major tool he used to entrance clients.
Words came back to her then, in his voice, as he’d said them that night in the cave.
The looks were just part of the act, part of the cocky wise-ass routine that kept people from seeing the real me. The stupid me I always thought I was until you showed me another way.
She had never realized he’d thought himself stupid. Perhaps because she knew better, because she’d dealt with that agile mind so closely during those tutoring sessions. She’d seen the quickness of his thinking, the way he solved puzzles, the way complex mathematical problems never fazed him, the way he designed things that would actually work simply because he liked doing it.
Anything that didn’t involve traditional reading, he whizzed through. This was far from the first time that she was grateful for the study she’d read that had suggested a way to use that visual acuity of his, that design ability, and relate it to the kind of language and writing the majority of the world used.
The memory that shot into her mind then was the day he’d come back for a session after they’d started using that technique and thrown his arms around her in a thank-you that was nothing less than joyous. Maybe because that was the way he was looking at her now. And that alone told her how serious these last hours she wasn’t even aware of must have been.
“Thank you for getting me out of there,” she said, aware her throat was a little sore and wondering if she’d had some kind of tube rammed down her throat at some point. She’d ask, later. The doctor, she decided, since she didn’t really want Spence to have to tell her about the worst of it.
“Thank Dad, he did the flying.”
“But you did the heavy lifting,” she said, wishing now she hadn’t been hurting quite so much so she could remember better how it had felt to have this man carrying her. But all she remembered was how steady his pace had been, how careful he’d been not to jostle her, how he’d held her as if she were some precious thing he hadn’t dared drop.
“You’re not heavy.” A flash of the old Spence grin warmed her. “It’s just all that muscle, girl.”
A woman in scrubs came in, quickly rushing to her bedside, saying how glad she was to see her awake. Spence started to move aside, and instinctively Hetty grabbed his hand. She didn’t want him to go.
“She needs to check some things,” he said soothingly. “And I need to call your mom. She went to get some rest. And text Troy. And the rest of your family, who’ve all been here, several times. My family, too. Everybody was worried.”
She nodded, feeling a little tired as it started to register just how bad it must have been, to pull everyone here. It might only be a hundred and ten miles as the helicopter flew from Shelby to Wasilla, but it was about two and a half times that if you tried to drive. And her mother had been in Seattle with friends, taking a well-earned and long-delayed vacation.
She watched him go, phone in hand, as he left the room.
“That boy,” the woman beside her said with a smile as she made notes from the monitor readings at the head of the bed, “has not left your side since you were moved in here. He gave your mom some space, but nobody else. He was a better guard dog than my German shepherd. He must love you a lot.”
Hetty felt her pulse leap at those last words, and the nurse laughed as it registered on the monitor.
“He’d kick-start my pulse, too, honey, but he’s only got eyes for you.”
No matter how the woman poked and prodded, Hetty didn’t feel much of anything after that.
Chapter 18
Hetty didn’t realize she’d dozed off again—which was irritating in itself, since she had been lying there for a day and a half and thought she should be feeling better—until she opened her eyes to see Lakin Colton standing there. The woman who was the office manager at RTA and also her brother Troy’s girlfriend since elementary school, was looking down at her with obvious worry in her warm brown eyes.
“Hi,” she said with the best reassuring smile she could manage. She realized she was feeling a bit better, so she had to reluctantly admit that the sleep Spence had kept urging her to get was doing some good.
“I’ve been so horribly worried,” Lakin admitted. “I was afraid we were going to lose you.”
“I’m too stubborn,” Hetty said, keeping that smile going.
“I’m glad,” the younger woman said. “I’d be lost without you. We girls are outnumbered at RTA. All those Colton boys.”
Yes, those Colton boys. Hetty had to hide her reaction to the observation. Until she and Spence had a chance to talk about the changes that had—she hoped—happened that night in the cave, she didn’t want to sharpen the already-too-perceptive gazes of said Colton males by saying anything that would start them prodding Spence for answers.
“Four of them, three of us counting Kansas,” Hetty said. “That makes us pretty much even.”
Lakin was smiling now. “You would know. You’re the one girl among six Amos boys, and you still rule.”
