Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade

that what I can call you, or do I have to call you Miss or something like at school?”

      “You can call me Carly.”

      “You can call me Evie Lee Lewis.”

      “Thank you,” Carly said with a smile, sitting up in bed and bracing her back against the headboard. “Have you been to school yet?” she asked the little girl.

      “I went to kindergarten before the summer and when the summer is over and it’s schooltime again I’ll be in the first grade. You go all day long in that grade. I hope I like it. I hope it’s not too much stressful. Alisha had a lot of stressfuls and then she’d go to bed and I wouldn’t want to have to go to first grade and then have to go to bed.”

      “Alisha?” Carly repeated, her interest sparked at the mention of a woman’s name.

      “Alisha was my sort-of mom for a while but she didn’t like me. She liked my daddy. But she didn’t like me. She said I was a bad kid and that I was a stressful and a pest and a pain-in-the—”

      “Where did she go?”

      “Away. My daddy sent her away because she locked me in the closet because I was naughty one day and I put on her shoes and messed up some of her lipsticks.”

      The thought of putting this little girl or any other child in a closet raised Carly’s hackles. “Sounds like your daddy did the right thing by sending her away.”

      “He was really mad.”

      “Good for him. He should have been.”

      “How did you hurt yourself?”

      “I fell and sprained my ankle.”

      “I got a bad scratch on my elbow. See?” Evie Lee displayed the underside of her elbow. “I got it on Mikey Stravoni’s slide and then I got a scab but I picked at it till it comed off and then it bleeded all over the place and my daddy said ‘I told you not to pick off that scab’ because he’s a doctor.”

      Carly laughed at the lowered-voice imitation, enjoying the child who looked so much like her father that staring at her conjured flashes of the man himself in Carly’s mind’s eye. Flashes that left her with more eagerness to see him again than she wanted to acknowledge.

      “Does your ankle hurt?” Evie Lee asked.

      “A little.”

      “Sometimes if you pinch yourself really hard somewhere else you’ll forget about it.”

      “I’ll remember that.”

      “Could I play with your crutches when you don’t need ’em?”

      “Sure, but they’ll be awfully big for you.”

      “You have pretty eyes.”

      “So do you.”

      “I have pretty hair, too,” Evie Lee said matter-of-factly. “Will you show me how to put a pencil in it?”

      “I will if you want me to. But we could probably put something prettier than a pencil in it.”

      “Okay,” Evie Lee said with enthusiasm, her pale eyebrows taking flight with the anticipation. “My daddy is no good at hair combing. He says he could do surgery better. Do you have any l’il kids?”

      “I’m afraid not. I’m not married.”

      “Me, neither. My daddy isn’t neither, too. Are there any l’il kids around here to play with?”

      Carly eased herself to the edge of the bed, letting both feet dangle over the side to test how her ankle felt when it wasn’t propped up. It hurt more, but it wasn’t unbearable.

      “There’s a little girl up the street,” she answered.

      “How old is she?”

      “I think she’s six.”

      “That’s good. That’s how old I am—six. I just turned it and I got Angel Barbie for my birthday because she’s the prettiest one.”

      “You’ll have to show her to me.”

      “I could go get her now.”

      “I think we’ll have to do that later. My sister is at the medical building where your daddy will be working. She just had a baby last night and I want to go over and see how she is.”

      “What kind of baby?”

      “A boy.”

      “Can I come with you?”

      Carly laughed again, not minding the little girl’s chattiness or persistence. “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with your dad. But we can’t go without checking with him first.”

      Evie Lee hopped out of the chair. “I’ll go ask him right now.”

      “I want to clean up and then I’ll come across to the house to check with him.”

      “I’ll clean up, too,” Evie Lee said as if she liked the idea.

      The child ran for the door, opened it and turned back to Carly. “See ya.”

      “See ya,” Carly answered.

      And out went Evie Lee.

      Since Carly wasn’t too sure whether or not the little girl might return within minutes—alone or with her father—she wasted no time getting to her crutches and heading for the bathroom.

      But on the way she realized she was wearing only her slip, that the dress she’d had on the night before was tossed over the back of the love seat, and that she hadn’t brought any of her things with her from the house.

      That meant she couldn’t take the fast shower she had in mind or so much as run a comb through her hair or brush her teeth or fix her face or change her clothes.

      It also meant that if Bax McDermot was up and about, she was going to have to meet him looking even worse than she had the first time.

      Not a proposition she relished.

      But what was she going to do? She was in the cottage and everything she needed was in the house. She didn’t have any choice.

      Her only hope was that he was still asleep and she could slip in and out before he woke up.

      With that in mind, she put her dress back on over her slip and made her way out of the cottage.

      The cottage was separated from the main house by only an eight-foot, brick-paved breezeway. The breezeway was covered on top but open on either side so it could be used as a patio in good weather. There was a cedar wood bench seat along one side, but Carly had left the rest of the patio furniture—chairs and small tables—in the garage so far this season. Minus the clutter of it, she maneuvered herself and the crutches across the breezeway without impediment.

      When she reached the back door, she peeked in the window that filled the top half of it and spotted Evie Lee alone in the kitchen, standing on a ladder-backed chair to get herself a glass of water.

      Carly knocked on the door to draw the child’s attention and then opened it enough to poke her head in. “Is your dad around?”

      “He’s in the shower so I didn’t ask him yet about going with you. But he’ll be out in a little bit.”

      Carly didn’t want to think about Bax being in her shower. Naked in her shower…

      “I need to get up to my room. All my things are still in it.”

      Evie Lee jumped down from the chair as if it were a tall cliff. “Okay. Come on.”

      Carly pushed the door open wide with the end of one crutch and got herself through it. But as she did, it occurred to her that if she didn’t let the new doctor know she was coming inside, she was liable to bump into him accidentally. As he left the bathroom after his shower. Maybe not dressed…