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  “No,” Brett replied, wiping down the length of the bar directly in front of Nathan—when he became inebriated, he tended to spill his beer a little. “We’re not an item, Nathan. I’m just trying to make her feel like she belongs here. Dr. Dan is working too hard. We need a second doctor in Forever.”

  A few people along the bar mumbled, adding in their two cents and essentially agreeing with the gist of Brett’s statement.

  Only Nathan spoke up loud enough for Brett to make out what was being said.

  “You could try marrying her,” Nathan told him, shifting his gaze to take in the bartender. Bloodshot eyes vainly attempted to focus on the younger man. Giving up, Nathan addressed the rest of his statement to his half-empty beer mug. “Just ’cause it turned out so bad for me doesn’t mean it will for you.”

  A hearty laugh greeted the intoxicated advice. “Are you trying to talk the last of Forever’s elite bachelors into giving up his title?” Gabriel Rodriguez asked the question as he came around to stand next to Nathan at the bar. “Of course,” Miguel Rodriguez’s son continued, making eye contact with Brett, “the last couple of men who boasted that they were never going to tie the knot with any female who walked the earth did just that pretty soon afterward.”

  It sounded to him as if Gabe was putting him on some sort of notice. He could do that all he wanted, Brett thought. He wasn’t going to get married for a long time to come.

  “You talking about your brothers, Gabe?” Finn asked, coming over to join his brother and Gabe at the far end of the bar.

  Although Gabe nodded at Nathan, the latter continued communing with his beer, obviously content to let the conversation go on with his supervision, but not necessarily any of his input.

  “Yeah, I am. Didn’t really know what I was missing until I got married. None of us did,” Gabe said honestly. He put one arm around Nathan’s exceedingly wide back, practically straining to do so. “Not everyone follows in old Nathan here’s footsteps,” he testified. “I sure wouldn’t trade what I have now for what I had before for all the money in the world.”

  He sounded sincere, Brett thought. Most likely, he was. You couldn’t fake that sort of happy.

  “That’s because you lucked out,” Brett told him. For an instant, he found himself thinking of Laura, the one who had gotten away—or more accurately, the one he had sent away with his refusal to choose between leaving Forever with her and staying in the town with his underage brothers. “Your wife never gave you any ultimatums,” he added, saying the last sentence more to himself than to anyone else.

  And then he thought of the woman he had just asked to see the ranch with him. “And if you’re thinking of Lady Doc,” he said, looking at Gabe, knowing how the people in this town were quick to try to pair off singles with likely candidates, “that one still hasn’t made up her mind whether or not she’s staying in Forever. She might take off for that fancy hospital in New York that she came from.”

  “If anyone can convince her to stay here, it’s you,” Gabe replied.

  But Brett shook his head. “You’re giving me way too much credit here,” he told Gabe. “That lady’s got a mind all her own, and it’s not about to be cajoled or coerced by anything that I or anyone else can say,” he assured his friend.

  Whatever Gabe might have said to contradict Brett’s statement never managed to be uttered because another, more pressing matter suddenly took front and center for not just him or Brett, but for just about everyone who was in the saloon.

  Nathan had made a strange gurgling sound as he clutched his right side. He attempted to say something to Brett, but nothing coherent came out. The next moment, still clutching his side, Nathan made a guttural sound. His eyes rolled back in his head and then he fell off his bar stool with a resounding thud.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Is he dead?” a high-pitched voice in the center of the crowd asked as the man the voice belonged to tried to jockey for a better position.

  “Naw, probably just dead drunk,” the man next to him answered with a dismissive laugh.

  A tight knot of people had formed around the heavyset, unconscious man on the floor, and the participants all seemed to be intent on coming in even closer, despite the lack of space.

  The second Nathan keeled over, Brett quickly made his way out from behind the bar. Finn was directly behind him. Moving people aside, Brett reached Nathan’s prone body.

  Gabe was already crouching on the floor beside the man, feeling for Nathan’s pulse. It was obvious by the expression on Gabe’s face that he hadn’t succeeded in locating it yet. “I can’t find his pulse, Brett.”

  “Ah, don’t worry. McLane’s pulse is probably just buried under all that fat,” another patron volunteered, slurring some of his words a little.

  Brett, always more than ready to share a joke, appeared to be deadly serious as he shouted out instructions. “Finn, keep these mindless comedians back. Nathan needs space. Gabe, you keep trying to rouse Nathan.”

  “Where are you going?” Finn asked as Brett pushed his way out of the inner circle of curious onlookers.

  “To get our own private doctor,” Brett tossed over his shoulder, hurrying to the rear of the saloon.

  Once there, Brett took the stairs two at a time, reaching Alisha’s door in record time. Rather than knocking on it lightly, a sense of urgency had Brett doubling up his fist and pounding. He hadn’t liked the way Nathan had looked, and he knew enough about medicine to know that sometimes, every second counted. This might very well be one of those times.

  On the other side of the door, Alisha had just finished changing out of the clothes that she’d worn all day and into a baggy T-shirt that had seen far better days and a pair of denim shorts that had long since faded to a shade of nondescript blue. Ready for a quiet hour or two before bedtime, she was startled by the pounding on her door.

  Had one of the men downstairs had too much to drink and decided that what he really wanted was some female companionship? They’d looked like a harmless bunch when she’d walked past them, but looks could be deceiving, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Alisha glanced around for something to drag over to her door to keep whoever was pounding from breaking in. The only thing that presented itself was one of the two chairs at her small table. It was flimsy, but it was all she had.

  She was about to grab it when she thought she heard Brett’s voice calling to her.

  “Are you in there, Doc? I’ve got a man down, and I need you to look at him for me.”

  Alisha stared at the door uncertainly, her nerves on edge. Was Brett serious? Or was that just a ploy to get into her room?

  “Alisha, please. I don’t know if he’s breathing.”

  That did it for her. Alisha flipped the lock and pulled open her door.

  Brett appeared worried and far more serious than she had ever seen him.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you downstairs,” he promised, already heading back to the stairs. But when he turned to look over his shoulder, he saw that Alisha wasn’t following behind him. “Doc?” he called out, confused. “Where’d you go?”

  The next moment, Alisha came hurrying over to him, her medical bag in tow. “Had to get my bag,” she explained.

  This almost felt like a stereotypical scenario, she couldn’t help thinking. Here she was, dashing down the stairs in the shank of the night, clutching her medical bag, ready to minister to some unfortunate soul who’d been on the wrong end of a bar fight or had tripped and smashed his head.

  Or—

  At that point, it suddenly occurred to Alisha that she didn’t have a clue exactly what was waiting for her.

  The noise level was drowning out almost everything else by now. She raised her voice so that Brett could hear her. “What happened?” she cried.


  Brett turned his head so that his voice would carry toward her. “Damned if I know. One minute, Nathan is sitting on his usual stool, drinking beer like he does every night. The next, he clutches his side, makes a funny whimpering noise and falls on the floor.”

  “His side, not his chest?” she asked. The first thing she’d thought of was a heart attack.

  At her side now, Brett shook his head. “No, it was definitely his side.”

  “Which?” she asked as they came into the saloon proper. “Right or left?” She was fairly shouting now.

  “His right, I think.” Rethinking the incident, Brett confirmed his first answer. “It was definitely his right.”

  It seemed as if everyone in the saloon had gathered around the fallen man, forming a very large, almost impenetrable ring around Nathan, even with Finn trying to hold the patrons back.

  Brett moved protectively in front of the woman he’d gone to fetch and, pushing the throng aside, created a path for Alisha.

  “Get back,” he ordered. “Everyone, get back. Give the doc some room.” It wasn’t a request voiced in his usual easygoing manner. This was a command, issued in a no-nonsense tone of voice.

  The people in the crowd obediently parted and began to move to either side of the immobile form sprawled on his side on the floor.

  Gabe rose to his feet to get out of Alisha’s way. “Want us to move him for you?” he asked.

  “Not until I know what we’re up against,” she responded.

  Taking out her stethoscope, she sank down to her knees. Putting both ends into her ears, she listened intently as she moved the stethoscope around the man’s wide chest. The effort quickly met with success. She could make out the beat of his heart.

  The beat was elevated.

  Placing her hand to the man’s forehead—not the last word in medicine, she knew, but useful just the same—told her that Nathan’s temperature was raised, as well.

  Not good.

  Removing the stethoscope from her ears for a moment, she looked up at Brett. “Could you turn Mr. McLane on his back, please?”

  “Finn?” Brett said to his brother, his meaning clear. This effort was going to take two of them.

  Brett and his brother moved Nathan so that the unconscious man was flat on the floor, then moved back, out of the doctor’s way.

  Very gingerly, Alisha passed her small hands slowly and methodically along Nathan’s lower right quadrant. She watched his face as she did so. Despite the fact that he was still unconscious, she saw the man wince and heard him cry out in obvious pain. Loudly.

  When he did, several of Murphy’s patrons, who were angling for a closer position to get a better look at what was going on, jumped back, clearly shaken. The next second, they appeared to be embarrassed because they’d reacted like children around a campfire, listening to ghost stories and jumping when they heard a noise behind them.

  The resulting cacophony of explanations and excuses proved to be only just so much more incomprehensible background noise to Alisha.

  Unable to hold his curiosity in check any longer, Gabe asked her, “What’s the matter with him, Doc? Is he going to make it?”

  Brett seconded that concern. “Is he going to be all right?” he asked.

  She didn’t like to make prognoses until she had all the facts—or as many as were available in a situation. “I can’t tell until I open him up—”

  Her reply immediately caused a stir amid the bar’s clients. She could have sworn she heard someone laying odds on the outcome.

  “You’re going to operate on him here?” Finn exclaimed in obvious awe and wonder. “Wow!”

  “No, not here,” she immediately corrected, then turned to look up at Brett. “We need to get Nathan to the clinic,” she told him. “No offense, but your floor isn’t exactly sterile.”

  “Yeah, but neither’s Brett,” someone in the crowd called out, laughing and obviously amusing himself.

  Brett ignored the mindless remark as well as the man who’d uttered it. His only concern right now was Nathan. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked Alisha pointedly.

  She was about to repeat her previous vague comment, but the genuine concern she saw in Brett’s eyes had her reconsidering. Instead of saying it was too early to tell, she reviewed the symptoms and gave the man her best guess.

  “He’s running a fever, he clutched his side when he collapsed and his side is swollen and so tender, he can’t bear to be touched even in his unconscious state. It looks pretty much like appendicitis to me.” And, she added silently, she was more than 95 percent certain that she was right.

  “Can’t be that. Nathan had his appendix removed when he was a kid,” one of the female patrons volunteered as she made her way to the front of the human circle.

  “Sometimes they grow back,” Alisha answered. “It’s rare, but it is possible. Like I said, I won’t know exactly what we’re up against until I open him up.” Accepting the hand Brett extended to her, she stood. The way she saw it, her immediate problem was one of leverage—and transport. “I’m going to need help getting Nathan to the clinic.” That made her think of something else. “And I also need someone to get the doctor.”

  Finn looked at her, confused. “But you’re the doctor.”

  Alisha smiled at that. It looked as though she was finally being accepted here, and not just by one lone female patient.

  Still, she wasn’t vain enough to think she could do this on her own—unless she absolutely had to. And right now, she didn’t. She was perfectly happy just assisting at the surgery, since she surmised that Dan would want to be the primary surgeon.

  Nathan was drastically overweight, which meant that there would be abundant layers of tissue and fat to cut through before she could even get at the appendix and remove it. That was better left to a man with experience with this sort of thing.

  “The other doctor,” she stressed. “Dr. Davenport.”

  “I’ll do it,” Finn volunteered.

  “Okay,” Gabe said, coming to stand beside Brett. They both looked down at the moaning, unconscious man on the floor. “That leaves us with the problem of getting Nathan over to the clinic.”

  “If we had a gurney, we could just wheel him over,” Alisha said, thinking out loud. “Except that we don’t.”

  Purchasing a gurney was on her wish list. If she was going to remain here for any amount of time, it might as well be under better conditions. Or at least the very best conditions she was able to create.

  “We can drive him over in my flatbed truck,” Gabe offered. “We just have to get him in the back.”

  Just.

  The single word hung in the air, mocking her as she tried to come up with a viable solution that would get her patient into the back of the flatbed without doing him any harm.

  “Problem is,” she told Gabe and Brett, “if it is his appendix, it might be on the verge of rupturing, and if we jostle him too much when we try to get him into the truck, it might just burst.”

  “In other words, you don’t want us to each grab a limb and carry him outside,” Brett said, interpreting her words. In a pinch, that would have been what he would have done—get three other men and between them, carry Nathan to the back of the truck that way.

  “That wouldn’t be wise,” she said seriously, trying to think of an alternative. And then a possible solution occurred to her. “If we can get Nathan onto a big blanket and each grabbed a corner of that, we might be able to get away with it. That’s a little more cushioned than just dragging him by his arms and legs.” She turned to Brett. “Do you have a big blanket?”

  “Technically, you do,” he told her. When she looked at him, waiting for an explanation, he said, “There’s a folded-up blanket on the top shelf in your closet. For cold winter nights,” he added.

  “Ca
n you go get it, please?” she requested.

  Brett was already hurrying toward the stairs again. “On my way.”

  Waiting, Alisha bent down and placed her fingers against Nathan’s forehead again. It was even hotter than it had been before.

  Not a good sign, she thought in frustration.

  “Does Nathan have any family?” she asked Gabe as she rose to her feet again.

  “He’s got a wife,” Gabe told her.

  It was always good to cover all bases. If her husband was sick, she’d definitely want to be notified. “Maybe someone should go get her,” she suggested, looking around the saloon for a volunteer.

  “Hell, Henrietta’s not going to like having to come down here on account of Nathan,” one of the men standing behind her said. There was a murmur of agreement.

  “Even if he’s really sick?” Alisha asked in disbelief.

  “Henrietta’ll only say that it serves him right, coming here night after night instead of home to her,” another man spoke up, agreeing with his friend.

  That just didn’t seem right to her.

  Ordinarily, she would have just shrugged the matter off. Dealing with all sorts of people in New York had made her somewhat removed from this kind of personal drama. But things were different out here, and she had come to expect a certain level of compassionate behavior from the citizens of Forever.

  Consequently, Nathan’s wife’s behavior seemed horribly insensitive to her. Without fully realizing it, she wasn’t going to just stand on the sidelines and let that type of behavior continue. Not when this man needed someone in his corner.

  Turning around to face the last man who had spoken up about Nathan’s wife, she ordered, “You go and tell that woman to get her butt in gear and bring it over to the clinic. If I’m going to try to save her husband’s life, she needs to be there for her man.”

  Stunned for a moment, the man’s thin lips peeled back to display a toothy grin. It was obvious that he liked what he’d heard.