Read Online Granted: A Family for Baby by Grace Carol - Free Book Online Page B

Said Brady would pick it up, but he hasn’t. Could be because he’s feeling no pain, if you know what I mean.”
    Good old Carla, with her finger on the pulse of Harmony and its inhabitants.
    “You mean...”
    “I heard he was over at the saloon hoisting a few.”
    Suzy hung up, locked the office and drove up the street to the pharmacy, picked up Brady’s medicine and drove the three blocks to the saloon on the corner. She only had to look through the crowd to locate him at the table in the back. There he sat, with his right foot in a thick white sock propped on the table, and a mug of beer in his hand.
    He saw her, she was sure he saw her, but the only acknowledgment was the way he raised his eyebrows. She plowed right through the cigar smoke and the wall-to-wall cowboys, and up to his table.
    “Look who’s here,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Sit down, darlin’, and have a drink.”
    Darlin’? He must be drunk.
    “No thank you,” she said primly. “I came to apologize.”
    “For what? Kissing me?”
    Suzy swallowed hard and glanced over her shoulder. She could feel the heat rise up her neck into her face. Did he have to raise his voice so the whole bar could hear him?
    “No,” she said in a loud whisper, “for dropping the hammer on your foot.”
    “Then you’re not sorry you kissed me?” he asked loudly with a wicked grin.
    Her knees buckled and she sank into the seat opposite his elevated foot, hoping to prevent him from sharing any more of what happened with the whole world.
    “Could we forget about what happened and talk about your foot?”
    “Foot’s fine,” he said. “Long as I don’t walk on it.”
    “How did you get here?”
    “Don’t remember.”
    “How will you get home?”
    He shrugged. “Who wants to go home? Nobody there.”
    Was this Brady Wilson, the consummate loner saying he didn’t want to go home because nobody was there?
    “Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?” she asked, noticing the half dozen empty glasses on the table.
    He shook his head and lifted his glass to his lips for another swig of the dark beer.
    “I only came here to bring you your pain pills,” she said, “but I’m not going to leave you here like this.” After all, this was all her fault. She’d kissed him. She’d dropped the hammer on his foot. He could get over the kiss, but what about his broken toe?
    “Come on,” she said, getting to her feet. “Lean on me. I’ll take you home.”
    He lowered his foot to the floor, and she pulled him up by the hand. Then he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and he hobbled out through the crowd to the sidewalk, leaning heavily against her. She opened the car door and watched him ease himself awkwardly into the front seat.
    “Sorry it’s so small,” she said noting his legs were jackknifed against the glove compartment and his face reflected the pain he must be in. “What did the doctor say, anyway?”
    “Stay off the foot”
    Suzy pictured Brady in his big house, unable to walk to the kitchen, crawling to the bathroom. And all because she’d broken his toe. “Maybe you’d better come home with me.”
    Brady opened the window and let the cool night air hit his face. It had a sobering effect on his woozy state of inebrium. Go home with her. If he couldn’t keep his hands off her in the office, what would happen at her house? “I’d better not,” he said.
    “I don’t think you ought to be alone. Besides I feel responsible for what happened.”
    “No doubt about that,” he said, glancing at her profile in the semidarkness, at the curve of her cheek, her straight nose and her lips. Those tempting lips that had gotten him where he was right now.
    “I was talking about the way I dropped the hammer on your toe,” she said.
    “I was talking about the way you kissed me.”
    “You keep talking about my kissing you,” she said. “You seem to have forgotten that you started it. You kissed me first,” she said.
    “I haven’t