Read Online The Cowboy Soldier by Roz Denny Fox - Free Book Online

liked having Rafe Eaglefeather around.



CHAPTER FOUR
    R AFE GOT READY FOR BED , but was too keyed up to sleep. His nerves were used to being brought down by two separate pills during the day, and another pill at night. Alexa allowed him only one tablet per day. Surprisingly, though, he felt more alert. More engaged. Alive. No, he cut himself off. He hadn’t felt truly alive for months now, pills or no pills.
    He had to acknowledge that Alexa Robinson and her smoky, sexy voice booted him in the butt the way nobody else had. He wanted to please her. Really, he wanted to see her. See her hair, her eyes, her expressions as she spoke.
    Sitting in the rocker, petting Dog, Rafe mulled over the treatments Alexa had at her disposal beyond teas and herbs. He had no reason not to go to the mineral springs. Ego? Was he worried about his scars? Possibly. He didn’t know how awful they looked. But Alexa must have already seen some of them.
    That same reasoning ruled out any objections to massage. What about acupuncture? He straight-up got jitters picturing Alexa or anyone else poking him with a bunch of needles. But why? When he’d joined the service he’d watched grown men drop like rocks over a few pops with a vaccination needle gun. Not him. So why was he holding out?
    If there was even the slimmest possibility that any of these treatments might restore his sight, he should have no objections.
    Tomorrow he’d ask Alexa to take him on a trip to the hot springs, followed by a back massage, and then work his way up to the big daddy—acupuncture.

    A LEXA RUBBED HER EYES and looked at the clock on her computer. Two-fifteen. She yawned and closed the books she’d been checking and cross-referencing online. Most of the information she’d read dealt with poultices for tired or overstrained eyes. Chinese herbalists agreed that there was no reversing congenital blindness. They weren’t in such solid agreement when it came to other reasons for sight loss. Rafe’s blindness was undefined. There was no evidence that he’d had a concussion or even blacked out, which left a huge gray area, the big mystery to medicine. Psychosomatic trauma of unspecified origin was the final diagnosis in his medical record.
    How inconclusive. Why was the military so reluctant to attribute his condition to the ambush he’d been in? An attack where five in his troop had died. According to Sierra, two were Rafe’s childhood friends.
    Alexa surfed the Web awhile longer and ran across another possible reason for the evasive diagnosis. Money. Several soldiers had recently charged that they were being denied long-term VA benefits because military doctors hadn’t diagnosed their disabilities as combat-related injuries, whereas doctors outside the military argued the opposite. Carefully worded notes in Rafe’s chart could be aimed at cutting him from veteran disability payments. There was a pending lawsuit against the government concerning soldiers’ rights to a second opinion.
    Closing down her computer, Alexa felt torn. Should she continue to treat Rafe with nontraditional medicine? Maybe he should be at a VA facility. If driving proved too difficult for Sierra, maybe the two of them could split the travel. How many visits did Rafe need each month? Would going to the facility only frustrate him further? It was a dilemma.
    She shut off the light and left her office. As she entered her bedroom, an image of Bobby materialized. He appeared before her with his old cocky smile, as if he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Rattled by the vision, she wondered if it was telling her she should send Rafe home when Sierra came to pick up his laundry? She hated to renege on an offer. And she’d said she would work with Rafe for thirty days.
    It was a long time before she was able to shake Bobby’s image.
    The next morning she stood at the sink, cleaning and boxing fresh eggs she’d been out at dawn to gather, when a scraping sound drew her attention. Glancing