The Sage After Rain A love story by Jaclyn Hawkes

Author:Jaclyn Hawkes [Hawkes, Jaclyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spirit Dance Books LLC
Published: 2013-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

After another full day of first interviewing three people, and hiring one, and then heading back out to work, Matt came back to camp at dark dead tired again. He was surprised that just a few days of being down could make him tire this easily. When he came in, camp was quieter than usual and it took him a second to realize it was the absence of bedded sheep that he wasn't hearing. Taya usually had them in and settled by this time at dusk and he wondered if she had had more trouble with predators today.

He dumped off his pack at his tent and gathered up his gear to shower and headed for her neato rig. The hot water on his tired muscles felt wonderful, and on the way back he was speculating about whether she had had time to even think about making dinner with her coyote troubles and if it would be something he could eat in front of his laptop when he almost walked into Horse in his reverie.

It finally clicked that Taya wasn't out on her horse somewhere with her sheep, and he looked around him to see what was really going on. He could see the white shapes of her herd in more than three different directions and instantly he knew something was definitely wrong.

He called her name out as he tossed his shower stuff back inside his tent and caught up Horse. He headed for her trailer to get her saddle so he could go look for her, and was just slinging it onto Horse's back when he realized Taya was right there beside him on her swing, wrapped up in her big blanket. Even that was weird. It was still eighty degrees out here. He had gotten clear to the swing and started talking to her when it finally dawned on him that she had gotten it. It hit him like an ugly and incriminating lightning bolt. She had been his angel of mercy and he had in turn made her sick with the virus from the devil himself.

Sitting on the swing beside her, he gathered her into his arms and pulled her right up onto his lap. The heat rolled off of her like a furnace and he reached up to feel her scorching forehead and was floored at how hot it was. He knew now what she had meant when she said his fever had scared her. That high of a fever was more than scary. That was the kind of thing that caused brain damage, wasn't it?

Gently, he pulled her out of the quilt and tossed it aside, talking to her as he did so, "Oh, Taya, honey. I'm so sorry. I had no idea." Guiltily, he wondered how long she had been like this. She had seemed okay when he had come in last night, but he hadn't even talked to her, just waved on his way back from the shower. And this morning she had still been out with her herd when he'd left on the helicopter.

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