Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,150

watch on her wrist. She turned and walked slowly toward the building.

It wasn’t really blatant, but he could see that she limped a little when she walked. Odd. An old injury? he wondered. A fall or something? Not his business. But he was curious about her. Far more curious than he wanted to be.

* * *

IDA SAT IN the waiting room for her turn to see Dr. Menzer and tried to understand why Jake McGuire, who obviously disliked her, had been so kind to her. She didn’t expect kindness from men. She pretended to be a wild woman, just to make men leave her alone. She exaggerated her reputation, let it be rumored that she had high standards for her bedroom and talked about fictional men she’d had affairs with to give the idea that she’d gossip about a man who didn’t measure up to her expectations. As she’d expected, it kept her free of complications in her private life. Not many men had the ego to even approach her.

Cort Grier had, but she found an unexpected friend in the jaded cattle baron who’d had his own issues with women who wanted his wealth, not himself. They’d formed a friendship. She’d opened up to him as she hadn’t been able to open up with any other man.

She was happy for him. He loved Mina and his son, and that was wonderful. But he’d been the only friend she had. When he married, she’d removed his contact information from her phone. She didn’t want it to appear that she was after him even when he married. That left the screen completely blank. She had no contacts, because she only used the phone for emergencies and surfing the internet. Her attorneys had her home phone number, which had an answering machine. She had no idea how to set up voice mail on the cell phone, so it was better not to have people call the number. That was why her contact screen was blank, and Jake had noticed. She’d have bet that his own phone contact list was overflowing.

Well, she couldn’t want a man that way, not anymore. And she had her own problems. Her ex-husband, Bailey Trent, was just recently out of prison and in hock to his gambling associates. How he’d gotten out was a mystery. She’d had him sent up for violent assault and battery. Shortly after his arrival, he’d lost his temper and killed another inmate, almost guaranteeing that he’d never get out. But he had gotten out.

He’d been calling her on her home phone, leaving threatening messages. She’d phoned her attorneys in Denver, but she wasn’t even sure what they could do about him. He left no contact number. She didn’t even know where he was. She tried a reverse lookup on her phone, but the number was blocked. What if he came after her again, the way he had the last time she’d refused to give him money, before he even went to prison?

Her hand went idly to her hip and she grimaced. She’d had a fractured pelvis and damage to her femur, injuries that had been catastrophic, to her mind. The orthopedic surgeon, a genius in his own right, had put her hip and femur back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Two surgeries, a partial hip replacement and a metal plate along her thigh with metal screws to hold it in place had alleviated most of her problem, but the pain continued and the visits to her orthopedic surgeon had increased in recent months. Oncoming cold weather usually brought its own set of complications. Secondary arthritis had set in to the damaged pelvis. She needed another prescription for the powerful anti-inflammatory medications she had to take, hence the visit.

She tried not to think about the injury her second husband had caused. He’d seemed like such a kind, sweet man. She hadn’t realized that it was an act, all of it, to lure her in and get her to marry him so that he’d have access to her inherited fortune.

She shivered, remembering. It hadn’t been a long fall, just over the side of a one-story parking garage. She’d landed on hard ground, not, thank God, on concrete. The pain had been something out of her experience. By the time the ambulance arrived, of course, Bailey was pretending hysterics and wailing that his poor wife had fallen despite his efforts to save her. It would have been her word against his, how it happened. Even in the