He also didn’t like the look the checkout clerk gave him. A lopsided smile, a lift of her eyebrow, a glance down his body. That “come get me” look cowboys on the circuit often get. If it had been ten years ago and they’d met in a bar, he might have taken her home, but not now. He was older, wiser, and had a few other things to think about than mindless sex with a woman who’d probably cry while claiming she loved him, at the same time she was trying to remember his name.

A friend told him once that he used women, but Hank didn’t see it that way. He never made the first move. He never said a word that hinted of love or a future. If anything, women used him. They wanted their one wild night with a cowboy at the rodeo or their encounter with a biker who was riding across the country. They wanted the fantasy lover, not the reality.

When he’d left the rodeo to work on oil rigs, he’d abandoned that life as easily as he’d left his life in Clifton Bend. The bar games and the women who giggled constantly no longer interested him. Two years later he’d studied enough to hire on at an oil company as an explosives engineer. Two years after that he was in the EOD, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal branch of the Houston police. Moments of excitement hidden inside hours of waiting. Just like riding bulls. A clock in his brain that ticked out seconds still seemed to be ticking.

Moving inside Amelia Remington’s room, Hank thought he could go over to his dad’s house and borrow the preacher’s old Lincoln, once he got her settled. If the boat of a car would start. He might even go get his dad and take him for a ride one morning before he left town. They could drive by the old house, the church, and maybe his mom’s grave. One place his father had probably never been.

But right now, he had to get Millie home and settled.

He had money and plenty of vacation days, but maybe it would be easier to hire an aide to sit with her. Hank wasn’t skilled at this kind of thing. She would probably be better off with professional help.

He stood just inside the librarian’s doorway and watched as the nurse slowly applied cream to Millie’s arm, then moved behind her to untie her gown. As the cotton slipped away he saw her back. From her shoulder to the small of her back there were black bruises and places where missing skin was raw. The line of her body as she sat so straight reminded him of a painting. Graceful.