Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

But two years ago, when the crew from the weekly national news program had rolled into town and dropped boom mics and spotlights over everyone's head, had started asking questions about the Big Brown Barn for their expose on Earnestine Township, her progress toward Ed's level of acceptance had skidded to a halt.

The people who chose to live in Pit Stop did so for a reason. They were either running away from something or had nowhere else to go. Whatever the individual case, no one had wanted—or welcomed—the exposure. Including Neva herself. Especially Neva herself.

After backing her truck up to the rear of Ed's clinic, she cut the engine and climbed from the cab. Before lowering her tailgate, she walked over and hit the big red button next to the clinic's rolling door and waved at the camera above. the motor engaged and the door began to crawl upward.

Seconds later, the doctor appeared feet first in the doorway, his legs clad in denim spattered with, well, Neva didn't want to know what, and his top half garbed in his standard green scrubs. At least his hands looked clean. His face she only gave a quick glance. As well as she knew him, she needed no more.

"I've got a couple of patients here for you." She waved a hand over the truck bed. "Both on their way to being road kill, so I went ahead and broke all the medical rules and moved them to bring them in."

"Now, Nevada," Ed said with a patronizing shake of his head. "What have I told you about emergency protocol?"

"Uh, nothing?" She jerked at the latch, lowered the tailgate. She knew he was teasing. She'd just never liked his idea of a joke. "But I have told you not to call me Nevada."

Ed winked at her quickly before turning his attention to her human and canine cargoes. At that point, he was stern and all business, and she stood back and watched him work. His hair was military short and a Richard Gere gray, his eyes only a little bit darker.

He was a man in his forty-something prime, fit and fine. And she wished, she really truly wished things between them had worked. They definitely had in bed, and still did when she got the itch, though she hadn't itched in too many months to count, and Ed had noticed.

But out of bed? He asked too many questions. He wanted to know too much. He found reasons she'd never imagined to be jealous. And that more than anything drove her nuts. As often as he'd been there for her, as many times as he'd dropped everything to help her, no matter how much she depended on him to offer medical treatment to the girls at the Barn, she hated to have her loyalties mistrusted.

"Where did you find these two?"

That she could answer. "Just over the state line. On the side of Sixty-two. Coming back from Carlsbad."

Having given both patients a quick once-over, checking whatever he checked in their eyes with his penlight, he headed into the clinic's large animal suite for a gurney, calling back, "Which one did you stop for? The man or the dog?"

Neva wanted to roll her eyes but stood at the truck bed to scratch FM's ears reassuringly. As if she'd actually get it on with a half-dead guy. "What do you want me to do?"

"Get rid of the rope and blanket. Carefully," he called over the rumbling clatter of the gurney wheels crossing the concrete floor.

She hopped into the bed of the truck, her back to the cab as she straddled and squatted above her mummy man, ridding him of his bindings, and now that the immediate urgency had lessened, looking at him more closely.

She pushed the blanket off his shoulders, away from his chest and abdomen, realizing as she did, as her fingers brushed clothing that was torn and the exposed, hair-dusted skin beneath, that she must have been out of her mind to think she could move him. She had, yes, but owed her success in doing so to an obvious adrenaline high.

He seemed much larger now than he'd seemed then. Much, much larger. Much, much ... more. His chest, his shoulders, his hands and arms and neck were all proportioned in a way that made her feel small. She never felt small. And she hadn't even uncovered his legs.

The instincts telling her for weeks to keep an eye trained over her shoulder now screamed at her to run. That she had no idea what she'd gotten herself into. That he was a man like none she'd ever known. That any threat he posed was a threat to her personally.

And then, just as she was fumbling with the blanket below his waist, he opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he barely whispered, a raspy, throaty croak of a sound.

"We're at Doc Hill's clinic. He's coming now with a gur-ney. You're going to be fine." On what she based her encouraging words, she had no clue.

"And if you're not," Ed walked up to say, "you can always hire Nevada here to sue me for malpractice."

"Jesus, Ed. Don't scare him like that." Her gaze traveled from the downed man to the other and back. "And don't call me Nevada."

"Not scared," the man beneath her grunted thickly. "Thirsty."

Neva looked up from his glazed and tortured eyes. "Ed? Is water okay? I've got a cooler with bottles behind the truck seat."

Ed nodded, left the gurney near the tailgate, and opened the driver's-side door. He returned with a bottle, handed it off but didn't immediately let go. "Not too much. Slowly. No gulping."

"Okay," she agreed, adding, "1 promise," to get him to give her the bottle. When one of his dark gray brows went up and he still held tight, she mouthed back, "Not funny." jerking it from his hand, she unscrewed the cap as he moved to attend briefly to the dog. "His name is FM."

"Like the