Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(69)

Toby was only trying to console her, but something rebelled right there in the hallway outside her grandmother’s room. Maybe it was the flirty waitress or those two hussies who’d met them in the lobby. Or the fact that the brazen twins made her feel so dowdy and ugly. But something triggered a bomb in her heart and it exploded.

“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do with my own grandmother.” She pushed away from him and folded her arms over her chest. “You can’t begin to understand how helpless I feel. She took care of me. She wiped my nose when I had a cold. She cooked for me, cleaned my room so I wouldn’t get in trouble, and I can’t do a thing for her. She wants to go home, Toby.”

The light above her grandmother’s door flashed on and two nurses jogged down the hall. They entered the room with Lizzy and Toby right behind them. Deke was in the corner with his hands up like a villain in an old western movie. Irene had made a gun out of her thumb and forefinger and had it pointed right at his crotch.

“Look what he’s done to my room. He’s trying to kidnap me. He even took the sheets off my bed.” Irene holstered her imaginary pistol and looked past Lizzy at Toby. “He was with him. They were going to rob me.”

“You two get on out of here and we’ll deal with you later,” the older nurse said with authority in her voice. “You’ll probably do jail time over this. What about this young lady? Was she in on it? Who put all your stuff in these bags, Miz Irene?”

“No, they did it all. She’s my granddaughter, Allie.” Irene sat down in a rocker and frowned. “Or is it Fiona. Yes, this one is Fiona. I haven’t seen her in ten years and she looks like her sister. I’ll sit right here while y’all put all my stuff away. Fiona, you make up that bed so I can have a nap.”

“We’ll take care of it,” the nurse said.

Irene cocked her head to one side and then the lights went out. She’d been frantic one second and now the muscles in her face were slack and her eyes dull. “Who are all you people?”

“We are the cleaning crew. We’ll have everything put to rights in just a few minutes,” the older lady said.

“I wanted to take her home for a couple of days,” Lizzy whispered.

The younger one shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

Irene stared blankly out the window, a smile tickling the corners of her mouth. “When you girls get this room in order, you should go out there and hoe the weeds from the garden.”

“Yes, ma’am, we will get right on that,” the nurse said.

“Who are you, again? And why aren’t you helping taking care of this mess you made?” Irene looked straight at Lizzy and the smile disappeared.

“She’s our supervisor,” the younger nurse answered.

“I see. I’m sleepy. You can go now. You trained these two pretty good,” Irene told her.

“Thank you.” Lizzy bit back the tears as she left the room.

Deke and Toby were in the lobby, sitting on the sofa and talking so low she couldn’t hear them. Could it be they were regretting not going with those women? All the anger inside her at not being able to do a blessed thing rose to the top, and she marched right up to Deke and held out her hand.

“What?” he asked.

“Give me your truck keys. I’m going home. You can ride back to Dry Creek with Toby or the two of you can do what you wanted to do all along.”

“And what did we want to do?” Toby asked.

“Just go. Have a great time with the booty bitches. I’ll leave the keys under the floor mat so you don’t even have to come in the house,” she said.

Deke handed her the keys and she nodded toward a nurse’s aide who rushed over and hit the code to let her out. It was like a jail. Granny couldn’t come and go when she wanted. The windows were locked so she couldn’t raise them to get a breath of fresh air. No wonder she was losing the last thread of her memories and life.

By the time Lizzy had adjusted the driver’s seat to fit her small frame, tears streamed down her face. One look in the rearview let her know she was a complete mess with long streaks of dark mascara and light blue eyeliner running down her cheeks and dripping onto the ecru lace top. It was probably ruined but Lizzy didn’t give a damn. At least she could walk out of that place and inhale the wonderful aroma of the air after a summer rain.

She was still sniffling when she pulled into the driveway at Audrey’s Place. Sitting in the truck with the window rolled down, she imagined the original ladies who lived in the house sprawled out on the porch steps with fans. The madam of those women would be her ancestor.

Granny’s great-grandmother had built the place for a hotel with her husband. Then he died and the Depression hit and the rest was history. When she shut down the brothel, she married the local deputy and they had a daughter who lived in the house until she died. It had been passed down from one generation to the next and someday Lizzy might inherit it.

Her mind and heart were at war with each other as her thoughts went from one subject to another. She could have been like those two women in the nursing home if Audrey’s Place had been a brothel for a few more generations, so what right did she have to judge them? They’d had a good time with Deke and Toby in the past. So much for forgetting the past like she’d preached about to Toby.