Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe
He wasn't dead yet.
The darkness behind his eyelids thinned. Sensation prickled the hairs on his arm. Inside his head, he heard the beat of his heart—as loud and steady as the Ghost Dance drum. That sacred rhythm called him back to life.
His ears picked up other sounds. The beep-beep-beep of a monitor. The shuffle of quiet footsteps. The creaking of a chair. A cough. Someone else was in the room with him.
The drumming accelerated.
His eyelids opened—just a slit. Sunlight through the window blinds reflected off the white sheet that covered his prone body. Hospital equipment surrounded the bed. Oxygen. An IV drip on a metal pole. A heart monitor that beeped. Faster. Faster. Faster.
"Jesse?" A deep voice called to him. "Jesse, are you awake?"
Jesse Longbridge tried to move, tried to respond. Pain radiated from his left shoulder. He remembered being shot, falling from his saddle to the cold earth and lying there, helpless. He remembered a gush of blood. He remembered…
"Come on, Jesse. Open your eyes."
He recognized the voice of Bill Wentworth. A friend. A coworker. Good old Wentworth. He'd been ... read full excerpt from: Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe ebook
