The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (31 page)

“I’d say you put your time to good use then,”
Simon remarks with a smile. “Your art is great.”

“It was just to pass the time till the bell
rang and I could get home to my horse,” Sam admits with a
shrug.

If the world was still normal and
they’d gone to the same school, they probably wouldn’t have even
been friends. Sam had to have been a popular girl in school
as
pretty
and sweet as she is. He
was a comic book science nerd.
Pretty
girls weren’t exactly slobbering over red-haired teen boys
with tickets to Comic-Con. Even though the skinny teen body of his
youth is long gone, replaced with a soldier’s body, Simon still
can’t seem to shake some of his insecurities.

“Air…ay…” she attempts at pronouncing the
title of the medical book.

“Close. It’s pronounced,
are-you-
vay
-
dic
. The word is
ayruvedic
. Or you can just say
ayruveda
. Same thing,” Simon corrects
her.

“What’s this book about?” she inquires and
takes a seat on the stool again.

Normally he’s happy to have her help,
appreciative of it. She’s always great to work with and never bugs
him when he needs space. She’s wonderful at the clinic for the same
reason. Samantha is patient and kind and the best lab assistant he
could ask for. She sometimes asks questions that actually put him
on a different path to figuring something out. Her brain works
in
a completely
different way
than his. She’s thoughtful and expressive, where he is more logical
and analytical.

“It’s an eastern Indian tradition of
healing with herbs in a more natural way and detoxifying the
system. That kind of thing. It’s
pretty
interesting
actually.”

“Cool,” Sam says with her usual enthusiasm.
“Reagan would say it’s hippy-dippy stuff, huh? Can we use some of
the practices at the clinic?”

She twists back and forth quarter spins
on her
stool as
a young kid would
do. It just makes her seem more child-like to Simon, which makes
him feel like a bigger pervert for finding her desirable. If
it
weren’t
for her body and those
bewitching blue eyes, Sam would seem like a pre-teen. Em was
younger than her and still taller.

“We may need to
depending
on what direction and depletion of the
medicine we end up getting into this winter,” Simon tells her. “Doc
and I have been working on some things.”

“I’ll help, too,” she offers with hope-filled
eyes.

Simon clears his voice, pushes his glasses a
little higher on his nose, and reaches around her to collect more
items.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“This jug is full of apple cider vinegar from
the Johnson farm. I wanted a jar of theirs to try since they have
different breeds of apples over there. Doc and I want to have a few
different varieties of this antibiotic to see if the apples make a
difference in the healing process. Evie was kind enough to send a
jar home with Cory the other day.”

“Oh yeah, I remember them talking about it,”
she acknowledges.

“Did everything go all right the other day at
the Johnson’s?” he inquires, curious about his sister’s knowledge
of Cory’s relationship with Evie Johnson.

“Yeah, your sister did great. She’s a better
shot than we thought,” Sam says.

“I meant how do it go with Evie? Was anything
out of the ordinary? Did she and Paige get along?”

“Of course, silly,” Sam says with a confused
smile. “Why wouldn’t they? Evie’s so sweet with everyone, and so is
Paige.”

“Hm,” Simon murmurs. Sam wouldn’t pick
up on a rift between the other women if they’d start duking it out
in the mud right in front of her. She doesn’t have a mean bone in
her body. “Let’s
start
on
this.”

He wants to get the project finished and
avoid lingering in the shed with her. Standing so close to her,
smelling the clean freshness of her is wreaking havoc on his
resistance.

“Ready?” he asks and gets a nod. She pulls
out a rubber band from her jeans pocket and ties back her hair.
“Want to cut those onions and three or four cloves of garlic for
me? I’ll start on the peppers since they might burn your skin.”

She chuckles at him as they take cutting
boards from the cabinet below them. Simon also snags a pair of
rubber gloves to protect his skin from pepper oils.

“Simon, I help can the hot peppers with Sue.
I think I’m used to it. Probably more than you!”

“Just do the onions and garlic,” he says
testily.

“Won’t have to worry about vampires any time
soon!”

Simon chuckles. He’s more worried about his
own restraint. It would take more than the scent of garlic to keep
him from kissing her again.

They work side by side slicing and dicing all
the while he tries to keep from bumping into her. She chit-chats
about the new foal in the barn, and he tries not to think about the
softness of her mouth when he’d kissed her.

Simon adds ground ginger and pulverized and
dried horseradish root to a five-gallon bucket.

“I need the vinegar, Sam,” he says as he
places the rest of their ingredients into the bucket. She grabs the
jug from the counter and squats beside him.

“This stinks,” she says, wrinkling her pert
nose. “I mean really bad. I think I’d rather die than have to….
drink this? Is that what you’re making? Something that has to be
drunk?”

“Yes, but only a very small amount at a
time,” he says as he measures the apple cider vinegar into the
bucket with their other ingredients. “We’ll cut it with honey for
our patients this winter when the seasonal illnesses roll through.
Or any other sicknesses that we might need antibiotics for.”

A few years ago when he and Doc started
compounding their own medicinal cures in bulk, they
sawed
an old wooden curtain rod in half,
leaving the round finial attached. The bucket and
rod
act as an oversized mortar and
pestle system. Simon now uses the
fat
end to smash and mince the malodorous concoction into
smithereens.

“We’ll cover this when I’m done and
leave it for about a week to cure. Then we’ll strain it through
a
cheesecloth
,” he tells
Sam,
who has already started cleaning up
their mess.

“What if it doesn’t work?” she asks.

“It will,” he assures Sam, looks up, and
gives her a grin. “This may be a new remedy, but it still has all
of the antibiotic qualities in it that we need to cure or treat
most sicknesses and wounds.”

“You had me until you said the wound part,”
Sam says on a rotten chuckle. “Nobody’s gonna want to rub this on
themselves and smell like it. I’d rather get gangrene.”

“We’ll make it into a gel,” he explains.

Sam wrinkles her nose again, wags her finger,
and shakes her head. “No way, not rubbing it on any of my wounds.
That stuff could scare away Dracula himself.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you turn it
down,” Simon says jokingly. “I’ll shower you
in
it head to toe if that’s what it takes to keep
you from getting sick.”

“Ew, Simon. No way! No thanks,” she
says
with
a laugh.

“Yep, I sure will,” he teases further,
enjoying the sound of Sam’s musical laughter.

“Then I’m making it my mission to look for
some Tylenol or Neosporin when we get to Nashville,” she jokes.

Her comment makes his jesting mood dissipate.
“Sam, I really think you should stay here.”

“I need to go,” she says without missing a
beat. “I’m your partner, and your sister is Cory’s. I have to go.
If I don’t, then you guys won’t be able to split up, and it will
take way longer to get anything done.”

Her no-nonsense reasoning is causing him to
lose patience. He knows that without John approving a change,
Samantha is going with him. He grinds his teeth and screws the
plastic lid onto the top of the bucket to contain the smell. They
take turns washing the stench of onions, garlic and herbs from
their hands in the stainless steel sink. Sue’s herbal soap has
antibacterial components in it like citrus oils and lye. It’s the
same soap they use to scrub up before treating patients.

“Reagan could go,” Simon proposes and
then feels
bad
for even doing
so.

“Simon, no way,” Sam says quickly. “She has
Jacob. That’s not fair.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry I even suggested it.
That was stupid of me.”

Simon feels an enormous amount of guilt for
considering Reagan for a run. She’s a mom now. She has
responsibilities, and unlike him, she’s an actual doctor that the
whole town relies upon for healthcare. He carries the heavy bucket
to the back of the shed and stores it in a dark corner behind the
shelving units. Sam follows him.

“It’s ok,” Sam says and lays her
hand
against
his
forearm.

This feels just like the day at the clinic
when he’d kissed her. They are back in a darkened area of a medical
clinic surrounded by tall shelving. This time, however, Reagan is
nowhere in sight to interrupt him should he take advantage of Sam
again. Simon swallows hard.

“You just have a big heart, Simon,” Sam
praises. “Nobody could ever fault you for that. But don’t worry,
‘kay? I’ve gone with you guys before. I went last year with Derek
and then again with John and Kelly, remember? I’ll be
fine
. Really.”

Simon stares down at her hand a moment before
she takes it away.

“You’ll keep me safe, too,” she says
so
easily
. “I know you will. And
I’ll watch your back just like when you and Cory go together. I
won’t let anything happen to you, either.”

Simon chuffs through his nose and
squints his eyes at her. She’s being so serious that he doesn’t
want to laugh at her. The idea of tiny, doll-like Samantha
protecting him seems far-fetched. And he’s hardly concerned about
his own neck. Her skinny, delicate one is the bigger issue. He
allows his gaze to drop from her face to her thin neck. It’s
an enormous mistake on
his part. He
watches an artery pump blood for a second before forcing his eyes
away.

“We’re hitting the hospital over there and
some of the places where I might find medicines and supplies for
the clinic,” he tells her, trying to change the subject while
fidgeting from foot to foot.

“Sounds good,” she says, staring up into his
eyes.

“Then we’ll try to join back up with
Cory and Paige for the night somewhere or if we can’t get to them,
we’ll stay in separate areas of the cities until we can meet up the
next day. We probably won’t make the hike to the cabin since we
don’t have horses. We’ll stash the car and move on foot,” he says.
Simon has no idea why he’s going over any of this with her other
than that talking is keeping his mind occupied. If only he could
give his eyes something to look at and keep busy with instead of
gawking at her lovely face, graceful neck, and slim figure.
The
cool
air this morning has
kissed her cheeks to a dark pink.

“Simon, are still mad at me?” she asks and
drops her eyes to his chest.

Her question takes him by surprise, “Um…”

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” she says,
twisting her hands in front of her.

Her blue eyes lift to his and
melt
his insides, “Sam, I could never be
mad at you. That would be like being mad at Arianna or
Jacob.”

“What?” she asks irritably, glaring at him.
“I’m not a little kid, Simon. For goodness sake, I’m going on a
raid to a dangerous city with you. I’d hardly say I’m like one of
the kids.”

“Sorry,” he
mumbles
, wishing he could get out of the tight
space and leave the shed.

“I… I kind of have a favor to ask. That’s why
I wanted to know if you were still mad.”

“I am not now nor was I before angry with
you, Samantha,” Simon tells her and rests his right hand on the
shelf by his head. It’s better than slipping it behind her back and
pulling her close.

His answer must amuse her because she
chuckles at him, which makes Simon frown with the usual confusion
he feels around Sam.

“I want to know if you’ll… if you’d…”

“What is it? What do you want? Just ask, Sam.
You know I can’t usually tell you no, so whatever it is I’m sure
you’ll get your way,” he admits, causing her to smile. With her
big, expressive eyes, her pert nose and dark hair, Sam looks like a
Disney princess character when she smiles.

“Good to know,” she grins deviously.

“You already knew that,” he teases.

Sam just smiles at him coyly. Her smile
disappears quickly.

“I just… lately I’ve been thinking about them
a lot, you know?” she regards him with expectation and rubs her
forehead.

He knows exactly what she means. He’s the
only one in the McClane clan that she’ll talk to about her family,
her real family.

“Have you been drawing…?”

She cuts him off with a wave of her hand and
says, “No, no, nothing dark. I’ve just been thinking about them.
Would you take me to see them, Simon?”

He’s taken her before. She won’t let anyone
else go with them to visit her family’s gravesites behind her
former home.