The First Love Cookie Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

teacher’s aide popped her head in the room. “Officer Walker?” Her voice sounded tense, strained.
    “Yes?”
    “Could you come with me please, sir?”
    Alarm swept through him, but Travis tried not to show it. “Sure. I’ll be right with you.”
    “You need to come with me right now.”
    Okay, now he was really scared. “Good-bye, class, study hard.” He raised a hand and followed the teacher’s aide from the classroom. “What’sup?” he asked once the door had closed behind them.
    “It’s Jazzy,” the woman said.
    That was all Travis had to hear. He fisted his hands, felt his pulse spurt adrenaline through his veins. He pivoted on his heel, headed for his daughter’s classroom, the teacher’s aide trailing behind him.
    “What happened?” he barked at her over his shoulder.
    “She was running—“
    He stopped dead, whirled on her. “Jazzy was running?”
    “She did it behind our backs, we were—“
    “It’s your job to watch out for her,” he snarled, rage exploding inside him. “You know her medical condition.”
    Anxiety scrunched up the woman’s features. “You’re right, but Jazzy is headstrong and independent …”
    He had no time for this woman or for anger or blame. His daughter needed him. Jazzy was the most important thing. Dismissing the teacher’s aide, he strode toward Jazzy’s classroom.
    “Um … Mr. Walker … she’s in the school nurse’s office. I’ll show you.”
    He knew where the school nurse’s office was. He’d been there more times than he could count. He barreled toward his destination, pushed through the door without knocking. To hell with civility. “Jazzy!”
    “Daddy.” Her voice was weak, wheezy.
    He shoved aside the white curtain mounted on an overhead track. Jazzy lay on the table, her lipsthat familiar dusky color, her blue eyes wide with fear, a thin green oxygen cannula snaking from her tiny nose. A nurse in pink scrubs, with brown teddy bears on them, stood beside Jazzy checking her pulse. Travis’s heart constricted.
    His daughter held out her frail arms to him and he crossed the remaining space with one long-legged purposeful stride and scooped her up into his arms. “Call Dr. Adams and have him meet us at the hospital,” he barked.
    “I—” the nurse said.
    “Just do it,” he cut her off.
    The nurse nodded and hustled to the phone on her desk while Travis gently removed the nasal can-nula from Jazzy’s nose and then carried her toward the door. Her breathing was quick, raspy, with an elongated whistling noise at the end of each shaky exhalation. A familiar sound he knew all too well. She sounded like someone who’d smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years.
    He held her tight, could feel her delicate little arm bones through the softness of her skin. God, she was so vulnerable, his tough little angel. Travis stalked from the school, headed toward the brown, extended cab pickup truck that the state of Texas issued to him as game warden.
    “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he murmured, his mouth pressed close to her ear. “Daddy’s here.”
    She clung to him, buried her face against his neck. He could smell her little-girl scent, full of sweetness and innocence. She might be eight years old, but she barely weighed forty pounds. He strapped her into her car seat and then hustled around to the driver’s side. He drove as fast as hedared, torn between getting her to the emergency room and not alarming her.
    Jazzy was very sensitive and quickly picked up on the emotions of those around her. They’d been through this so many times that it was almost routine. But he could not afford to view her illness as ordinary. Each labored breath that his daughter took could be her last.
    A memory hit him then, sharp and poignant, the way it often did when his daughter was in acute respiratory distress. He thought about his mother, Penelope Walker, who had suffered from severe asthma throughout most of his childhood. It had