Читать книгу Trading Secrets - Christine Flynn, Christine Flynn, Mary J. Forbes - Страница 8

T he wipers of Jenny’s sporty four-year-old sedan whipped across the windshield, their beat as steady as the drum of rain on the roof and the road in front of her. Though she kept her focus on what she could see in the beam of her headlights, her awareness was on the man occupying her passenger seat.

She really wished she hadn’t said what she had about the detectives.

“You said you live in the last house on Main,” she reminded him, desperately trying to think of how to fix her little faux paux. “Do you mean Doc Wilson’s old house?”

“That’s the one. He and his wife retired to Florida.”

“Doc Wilson’s wife always wanted to live in Florida,” she mused. “I just hadn’t realized they’d gone.”

She glanced over, found him watching her, glanced back.

“By the way, I’m sorry I doubted you back there. About being the doctor, I mean. Since my mom moved, I don’t hear much of anything about Maple Mountain.”

“Forget it.” Absently rubbing his shoulder, he distractedly added, “I just appreciate the help.”

She lifted her chin, kept her eyes straight ahead.

In the rain and dark, she couldn’t tell if anything had changed along the narrow two-lane road into town. She doubted anything had. Little had changed in the twenty-two years she’d lived there before moving on herself. So it wasn’t likely that much had changed in the four years she’d been gone. Teenagers probably still stole their first kisses under the old covered bridge. The old men who gathered to play checkers at the general store, probably still discussed the weather and farm reports with the same laconic zeal they always had, and regarded anything invented after 1950 as newfangled. The good-hearted-but-opinionated church ladies probably still baked pies for every function. Every season and major holiday was celebrated with a festival or a parade on the town’s four-block-long main street. And with the way the locals loved to talk, something the disturbing man beside her had noted himself, there was rarely such a thing as a secret.

The uneasiness she felt turned to dread.

There was so much about all that had happened to her that she didn’t want anyone here to know. And Dr. Greg Reid already knew part of it.

Her tires hummed on wet pavement as she passed the white scrollwork sign that let visitors know they’d arrived—Welcome To Maple Mountain, Population 704.

“You should come by the clinic in the morning and let Bess check you over.”

He had a delicious voice. Deep, rich, like honey laced with smoke and brandy. Without pain tightening it, it also held authority, and thoughtfulness.

“Why?”

“Since you didn’t want to deal with the police, I assume you didn’t bother going to a hospital, either.”

She gripped the wheel a little tighter, forced herself to smile. “All I have are bruises.”

“Your pupils looked fine, but I should have taken a look at your forehead.”

He’d checked her pupils? “It’s just a scrape. Nothing a little makeup won’t cover.” Fervently wanting to forget that morning’s incident, wishing he would, too, she cut a quick glance toward him. “You’re the one who needs to be checked over. You could have broken something. Or maybe you hit your head and didn’t even realize it.”

His only concern had been his arm. Considering the pain he’d been in, and the intense and rather intimate relief they’d shared once his body parts had been aligned, she hadn’t thought to be concerned about anything else herself.

She turned her attention to the street, mostly so she wouldn’t hit the truck parked in front of the general store, partly because thinking about how he’d sagged against her did strange things to the pit of her stomach.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to St. Johnsbury?”

“Positive. I’ll leave a message for Bess to stop by when she gets in.”

“But what if she’s late? If you did hit your head, you shouldn’t be by yourself. Is there anyone home to take care of you?”

“I live alone, but I’m fine. Honest.”

She sighed. “Are you right-handed or left?”

“Right.”

It was his left arm he was holding, even with the sling. “At least you can undress yourself,” she concluded, “but I’m still worried about your head.”

She was worried about him.

“You don’t need to be,” Greg assured her, unwillingly touched that she was. “I only hurt my shoulder. You’re the one who hit her head.”

She went quiet at that.

The storm and the dark had cleared the street of summer tourists. Cars lined the block in front of Dora’s Diner and the video-and-bookstore seemed to be doing a fair business. Something appeared to be going on at the community church, too. The square white building was surrounded by vehicles, and its simple spire was lit and gleaming like the blade of a sword. But the end of the street was nearly deserted as they left Maple Mountain’s not-so-booming commercial district and passed two blocks of tidy little homes.

Greg’s was the last house on the right before the road through town disappeared into a forest of birch, maple and evergreen trees. It was a comfortable old place with a porch that wrapped around three sides and, as far as Greg was concerned, more rooms than a bachelor needed. But use of it had come with his contract with the community, and he could walk to the clinic. Because of its size he’d also been able to convert the pantry into a darkroom so he had something to do during the long winter nights.

He should have left the porch light on, he thought. Without it, with the rain, he couldn’t even see his front steps.

Jenny Baker seemed to notice that, too. In the green glow of the dashboard lights, he saw her hesitate only a moment before she reached to turn off the engine of her cramped little car. “Stay put for a minute. I’ll get the door and get you inside.”

“You’ve done enough. Thank you,” he quickly added, softening his abruptness. “But I can take it from here.”

Cold, wet, and with the steady ache reminding him that his arm had been literally ripped from its socket, getting inside was exactly what Greg wanted to do. He wanted a hot shower. He wanted to get ice packs on his shoulder before the swelling got worse than it was.

He had no intention, however, of further imposing on the intriguing and rather mysterious woman now turning toward him. He didn’t want to be intrigued by her. He didn’t want to think about what he’d felt when she’d held him. He didn’t want her on his mind at all. There were questions about her that begged to be answered, but he didn’t want to be that interested.

“Are you sure?” she asked, the concern he’d heard in her voice now evident in her face.

“Positive. Thanks.”

Jenny opened her mouth, closed it again. He wasn’t simply being stubborn. He didn’t want her help anymore. And if didn’t want it, she wasn’t about to impose it on him.

She couldn’t, however, let him go without clearing up one little detail.

He’d already turned to open his door.

“Wait,” she said, splaying her fingers over his thigh to stop him. Drawing back her hand when his glance shot toward it, she curled her fingers into her palm.

“I need to ask you not to say anything about that remark I made. The one about having dealt enough with detectives.

“As long as you’ve lived in Maple Mountain,” she continued, not sure which made her more uncomfortable, him or her circumstances, “you have to know that people love to talk…and I’d really rather that didn’t get around. That oath you took says you’re not supposed to repeat what you hear, anyway.”

“That oath?”

“The Hippocratic one. You’re supposed to keep what people tell you confidential.”

Greg wasn’t quite sure what he heard in the quiet tones of her voice, desperation or defensiveness. Either way, he couldn’t deny his quick curiosity why either would be there.

“My silence is only required of doctor-patient relationships.” He tipped his head, studied the plea in her lovely features. “In this case, I was the patient.”

“Please…”

“Are you here because you’re in trouble with the law?”

“No. No,” she repeated, more grateful than he could imagine that she no longer had to deal with people with badges who refused to believe a word she said. “I was completely cleared. So, please, just keep what I said to yourself. Okay?”

Completely cleared of what? he was about to ask when a blinding white light cut him off.

A vehicle came to a stop behind them. The dual beams of its headlights filled the car, causing Jenny to flinch as the light reflected off the rearview mirror.

The solid slam of a door preceded the appearance of another beam from a flashlight a moment before a black gloved fist tapped on the window on the driver’s side.

Jenny rolled the window down. Rain pounding, she saw Deputy Joe Sheldon lean down to see who was inside.

Clear plastic covered the local ex-football hero’s State Trooper-style hat. A yellow raincoat hid his uniform. In between, sharp eyes darted from her to Greg and back again.

Sharpness turned to recognition.

“Jenny Baker,” he said, speaking in the unhurried, deliberate way of a native of rural Vermont. His craggy face broke into a grin, calling attention to the hook-shaped scar at the corner of his mouth and making him look as if he might ruffle her hair the way he’d done years ago when he’d dated her older sister. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m moving back, Joe.”

“You don’t say.” Rain dripped from the brim of his hat. “Didn’t think you’d be one of the ones to do that. Huh,” he grunted. “Then, that must be your stuff I saw in your grandma’s place. Thought we had ourselves a squatter.” Satisfied with his conclusion, he leaned lower so he could look past her. “Say, Doc. I saw your Tahoe in the ditch out by Widow Maker.” He took in the towel, the way it was pinned at his shoulder and the wet shirt lying in his lap. “You okay?”

“I am now. Thanks, Joe.”

“Gave me a scare there, Doc. Looked all over the place for you when I saw you weren’t in your car. Thought you might have taken shelter at the old Baker place,” he told him, explaining how he’d come across Jenny’s few remaining possessions. “Just came by here to see if you’d made it back.”

His glance narrowed on the makeshift sling. “Need any help getting inside?”

Jenny looked toward Greg. He didn’t want her help, but there was no need for him to refuse Joe’s.

“You might get his front door for him,” Jenny suggested.

“Not a problem,” the deputy replied and headed around to pull open the car door for him, too.

Jenny was worried.

Greg hadn’t said that he would keep quiet. After he’d accepted Joe’s offer to help him into his house, he hadn’t said anything to her, except to thank her again for everything she’d done.

He’d been profuse with his thanks. What she’d wanted was his promise.

As she walked the block from the diner to the clinic the next morning, under skies of blessedly brilliant blue, she still didn’t know which bothered her more. That he hadn’t promised, or that he had so obviously preferred someone else’s help over hers after what she’d been through with him.

To be fair, she supposed she couldn’t blame him for not wanting anything else to do with her. All he really knew about her was where she currently lived, that she’d recently been involved with detectives and that she was a tad desperate to keep him quiet about that.

A knot of quiet anxiety had taken up permanent residence in her stomach. With her hand over it, she smoothed the front of the cocoa-colored blouse tucked into her beige slacks and climbed the four steps leading into the white clapboard building that had housed Maple Mountain’s only clinic for over a hundred years. She had come home to start over. No matter what Dr. Greg Reid’s impression of her, she didn’t want him making that start any harder than it was already.

The screen door opened with a squeak a moment before a bell over the white wooden door gave a faint tinkle.

Six dark wood chairs lined one wall of the tidy, pale-green reception room. Only one was occupied. A teenage mother—one of the McGraw girls from the looks of her flaming-red hair—sat with a listless toddler, soothing the child with pictures from an office copy of Parenting magazine.

“Hi,” said Jenny on her way to the reception window.

The girl smiled and went back to pointing at pictures.

From inside the front office, a very pregnant brunette in a light-blue scrub smock and ponytail turned to see who had just come in.

“May I help you?” she asked, an instant before her eyes widened. “Jenny Baker!”

Pressing her hand to the small of her back, thirty-something Rhonda Pembroke turned to get a better look at the girl she hadn’t seen in four years. “Bess told me this morning that you were back. And Lois Neely was in here not two hours ago sayin’ you’ve moved into your grandma’s old place.”

Word had definitely preceded her—which meant at least one of the two men she’d encountered during her first hours home had wasted no time spreading it. Jenny’s money was on Joe as the culprit. Lois worked as dispatcher at the sheriff’s office, and Joe’s name had come up when Jenny had been met with virtually the same greeting at the diner an hour ago.

“Are you really going to restore your grandma’s house?”

Jenny’s smile faltered. She had no idea who had assumed such a thing, though she could see where someone might take it for granted. No one in her right mind would live there without redoing the place. Restoration, however, would cost a fortune she would never have.

“It certainly needs work,” she replied, deliberately hedging as she nodded toward the woman’s girth. “How are you and your family doing? Is this your third?”

“Fourth. I had a little girl while you were gone. But you didn’t come by to hear about me,” she insisted. “Who are you here to see? The doctor?” Her glance made a quick sweep of the bruises barely visible beneath the makeup on Jenny’s jaw. “Or Bess?”

Jenny felt herself hesitate. Being Greg’s receptionist and office manager, Rhonda would know that he’d been hurt. He might even have told her that she’d helped him, and the woman simply assumed that she was there to see how he was doing. Which she was. Partly.

It was whatever else he might have said that worried her.

“The doctor,” she replied. “Is he available?”

“He’s with a patient. But give me a minute.” Turning from the desk below the wide window, she dropped her hand from her back. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

A large bulletin board hung by the door that separated the waiting area from the exam rooms. Wanting to take her mind off her growing uneasiness, Jenny glanced over a poster for a senior citizens’ exercise classes at the local community center. She had no idea why the local seniors needed a formal exercise routine. Most of those she’d known growing up got plenty of exercise working their gardens and gathering berries in the woods in the summer and shoveling snow and snowshoeing in the winter. The people in the North Woods seemed to be of hardier stock than those she’d encountered in the city.

She was wondering if she could pick up a few extra dollars this winter shoveling snow for those who weren’t so hardy when the door suddenly opened.

There was a little more white in Bess Amherst’s tight crop of salt-and-pepper curls than Jenny had remembered, and the crow’s feet around her narrowed hazel eyes seemed to have fanned a little farther toward her temples, but she hadn’t otherwise changed since Jenny had last seen her. The midfifties, suffer-no-whiners nurse practitioner still wore her reading glasses on a silver chain around her neck, still preferred pastel plaid shirts and elastic-waist pants to the nurse’s scrub uniform Dr. Wilson had never been able to get her to wear, and still wore white athletic shoes—which more or less matched her short lab jacket.

Stylish, she wasn’t.

Interested, she always was.

Jenny had known Bess since she was a child.

“You’re too thin,” the woman immediately pronounced, hands on her hips. “I don’t know why you girls go off to the city and come back looking like waifs. Everybody’s always bragging about what great restaurants they have in Boston, but seems to me you girls never eat in ’em. And your hair.” Had it not been for the twinkle in her eyes, Bess might have looked as disapproving as she sounded. “How big-city you look with it all short and wispy like that.” She shook her head as she stepped forward, shoes squeaking. “Let me see that forehead of yours.”

Before Jenny could even say hello herself, Bess nudged back the sweep of her dark bangs. She smelled faintly of antibacterial soap, rubbing alcohol and—vanilla. “The doctor said he didn’t get a chance to look at that,” she said, frowning, as she concentrated on the two-inch sidewalk burn above Jenny’s right eye. “What have you put on it?”

“Nothing. I just dabbed at it with soap and water.”

“Well, you need to keep your hair away from it. And it needs ointment. Come on back and I’ll get you some. And don’t go putting any makeup on it. Not until it heals. It doesn’t look like it’ll scar now, but it will if you get it infected.”

Her shoes gave another chirp as she turned. After waiting for Jenny to pass, she closed the door behind her and glanced down the wide hallway to where Rhonda headed toward them, her hand at her back.

“How’s her head?” Rhonda asked.

“Just an abrasion. I’m going to give her some salve to put on it.”

“I told Dr. Reid you’re here,” she said to Jenny. Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper as she moved past. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to come home.”

Bess turned into a white room lined with black counters and lab equipment and pointed Jenny to a chrome-legged stool. A faint frown pinched her mouth. “She must have overheard the doctor tell me he wanted me to check on you. He felt bad that he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to check you himself.”

“He wanted you to check on me?”

“That’s the kind of man he is. If he thinks a person needs help, he sees that she gets it.” Her shrug looked vaguely preoccupied as she pulled open one of the dozens of drawers and motioned again for Jenny to sit. “Considering the pain he had to be in, I’m surprised he was thinking at all. Good that you were there for him.”

Taking out what she was after, she closed the drawer, collected a small packet, a gauze pad and paper tape and walked to where Jenny stood by the stool. Since Jenny hadn’t sat, she proceeded to work on her where she stood. “Hold your bangs back.”

“Bess, you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do,” she said, and pushed them back herself to dab at the scrape with the orange-brown pad from the packet.

Jenny didn’t know what was on it, only that it smelled awful and stung like the devil.

“It’s just too bad it took something like this to bring you to your senses and move back to where it’s safe. You’re lucky that hoodlum didn’t have something worse on his mind.”

Paper crackled as she opened a gauze pad. Removing the lid from a little silver tube, she looped a coil of ointment onto the pad and moved Jenny’s finger to hold it in place when she positioned it above her eye.

As desperately as Jenny wanted to leave the events of the past month behind, it seemed easiest to let the women assume she had come home only because she hadn’t felt secure where she’d been. The older residents of Maple Mountain had always regarded cities as dens of iniquity that lured and swallowed up their young people. Having one of their own back, battered and bruised, undoubtedly vindicated the attitude.

All Jenny cared about was that Greg apparently hadn’t mentioned her comment about having been cleared by the detectives. If he had, the outspoken nurse practitioner would have already demanded to know what he’d been talking about. Bess had been good friends with her mother.

“Keep this covered.” Deftly applying strips of tape, Bess secured the pad in place. With that done, she handed her the silver tube, a handful of gauze pads and the tape roll. “Use the salve twice a day.” The woman’s friendly scolding suddenly softened. “Welcome home, Jenny.”

Bess often had the manner of a field marshal, but Jenny knew there wasn’t a more sincere soul on the planet than the woman now patting her on the shoulder.

Jenny smiled back, accepting the welcome with guilty grace.

“Thank you,” she murmured, torn between the comfort of a friendly and familiar face and feeling like a total fraud. “And thank you for all this,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t appear terribly ungrateful as she held out her filled hands. “But I really don’t think I need it.” She couldn’t afford it even if she did. She had exactly $46.08 to last until she got her first paycheck—which, if she’d calculated correctly, would be less than two hundred dollars before taxes. “Can you just bill me for taking care of my head?”

“You do need that,” Bess informed her. Taking what Jenny held, she stuffed it into the small purse hanging by a thin strap from Jenny’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t come for an examination. Rhonda said you’re here to see the doctor. I imagine you’re wanting to know if he’s all right after helping him out last night. But that,” she said, pointing at Jenny’s forehead, “is a nasty scrape and it needs to heal properly. And don’t you worry about a bill,” she admonished. “All I did was slap a bandage on you. That antibiotic is a sample. No charge. Now, come on. You can wait for Dr. Reid in his office.”

Bess obviously knew all about the help Jenny had given her boss. Because she did know about it, and because Jenny asked if he would be all right, the briskly efficient woman confided that she had X-rayed and wrapped his shoulder herself last evening and that he would be just fine in a couple of weeks. She offered nothing else, though, before she ushered Jenny into the office near the end of the hall, told her the doctor wouldn’t be long and closed the door behind her.

Jenny stared at the carved panel of dark wood. She hoped desperately that she’d done the right thing coming here.

Wishing the nerves in her stomach would stop jumping, something she’d been wishing now for weeks, she slowly faced the neat and comfortable space. Across from her, the sunshine spilling through the slatted wooden window blinds cut a pattern of shadow and light over a maple pedestal table and four bow back chairs. A coffee mug sat on the table near stacks of open medical books. At the other end of the room, a large maple desk sat in front of a wall of bookcases and a hanging fern.

Between the warm woods, the colorful braided rug beneath the table and the old furniture, the room looked much as it always had. Quaint and rather charming in a reassuring, old-fashioned sort of way. It was only the laptop computer on the table by the books, the dish of peppermint candies on the painfully tidy desk and the wall of photos and certificates that gave any hint of the new doctor’s personality. If she were pressed for a quick assessment, she would say that the new doctor was far neater than the old one had been. More open to technology. And that he apparently possessed a sweet tooth.

That small weakness would have made her smile had she not felt so anxious. Too restless to stand still, wondering how long she would be left to pace, she moved toward the desk with its single file neatly centered on the blotter and pens standing upright like good little soldiers in their holder. As she did, she absently pushed back her bangs, and promptly bumped into the bandage Bess had more or less slapped onto her forehead.

With everything else she’d had on her mind, the abrasion and her bruises truly had been of the least consequence. In no time the soreness would go away. The scrape and bruises would heal. The other damage done to her life felt infinitely more immediate and would take far longer to remedy.

She couldn’t believe Greg had actually asked Bess to check on her. With her faith in the human species, men in particular, sorely shaken, she’d almost forgotten that every man wasn’t out just for himself.

That’s just the kind of man he is. If someone needs help, he sees that he gets it.

She let her hand fall. It had seemed so much easier to ignore what had happened to her yesterday morning without the chunk of white gauze that undoubtedly made the little injury that much more noticeable. It had been as if by ignoring the abrasion and bruises, she could ignore the incident. She knew she was playing ostrich, but she simply didn’t have the mental energy to deal with the assault and thwarted robbery on top of everything else. Not when she was trying so desperately to focus her energy on something—anything—positive.

Needing to focus on something positive now, she thought about Dora Schaeffer. Dora, bless her, had given her back her old part-time job at the café. She was feeling exceedingly grateful to the older woman when she turned to the wall beside her.

The ivory-colored wall was covered with a collage of photos. Many were large, matted photographs of the area’s flaming fall foliage, stands of bare birch trees in pristine fields of snow, apple trees blossoming in the spring. Most were photos of the local Little League team and individual players with gap-toothed grins. Snapshots of babies, some held by their proud parents, obliterated a bulletin board. A child’s handmade Valentine, its paper lace doily curling, dangled from one corner.

A black-framed diploma hung near the edge of the wall. Its placement by a state medical board certificate and a medical license seemed almost incidental, as if it were displayed only because convention or law required it.

It seemed that Gregory Matthias Reid had been awarded his medical degree from Harvard.

She was definitely impressed. A Harvard education was not only academically challenging to obtain, it cost a fortune. She knew. She’d heard brokers she’d worked with complaining about it, either because they were paying it off for themselves or their offspring.

His alma mater surprised her, too. The Harvard men she’d met wouldn’t have spent more than a weekend in this remote and rural community, and then only for one of the quaint local festivals. There were no ski lodges nearby, no reliable cell phone service, no latte machines, martini bars or night life. But then the only Harvard graduates she’d known were hungry MBAs clawing their way to the top of the shark tank. Those who swore to beat the stock market undoubtedly possessed less compassion per gene than those who swore to beat injury and disease.

Shaking off her thoughts before they could move to one MBA in particular, her glance dropped to the shades of coral and orange in a small gold-framed photograph. The photo sat askew among the books and files jammed along the credenza. In it, the good doctor stood with a view of the Eiffel Tower at sunset in the distant background—and his arm around a drop-dead-gorgeous blonde.

The woman was tall, built like a model and had been blessed with long, corn-silk-colored hair that flew in the breeze. Jenny couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but her smile was wide, her teeth perfect. It wasn’t the perfection, however, that had Jenny picking up the picture. It was the air of utter self-assurance the woman seemed to exude.

With her own self-confidence having disappeared along with her life as she’d known it, Jenny was wondering if she would ever feel certain about anything again when the door opened and Greg walked in.