Читать книгу Under Montana Skies - Darlene Graham - Страница 10

WHILE LAURA DUNCAN was applying her strong skilled hands to his bare back, Adam had to make an effort not to feel what he was feeling, not to think what he was thinking.

It scared him, the effect this woman had had on him when he’d first seen her. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it hadn’t just been that she was attractive. She’d looked…special.

No woman had looked that way to him since Elizabeth.

Of course, the few women he’d seen since he’d decided to go into hiding up on Sixteen Mile Creek couldn’t be considered much of a sampling. The husky postwoman delivering a package, those matronly Mountain Home nurses, the elderly Katherine. Nice ladies. None of them a threat to his precious memories.

Laura’s hands kept bringing his attention back to her. He could hear her gentle breathing becoming more labored as she worked diligently. She’d made him sit in one of the straight-backed chairs, facing backward, and was rhythmically digging her thumb into a muscle that had felt like a burning knot only seconds ago.

“You have a trigger point here, where a tight muscle is crossing a nerve and compressing it. I’ll be sure to use moist heat packs on it before the next treatment.”

Yes, even from a distance this woman had looked singular, unique. Despite her faded jeans and that neon-orange sweatshirt with that dumb slogan—PHYSICAL THERAPISTS HAVE PATIENTS—she exuded a kind of elegance.

He had watched her unload her belongings from the hatchback of that faded red Toyota like a magician pulling stuff out of a hat. First had come her personal bags, surprisingly compact, then she’d heaved out a big rectangle that looked like a folding table. After that she’d struggled with a contraption that looked like the front half of a small bike, mounted on a stand.

Then a CD player, a pillow, a gym bag that seemed too heavy for a woman of her petite stature, and a large gift basket—what was that for?

Finally, she’d taken out the life-size doll she’d called a safety dummy. The thing was done up to resemble a sort of Raggedy Andy cowboy with a painted-on face, plaid shirt, battered black hat, even an old pair of boots at the end of stuffed denim legs.

“The passenger door leaks when it rains, so better to keep him inside,” she’d explained as she lugged the dummy up the porch steps. “Meet Ned.” She stopped in the doorway and flopped the white muslin “hand” at him.

Adam had given the thing a dubious frown, but he’d admired the way she’d managed to cheerfully haul it and everything else up the cabin steps and inside without emitting so much as a groan.

“I’ll set up the massage table tomorrow. We can manage without it today,” she’d explained.

Now she was flattening her warm palm against the injured area, applying a gentle rotating pressure that seemed to pull the pain out. After a moment his eyes involuntarily closed with pure relief.

“Mr. Scott?”

His eyes flew open and looked straight into hers, only inches from his own. They were clear blue eyes, tilted up at the corners. No makeup.

“I’m afraid that was the pleasant part of the treatment.” She spoke softly, apologetically. Her voice was melodic and low, with a hint of a Southern drawl.

Her lips—moist-looking pink lips—parted, as if she was unsure about something. “Umm…for the next step, which may cause some discomfort, I’ll need you to be stretched out on your abdomen.”

She stood straight, swiveling at the waist as she scanned the room. Her breasts—perfect, very rounded—stretched the fabric of the sweatshirt.

“Where’s your bed?” she said.

Her gentle hands resumed massaging his shoulder muscles rhythmically while she waited for his answer.

Adam was so completely relaxed from what her hands were doing to him that he didn’t answer right away.

She leaned forward. “Mr. Scott? The bed?” she repeated.

He took a deep breath and reluctantly shoved himself to his feet. “Upstairs.”

He fumbled with his shirt, couldn’t find the armholes, gave up. “The, uh, stairs—” he pointed “—are in the kitchen.”

She followed as he led her through the door to the left of the fireplace, down a short dim hallway and into a bright kitchen at the back of the cabin.

NOW THIS ROOM is more like it, Laura thought.

Above the deep white enamel sink a solid bank of pleasingly spaced casement windows looked out on the verdant mountainside as it rose at an acute angle behind the cabin.

The varnished knotty-pine cabinets formed a cozy U around a waist-high chopping block. Thank God I’ll have plenty of ice, she thought when she noticed a large refrigerator, albeit an ancient rounded model, humming in the corner. An old wood-burning cast-iron cook stove completed the charming picture.

There were bird feeders outside the windows and fresh herbs growing on the sills in hand-thrown clay pots. A squat old teakettle stood on the stove, and a colorful quilt draped an antique rocker.

Adam jerked a leather strap on a plank door that groaned opened onto a narrow wooden staircase rising between two whitewashed walls. The stairs creaked as he clumped up them, Laura following.

At the top was an attic room that seemed even gloomier than the one below it. Laura’s first question when her eyes took in the enclosure with its bare-studded walls was going to be: Where is the bathroom?

She hadn’t noticed one downstairs. But when she glanced out the large floor-to-ceiling window set into the gable end by the stair landing, she saw her answer.

Below, at the end of a narrow footpath worn through the thick mountain grasses, looking like something from a picture postcard, sat a weathered gray structure. Complete with tin roof and quarter-moon hole in the door. An outhouse. Lovely.

She turned to her new patient and smiled bravely. “Please lie facedown on the bed with your shoulder near the edge. No pillow.”

He went to the heavy four-poster bed tucked up under the roof between two dormer windows, pulled off his boots, struggling with the left one, then did as she asked. Laura stood over him, warming some lotion between her palms and wondering how in the world she could continue. Though she’d admitted to herself right away that he was handsome, actually touching him had been a shock.

His skin was tanned, smooth and warm. As soon as she laid her hands on his firm back, she felt an electric thrill run through her fingertips, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Certainly a sensation unlike any she’d felt while touching any other patient.

She’d made it through the warm-up phase of the therapy on sheer professional concentration, but now she wondered if she could complete the painful stretches and manipulations necessary to remove scar tissue without communicating her nervousness to him.

He was lying very still, his back muscles relaxed and his breathing regular. Careful not to drip the lotion on his bare back, she leaned forward and realized the man had fallen asleep.

WHEN HE WOKE UP, he realized he was upstairs in his bed, but couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten there or what time it was. The sunlight slanting through the western dormers was low and golden, so it must be evening.

He was startled when he saw a cowboy slumping between the wall and the bed, denim legs sprawled straight out as if the man was drunk. Then he remembered.

The safety dummy. Her.

He’d been so relaxed when she’d finished the first part of the treatment that he’d trudged up the stairs in a fog, flopped on the bed the way she told him to and then?

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, flexed his injured arm and shoulder. It felt pretty good. And he felt fantastic. He hadn’t slept like this since…He heard voices downstairs. Doc and Katherine. The delicious spicy aroma of Katherine’s lentil soup drifted up. Was it dinnertime already?

Laughter.

Laura Duncan’s laughter.

Man. Having her here was going to be tough. Why did they have to send him a beautiful female physical therapist? It was hard enough looking at her, but when she touched him…

He couldn’t afford to let himself have these feelings. He needed a fully functioning arm and shoulder if he was going to do what he had to do, and he didn’t need to be distracted by the charms of his therapist. This arrangement would never work. Somehow he’d find another way to get his therapy done.

He pulled on his boots, which set off a twinge of pain in his shoulder, found his shirt, sneered at Ned while he buttoned it, then headed down the stairs.

The laughter fell off when he ducked his head around the narrow door at the foot of the stairs.

“Adam,” Katherine said kindly, and stepped away from the stove toward him. “Did you sleep well?”

“We were just getting acquainted with Laura.” Doc smiled up at him from the rocker.

Laura Duncan was standing at the chopping block, where the big gift basket sat with the cellophane all askew as if they’d been digging around in it. Evidently she’d been slicing chunks of cantaloupe into a crockery bowl, but now she stopped. She, too, was smiling. Everybody looked happy. He was glad to see Doc and Katherine enjoying themselves, but he had no intention of joining the party. For him there was no such feeling as happy. Only one thing drove his days and nights now. One thing. And Doc and Katherine knew that.

“Ms. Duncan, I need to speak to you. Alone.” He marched past her into the main room and waited with his boot propped on the big stone hearth.

IN THE KITCHEN, Laura looked from Doc to Katherine, confusion and embarrassment rendering her speechless. Things had been going so well!

She’d immediately liked Doc and Katherine Jones, lean white-haired retirees who wore Birkenstocks and sincere smiles. As soon as they’d walked in the back door of the cabin, their arms loaded with groceries, Laura had sensed their good humor, their kindness, their wisdom.

As the older couple bustled about putting away the food and chattering, it was obvious they felt at home and knew where everything was stored in the small kitchen. In no time they were all sipping steaming mugs of the herbal tea Laura had taken from her basket.

“We come up the mountain all the time,” Katherine explained. “We try to help Adam. I cook. Doc tends garden and does odd jobs.” She sighed. “Poor Adam—such a long recovery.”

After they’d helped Laura situate her gear, they’d given her a tour of the place—forty acres in the middle of a national forest. The last of such private land, Doc explained. The log cabin was built late in the nineteenth century, Katherine told her. The stone house, she said, was added later.

The whole time Adam Scott had slept soundly, and as the sun lowered, there had been an almost palpable peace about the breathtakingly beautiful old homestead.

Then, Laura thought, the minute the man stomped down the stairs, there was tension again.

Doc cleared his throat and scratched the top of his balding pate. “You’d better go see what he wants, Laura.”

“Yes,” Katherine added. “The soup will keep.” She turned to the stove and stirred it.

“Excuse me, then.” Laura laid aside the knife, wiped her hands on the apron Katherine had supplied and went into the main room.

She wished he’d lit a lamp. The pale evening light that filtered in through the lone unshuttered window didn’t allow her to see him, much less read his expression.

His voice rumbled, disembodied, from beside the fireplace. “We need to discuss this arrangement,” he said.

Laura dropped her hands to her sides and squared her shoulders. “Mr. Scott, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’m not the right therapist for you, after all. I’ll arrange some sort of replacement immediately and, of course, I won’t hold you to that contract.”

“What?” Even in the darkness, Laura sensed his sudden dismay.

She wished she had a plausible excuse. She’d tried to think of one all afternoon while he slept. But what could she say? I think I’m attracted to you, so it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to do your therapy? Though it was true, that sounded so unprofessional it made Laura cringe. “I’m leaving, but I’ll stay till I find a replacement.”

Wait a minute, Adam thought as he studied Laura in the dim light, she’s leaving? The strangest mix of emotions assailed him. He was a scientist, a logical man, but he couldn’t explain these feelings. Upstairs he’d been certain she should go, but the second she announced that she was leaving, his heart had started to beat faster and his breath had actually become short. She reached up self-consciously to adjust her tiny earring, making it glint, and he was struck again by how feminine she was, how even her slightest movement affected him.

“Ms. Duncan—” he found his voice “—I know I’ve been…less than cordial. But now that you’ll have the Joneses here with you…” His voice trailed off. He felt genuinely at a loss. When had his goal become keeping her here?

“Please, believe me, Mr. Scott, it’s not anything you’ve done,” Laura was saying. “And I like Doc and Katherine a lot. I just…I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes to complete your therapy. I know my limits.”

“But my arm and my shoulder—when I woke up they already felt better.” He stepped forward, feeling like a panic-stricken little boy. “I’ll double your salary.”

“Mr. Scott! I couldn’t let you do that.” Even in the darkening room, he could see her eyes widen with shock. “That would make my fee almost twenty-five thousand dollars!”

“I want you to stay,” he stated simply. She didn’t reply.

DINNER WAS QUIET, uneasy.

Katherine had lit a kerosene lamp in the middle of the table, which alleviated the gloom, and the food was delicious, especially Katherine’s homemade bread, but Laura sensed Adam’s tension. And the way Doc and Katherine addressed him—so kindly, so carefully, as if he was fragile and needed encouragement—bothered her. It also began to bother her that the Joneses had so easily given up their own beds for this man. What was their relationship? It seemed more than neighborly.

“Adam, aren’t you having any brown Betty? I made it just for you,” Katherine said.

“You don’t have to cook especially for me, Katherine. I told you that.”

After dinner Adam and Doc busied themselves setting up a bed for the Joneses in the small alcove on the other side of the fireplace. Laura didn’t ask where the bed had come from. This place was full of unanswered questions, some less important than others.

After she helped Katherine with the dishes, Laura washed up at the kitchen sink, visited the outhouse with a flashlight, then retreated to the attic.

It was Katherine, she assumed, who’d thoughtfully placed a vase of wildflowers on the chest and made up the bed with fresh sheets—his bed. Laura shook the thought off. She had to remain professional and detached.

She turned on the small bedside lamp and settled herself in, ready to pore over the thick sheaf of Adam Scott’s chart again.

“All right, Ned-o.” She glanced at the dummy propped against the wall. “Let’s see what this guy is all about.”

Adam Scott had had a long recovery indeed. Ruptured spleen. Pins in his broken shoulder. Months of surgeries, antibiotics, treatments. Yet he appeared to be in good physical condition, considering all his trauma.

Strengthening the arm and shoulder muscles and restoring complete range of motion would be the last painful step. Except…She thumbed through the chart, looking for psychotherapy referrals. None.

“Patient refuses” notations next to entries documenting offers of counseling and pastoral care made it clear that everyone who’d tried to help Adam Scott had been rebuffed. There was something disturbing about this case, about this man, something she couldn’t see just by reading his charts.

She flipped back to the biographical data. All the blanks were neatly filled in, and she’d read it all this morning. She sighed. “All the same, I reckon we got us a real pitiful one, Ned.”

She closed the chart, scooted under the thick down comforter and tossed her way into a restless sleep.

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT a sound, something softer than a moth’s wing, awakened her.

She opened her eyes a crack and without raising her head looked around the unfamiliar room. Rain pattered softly on the metal attic roof and the mountain air had grown so chilly that her nose felt cold.

Lightning flashed, and standing there, clearly silhouetted in the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the attic, was a man.

For an instant Laura was paralyzed by fear, as thunder rolled over the roof. Her heart raced.

Another bolt of lightning illuminated the figure. Though she couldn’t see clearly without her glasses, she recognized the build. Adam Scott. Of course. But what on earth…?

Waves of sheet lightning in the distance kept him constantly in view now. His pose was alert, still.

He faced the window, holding a pair of binoculars. They were bigger than normal, Laura thought, with a long extra piece in the middle, perhaps the night-vision kind she’d seen in thrillers.

She was about to let him know she was awake when, as the room darkened, she thought she saw him turn his head in her direction.

Laura lay stiffly in the dark, feeling that he was staring at her. The bed was under the eaves, cloaked in complete darkness, but even so, she wondered if he could feel her staring back.

She feigned sleep, waiting to see what he would do. After a long moment she heard him cross to the stairwell, cautiously, soundlessly. Just as he reached it, faint flashes of lightning in the distance made his silhouette visible. She watched him descend until finally his head disappeared below the landing.

Lightning continued to pulse in the distance, and she heard the sound of one stealthy creak as he opened the door at the bottom of the stairs.

The whole thing gave Laura a roaring case of the creeps.

THE NEXT MORNING she awoke before the sun peeked over the mountain. She padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor to gaze out the window onto the dewy green expanse of meadow between the cabin and the outhouse. What had he been looking at last night?

Doc was hiking stiffly up the misty path. When he spotted Laura standing in the window, he raised his arm and gave her a jaunty salute.

Everything below looked normal. So idyllic and beautiful, in fact, that she could hardly believe the unsettling incident last night had happened.

Beyond the meadow, Sixteen Mile Creek sparkled in the deep valley, the narrow road beside it winding lazily down, finally intersecting with a bigger road. The view from this window clearly showed the route up to Adam Scott’s property—the only route. He must have been checking that. But why?

Shivering slightly, she slipped into her plaid robe and slippers and made her way gingerly down the creaky stairs, concerned that she might awaken Katherine.

But Katherine was already bustling around the kitchen.

The fire crackling in the old stove, the eggs gently boiling in a pan, the teakettle steaming, all made the small room feel toasty warm and inviting. Laura hated to venture out into the chilly morning, but she needed to make a trip to the outhouse. After she returned, she started to wash her hands at the sink.

“Oh, use the basin, dear.” Katherine suggested. “That pipe water is freezing.” Katherine poured hot water from the kettle and cooler water from an old-fashioned pitcher into a matching basin. Laura submerged her hands in the warm water, then washed her face with the glycerin soap Katherine had provided, marveling at how this primitive setting seemed to enhance the simple pleasures.

When she was finished washing, she accepted a warm bran muffin and a fragrant mug of tea from Katherine.

“There’s a small jar of strawberry preserve in my basket,” Laura offered.

“No!” Katherine exclaimed. “You don’t need to use the things from your basket.”

“But I want to.”

“Well, I make gallons of cherry jelly every year.” Katherine reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a pint mason jar and unscrewed the lid. Then she opened a drawer and produced an ornate silver condiment spoon. All the homey touches in the kitchen were likely this older woman’s doing.

“Thank you.” Laura took the jelly, thinking how much nicer her stay would be with this lovely woman around.

“No trouble.” Katherine smiled. “By the way, Doc and I are strict vegetarians. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll do the cooking while we’re here.”

Laura took a bite of the muffin—heavenly. “Mind?” she said, and swallowed. “I’m a vegetarian, too!”

Katherine’ s smile grew wider. “Why don’t you sit down on that stool?” She pointed at a well-worn bar stool that looked hand-hewn. “We can chat while I finish filling these hummingbird feeders.”

While Katherine measured a batch of red nectar into a large bowl and slowly stirred the mixture, the two women talked about ordinary things.

How well Laura had slept: “Pretty well,” she hedged. “It’s so very quiet up here.”

Where she came from originally: “Texas—Dallas. But I could never go back. So hot. So hectic.”

Where Doc and Katherine came from: “Seattle. Doc isn’t a medical doctor, you know. He’s a botanist.”

How the older couple had long dreamed of retiring up on Sixteen Mile Creek: “Because there is no more beautiful place on earth.”

Laura had to agree. “Where’s your house?”

“Oh, quite a distance back down the road. It takes a good thirty minutes to get there, but one can go faster in a canoe when the creek’s high. There’s also the shortcut—nothing more than a rough logging road. I don’t recommend it to the uninitiated.”

When Katherine showed no signs of volunteering any information about Adam Scott, Laura decided to ask.

“How long have you known Mr. Scott?”

“Oh, many years.” Katherine smiled as she used a little funnel to fill the feeder.

This seemed to Laura a cryptic answer. She tried again.

“What, exactly, does he do for a living?”

“Oh, he doesn’t like to talk about that much.” Katherine screwed the lid on the feeder, carefully turned it over and held it up by its chain, examining her handiwork. “All done,” she said cheerfully.

“And Mrs. Scott? Did you know her?”

Katherine dropped the hummingbird feeder onto its side, and as the sticky cherry-colored liquid gurgled out, the woman did nothing to stop it. She touched her gnarled fingers to her heart and paled, staring at Laura while the mess ran over the side of the cabinet top and onto the floorboards.

“Oh, dear,” Laura said as she jumped off her stool and righted the feeder. “Let me help you clean that up.”

Katherine swung her gaze to the red liquid dripping at her feet, but still she didn’t move.

“Did I say something wrong?” Laura asked gently as she snapped off a handful of paper towels and started soaking up the puddle.

“No.” At last Katherine seemed to come to herself. “No, dear. You didn’t.” She turned toward the sink and ran water over a dishrag. She twisted the rag, wrung out the water, then started furiously mopping up the mess on the counter-top. “It’s…well, Adam’s wife is…” Katherine stopped cleaning and looked at Laura with eyes full of something unspoken. She seemed to be gauging how much to reveal. “Adam’s wife is deceased.”

“I know that. I read it in his chart. I was just wondering about her.”

“I see.” Katherine resumed scrubbing the counter, and Laura could see that her hands trembled.

“She died in the car wreck?” Laura asked gently.

Katherine nodded. “Instantly. The car plunged off the side of a mountain back in Washington.” She kept on scrubbing.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Laura whispered. “No one told me exactly how it happened.”

Katherine continued to clean.

Laura sensed the woman was holding something back. She squatted down with the paper towels and started wiping up the mess on the rough wood as best she could.

“I’m sorry.” She looked up at Katherine’s back. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Tension built in the quiet kitchen while the ashes in the old cast-iron stove collapsed with a pop and a hiss and bird song filtered in from outside.

Finally Katherine turned and looked down at Laura. Her wrinkled old eyes communicated an unspeakable sadness when she spoke. “I…I did know Elizabeth. Quite well. And I knew their little girl, too. Anna. She died in the accident, also…with her mother.”