Greg had no money to speak of himself. Like Jenny, he was in debt and would be until his work with the Rural Health Corp helped him pay off the last of his student loans. That was why he’d jumped at the job in Brayborough, much as he had at the one in Maple Mountain. He had his salary, which adequately met his personal needs, but there was little left to spare. Certainly, not enough for a roof and furniture.
For a rather disquieting and totally unexpected moment, he’d even thought of giving her some of his father’s money. But even if it had been accessible to him, which it wasn’t because it was tied up in real estate and investments and he’d yet to sign a single document that had been sent to him, money wouldn’t solve her bigger problem. In her kitchen the other night, it had been clear that what bothered her even more than the condition of her house was how people would perceive her once her pregnancy became apparent. After everything that had been taken from her, her good name in Maple Mountain was all she had left.
He could think of only one way to help her.
He didn’t have money to give her, but he did have space.
The idea of having her move in with him had hit two nights ago on his way through his spacious living room to his study. The house he lived in had been built for a family. There were extra rooms. Extra beds.
He had promptly dismissed the notion, however. The idea wasn’t nearly as straightforward as it first seemed. And what it would take to make it work was the epitome of extreme. Aside from that, though he could see the logic in it, Jenny might easily think he’d lost his mind.
“Something interesting going on out there?”
He jerked his glance to Bess, looked back out the window again. Despite the radical edge to it, the idea kept returning, taking firmer root.
“Just watching the tourists,” he replied, since the street was scattered with them. The fall foliage season had started to arrive and with it the first of what the locals called leaf-peepers. He’d just spotted a license plate from Rhode Island.
As he wondered where the people with the out-of-state plates were staying and how long they would be, he frowned at himself. He was getting as nosy as Amos and Charlie.
Bess lifted one of the blinds’ white slats so she could see better herself. “I heard you ask Jenny if she knew what the specials are at the diner tonight. Thought you might be debating whether or not to go for dinner before the tourists took over the place.”
Food had actually been the last thing on his mind. When he’d asked Jenny about the menu a few minute ago, he’d just been making conversation. “I have work to do yet. I think I’ll just stay here for a couple hours, then go home and thaw something in the microwave.”
“Well, if you’re of a mind for something more palatable, we’re having pot luck at the community center while we set up for the chicken dinner tomorrow night.” Turning in her sensible shoes, she headed for the far side of the room to close the blinds. “There won’t be any visitors there. At least not until tomorrow, and then I hope they come in droves. We need their money to buy wood and supplies for the extra booths I’m helping paint for the Pumpkin Festival. Come over about seven. I’ll be there. So will Amos, the Sheldons and the Moorehouses. Mary is bringing her lasagna casserole.”
The fund-raising chicken dinners at the community center were nearly as popular as the town’s seasonal celebrations themselves. More important at the moment, Mary Moorehouse made amazing lasagna.
“You’re painting?” he asked absently, writing off a frozen dinner for potluck. “I thought you always baked pies for the festival.”
“I’m doing that, too. Claire McGraw talked me into the other.” She turned to straighten the magazines on the small table. Since Jenny had been in a hurry to get to the diner today, Bess had told her she would lock up. “She’s got Jenny working on pumpkin costumes.”
Mild interest turned acute. “When will she have time do that?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” his nurse-practitioner replied. “I already think she’s bitten off more than she can chew trying to get that house in shape. Not that I can’t see why she’s doing it,” she confided, one professional to another. “If she rebuilds it, she rebuilds her life, so to speak. And the busier she stays, the less time she has to think. Between you and me, I don’t think she’s doing so well with what happened to her in the city.”
Greg felt himself hesitate. He had no idea what Bess knew. No idea how much, if anything, Jenny had confided in her. “What do you mean?”
“Her being attacked by that man who tried to rob her,” she said, frowning as if she couldn’t imagine what else he thought she’d be talking about. “Being mugged scared her enough to bring her back here,” she reminded him. “She says she’s just fine when I ask, but I don’t think she is. She’s trying to handle too much on her own.” Her tight salt-and-pepper curls barely moved when she shook her head. “I worry about that girl.”
Greg couldn’t fault Bess’s psychology or her metaphor. As he followed the older woman through the reception room doorway, he conceded that he might have reached the same conclusion himself had he not known that Jenny was in the process of moving home when the mugging had taken place. Or had he not been privy to the events that had really brought her back to Maple Mountain.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he heard Bess say as she opened a file drawer for her purse. “I thought she seemed distracted when she left here. She forgot her jacket.”
“Leave it.” Since Bess had suggested he ask Jenny where she’d find time to work on the festival, he planned to do just that. She barely had time to sleep as it was. “I’ll drop it off for her on my way home.”
The closed sign swung in the door’s window as Jenny shut the diner’s door behind her. Inside, Lorna had just finished mopping the kitchen and Dora was snapping out lights.
Shivering as the cool air hit her skin, she crossed her arms over her thin white blouse and started down the stairs.
Had it not been for the chill keeping her shoulders hunched, they would have sagged as the fatigue of the day set in. She’d hadn’t slept well last night, not that she did any night, and had been at a dead run since she’d arrived at the clinic that morning. The thought of now having to go to her cold, creaky house and build a fire to get warm and be back at the clinic first thing in the morning made her want to sit down and cry. But if she sat down, she wouldn’t want to get up, and crying wasn’t something she allowed herself to do—even though she felt like doing just that more every day. She was afraid that if she started she might never stop and she needed to learn to be strong for her baby.
“You really don’t ever want to play poker.”
There were no streetlights in Maple Mountain. In the glow of the half-moon and the entrance light from the building behind her, she saw Greg walk toward her. With his hands deep in the pockets of his casual corduroy jacket, something dark looped through one arm, he met her at the edge of the street.
“Long day?”
She couldn’t tell who was asking. Greg her boss. Or, Greg the man who had somehow become her confidant and who totally, completely confused her.
“Is that a trick question?”
“A redundant one,” he replied, letting her off the hook. “I can see you’re beat. Here.” He held out her jean jacket. “You forgot this.”
Grateful that she wouldn’t have to go in and get it or drive home cold, she thanked him and slipped the flannel-lined denim over her blouse.
“Are you just now leaving work?” she asked, crossing her arms against another shiver as she started to warm.
“I worked until about seven, took a dinner break, then put in another hour.”
“And you brought me my jacket,” she concluded, touched as she always was by his thoughtfulness.
“You needed it. Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”
Jenny glanced up at his profile. He seemed distracted, as if his mind hadn’t yet left work and he was still thinking about a patient or concerned about one. There was a
deep-in-thought, pensive quality about him as they angled across the road and headed for the lot behind the clinic. She always left her car there when she worked at the diner. It seemed silly to drive it across the street.
“Is Mrs. McNeff doing worse?” she asked, thinking Sally’s mom might be who occupied his thoughts. The older lady had been in the hospital for a week now.
“Actually, I talked to her oncologist a couple of hours ago. He thinks she’s responding well to the new chemo protocol.”
A faint smile tugged at Jenny’s mouth. That was really good to know. “I just thought you might be thinking about her,” she explained. “You had that look.”
“That look?”
“The one you get when something’s on your mind.”
“I don’t have a ‘look,’” he insisted, frowning.
“Yes you do. You say you can always tell when I’m worried. Well, I can tell when you’re preoccupied. You get two little lines. Right…” She started to reach up and touch the spot between his eyebrows. For a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that they were in full view of whoever happened to drive by, she touched between her own instead. “Right here.”
“So,” she said, still wondering what was on his mind since he wasn’t saying. Not that he’d confided in her much lately. If she’d had the nerve, she might have asked why he seemed to be keeping his distance from her. But she was afraid she already knew. When she’d discovered she was pregnant, he had offered to be there for her if she needed him. And she didn’t doubt that if she asked, he would be. Just as he would be for anyone else. He just didn’t want her to think he was offering anything more than that.
She didn’t want anything more herself. All she wanted was his friendship. And maybe, once in a while, to have his strong arms wrapped around her.
“So,” he echoed. “What hours do you work this weekend?”
She shook off her thoughts, hating how needy she felt, and hugged herself tighter. “I work lunch and dinner Saturday and lunch on Sunday. Why?”
“And your house,” he said, ignoring her question as they walked. “What do you plan to do there when you’re not at the diner?”
“Caulk.”
“Caulk?”
“You know. Put that gooey insulating stuff around the windows, the bathtub and the sink. Mostly the windows. I want to get them done before it rains.”
“So when do you plan on making costumes for the harvest festival?” he asked mildly.
The deep tones of his voice made him sound merely curious. Still, Jenny couldn’t help but hesitate. “I’m only doing two. And I have six weeks to get them done.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. What about sleep?” he continued in that same deceptively quiet tone. “When do you plan to do that?”
Confused by his questioning, she tried not to sound defensive as she tipped up her chin. “I sleep.”
“But not well,” he countered. “And not enough. You try to hide it, but you’re tired all the time, Jenny.”
Probably because I’m pregnant, she thought, but decided not to say. He knew that. And she was tired. She hardly needed him to point that out to her. But her concern at the moment was why he felt it necessary to mention her fatigue at all.
Lights from a passing car illuminated the short driveway beside the clinic. At the back of the square white building, a yellow security lamp glowed near her car. Uneasy, she glanced toward him.
He towered beside her as they moved along the quiet and darkened structure, seeming as tall and strong as the oaks and maples behind the lot. And suddenly just as silent.
“The tiredness will go away,” she assured him. At least she hoped it would. If it didn’t, she’d be dragging by the time the baby came next April. “Rhonda managed.”
“Rhonda wasn’t working two jobs and rehabbing a house.”
“She has four children. She does now that she has little Amy Lynn, anyway. That’s a job and half right there.”
“She has a husband and sister who help her, too. You don’t have anyone.”
Now there was a reminder she could live without.
Unfortunately she had no way to counter it. The best she could do was say, “I’ll be fine. I’m fine now,” and head to her car.
She had her fingers on the handle when she looked up to thank him again for her jacket and tell him good-night. She needed to go. She really did. She had no idea why he was saying what he was, but she was feeling too dispirited to hear it. The last thing she needed was him making her feel more discouraged than she already did.
The feel of his hand covering hers stopped her cold.
“You don’t have to do that with me, Jenny. You want to be okay. And you pretend you are. But you and I both know you’re not.”
Greg lowered his voice even more. They could be seen if someone really looked, but now no one could hear them.
“You need to give something up,” he insisted. “You’re trying to do to much.”
His big hand engulfed hers, his heat permeating her skin. The side of his jacket brushed her shoulder. As close as he stood, she could almost feel the heat of his body, too.
He was right. Something had to give. It was just difficult to think of what that something might be with him taunting her with his big body and jerking around with her flagging morale.
“I’ll ask for a smaller project for the festival,” she said.
“I was thinking more of your job at the diner.”
In the glow of the pale light he saw pure panic slip into her eyes.
Pulling her hand away, she drew back, quickly recrossed her arms.
“I can’t quit there. I need that job. You know that.”
“I know you’re trying to do too much,” he repeated.
“My work at the clinic is okay, isn’t it?” she hurried to ask. “I haven’t come in late and I don’t leave early. Except for tonight,” she amended, seeming to think her job performance was the issue. “But I had everything done before I left, and Bess said she didn’t mind locking up.”
“Jenny—”
“It’s just that with all the tourists, Dora needed me as soon as I could get there.”
“Tonight wasn’t a problem.”
“Then what is? Did I set someone up for the wrong test? Am I making mistakes in your transcription? Bess is helping me with the words I’m not sure about and I’m trying to get the terminology memorized—”
He couldn’t stand her panic. Unable to bear that he’d caused it, he reached toward her. Nudging back the soft hair at her temple, he said, “You haven’t done any of that. Your work is fine.”
Fear and fatigue strained her features as her eyes searched his. “Then, why do you want me to quit the diner? What I make there is the only way I’ll be able to pay for a new furnace.”
The crisp night air he breathed brought the scent of burning pine from someone’s fireplace and a hint of her herbal shampoo. The smoke barely registered. The blend of balsam and sweet herbs always did. And, as always, breathing in that soft, seductive scent, he felt a twinge of pure visceral awareness low in his gut.
He let his hand fall.
“I think you should forget about the house, too,” he told her, needing to keep his libido out of this. “It’s taking too much of your energy. You need to take care of yourself,” he explained, his voice softening. “If not for you, then for your baby.”
“I can’t forget about the house.” She looked as she sounded, utterly amazed that he could think she would. “I don’t have any choice but to do what I’m doing. You know that, too.”
It was because she had little choice that the idea he’d had simply refused to go away. He just hadn’t considered that he would really suggest it until he’d felt her distress clutch his chest. He’d never intended to alarm her.
“Actually, you do. You can marry me,” he said, because he needed her to know he was trying to make things better for her, not worse. “Temporarily.”
Bewilderment disappeared in
a slow blink. Now she just looked stunned.
“I would suggest that you just move in with me,” he hurried to add, wanting her to know he’d explored all the options and found his proposal the only viable alternative. “That wouldn’t work, though. There’s a morals clause in my agreement with the community. Housing here is only for the physician and his legal dependents. Bertie Buell and her friends on the city council would be the first to come pounding on my door to remind us of that, too.” Heaven knew the old biddy had a nose for improprieties. “Just living with me wouldn’t solve your other problems, anyway.
“If we’re married,” he explained, “we can share the house and you can forget about the work on yours. Being married would save your reputation, too. You’re a little more than two months along now. I’ll be leaving here in just over another two. You should be able to hide your pregnancy for that long.”
Jenny slowly shook her head. “Marry you?”
“For a while,” he reiterated.
Still struggling to believe what Greg was so calmly suggesting, Jenny threaded her fingers through her hair. “How long is ‘a while’?”
“A couple of years. That’s the length of my new contract. When we move from here, everyone in the new place will assume the baby is mine. I can help you with it after it comes,” he told her, because in the past few days, he’d thought about that, too. “And you can help me run the office while we’re there. The way you do now. That way you’ll have the references you need so when my contract expires, we can both move on.”
From a few blocks beyond them came the hoot of an owl. Up toward Greg’s house, his neighbor’s dog barked in response. Those distant sounds were all that broke the stillness as Jenny stared at the man she knew didn’t believe in marriage, didn’t want to be married and was proposing it to her all the same.
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