“She needs the work.”
Jenny’s contention died on her lips. She’d been thinking only in terms of what she could contribute to their arrangement. Greg was clearly thinking of Lorna. The late-thirty-something widowed mother of two worked full-time at the diner, but she had also cleaned for Dr. Wilson and his wife since she was sixteen. Apparently, she’d more or less come with the house.
As a single parent, Lorna definitely needed the extra income.
Thinking she could definitely relate to her situation, and thinking it very much like Greg to consider the woman’s needs, Jenny looked from his broad back as he flipped on the brass table lamps on either side of two armchairs. Overstuffed furniture in shades of sage and brown and throw pillows printed with sprays of pine needles lent a definite north woods feel to the comfortable space. The slate fireplace that took up half the end wall promised warmth on long winter nights.
A collection of photography and news magazines on the maple coffee table caught her eye. So did the framed photos of pine-cones, tree bark and leaves he’d hung in a line above the couch.
She’d seen the photographs in his office, thought how beautiful and detailed they were. She just hadn’t realized until Mrs. McNeff had mentioned it during their visit that he’d taken them himself.
She had little time to consider how truly talented he was, or to wonder how a man who had been raised in such an emotional wasteland had emerged with so much compassion and such an eye for beauty. She had barely noticed how each photo had a single heartbeat in it—a butterfly, a beetle, a ladybug—when he disappeared through the doorway ahead of them.
It occurred to her as she followed that she needed to look at the landscape photographs in his office again. It seemed there was a single figure in the distance in each of them, too. She remembered a tiny fawn in one. A single bird in flight in another.
It was almost as if he didn’t simply freeze the beauty of the world. He captured a sense of how alone some were in it.
“The kitchen is in here,” he said, shedding his jacket on the way. “It came with all the basics. Stove, fridge, microwave. Freezer on the back porch. Wash and dryer through there.”
He indicated another door off the spacious country kitchen and left his jacket on the back of a chair at the big pine table in the breakfast nook.
The tie came off and landed on the jacket.
“That side hall goes to a bathroom and a room I’ve converted to a darkroom,” he said, nodding toward it as he opened the refrigerator. “The door on the left is to my study. If you go through that, you’re back in the front hall.”
The tour of the downstairs apparently complete, he looked to where she’d stopped by the table. “Are you okay with eggs?”
The thought that his photographs might be images of how he felt himself had caused an odd catch in her chest. It also raised her internal defenses. She already knew he isolated parts of his heart. As kind as he’d been to her, as kind as he was to everyone, she needed to remember how deliberately he distanced himself.
He was also making things easy. Enormously grateful to him for that, she shook off her disturbing thoughts, dropped her purse on her chair and shed her jacket, too.
“I’m fine with them.” Heading toward him, she smoothed the front of her slate-blue shell and absently skimmed her hands over the sides of her hips to make sure her skirt was straight. “Let me do that.”
Greg followed the movements of her hands. As unaware as she seemed, skimming her hands over her clothes, he was dead certain she didn’t know how enticing the action was. His eyes were drawn to the gentle fullness of her breasts, her small waist, her trim hips. Then, there were her legs, he thought, when his glance reached the short hem of her skirt. They seemed to go on forever.
Thinking she’d be easier to have around in her baggy lab jacket or sweats, he shrugged as if to say suit yourself and opened a cabinet above one of the long green Formica counters.
“I put the suitcases you dropped off this morning upstairs,” he said, taking out two plates. He would help her bring the rest of her things over tomorrow. Right now it just relieved him to know she would be sleeping in a bed tonight instead of on a floor. “There are two extra rooms up there. Both have sets of twin beds. I put you in the one in back. It’s bigger.”
It wasn’t bigger by much. A foot, maybe, if anyone bothered to measure. But it was also the farthest from his. He’d put her there even before he’d so briefly kissed her, before he’d felt the sharp heat of carnal need that threatened to play total havoc with his sense of objectivity.
She would be sleeping just down the hall from him. She would be showering on the other side of his bedroom wall, getting the bathroom all steamy and filling it with the scents of her soap and shampoo.
As aware of her as he’d been before, he was infinitely more so now. He also knew he wasn’t going to do a single thing about the undeniable physical desire he felt for her.
Her sense of trust had been shattered. Yet, despite the caution he’d sensed in her since they’d left chatty old Edna behind, he knew she trusted him. He wasn’t totally sure why that was. If he’d believed in anything cosmic, he might have thought they were simply kindred spirits. Two cynical souls who’d bumped into each other at a time when each needed something the other could give. She needed his shelter and protection. He needed the sense of calm he often felt with her so he could tackle the estate that hung over his head like Damocles’s sword. But he didn’t believe in soul mates any more than he believed in the myth of undying love. He knew only that he wouldn’t shake her trust by making any moves that would cause her to think he expected anything more than what they’d agreed on.
Or, so he was telling himself when he saw her give him a quiet little smile. “I’m sure the back one is perfect. Thank you.”
“There’s only one bathroom up there, though. You might want to take over the one down here.”
He handed her a bowl from the cupboard above her head.
“Whatever’s most convenient for you,” she said, her focus on the crisp white shirt covering the breadth of his very solid chest. Hugging what he’d handed her, wanting her awareness of him to go away, she turned to the eggs.
He took a step back himself. “That would probably be best.”
“Then, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Utensils are on your left.”
“Do you have the prenuptial agreement?” she asked, not sure if he was getting tense or if it was just her as she looked around for something to use for an apron. “And a dish towel?”
Other than a few small appliances, a basket with fruit and a bottle of dish soap by the sink, the counters were bare. Nothing hung from any of the knobs, or the handles on the stove or fridge.
“I should have probably signed it before we went to St. Johns bury,” she continued, unable to bring herself to say before we got married. “But it’s not like it has a time stamp on it, so as long as I sign it today it should be fine.” She frowned. “Except it probably needs to be notarized, doesn’t it?”
Greg opened one of the doors beneath the sink, pulled a white dish towel from the chrome bar on the other side of it and held it out.
“I would imagine it does.”
Thanking him, she turned sideways to wrap the rectangle of cotton around herself. “Is Joe a notary?”
“I don’t think so. Joanna at the post office is. And Lois at the sheriff’s office.” He watched her as she tucked the short ends of the towel into her waistband at the small of her back. Her motions drew her blouse tight across her breasts, accentuated her still-flat stomach. “But I didn’t get around to calling Larry,” he admitted, forcing his glance away to open the refrigerator again. “I’ll do it next week. Do you want milk?”
It seemed to her that the agreement was something he would have wanted to make sure was in order. She would have mentioned that, too, and asked if he wanted her to remind him to make the call Monday, had he not just so clearly dismissed the subject.
There was something else she needed to ask him about, too, she thought after telling him milk would be great. Yet, as he went about pouring two glasses and dropping bread in the toaster while she scrambled the eggs, she couldn’t quite work up the nerve to bring up the subject.
Nerve wasn’t necessary. The eggs had just set when he mentioned what was on her mind.
“We got off easy with Mrs. McNeff and Edna.” He set plates beside her, turned to butter the toast. “No one is going to expect us to just suddenly be married. How do you want to explain it?”
“What you said to Mrs. McNeff is good.” As good as anything she could come up with, anyway. “Saying we wanted to keep things quiet will explain why no one has seen us acting like we were dating.”
“And what about Edna’s comment? About it being so sudden.”
“It is sudden.” There was no way around that one. Keeping her focus on her task, she scooped their dinner onto the plates. “There’s only one explanation I can think of that people wouldn’t question.”
His arm brushed hers as he took his plate and fork, then stepped back to lean against the sink. He took a bite of toast, washed it down with milk. “What’s that?”
She didn’t know whether he usually ate standing up, or if he was just in a hurry to get the meal over so he could get to his work. Whichever, she picked up her plate and moved to lean against the counter across from him.
She cleared her throat. “Love at first sight.”
Greg watched her glance fall to her plate a moment before she started picking at her eggs. She wasn’t nearly as comfortable with this particular conversation as she wanted him to think. A hint of color touched the soft skin of her cheeks, much as it had the time she’d inadvertently admitted that she’d hung on to her virginity waiting for the right man. For all her guts and spirit, even considering that she was standing there pregnant, she was the only female he knew over the age of sixteen who still blushed.
Leaning against the counter with her long, shapely legs crossed at the her slender ankles, the dish towel wrapped around her short, businesslike little skirt, she also looked as tempting as sin itself.
Lust at first sight he could buy.
“I suppose there are those who believe such a thing exists,” he conceded, not being one of them. “And it’s good because it’s too subjective for anyone to question.” He scooped up a bite of fluffy egg, his attention on his plate to block the view of her legs. “I’m okay with it if you are.”
Jenny watched him finish his dinner in a few bites and rinse his plate in the sink. In a little over a minute he’d annihilated what she’d barely touched.
She was about to ask if he wanted hers when the ringing phone had him reaching for the instrument hanging beneath the cabinets.
“Greg Reid,” she heard him answer as he dried his hands on another towel. His motions slowed, his brow dropping sharply. “No, it’s not a problem. Is the guy conscious?”
Jenny set her own plate aside, her thoughts shifting automatically to wonder who had been hurt and what had happened. She heard Greg ask more questions as he tossed the towel aside. His hands moved down the front of his shirt, slipping buttons from their holes. He’d reached his belt and tugged his shirttails from his slacks, when she heard him say, “I’ll meet you at the clinic in ten minutes.”
He hung up and turned to face her, a slash of hard muscle visible between the sides of his shirt.
It had seemed like an eternity had passed since the night she’d helped him with his shoulder, but she could still remember the feel of his naked chest beneath her hands.
Pulling her drifting glance from his hard belly, she consciously ignored the strange tingling sensation in her palms.
“They’re getting an early start out at The Dig,” he said, unbuttoning his cuffs, now that his hands were free. “Joe’s bringing in a drunk with a few gashes and a split lip. Apparently he ran into a beer bottle.”
“Anyone we know?” she asked as he headed down the hallway and through his study.
“Some itinerant worker here for the apple harvest.”
“Do you want me to help?”
“The guy’s drunk and belligerent, Jenny. It’s possible he’s also strung out on something more heavy-duty than alcohol.” He moved through his study, stopped at the base of the stairs. Turning to find her behind him, something moved into his eyes. Protectiveness possibly. Or, maybe, simply gratitude for the escape. “You stay here and get unpacked. Joe will help me handle him.”
He turned and jogged up the stairs before she could say a thing. Then jogged back down minutes later, presumably having changed his clothes. She didn’t know for sure because she didn’t see him go. He just called from the entry that he’d be back in a while and left her where she stood at the sink, washing the dishes they’d used.
The task took no time at all. Neither did unpacking her clothes and putting them away in the closet and the dresser of the room decorated predominantly in blues. She had curtains on her window, white to match the bedspreads and the tiny flowers on the delft-blue wallpaper. The braided oval rug covering most of the hardwood floor had been woven in shades of sapphire and periwinkle.
She’d noticed Greg’s room as she’d passed it at the top of the stairs. Loath to invade his privacy any more than she already had, she stopped in the doorway only long enough to notice the burgundy-covered double bed, which had to be far too short for his tall frame, and the stacks of books on his nightstand, before moving to the room at the end of the hall.
She passed his room again when she headed back downstairs to wait for him to return.
Curled up on his sofa, she tried valiantly to stay awake by watching his satellite dish television. But the emotional ups and downs of the day, the month, caught up with her just before midnight. Because Greg had alluded to his patient being potentially dangerous, she’d wanted to stay up and make sure he was all right himself. He was a big man, and Joe was even bigger, but unless they’d wrestled the guy into restraints and knocked him out with an injection, it was possible that one of them could get hurt, too.
Greg, however, looked just fine to her when she woke to find him standing over her.
Chapter Ten
Greg stood over Jenny, his hands on the hips of his drawstring sweatpants. “I just wanted to make sure you were still breathing.”
She hadn’t heard him come in. She didn’t remember him covering her with a blanket, either. But he’d obviously done both. She could feel the pleasant weight of warm fleece from her cheek to her toes.
Pushing away the blanket, she eased herself upright. The neckline of her favorite sweatshirt promptly slid off one shoulder.
“How is your patient?” she asked, tugging it back into place.
“Resting comfortably in jail.”
“Did he give you a hard time?”
“Not once we restrained him.”
That was good, she thought, because restraints meant Greg had been safe, and he was the one she’d been most concerned about.
“What time is it?”
“Ten.”
Her eyes widened. “In the morning?”
He lifted his hand toward the two multipaned windows across from her. He’d already drawn the heavier drapes back. Sheer curtains blocked the view of passersby on the street, allowing muted sunlight to filter through.
Jenny sat a little straighter. She had an hour and a half before she had to be at the diner. She hadn’t given Dora notice yet. When she’d requested to have last night off and arranged for Tina Waters, the high-school girl Dora often employed, to cover for her, Dora had asked for no explanation and Jenny had offered none. She hadn’t said anything to anyone about what she was doing. Mostly, she supposed, because she hadn’t totally believed it would happen. But there she was, looking up at the man she’d married yesterday.
The thought seemed a little unreal at the moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late. She couldn’t remember the last time she
’d slept straight through the night, for that matter.
Thinking it might have something to do with sleeping on something soft rather than hard floor, she swung her sock-clad feet to the carpet—only to immediately slow her motions at what felt like a wave of seasickness. For weeks, she’d told herself the sensation was only fatigue, because she always woke so tired. She now knew that fatigue couldn’t be blamed for everything.
“Queasy?” he asked as she eased one hand to her stomach.
“A little. The feeling is usually gone by the time I wash my face and get something to eat.”
“I haven’t noticed you drinking coffee lately. Are you off it on purpose or does the smell bother you?”
She was fine with its aroma. And she was dying for a cup. “I read in one of the brochures we give our pregnant patients that caffeine should be avoided. I’ve switched to herbal tea.”
“The smell of food doesn’t bother you in the morning?”
“Not so far.”
She didn’t know what caused his quick frown. She just knew she wasn’t awake enough yet to be into subtleties.
“Then you probably won’t be bothered much more than you are,” he told her.
Pushing her fingers through her hair again, she watched him lower his big frame to the sofa. He’d apparently just returned from his morning run. A dark vee of sweat stained the neck of his gray sweatshirt. His hair, damp at his temples, looked as if it had been combed by the wind.
She smiled across the cushion separating them. A night’s growth of beard shadowed the lean line of his jaw. “Really?”
“Really,” he echoed, smiling back. “Morning sickness often starts around the fourth to sixth week and is usually gone by the twelfth to sixteenth. Some women never get rid of it. But if this is as bad as it gets for you, the worst is probably already over.”
Her sleepy smile brightened. “Then I have nothing to complain about. It really hasn’t been bad at all.”
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