by Radclyffe
“Okay. Good. That’s good. I saw the cruiser…” Gard slid her hands into her back pockets and rocked on her heels. “What’s going on?”
Rina said, “I’ve just been talking to Ms. Hardy about making arrangements for Elizabeth’s place.”
“I realize now there’s more to it than signing a few papers,” Jenna said. “The house can wait, but I want to make sure the animals—”
“I’ll take care of that,” Gard said. “I was planning to run out there and check on them after we got you settled at the motel.”
“No,” Jenna said quickly. “You don’t need to. You’ve been wonderful, but I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do with your own job.”
Rina’s gaze swiveled between Gard and Jenna as if she were waiting for the serve on match point in the finals of a Grand Slam tennis tournament. “I’m heading back through town. If you need a ride—”
“I’ll take her,” Gard said forcefully.
“If the sheriff is going that way—” Jenna protested.
“It’s no trouble.” Gard paced a few steps and fixed Jenna with an intense stare. “We can run by the Hardy place on the way. See what might need to be done before you talk to Sherm.”
Jenna couldn’t argue the logic, but she still wanted to. She didn’t let anyone take charge of her life, not even Alice. Alice was her detail woman, true, and she did more than organize her schedule. Alice was the wall between Jenna and the rest of the world, the buffer between her and the outside forces that disrupted her concentration and made it hard for her to work. Alice wielded more power than Jenna had ever granted anyone, even her occasional serious lovers, but not even Alice crossed beyond the barriers Jenna had erected around her body and her soul.
Gard Davis didn’t even seem to recognize those barriers, or if she did, she didn’t care. She shouldered past them, steamrolled over them, while insisting on being part of Jenna’s life as if Jenna had no say whatsoever. The intrusion irritated her, but she resisted the urge to argue, and not just because she didn’t want to expose herself in front of Rina Gold. Part of her, maybe a bigger part than she wanted to face right now, liked Gard’s arrogant chivalry. She would never have asked for Gard’s help, but Gard didn’t seem to need an invitation.
Until this moment, Alice had been the only one in her life who put her first, who cared about her welfare more than about what she could get from pretending to care for her. For all of that, Alice had never looked at her with the consuming intensity Gard did. Alice loved her as a friend, and sometimes, possibly—more. But even Alice didn’t care for the fragile places in her heart because Jenna didn’t let her. If she had, she knew Alice would be there for her. She wasn’t offering those vulnerable places to Gard, either, but Gard didn’t seem to need permission to cross boundaries. She just did it. Jenna had never really met anyone like her before.
“You’re sure you have time?” Jenna asked. Spending a little more time with Gard wasn’t exactly a hardship, especially when the alternative was sitting in the motel.
“Positive.” Gard jiggled her truck keys in her pants pockets while watching the war wage across Jenna’s face. She thought she knew why. Jenna was independent, even more independent than the farmers and ranchers she bumped shoulders with every day in the quiet countryside. She hadn’t thought there could be anyone more independent than these people who prided themselves on doing for themselves and living by their own rules. But Jenna was. She didn’t want help from anyone, as if help were a sign of weakness. As if letting anyone ease her way would somehow lessen her. She had shadows under her eyes this morning, and although she probably wasn’t even aware of it, she was favoring her injured leg. Strain lines marred the smooth skin around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She was exhausted and in pain but ignoring both. Knowing that made Gard’s insides twist and her chest hurt. She wanted to take away that pain. She’d never had the desire, the need, to do that with another woman. The strangeness of it jangled her nerves. “Look, we should get going.”
“All right. Fine.” Jenna knew she sounded ungracious, but God, the woman taxed her patience.
“I’ll get your things when you’re ready,” Gard said, needing to move. Needing to do something to burn off the restless energy that was always with her but magnified a thousand times in Jenna’s presence. She wanted to touch her. She wanted to catch the scent of flowers and sweet spice again. “Then we’ll head into town so you can get settled in at the motel.”
“I want to see the Hardy property first,” Jenna said.
“Your call.”
“I’ll go pack.” Jenna held out her hand to the sheriff. “It was nice to meet you. Thank you for the help at Elizabeth’s.”
“Anything you need while you’re here, just let me know,” Rina said. “I take it, then, you’ll be staying a few days?”
“It sounds like I’ll need more than just a few days,” Jenna said. “Maybe a few weeks.”
“Really,” the sheriff said dryly, her gaze shifting to Gard.
Curiosity flickered in the sheriff’s eyes, and Jenna wondered what misconception the sheriff had about her and Gard. If she thought the two of them were anything other than acquaintances, she was way off base. She and Gard had nothing in common and practically everything at odds. If anything, the sheriff should have noticed that they could barely have a conversation without irritating each other. Besides, she should hardly pose a threat to a beautiful woman like Rina Gold, who obviously had more than just a friendly interest in the local vet. Jenna had no trouble at all imagining Gard and Rina together, and the instant she did, the flare of possessiveness hit her so hard she almost gasped out loud. This wasn’t like her. She just wasn’t the possessive type. She rarely indulged in a relationship long enough to have any feelings for her dates other than fondness. Jealousy? Never. Possessiveness? Irrelevant. She hadn’t even kissed Gard Davis, and the thought of another woman touching her made her blood run hot.
“I’ll just need a few minutes. Good-bye, Sheriff.” Jenna quickly ducked inside, needing to put distance between herself and Gard. And Rina Gold. Whatever was between Gard and the beautiful sheriff did not concern her.
As she climbed the stairs as quickly as her aching knee allowed, leaving Gard alone with Rina, she refused to consider why every step she took was more difficult than plodding through quicksand.
Chapter Eleven
“How’s the knee?” Gard asked when they were settled in the front seat of her truck.
“Much better.” Jenna rolled down the window as Gard pulled out onto the road. The thick, sultry air felt more like July than June, the kind of hot, hazy day she associated with skinny-dipping in placid ponds, hiding away in the shade of a huge maple with a book, and relaxing in twilights resonant with the sound of distant thunder. She’d lost touch with those pleasures all these years living in the city, where the summer brought only the pungent stench of automobile fumes, trash left out too long, and throngs of humanity coursing over the steaming sidewalks like schools of fish fleeing for their lives.
“Sorry there’s no air-conditioning,” Gard said.
“Don’t be. I hate it.”
“Me too.” Gard slowed as a string of geese with goslings scampering behind waddled haphazardly across the road. “You might feel differently in August, though.”
“I can remember putting ice cubes on my chest to fall asleep some summer nights,” Jenna said, laughing.
“Inventive.” Gard imagined Jenna as she would appear now, nude in the moonlight with trails of cool clear water streaming between her breasts and over the curve of her abdomen to pool on the soft white sheets tangled around her hips. Her skin gleamed with reflections of starlight and Gard saw herself leaning down to brush her mouth over the glimmering diamond ice chips. Lust kicked in her belly and she jerked her thoughts away from the fantasy. “I notice you forgot the immobilizer today.”
“You do realize it’s hateful?”
“I’ve had the pleasure.” Gard smiled.
“Then you know why I’m not wearing it.” Jenna liked Gard’s smile, the way her lips canted up at one corner, softening the angular planes of her face and hinting at a dark sensuality she found hard to ignore. Gard had changed while in the house, and now she wore a pressed button-down tucked into charcoal work pants. Her boots were still the same low-heeled scuffed farm boots, and a tooled brown belt encircled her waist. Her wrists and hands below the rolled-up sleeves of the crisp white shirt were faintly corded and darkly tanned. If she hadn’t seen Gard’s elegant, stately house, she might have been surprised at the pressed and starched shirt. Gard had to be sending her shirts out to be done. Not exactly what she would have expected from the usual country vet, but nothing thus far was ordinary about Gard. She remembered Alice’s comment that Gard’s name had rung a bell.
“Where are you from?”
The smile disappeared and Gard’s jaw tightened. Another sensitive spot for the enigmatic doctor—so attentive one second, and so distant the next. Someone else might not have noticed, but Jenna made it her business to notice the small details that revealed feelings and moods. She’d learned to watch people for the subtle signs of tempers about to snap after the first time a hand she hadn’t seen coming had struck out and landed on her face. Darlene hadn’t resorted to physical violence very often, but once had been enough to teach Jenna to be vigilant. She’d been lucky. She’d taken those lessons and turned them around, just like she’d turned her life around, and made them into something she could trust. She’d become an expert people watcher. Being a writer, much of what she conveyed about her characters was through the nuances of expression, and she’d learned to trust the signals others gave off unconsciously. She had to if she wanted to be safe.
“Touchy subject?” Jenna was suddenly sorry she’d brought up something that stirred a painful memory. “Never mind. I shouldn’t pry.”
Gard took a deep breath, obviously trying to force herself to relax. “You’re not prying. It’s a simple question.”
“Not always, and I should know better.” Jenna suspected Gard never truly relaxed and wondered what haunted her. She seemed to be the kind of person who needed to be moving, maybe because there was something she was trying to outrun. Impulsively, Jenna rested her hand on Gard’s forearm and squeezed, finding the muscles beneath her fingers more like steel than flesh. She rubbed her palm up and down over the soft cotton, knowing some pain couldn’t be soothed with a simple touch, but needing to try all the same. She didn’t want Gard to hurt. “It’s not important. The past is the past.”
Gard turned her head, her smoky eyes as impenetrable as a dead fire. “Is it? Is yours?”
“Long dead and buried,” Jenna said.
“Is it hard for you, then, having a relative like Elizabeth suddenly appear in your life?”
“You are astute, Dr. Davis,” Jenna murmured, surprised at Gard’s perceptiveness. “I didn’t say everyone in my past was dead and buried, did I?”
“You ask questions but you don’t say much about yourself.” Gard lifted her shoulder, her gaze moving between Jenna and the road she could probably drive with her eyes closed. “The quintessential observer who keeps her secrets to herself.”
“I’m not alone in that.” Jenna delighted that Gard could read her, even as yet another warning pealed. Gard could read her, and that wasn’t a good thing. “You do realize you’ve completely diverted the conversation from my original question?”
“Have I?” Gard slowed and turned onto yet another hard-packed dirt road. This one was lined on either side with fences, pastureland, and copses of thick birches. As they rounded a curve, a homestead came into view.
“Oh! Is that it?” Jenna’s heart raced.
“That would be Birch Hill.”
“It’s beautiful.”
A rambling pale yellow farmhouse that had been added on to many times over the centuries, if the varying roof heights and façade details were any indication, sat on a slight knoll shaded by huge maples and slender white birches. Several weathered gray barns were visible behind the house and a fat round silo jutted into the skyline between them. A broad porch with plain square-capped columns and no railing circled the front of the house and ran along both sides as far as she could see. Where Gard’s home was a grand manor house, this was every inch a traditional New England farmstead.
“They don’t come any finer than this place.” Gard slowed even more as they approached the house, waiting for the golden-feathered chickens to peck their way out of the path of the truck.
“Rina said there were cows. Are those going to wander out next?”
Gard laughed, a deep resonant laugh that stirred an echoing rumble in Jenna’s depths. God, she was sexy.
“They ought to be in the back pasture.”
“What about the donkeys?”
“Fred and Myrtle have their own shelter on the other side of the back barn. As long as they’ve got food and water, they should be fine. I’ll check on them before we go.”
Gard turned off the truck and Jenna sat, her hands loosely clasped in her lap, surveying what was now, apparently, hers. The place couldn’t be more different from where she had grown up. The trailer park had been situated in a hollow, shaded by the rise of surrounding mountains, damp in the spring, hot and humid and bug-ridden in the summer, barren in the fall, and bitterly cold in the winter. She doubted that everything here was as beautiful as it appeared on this crystal June morning, but she knew she would always remember it this way. Tranquil and still and lovely, steeped in the indolent passage of time. She itched to write.
“This is a house meant for romance,” she murmured.
“You think?” Gard said softly.
Jenna flushed. “Sorry. Some places just beg for a story.”
“What about people? Do they do the same thing?”
Jenna shifted to put her back against the door. “Not always. Sometimes the story’s better left untold.”
“What about yours?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. Mine isn’t interesting.”
“More so than you think, I imagine.” Gard leaned over the space between them, her body slanting above Jenna’s, and braced her arm on the door beside Jenna’s shoulder. Her face was so close their mouths nearly met. Her arm caged Jenna in.
Gard was going to kiss her and she was going to let her.
Jenna blinked and caught herself before she could gasp aloud. Gard hadn’t moved. She slouched behind the wheel, one arm casually tossed over it, her expression curious.
“Are you okay?” Gard asked.
“Yes, perfect,” Jenna said, too fast she knew. Her imagination was on hyperdrive and had been since she got off the plane. Her usual boundaries were distorted, as if her trip from the city to the country had somehow reset her inner compass. She needed to be more careful. She needed to reroute the conversation to safer ground. “I guess I should take a look around. I need to have some idea what to tell the realtor. And I want to be certain the animals are being properly cared for.”
“Let’s go.”
“Do you have keys? I never thought—”
“I took Elizabeth’s, but the door isn’t locked.”
Jenna arched her brows. “Isn’t that a little reckless?”
Gard shoved open her door. “Not really. Wait for me, I’ll come around.”
Jenna didn’t plan to wait, but when she opened her door and considered the drop from the truck to the ground, she hesitated. She couldn’t risk re-injuring her knee. In another day she would be completely mobile again. When Gard appeared, Jenna rested a hand on Gard’s shoulder and let Gard slip an arm around her waist and lift her to the ground. She might get used to the lady-of-the-manor routine. The whimsical idea made her laugh.
Gard relaxed her hold but didn’t move away. Their shoulders and thighs touched. “What?”
“Nothing,” Jenna said, barely resisting the urge to bury her face in the curve of Gard’s neck. Gard smelled of soap and sunshine. Simple, strong. The
sun glinted in her hair, gilding the ebony curls on her neck, and a fine mist of sweat sheened her skin, tempting Jenna to taste the salt and heat of her. Jenna took a step back. She’d need a lot more than a few feet to ensure immunity to Gard’s appeal, but she would damn well find a way to resist. She wasn’t against a healthy roll in the proverbial hay—she almost laughed again when she considered the barns nearby, no doubt full of the stuff—but Gard already made her mind cloudy and they hadn’t even kissed. She wasn’t risking full-out sex with a woman who wouldn’t keep her distance.
“If you don’t lock the door, aren’t you inviting vandals?” Jenna stepped carefully around the chickens on her way to the house.
“If someone wants to get in, they’ll break a window. Why create false barriers that don’t keep anyone out and prevent the ones who should have access from getting in?”
Jenna wondered for a moment if they were still talking about the house, but they must be. What else would they be talking about?
*
“Doing okay?” Gard turned on lights as they slowly traversed the first floor, checking that windows were closed and the gas turned off in the big six-burner cast-iron stove in the kitchen, where their journey ended. The kitchen resembled Gard’s in the same way a vintage Rolls resembled a sleek new Mercedes. All the classic elements with an added touch of grace. The solid oak cabinets were fronted with beveled-glass doors and cut-glass knobs. The pie safe and hutch had carved lion’s-feet legs. The oak plank floors were worn down in front of the sink and counters from generations of cooks shuttling back and forth. Bright rag rugs were strategically placed in front of the back door that led in from a wide porch overlooking the back forty and barns. The spacious heart of the house was neat and tidy and had clearly been lived in, and lived in well.