Mountain Mystic

by Debra Dixon

  “Victoria, you aren’t going to like living here. It’s too quiet for most people.”

  “I’m not most people,” she reminded him.

  “So you keep telling me.” Lie rubbed the back of his neck. “You know there are cougars in this part of the country.”

  “Oh, please! I’ve already read all the travel brochures. There hasn’t been a cougar even photographed in East Tennessee for something like fifty years. I doubt very seriously that I’m going to have to fight off big cats. Unless I buy one myself.”

  They stood for a few moments, sizing each other up, weighing the possibilities. Finally, Joshua said, “You’ll have to take the couch, armchairs, and the bed. I’m not moving them.”

  “Great, Then I won’t have to buy furniture.”

  “You don’t have any?” Joshua asked incredulously.

  “No. I sold everything but the Range Rover before I came here,” she told him, trying not to think of all the personal possessions she’d had to get rid of because she couldn’t afford to move them or store them. She hadn’t wanted to send them to Connecticut either. Her mother didn’t like “junk.”

  Catching the wistful tone of her admission, Joshua asked, “Nothing like burning your bridges, is there?”

  “It’s an experience.” Then she laughed. “Not to mention intensely motivating.”

  “I’ll bet.” Joshua took her elbow and led her toward the front of the cabin. “You’d better look inside again before you make up your mind.”

  “Oh, my mind is made up. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Joshua stepped up on the porch and held the door open as she entered the cabin. “You may change your mind when I tell you how much the rent is.”

  “Ha! I knew this was coming. Grenwald warned me that you’d try to take advantage of me.”

  Looking at her back, Joshua raised an eyebrow and decided that old Doc Grenwald hadn’t been far off the mark. He did want to take advantage of Victoria, but it had nothing to do with rent.

  About halfway to the old—to Victoria’s cabin, Joshua decided walking had been a bad idea. It gave him too much time to think about her. He should have ridden the motorcycle; if he drove fast enough, he wasn’t able to think about anything but the road.

  Thinking about Victoria shouldn’t have been a problem. She’d been true to her word about being a model tenant. She hadn’t dropped by for a cup of sugar. She hadn’t asked him to change so much as a fuse. She hadn’t done anything to disrupt his peace. Except call him once to confirm that he could ride with her on Tuesday.

  If she kept her word about not bothering him, why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? Because she needed to be kissed. Because he doubted very much that Victoria Bennett would agree to a hot, satisfying, walk-away-when-it’s-over affair. Because he didn’t want a friend, and he had a gut feeling that Victoria needed one.

  She’d moved in over the weekend, but she hadn’t imposed on him to carry more than a few boxes, and then only because he hung around on moving day and insisted. He shook his head as he remembered unloading the truck. It hadn’t taken long. The woman owned almost nothing.

  Except her dreams, Joshua reminded himself, thinking of the excitement in her eyes when she talked about the beginning of her career, about looking forward to the first year of private practice. Maybe her dreams were all she needed. He hoped so; he doubted there would be much money to go with them. She’d never get rich being a midwife in East Tennessee.

  As he walked through the woods and around the cabin, he could see her standing beside the old truck, intently studying a map spread out on the hood. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in what he assumed was an attempt to look more professional. Unfortunately, the closer he got, the less professional she looked.

  Wisps of dark hair had escaped from the topknot and fluttered gracefully in the mild breeze, which molded the red, cotton-knit dress to her curves. From top to bottom the supple creation sported tiny red buttons that he knew would torture him all day, teasing him, daring him to flick them open. In short, she looked soft and kissable, and off limits now that she was a neighbor in need of a friend. He groaned in frustration, and Victoria looked up, concern filling her gray eyes and her expression.

  “Are you all right?” she asked in a voice full of early-morning huskiness, but the sharpness in her eyes belied the sleepiness in her voice as her gaze ran over him.

  Joshua realized that his groan had triggered not only Victoria’s maternal instincts, but her medical training as well. He’d seen that look before as doctor after doctor tried to figure out what was wrong with him. When the doctors had finally and reluctantly given him a diagnosis, he hadn’t troubled himself long enough to argue. Instead, he paid the bill and came home to Tennessee.

  The constant headaches, the fatigue, and his inability to concentrate had all disappeared despite medical predictions to the contrary. Of course, he knew something they didn’t. His problem wasn’t a yuppie flu called chronic fatigue syndrome. His problem was the curse his mountain-bred grandmother called “the sight.”

  “I’m as right as I’m going to be,” he answered.

  Victoria narrowed her eyes at his evasive answer. The man didn’t look sick or hurt. He looked healthy enough to wrestle one of Tennessee’s black bears. His eyes were a cool, clear blue, and he had a way of looking at her that made her want to fuss with the fit of her clothes.

  Resisting the temptation to button another button on her dress, she said, “Well then, good morning and thanks for helping.”

  He grinned, noticing the way her hand had strayed toward a button and jerked back. “Good morning. What’s on the agenda?”

  “I’ve got a list of about six patients from Dr. Grenwald. He says they came in once and then never came back. They don’t live in town. They haven’t responded to his office’s phone follow-up, so … I’d like to track them down, make sure that they are in a regular prenatal care program of some kind.”

  “Sounds easy enough.” Joshua joined her by the hood of the truck and pulled the map toward him. “Let me have a look at the list.”

  Victoria handed the list over. “Assuming we find them at home, I figure we’ll need a half hour per visit, but I haven’t the foggiest idea where we’re going or how much travel time we’ll need.”

  Joshua froze. He’d been thinking more in terms of Victoria introducing herself to the women, giving them a card, and urging them to call the clinic. “Visit?”

  “Yeah.” She turned a puzzled glance on him. “These women have some sort of problem, or they would have come back in. I’ve got to talk to them and find out what the problem is. Evaluate their cases.”

  The last thing Joshua wanted to do was to traipse in and out of the homes of pregnant women whose emotions were closer to the surface and screwed up by hormones. “Why don’t we drive by, you knock on the door, and ask them to come into the clinic?”

  Thinking she understood, Victoria laughed. “It’s not an exam, Joshua. I want only to talk to the women. Face-to-face. It’s harder to evade the issues that way or make promises they won’t keep. We’ll be talking about boring stuff like nutrition and prenatal vitamins. So you don’t have to worry.”

  Not bothering to explain that his real reluctance was contact with people, Joshua told her candidly, “You do know that the most likely reason the women haven’t come back in is that they don’t have transportation or gas money. How are you going to fix that?”

  “Home care maybe.” She shrugged her shoulders. “The county health department warned me about the transportation problem. It’s what made me decide to go after Dr. Grenwald’s no-shows. The hospital won’t back me if I do home deliveries, but I can do prenatal care in the home with no problem.”

  “No problem as long as they can pay you, or you can afford to work for free. If they don’t have money for gas, they don’t have money to pay you, Victoria, and mountain pride won’t let them accept anything for free.”

  “Believe me, I’m che
aper than an ob-gyn. Besides, if money is keeping them from getting prenatal care, we can figure something out. A staggered payment schedule for the insurance deductible or something. They probably qualify for Medicare/Medicaid if they don’t have insurance and have been unemployed for a while.”

  Surprised, Joshua stared at her. “Medicare pays?”

  “Yep, for CNM’s.” At his blank expression, she elaborated. “Certified nurse midwives. If transportation’s a problem, then we’ll work out home visits. If insurance is a problem, we’ll find out if they qualify for federal aid. And if they don’t have transportation or health insurance, it’s a sure bet that my phone call wouldn’t have made any difference. Seeing is believing. I want an expectant mother to believe me when I tell her that she doesn’t have to be ashamed of being poor and that she’s not the only mother who’s had to go on Medicare or Medicaid because she was having hard times.”

  Joshua looked dubious and glanced down at the list. “If I were you, I wouldn’t look down your cultured Connecticut nose and tell these women that they’re poor.”

  Victoria was appalled. “Give me a little credit. I wasn’t going to say it like that!”

  “Not intentionally, but it’s the way you look, Victoria—like someone with all the answers. Like someone who doesn’t have problems.”

  “But I’m barely making ends meet myself!”

  “They don’t know that. You don’t present yourself that way. You’ve got emerald earrings, a Range Rover, and a killer red dress.”

  Victoria glanced down, stunned. “There isn’t anything ‘killer’ about this dress. It would have been two years and ten pounds ago, but not now. A woman will know that, trust me.” Meeting his gaze, she said, “The emerald earrings I got from my father for my sweet sixteen, and they’re the only pair I own. The truck—such as it is—I got in the divorce. I live in the real world nowadays, just as they do. Don’t worry, Joshua. I’ll get my point across without insulting anyone.”

  “I hope so. You’ve got to meet these women on the level and part on the square,” he cautioned.

  She crossed her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They’ve had a belly full of people coming in to ‘help’ them over the years. You might have noticed the number of tiny missionary churches spread out in the mountains. A lot more than that tried and failed because they were too busy patting themselves on the back for being do-gooders.”

  “Are you telling me that these women might refuse my help because they’re suspicious of my motives?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. By nature, we’re a suspicious lot. Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe it’s our Scotch-Irish ancestry. Maybe it’s experience. Whatever the reason, we don’t trust people, outsiders”—he amended—“to have our best interests at heart.”

  Victoria didn’t miss the fact that he included himself in that group. “Grenwald said you lived away from here for years. That you traveled everywhere.”

  “I did.”

  “And you still think of people who weren’t born on the mountain as outsiders?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Joshua told her, realizing that he’d never lost his identification with the place of his birth. As an archaeologist, he had spent years immersing himself in civilizations and cultures long gone. He’d lived in huge cities, college towns, and deserts. Yet he never once forgot he was born on a Tennessee mountain, or who he could count on should the need arise. “Old habits die hard. It’s the way some of us were raised. Another generation or two and things will be different.”

  She shook her head as she recognized the problems she faced. “I don’t think I can wait that long. If I don’t try, the women who can’t get to an ob-gyn will do what they’ve always done, which is ignore prenatal care and arrive at the hospital in the late stages of labor, totally unprepared and at higher risk for poor birth outcomes. That’s if they get to the hospital at all. Home birth is legal in Tennessee. I don’t see that I have any choice but at least to make the offer and let them decide how to manage their pregnancy and delivery. If they want to reject me because I have green rocks in my ears, so be it.”

  “You’re dead set on this?” Joshua asked, knowing he couldn’t refuse even though he wanted to. She made it sound too important. Made him believe it was too important.

  “It’s either that or sit around waiting for the mountain to come to Mohammed.”

  “Don’t believe in miracles?” Joshua folded his arms across his chest and leaned a hip against the grille of the car.

  “I don’t believe in sitting around, waiting for someone else to change. People rarely do.”

  “That sounds like the voice of experience.”

  “It is. Are you ready?”

  He resigned himself to a day of raw emotions rubbing against his consciousness. Maybe if he waited on the porch each time, it wouldn’t be so bad. “Give me the keys.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s hard to start the truck without them.”

  “I’m driving,” she said in a tone that clearly indicated he was foolish to suggest otherwise.

  “You don’t know where we’re going.”

  “That’s why I have you. I’ll learn my way much better if I’m driving the truck.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Joshua said, and held up an index finger to stop her from opening the driver’s door, “but didn’t you tell me that when you caught me, you were going to put me behind the wheel?”

  “Figure of speech.”

  “Is this a gender thing? A statement about women being better drivers?”

  “No, it’s a captain-of-the-ship thing. It’s my ship, and I get to steer.”

  “Ever heard of sharing?”

  “I may have.” She raised one eyebrow. “Isn’t that where you get to play with my toys and I can’t get mad when you break them?”

  Joshua fought a grin. “How do you know I’ll break anything?”

  “I’ve seen you drive that sleek black motorcycle around curves that were not meant for sixty miles an hour.” Victoria began folding the map. “What do they call the kind of motorcycle you have? A crotch rocket?”

  “Yeah. Want a ride?” Joshua asked before he remembered his decision to limit his contact with her.

  Victoria had already thought about living dangerously, about crawling up on the back of that machine, putting her arms around him, and holding on for dear life, flying around curves at speeds that would take her breath away. Assuming she had any left after getting that close to Joshua, her legs straddling his hips. But she wasn’t about to admit any of that to Joshua. Her mouth went dry at the thought.

  “No sense of adventure?” he teased as he headed for the passenger side.

  “My sense of adventure is just fine.” Victoria opened her door in unison with him and slid behind the wheel. “It’s my sense of impending doom that causes me to hesitate. You stick with that machine, and I’ll stick with old Bessie here.”

  Not for the first time Joshua felt frustration at not being able to get a sense of her true emotions. Did she hate motorcycles, or was she scared of being that close to him? He wanted to know. He wanted to know if the thought of being wrapped around him on a motorcycle was as exciting to her as it was to him. The thought of her breasts pressed tightly against his back and her fingers roaming across his stomach, sliding lower, made his mouth dry.

  He watched her, trying to find a clue in her expression or body language. She seemed to have dismissed the conversation and was pulling out a necklace from beneath her dress. A chuckle escaped Joshua as he realized it was more like a dog-tag chain than a necklace. Instead of tags, the silver chain sported Victoria’s car key. Her jewelry selections continued to fascinate him: expensive earrings, Mickey Mouse watch, and car-key necklace.

  “Don’t laugh,” Victoria informed him as she pulled the chain over her head. “It beats looking for my car key at three in the morning, when I absolutely have to get to the hospital.”

  “
What about your house keys? Aren’t you worried about losing them?”

  “Of course not. I’m sure I could borrow an extra set from the landlord, or he could let me back inside the cabin.” Victoria turned an innocent expression on him, her eyes full of mischief.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to be any trouble.”

  “Have I been?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Unfortunately, we’ll be crossing several of those today.”

  Joshua was studying the list of names and addresses, but Victoria had a feeling that he wasn’t talking about the incredible number of creeks that sliced through the mountains.

  As she turned off the highways and onto the smaller paved roads, Victoria was amazed at the stark contrasts in the terrain. Unconsciously, her hand found its way to Joshua’s knee time after time as she became excited about the scenery and wanted his attention. The roads had been literally cut into the mountainside. As often as not, sheer walls of rock rose on one side of the road, and a sickening drop lurked on the other.

  The drops scared her as much as the escarpments awed her. The mountain fell away at the side of the road without so much as a guardrail in most places, and even the bushes beside the road were deceptive because they were really the tops of trees from below. She shuddered to think that a moment’s distraction, especially at night or in the winter ice, would send the unfortunate motorist on a downhill ride that one had little chance of surviving. Forcing the depressing thought aside, she focused her attention on memorizing the area.

  Mobile homes had been planted on every level spot available and had taken root, transformed into permanent homes with flower beds bordered with cinder blocks. She saw brick houses, tar-paper shacks, wooden houses marching side by side up the mountain. Many houses had been added on to over the years until they finally had enough rooms but no architectural unity. Other houses, hidden in little hollows beside the road, were no more than a rooftop peeking over the edge of the asphalt paving. Almost all the wooden houses had a porch enclosed with a picket-fence railing.