She turned her face up to his. “So, when you were majoring in medicine and minoring in psychology, when did you have time to become a philosopher?”
What had just happened here? He could swear the woman in front of him had just gone through some sort of transformation. He could see it in her stance, detect it in her eyes. She had suddenly relaxed and in doing so, she seemed even sexier and more attractive than before. He felt himself wanting her. Badly.
He lifted a shoulder carelessly in response to her question. “Just comes naturally when you’ve got three siblings.”
She smiled at that. “Is three the magic number? I have two.”
“Sorry,” he deadpanned, moving closer to her. “It has to be three.”
“Three.” She nodded her head, as if she was being allowed in on a great secret. “Maybe next time,” she quipped.
“Maybe.”
His smile seemed to go right through her. As did the look in his eyes. She could almost feel him touching her with them. Or was that just wishful thinking?
“Feeling better?” he asked.
His voice was kind and she felt herself responding to it. She knew he was asking about the way she felt about her grandmother and she appreciated his thoughtfulness.
“I guess so.” She blew out a breath, making her peace with things the way they were. “At least I know she’s not lying keeled over in some ditch.”
“She seemed a great deal better off than that,” he noted, glancing over his shoulder toward the house. The sound of laughter floated out to him. The woman certainly did know how to enjoy herself, he mused. “And happier.”
“She did seem happy, didn’t she?” And that, April told herself, was the bottom line. Gran’s happiness. She’d lost sight of that for a moment. April opened the car door. “C’mon, I’ll drop you off at Alison’s house.”
He got in on his side and looked at her after buckling up. “I could be talked into a cup of coffee or a nightcap at your place.”
She was sure he could. And if she asked him in, she might just want him to stay. But she knew that right now, feeling vulnerable the way she was, she would be much better off not facing that complication.
“I think I’ve had enough surprises for one night,” she told him.
Jimmy sat back in his seat. He made it a point to never push.
“I take it Cinderella made it home from the ball.” Startled, April looked up from the drawing she’d been doodling on the pad, waiting for Jimmy to arrive. The mail had been particularly light today and she found herself with much too much time on her hands. Too much time to think.
She’d been biding her time since one o’clock, pretending to not look at the clock or to wonder if Jimmy would indeed show. Part of her hadn’t wanted him to, and the other part had.
Now there were only nerves to deal with instead of an internal war. There was no reason for nerves. This was nothing more than a pleasant outing. And if he was serious about wanting to see the so-called sights, the outing would practically be over before it began. No matter what Jimmy thought to the contrary, there really wasn’t all that much of Hades to see.
“Gran’s upstairs, sleeping,” she told him, reaching for her jacket. “She came in at three. The way she was tiptoeing around, she probably thought I didn’t hear her, but I did.”
Jimmy waited as she put up the Closed sign and then locked the door from the outside. “So now what, she’s grounded?”
April laughed shortly. “Living in Hades is being grounded enough.” Out of habit, because she was accustomed to taking charge, she led the way to her car. “You were right. She’s an adult and deserves to try to be happy. I just had this horrible image of her—”
Jimmy saw no reason to steer her to the vehicle Jean-Luc had lent him. It was April’s tour. He just stopped long enough to take out the picnic basket Luc and Alison had prepared for them. “Dying with a smile on her face?”
“Quite frankly, yes.” Did that make her seem silly in his eyes? Not that it mattered what she looked like in his eyes, but she wondered anyway.
“There are worse ways to go, you know.” He held the car door open for her then closed it when she slid inside. “When my time comes,” he told her as he deposited the picnic basket on the back seat of her car, “I hope I go that way.” Sliding into the front passenger side, he looked at her pointedly. “Making love to someone I was attracted to.”
Their eyes locking, April felt her skin tingle.
Chapter Seven
She tried very hard to ignore the fact that she felt every one of her nerve endings stand at attention. Craning her neck, April glanced at the item he’d deposited in the back seat before getting into the vehicle. She started the car, then looked at Jimmy. “What’s in the basket?”
“Food, a tablecloth, a bottle of some wine Jean-Luc said they save for special occasions. Since it warmed up a little again, he thought we might want to go on a picnic.”
“Picnic?” Though it was the month that bore her name, it was still a little brisk for things like that. The unseasonable warmth could evaporate in a split second, ushering in a snowstorm. She’d seen it happen often enough. “I thought you wanted a tour of Hades.”
He could tell by her tone that she wasn’t completely adverse to the idea of a picnic. All she needed was a little coaxing. Coaxing was his specialty.
“Well, seeing as how Hades is part of some of the prettiest scenery in the United States, I thought a picnic somewhere might not be out of order. Besides, as you pointed out, there isn’t all that much to Hades proper.”
Her mouth curved in amusement. “I never thought of Hades as being remotely proper. More like a ragtag bunch of houses scattered about like so many loose marbles.”
The town had built up some in the last six years, thanks in part to the money and effort sunk into it by Ike and Jean-Luc. There was more to the place than there had been before she’d left, but that still didn’t change her feelings about it. “It’s just someplace to leave.”
He turned in his seat to study her. For a second she’d sounded a little like him. It wasn’t that he wanted to leave Seattle, but there was this feeling that he was missing something, looking for something, even though his life was filled to breaking. “Did you always feel that way?”
The response that automatically rose to her lips was yes, but she stopped herself and gave the question some consideration. Her response wouldn’t have been entirely true.
“No, not always.” Realizing that she was getting too serious, April shrugged casually. “But that’s the basic battle cry of every kid—” she hesitated, remembering that neither her two siblings, or Ike or Luc, for that matter, had ever talked about leaving Hades; they’d actually been content to remain. But they had been in the minority. “Almost every kid,” she corrected herself, “who comes into puberty. There’s almost a mass exodus from the state every year of all the kids who turn eighteen. That’s why the government goes out of its way and pays people to stay here.”
“Did you leave here at eighteen?” When she didn’t answer, he took that to be a yes. “Was it just an itch to see the world or something more?”
He was getting personal again. She found herself not resenting it quite as much as last night. In the light of day, she had to admit that she rather enjoyed his curiosity about her. It was flattering—as long as she didn’t allow it to go to her head. “Are you studying me?”
The smile reached his eyes, making them sparkle. “So hard now that my eyes are about to fall out.”
She stopped as a deer loped across the road. “A blind surgeon, now there’s a frightening thought.”
Jimmy laughed, the fact that she still hadn’t answered him not eluding him. “Do you always take things literally?”
Taking her foot off the brake, April gave his question some thought before answering. “Most of the time. That way there’re no surprises down the road.”
She didn’t strike him as someone who liked things dull. “Don’t you like
surprises?”
April thought of the way she’d felt that long-ago morning, coming down to be with her father the way she did every morning, only to find that he wasn’t there. Or anywhere. Her voice was devoid of feeling when she answered. “Not particularly. Surprises are when life catches you unaware. It’s better to be prepared.”
He noticed the way her jaw hardened. It was too soon to ask her about that. He knew she wouldn’t answer. “But then that spoils the fun.”
With effort, she shook off her mood and smiled as she spared him a look. “It’s a trade-off.”
He could read things in her eyes. Things he’d seen in his own when he looked into a mirror. Things that still remained in his heart. “It’s hard not having any parents, isn’t it?”
April stopped the car for a moment and looked at him in surprise. There wasn’t anything to hit, but she didn’t want to take the chance on the occasional stray animal walking across her path when she wasn’t concentrating.
She’d mentioned her mother to him, but hadn’t said anything about whether or not her father had been on the scene while she was growing up. It was no secret in town, of course, that Wayne Yearling had abandoned his family. Had Jimmy asked Luc about her? she wondered. It occurred to her that maybe he was perhaps a tad unduly curious for a man who was just passing through.
Taking her foot off the brake again, she kept her eyes forward. Her voice was distant when she answered. “I never said I didn’t have any parents.”
He’d guessed correctly, he thought. He was treading somewhere that wasn’t fully healed. “Sorry, you said your grandmother raised you and I guess I just leaped to a conclusion.”
“I had parents,” she told him coolly. “Still have one somewhere I think.” Even saying the words cost her.
That surprised him. Family was very precious to him. There were just the four of them—five if he counted Luc—and he wouldn’t have lost track of his brother and sisters, no matter what, for the world. “You don’t know if he’s alive or not?”
He might as well not be, she thought, unable to separate herself from the bitterness that always sharply thrust at her whenever she thought of her father. “My father left when I was eleven.” She tried to shrug philosophically. “The wanderlust got the better of him.”
“Wanderlust?”
Well, she’d started this, she might as well tell him the rest of it, she thought. April eased her conscience by telling herself that talking to a stranger who was passing through was tantamount to talking to no one at all.
“My father came to Hades when there was supposedly gold found in the mines.” To have this make sense, she realized she had to backtrack a little. “Hades was founded by two prospectors. What they actually found was a vein of fool’s gold, but they thought it was the real thing and that they’d struck the mother lode.
“They found out otherwise quickly enough. Down on their luck and out of options, the two miners decided to stay where they were. Eventually, others came, looking for that same lucky strike. The hope was that the vein of fool’s gold was just a fluke and that there actually was gold in the hills. The legend persisted over the years.
“It was that legend that attracted my father and brought him here in the first place.” For a moment, she was back in the past. Her voice softened at the memory. “He was a giant of a man who always looked for the quickest road to everything. He never took his time, never wanted to stay put long. I think the years he stayed here with my mother were the most he’d ever spent in one place.” She tried to distance herself from the events she was recounting and couldn’t quite manage it. The hurt had lessened, but somehow it had never quite gone away. “He left me an atlas—badly outdated now—and not much more when he went away.” Uncomfortable, she blew out a breath. “He left my mother with three kids and a broken heart. I figure I got the better deal.”
Jimmy hadn’t said anything during her recitation. April glanced at him ruefully. “I don’t know why I’m running off at the mouth like this. Must be your easy bedside manner.”
“Must be,” he agreed quietly, moved by the pain he heard in her voice. “I’ve got the kind of face women talk to.”
Probably in an effort to get his attention, she thought. There was no denying that the man was a great deal more than just mildly attractive. “You must have heard a lot, then.”
He was tempted to touch her hand, to silently communicate that he understood. That he’d felt the same loneliness she’d experienced. But he figured that she might misunderstand. “Enough to know that your mother wasn’t the only one whose heart was broken.”
Her eyes darted toward him, anger threatening to flare. “Meaning what?”
He knew a smoke screen when he saw one. She was using anger as a shield. “That maybe you were hurt because he left.”
She shrugged, closing up right in front of him. “Didn’t think about it one way or the other.”
“That makes you very unique. I was pretty broken up when my parents died.”
She didn’t see the comparison. “That’s because death is final.”
“I was also angry because I felt that they’d abandoned me.”
Still driving, April looked at him for a long moment. “They didn’t exactly have a choice, did they?”
That was what he’d finally come to terms with. But it had taken him years to consciously reach that conclusion. Years in which he’d given Kevin more than his share of grief.
“No, but that didn’t change the way I felt at the time. I was pretty young and alone, as far as I saw. You kind of think your parents have control over things and that they could have somehow forestalled dying to stay with you.” The smile on his lips was rueful as he remembered. “I gave my brother a pretty hard time for a long while. I really think if it hadn’t been for Kevin, I might have wound up living a completely different life than I did.” There wasn’t a day that didn’t go by when he didn’t bless his older brother in his heart. “He refused to give up on me.”
She wished she’d had a Kevin in her life. Gran had been wonderful, but April had always felt guilty about needing to lean on the older woman. So she hadn’t. Gran had already raised a family, it hadn’t been fair to saddle her with another one. But then life, she’d come to accept, was never really fair.
“Kevin’s the oldest, right?”
He nodded. “Right.”
That explained it in her book. The oldest one just naturally had to assume the responsibility left behind by absent parents. You took care of the youngest ones, it was what you did if fate had placed you on the earth first. “Comes with the territory.”
She’d mentioned two siblings, but hadn’t given him any details and he hadn’t asked Alison about her. “You’re the oldest, then?”
“Guilty as charged.”
That she should bring the word guilt into it intrigued him. “Do you feel guilty?”
She looked at him. How the hell had he jumped to that conclusion? Of course she didn’t feel guilty. Why should she feel guilty? She’d served her time here. Which was more than her father had done. “That was just an expression.”
“I know, I just thought it was rather an interesting choice of words on your part.” She was clamming up, he could see it. “And you did eventually leave your brother and sister.”
She resented what he was implying. “With my grandmother. It wasn’t as if I was running out on them.” Like her father had. “Or withdrawing.” Like her mother had, she added silently.
He looked for a way to take the edge off the argument he heard brewing. “Do you know that your eyes darken to an interesting shade of blue when you get angry?”
“I’m not angry,” she told him, banking down exactly that.
“And you’re also very stirring.”
Why did he keep doing this to her, defusing her with compliments she knew he couldn’t mean, compliments that seemed to get to her anyway? “You make it hard for me to be annoyed with you.”
He grinned. “Good.”
/>
She tried not to pay attention to the way his smile seemed to create beams of sunshine wherever it hit.
Only half conscious of where she was going, April drove up a winding path, selecting the most scenic place she could think of. The place where, her mother had once told her, her father had proposed. There was even a tree where they had carved their initials. Before the disillusionment came.
Bringing the vehicle to a stop near the spot, April pulled up the hand brake, then turned toward him. “I guess this is as good a spot as any.”
The place she had brought him to overlooked a wide, crystal-blue river. The opposite bank was fringed with trees and there was an incredible view of the majestic mountains just beyond. Jimmy wondered if those were the same mountains that the miners had hoped were the answer to their prayers.
“As good as any?” he echoed, looking at her. Was she as completely anesthetized to what she saw because, having grown up with it, she’d taken it for granted? He got out of the car, as if drawn by a magnet, and moved toward the view. “This is absolutely magnificent.”
She wouldn’t have gone that far, although when she was a little girl, it had been her very favorite place. But that had been because of what it had meant to her mother and, she’d thought, to her father. She’d learned better.
With a shrug of her shoulders, she attempted to appear indifferent. “It looks like the stuff calendars are made of.”
She wouldn’t have brought him here if she didn’t agree with him, he thought. “Yes, the kind of calendars where you want to place yourself into the picture.”
“It’s a good photo opportunity,” the photographer in her conceded. April reached into the back seat and took out the basket. “You must have something like this back home.”
Jimmy took the basket from her and followed her up the bank. “Not like this.” He stopped to look around. There was still snow on the mountain peaks. The tranquillity astounded him. “The solitude is overwhelming.”
The M.D. Meets His Match Page 8