by Baker, Fran
Nick smiled, flowing with the feelings, and unerringly clinked his cup gently against hers in a toast. “To wonders. May they never cease.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Dovie said, and did.
Outside her clapboard house, a banshee wind howled and the snow tittered its secrets against the windows. Inside, steaming black coffee and a budding attraction warmed two strangers through and through.
“Would you mind fetching me an onion from the pantry?” Dovie peeled and diced a couple of cold cooked potatoes she’d found in the crisper. “It’s the first door to your left,” she added automatically. “The onions are hanging in a braid on a hook to your right.”
Nick brought back the whole shooting match, because he had no idea in hell how to remove one onion. “Did I smell pumpkin and dried apples in there?”
“Sure did.” She cut an onion off the bottom of the braid, peeled and minced it, and dropped the pieces into the frying pan to brown in a teaspoon of bacon drippings. “Thanks to my garden, my hogs, and the occasional trout, I rarely have to shop for groceries. In fact my only cash income is from this farm; the hogs provide most of my money.”
“You raise hogs?” If she had suggested they go skinny-dipping right after breakfast, he couldn’t have been more amazed.
“Prize blue guineas,” she boasted.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No. Why?”
“Because hogs bite.”
“Only under duress.” Lifting the onions from the frying pan with a slotted spoon, she mixed them with the corned beef and potatoes in a blue wooden bowl. “Anyway, I’ve got the most laid-back hogs this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”
“You’re so little, though,” he argued. “What would you do if one of them attacked you?”
“Wave a white flag?”
“Be serious, will you?” His stentorian tone told her he was taking this very seriously.
“Look,” she said, then sighed. “I know you’re concerned about me. And I appreciate it—I really do. But with Christmas right around the corner and my sister-in-law ready to deliver at the drop of a hat, being attacked by a hog is the least of my worries.”
Dovie shaped the corned-beef mixture into patties and arranged them in the oil sizzling in the skillet. “Besides, blue guineas aren’t that big and I’m not all that little, although it’s certainly nice of you to say so.”
What in the sam scratch got into Nick he couldn’t say, but the next thing he knew, he’d taken two steps backward and cocked his head to the side as though he were sizing her up. “How tall are you, anyway?”
“Five foot none,” she answered saucily.
A crooked grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Cute.”
“Don’t ever call a short person cute.”
“Why not?”
“Because she just might haul off and punch you in the knee!”
He laughed openly, throwing his head back and thinking how much he would miss her lively banter when he left. “And begging your pardon beforehand, what do you weigh?”
“A hundred and plenty.” Her hourglass body tended to be a touch hippy; she wouldn’t have divulged that information under penalty of death!
“Five foot none and a hundred and plenty, huh?” A sly smile limned his lips. “Sounds like a bite-sized snack for a stressed-out hog.”
And then they were both laughing, when it wasn’t really that funny, and she took her turn thinking she sure would miss this man’s wonderful sense of the ridiculous when he went home.
She sobered at the reminder and reached for a pan to poach their eggs in. No sense brooding about something she couldn’t change. “Breakfast is almost ready, so you can set the table now. Salt and pepper are on the stove; butter’s in the icebox.”
Like most doctors, Nick was better at giving orders than he was at taking them. But without a word of argument he set their two places cozily at right angles on her dining-room table, arranging the napkins and silverware and condiments so he wouldn’t have to grope for them.
While she waited for the water to boil, Dovie watched the smooth play of his shoulder muscles beneath his thermal shirt. Finally realizing what she was doing, she spun away and plopped two pieces of rye bread in the toaster. They popped up just as she’d finished filling their plates, and she joined him at the table.
For all their talking and teasing beforehand, they ate in silence, their appetities duly reflecting the fact that their metabolisms had been running full tilt all morning.
“That was good!” Nick exclaimed. He sat back and let out a repleted sigh. “If you fed your brothers and sisters that well, I’m surprised they ever left home.”
Dovie started to pick up their empty plates, thought better of it, and sat back too. The dishes could wait. It wasn’t as though she had anything else to do later on. “I’m afraid home cooking runs a poor second to matters of health.”
He arched a thick black eyebrow quizzically. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means if we had decent medical facilities here on the hill, more of our young people—my brothers and sisters, for example—might stay and raise their families.”
“That’s right; you said something about plans for a clinic falling through, when you were talking to Curtis.”
“He’ll leave next,” she said mournfully. “I just know it.”
“Maybe not.” But something told Nick that was small comfort.
“He’s already talking about it.” Dovie reached for her coffee cup, saw it was empty, and dropped her hand. “Linda’s had a difficult pregnancy, and they’ve about worn themselves sick running to and from Richmond to see the doctor. Then, to top it all off, the brakes on their ten-year-old Chevy went bad and the auto-parts store is closed through Christmas, so they have to borrow my car when there’s an emergency.”
Nick shook his head in sympathy. “It sounds like Curtis can’t win for losing.”
“That’s not the half of it!” Too agitated to sit still any longer, Dovie stood and began clearing the table. “If Curtis and Linda leave, can my other brothers—Jack and Ray and Lon—and their familes be far behind?”
He rose to help her. Their hands collided in midair when they both reached for the butter dish. She drew her breath in sharply, and his actions stilled for a heartbeat. Then she pulled her hand away as though she’d just been burned, and he picked up the cut-glass dish. Perversely, he was glad he wasn’t the only one who felt such a soul-jolting thrill whenever they touched.
She stood stock-still, captivated by the sight of his hand, with its long fingers curled around the fragile dish, the dark hairs swooping down from his forearm and wrist as he set it on the counter. At the thought of that hand on her body the blood thundered in her ears, echoing through her head until she thought it would surely burst.
The timer on her dryer buzzed, and in the furthest reaches of her mind Dovie feared the worst had happened, that her head really had burst. Then she realized what it was and made a sound like air going out of a balloon. “Oh, good … our clothes …”
“Can’t wait to get rid of me, huh?”
She looked at him to find that teasing smile back on his lips, and said softly, “You’re welcome to stay for the day, as far as I’m concerned.”
He sobered and crossed to her mantel, silently counting his steps, then opened the hinged face of her clock and felt the hands. “It’s almost ten; I don’t want to miss Harley.”
“Fine.” She swallowed hard, drowning a hope she hadn’t bidden, and clapped the dishes she was carrying into the sink. “I’ll get your clothes.”
His spicy citrus scent, fresh as the outdoors, clung to his warm chamois-cloth shirt. The legs of their jeans, his so much longer than hers, had tangled into a veritable lover’s knot during the drying cycle.
She separated them with a wistful smile, squared her small shoulders, and took his clothes to him. He was dressed and ready to leave before she could say Jack Robinson. She trailed him to the door
, her heart suddenly heavy as lead.
“I’d be happy to drive you down to the river road,” she offered when he reached for his waders.
“No, thanks.” Nick felt her eyes boring into his back and half turned, towering over her in the small entryway. “I need to learn my way around.”
“Oh, of course,” Dovie agreed too quickly, and backed a step away from him, only to trip over his fly rod, which still stood by the front door.
He reached for her wrist to keep her from falling. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she whispered miserably, knowing that he must think her totally graceless, a real klutz.
A smile softened his strong jaw when she was finally steady on her feet. She was so fragile, as delicate as china. He released her reluctantly and leaned down to pick up his fly rod. “Listen, thanks for breakfast.”
“My pleasure.” Anxiety made her voice breathless.
He turned and opened the door. “Good-bye, Dovie.”
She shivered and hugged her arms against a cold chunk of despair. “Good-bye, Nick.”
Halfway out the door he stopped and weighed his decision for a few seconds before turning back. “Will you meet me at the river tomorrow?”
“T-tomorrow?” she stammered, so startled by his abrupt about-face that she could hardly think.
“If you’d rather not—”
“No … I mean, yes, I’d like that very much.”
“Same time?”
The snow swirled in about her feet, blanketing those garish red-and-gold socks in winter white, but summer blossomed in her smile. “Same time.”
“See you then,” he confirmed before closing the door softly behind him. And for the first time since he’d lost his eyesight, Nick was looking forward to tomorrow.
Four
* * *
A good six inches of snow lay on the ground the next morning and a pale gray sky presaged several inches more before nightfall, but nothing short of an avalanche could have deterred Dovie. Clutching tightly the split-bamboo rod and graphite reel that had belonged to her father, she practically slalomed down Spicey Hill.
Slightly winded, as much from the excitement of seeing Nick again as from her race against time, she paused at the bottom to catch her breath. Inhaling deeply … exhaling slowly … She finally felt her pulse return to normal. She shouldn’t have bothered. The instant she spotted him, her heart went bobsledding again.
He’d claimed her favorite spot, of course, but had cleared a place to his right for her. Sharp-combed waves chopped at the rocky bank where he stood with feet spread wide and fly rod at the ready, his rugged masculinity harmonizing perfectly with the wild river setting.
Moving with the precision and power of a mountain cat stalking its prey, he made a perfect cast. His lure arced high in the air, catching a bitter angling breeze that carried it twenty feet or so before it landed with a soft plop and sank.
Upstream a flash of silver suddenly caught her eye.
Then another.
And yet another.
Incredible as it seemed—especially on the first cast—he’d flushed a school of trout feeding in a small chute of water between the rocks.
Dovie had been so absorbed in watching Nick that she hadn’t moved; she was still a dozen yards behind him. But now, her fishing fever soaring to an all-time high, she ran to the riverbank and rigged up. With any luck she’d catch her Christmas dinner this morning!
“You’re late.” He said it solemnly, but his warm smile bid her welcome. The opaque sunglasses that hid his eyes were identical to the ones he’d lost yesterday.
“Appears to me I’m just in time,” she replied sassily as an enormous trout circled, white-mouthed, around his lure.
Nick wanted to tell her that truer words were never spoken. That he’d been a dead man inside before her musical laughter and womanly body had brought him back to life. He wanted to say he was sorry he’d made her mad yesterday morning … sorrier still that he hadn’t kissed her. But knowing it was too much too soon he said, “You certainly are,” and let it go at that.
The trout seized both his lure and his attention then, snapping cold spray in his face as it turned abruptly and sped for shallow water. He slammed the bail of his reel open and let the line sing free in spiraling loops so it wouldn’t break, then clinked the bail shut and began working his rod.
Dovie stood in utter awe of Nick’s strength. Last night she’d lain awake in her lonely bed, thirty-four years old and fast heading upward, and found herself wondering if perhaps she’d endowed him with powers he really didn’t have because she craved some excitement in her life. But the moment she saw his lithe muscles rippling beneath his hunter’s-plaid shirt, she knew he was everything she’d remembered … and more.
“Oh, hell!”
His words pierced the still, frosty air, startling her. She looked closer and saw that the trout had run up under a rock and tangled his line. He reached to clear it, his pliant fingers expertly plucking the eight-pound test.
The trout darted into deeper water, fighting him ferociously, and Dovie could hear the stressed fiberglass strands in Nick’s rod humming like high-tension wires.
She couldn’t begin to guess how long the fight lasted. It might have been five minutes, or fifteen. She only knew that her arms ached for him as he strained against losing the fish. That her legs grew heavy and her breath came hard while he stoically stood his ground. And that her knees went rubbery with relief when he finally brought the trout home.
“Hand me the net, will you?” Nick reached out behind him, and she rushed to do his bidding.
“It’s beautiful,” Dovie murmured after he’d scooped up his second big rainbow in as many days.
The trout had nearly torn the hook free, and it slipped out easily.
“The next best thing to breakfast at Tiffany’s,” he stated with justifiable pride. His fingers were numb from the fight and the freezing water, but when he cradled his prize with both hands he felt a pang of shame.
For reasons she couldn’t define, Dovie sensed his change of heart. “You’re not keeping it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Nick held the trout upright. “Feel her sides.”
“Her sides?” But as she ran her hands along those bulging flanks, she suddenly understood that the deep and eternal force of life was trying to repeat itself in the trout’s body. “She’s ready to spawn.”
“Her eggs are so ripe, she’s about to explode.”
And Dovie, who’d once decided against marrying and having children because she’d raised so many relations, now felt her own biological clock ticking like a time bomb and wondered if she’d made the right decision. “No wonder she fought you tooth and nail; you threatened her babies.”
The trout gasped, her gills heaving harshly.
“Come on, little mother, I’m taking you home.” Nick crouched and swam the trout into the current, wagging her tail back and forth until she’d revived sufficiently to hold her place in his loosely cupped hands.
Dovie watched from the bank as he retraced the path of their fight in stages, holding the trout behind each rock in turn and letting her adjust to the swifter currents before moving her on.
When the trout was strong enough to swim, she slapped her tail against Nick’s arm as if to say thank you, then shot out of his hands. Dovie saw her for an instant in that wintry water, a speedy silver-gray missile. And then she was gone.
He turned toward the bank and grinned. “Oatmeal, anyone?”
She laughed softly, still pondering the import of what she’d witnessed and its impact on her. “Would you settle for sausage and cornmeal mush?”
Cocking his head and hooking both thumbs in the waistband of his waders, he pretended to give that serious consideration. “I might.”
Like metal shavings to a magnet, Dovie’s eyes were drawn to the opaque sunglasses he wore. She pictured his deep blue eyes, crinkled at the corners in amusement beneat
h coal black brows, and wished she could see them again. Her voice drifted wistfully across the water. “I’ll even throw in a pot of coffee and let you pour.”
Nick’s laughter flowed as richly and warmly as the blackstrap molasses she was planning to serve with breakfast. “You drive a hard bargain, lady, but I sure do like your style.”
She watched him climb the bank, taking it slowly but surely, and wondered if he would kiss her this time. The thought sent chills chasing along her spine and spawned an earthy sensation somewhere below her stomach. Only when he pushed his sunglasses back onto his head did she know for certain that he would.
His nostrils flaring slightly as he inhaled her heady rose fragrance, Nick homed in on her. Her pulse racing ecstatically at the hard-muscled sight of him, Dovie dropped her fishing rod and moved into his embrace as naturally as if she’d known him for years.
Yesterday he’d told her she was beautiful; today he showed her how beautiful she really was.
Holding her as though she were fragile and precious, Nick lowered his face toward hers. His lips trailed fiery paths across her cheeks, her eyelids, her chin, burning away the December chill.
Dovie trembled feverishly in his arms, but he didn’t rush. He paid homage to each perfect feature, that delicate bone structure; he even took the time to savor the honeyed flavor of her breath.
Every sense she had woke up and sang. She felt the imprint of his hard body against her softer one. Inhaled deeply of his lime-and-spice soap. Heard him fashion her name in low staccato sounds that echoed her heartbeat. And when his mouth finally met hers, the taste of him went straight to her head.
Intoxicating he was, like Christmas Day brandy, and she parted her lips to drain the cup.
Suddenly, so suddenly she almost lost her balance, Nick thrust her from him and turned away. In the sorry shadows cast by the naked trees, his breath tore out in ragged white clouds. “Dammit, Dovie, if I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to.”