by Jane Toombs
“Okay, I didn’t ride by myself.” Tim sounded defensive. “I had to hold on to her.”
He still wasn’t aware of Jade’s presence. She held her breath, listening, trying to figure out where there might be a lot of frogs. Some Asian country in the tropics? And who was the woman he spoke of?
“I like it here. I hope I never go back to him?” Tim made it a question, as though puzzled by something.
Hot Shot yawned and stretched, then looked directly at Jade, uttering a feline feed-me command. Tim turned his head and saw her.
“Time to get breakfast for both you guys, I guess,” she said, coming into the kitchen.
After they finished eating and she was filling the dishwasher, she said as casually as she could, “I didn’t always live in Nevada, you know. I came here when I was a baby. My brother Zed remembers a little bit about living in California, but I don’t.”
She filled the detergent container and shut the dishwasher door. “It looks like Alice used to live in California—maybe you did, too.”
Tim picked up Freddie and hugged him, looking away from her, remaining mute.
Jade sighed. Even the gentlest of probes made him shut down completely. She’d have to be patient.
“So, let’s pick out our clothes for the barbecue,” she said. “Once we’re dressed, we’ll have time to walk down to the beach and back before we leave. Okay?”
Tim nodded. He liked the narrow beach along Lake Tahoe, liked going barefoot and wading a few steps into the water, cold as it was.
When she helped him dress, she found the elastic bandage missing. “Gone,” he told her when she asked him where it was. “Don’t need no bandage.”
“We’ll have to ask Nathan if you can leave it off,” she said as she wound the other clean one around his ankle.
Tim scowled but didn’t protest further.
Later she found the missing unrolled bandage hidden behind a stack of newspapers she hadn’t yet tied with string for recycling. Since it was Hot Shot’s favorite hiding place for odds and ends, she couldn’t be sure whether Tim had copied him or whether the cat had actually hidden the bandage.
When they were ready to leave for Zed’s ranch, Tim carried Freddie into the truck with him, but once they were off the mountain into Carson Valley, he said, “Maybe Freddie wants to stay in the truck. He might not like bar-be-cues.”
“Good idea,” she said, realizing how uncertain Tim was about it himself. “Freddie can guard the truck for us while you get to meet Danny and Yasmin and Erin. Just think, you’ll be the oldest ’cause you’re five.”
“I wear Danny’s ’jamas to sleep in. Will he get mad?”
“Nope, not a bit.”
“Doc gonna be there?”
“You mean Dr. Walker.”
“He said I can call him Doc.”
“That’s okay, then. I don’t know if he’ll have time to come—doctors are busy people.”
“He told me Freddie was mine forever and ever.”
“And he meant it. That frog is all yours.”
“What if his sister wants Freddie back?”
She hadn’t thought Tim was paying attention to the conversation about Nathan’s sister, Laura, but the kid didn’t miss much. Reaching over, she ruffled his hair. “Laura’s grown up now, so she doesn’t need Freddie.”
Hugging the frog to him, Tim retreated into silence. He didn’t speak again until they reached the ranch and parked by the house. “Maybe I can stay in here with Freddie.”
“No,” she said firmly. “But we can hold hands until you get used to everyone.”
Danny came running over as soon as they got out of the truck, shouting and waving a boat. “Tee! Look what I got. Daddy T’s gonna help me sail it on the pond later.” He slowed as he neared them, his gaze on Tim.
“You can watch,” he said to him.
Tim nodded, still clutching Jade’s hand.
“You want to see the ponies?” Danny asked.
Tim’s grip tightened, so Jade answered for him. “Let’s wait until after he meets everyone, okay?”
She started for the backyard with Tim, Danny walking beside the boy and talking a mile a minute. Suddenly Tim stopped, let go of her hand and pointed to the red Jeep with its snowplow attachment turning into the drive. “Doc’s coming,” he said. “We gotta wait for him.”
“Who’s Doc?” Danny demanded.
“He fixes up hurt people,” Tim said. “He’s my friend.”
Jade, surprised he’d talked at all, was totally wiped out by his last few words. This from the kid who was afraid of men? Who’d tried to run away from Nathan less than a week ago?
As soon as the Jeep stopped beside her truck, Tim ran over to it. Nathan emerged, grinned at him, reached into the Jeep and brought out a child-sized broad-brimmed hat. He settled it on Tim’s head, saying, “Can’t be a proper cowboy without the right hat.”
Glancing at Jade, he tipped his own hat, a larger copy of Tim’s. “Us newbie Nevadans mean to do our best to fit in, right, cowboy?”
“Right!” Tim beamed at him, touching his own hat with tentative fingers.
“I got a hat like that,” Danny said. “I’m gonna go get it.” He ran off.
“Do I got to wear that thing on my leg anymore?” Tim asked Nathan.
“If your ankle doesn’t hurt without it, no, you don’t.”
Tim slanted Jade a triumphant look, plopped down on the ground and started taking off his shoe. Nathan smiled ruefully at her.
“I’m glad you were able to come,” she said, finding she meant every word.
By the time Tim got the bandage off and was putting his sock back on, Jade saw her brothers advancing toward them.
“A welcoming committee?” Nathan murmured to her.
Taken together, dark-haired, dark-eyed Zed and Talal did look impressive. She was so used to the two of them that she didn’t always remember how they affected others. Tim had stopped trying to get his shoe on, staring in disbelief at the two men.
“So this is Tim,” Zed said, hunkering down beside the boy. “Let’s get that shoe on so you can join the gang.”
Without a word, Tim let him do just that, gazing openmouthed from one man to the other.
“My brothers are twins, Tim,” Jade said. “Identical twins look almost exactly like each other. The one helping you is Zed, the other is Talal. Guys, this is Nathan Walker.”
Nathan offered his hand to Talal and, when Zed rose, to him.
“I heard there was a new doctor out by Tourmaline.” Zed glanced at the Jeep’s license plate. “Like it in the boondocks?”
“Beats Chicago,” Nathan told him.
“Well, you’re welcome out there, I’m sure. Here, too. Glad you could make it.”
Danny came dashing up to Tim. “See, my hat’s like yours,” he said. “I’m a cowboy, too.” He tugged at Zed’s hand. “Daddy Z, can Tim and me ride the ponies? Yasmin won’t care. She’s fussing with baby Erin.”
“I’ll help,” Nathan offered. The four of them headed for the corral, leaving Jade and Talal behind.
“You must really like the man,” Talal commented.
“If you’re referring to Nathan, I barely know him,” she said indignantly.
“My dear sister, you haven’t invited a man to our family barbecues for going on two years.”
“So it was time, right?”
Talal grinned. “If you say so.” He glanced at the red Jeep. “They must get a lot of late snow in the boondocks.”
Jade bit back a defensive answer, remembering just in time she was being baited. She had no reason to defend Nathan, anyway, she told herself as she picked up Tim’s discarded elastic bandage.
“I must say I like his choice of color, though,” Talal added. “Come and join the rest of the crew.”
“If you help me carry my contribution to the barbecue.”
They found Zed’s wife, Karen, Talal’s wife, Linnea and Karen’s brother, Steve, sitting around on the patio watching
Yasmin encouraging baby Erin to take a step away from the chair she held on to.
“Jade’s doctor friend has arrived,” Talal announced.
“He’s not mine,” Jade corrected automatically, then could have bitten her tongue. Instead of reacting to Talal’s teasing, she needed to ignore what he said. “Hi, Steve,” she added. “What’s with you?”
“Same old, same old,” he told her. “I hear you’ve got yourself a foster child.”
“Once I rescued him I could hardly let him be taken by strangers. Did they tell you the entire story?”
Steve shook his head, so she launched into a playby-play account, finishing with, “Alice is still out of it. The van she was driving was stolen and no one has a clue who she is. Or Tim, either, for that matter. He isn’t very communicative.”
Steve nodded. “I’ll see what I can find out when I fly back home next week.”
He wasn’t FBI or CIA, but Jade knew from experience that whatever secret Washington agency he worked for got answers quicker than fast. “Thanks,” she said.
Looking at Karen, she added, “Your brother ought to be named Sam, instead of Steve—short for Good Samaritan.”
Karen gave a whoop of laughter. “Him? He wouldn’t know a good deed if it bit him. Steve’s just nosy, that’s all.”
Steve rolled his eyes, then got up, saying to Talal, “Past time for us to join the other guys, that’s clear.”
When they were out of earshot, Linnea asked, “What’s this doctor like, Jade?”
“A tad too laid-back for my taste,” Jade told her. “I need to be challenged.”
“As I recall,” Karen put in, “the last challenging type you took up with didn’t last through the first round.”
“His problem was trying to turn me into a nice little kitty-cat,” Jade said. “He didn’t take into consideration that even kittens have claws.”
“And cougars have even bigger claws,” Karen noted, “if you don’t mind the comparison.”
“Actually I’m flattered. I’ve always admired them.”
“So Dr. Walker isn’t a challenger?” Linnea asked.
Jade shook her head. “No way. We don’t have any kind of a relationship brewing, and I don’t plan on changing that. If we did get involved, in a month or two I’d be walking all over him, and neither of us would enjoy the experience.”
Linnea and Karen glanced at each other, making Jade wonder why. Did they think she liked wiping her feet on men as though they were doormats? Or was it something else?
“But you invited him here,” Karen said finally.
“You remember I told you poor little Tim showed evidence of abuse? Well, Nathan’s gone out of his way to reassure him that not all men are abusive. I thought the invitation was the least I could do.”
Deciding the subject definitely needed changing, she called to Talal’s and Linnea’s daughter, Yasmin. “Hey, bright eyes, how come Tee didn’t get a hug?”
“Tee!” Zed’s and Karen’s daughter, Erin, crowed, holding out her arms to be picked up.
Jade got two hugs, one from each niece, and the conversation turned to the children.
In the corral, the men were applauding Tim and Danny’s riding skills. Steve had arrived with Talal, but after being introduced to Nathan, had wandered off by himself.
Pleased with Tim’s performance, Nathan said to the boy, “You must have ridden a pony before.”
“Before,” Tim said. “Back there.”
“Back where?” Nathan asked, only to be greeted with silence as Tim shut down. This is deep-seated, he told himself, not just because of the accident. Somewhere, somehow, the kid got the idea that revealing information was dangerous.
A muscle twitched in his jaw as he wondered if maybe Tim had been beaten for it. They hadn’t yet invented a name rotten enough for child abusers.
“Good little rider you got there, Nathan,” Zed told him. “Somebody taught him right.”
Catching an incipient scowl on Danny’s face, Nathan realized the younger boy was beginning to resent how everyone’s attention was fixed on Tim.
“Danny’s no slouch,” he told the twins. “One or both of you turned him into a real cowboy.” With Danny referring to them as Daddy T or Daddy Z, he wasn’t sure which twin was the real father.
“Daddy Z taught me,” Danny put in. “Daddy T’s got to go away a lot ’cause he’s a prince.”
Nathan raised his eyebrows. Talal did have a slight accent—he hadn’t noticed Zed did. But these guys were twins.
Both of them chuckled, then Talal explained briefly how they’d been separated as small boys. “I grew up in Kholi and Zeid here in Nevada. It took us a while to get together. Since he’s more settled than I, he’s raising my son.” He glanced at Danny. “Right, tiger?”
Danny nodded casually. Obviously this was no big deal to him. “Can me and Tim race?” he asked.
“Maybe the next time he comes to visit,” Zed said, lifting him off the pony. “Time to get honking with the pit fires or we’ll be having a barbecue without any meat.”
“Ve-ge-tar-ian,” Danny said carefully. “Me and Yasmin got kids in our school like that. They don’t eat meat. I like meat, don’t you, Tim?”
“Yeah. Specially hot dogs.”
As soon as Nathan lifted Tim down, Danny grabbed his hand, saying, “Come on, let’s go see Yasmin and Erin. They’re my sisters. You got any sisters?”
“No.” Tim gave Nathan a questioning look, saw his nod and raced off with Danny.
The ankle must really be better, Nathan thought. It was as good as healed, anyway. He was pleased the boy had taken to Danny and was beginning to behave like a normal kid.
“Jade seems pretty attached to Tim,” Zed said as they started toward the house. “She’s got a soft heart under that tough shell.”
“Jaida tries to hide it, but she’s all heart,” Talal put in, giving her name the same slightly different pronunciation he did Zed’s. “That makes a woman vulnerable.”
Nathan couldn’t figure whether they were warning him off or simply trying to explain their sister to him. He decided keeping quiet was the best choice.
“We make her sound like she needs a cardiologist,” Zed added, chuckling.
Nathan quelled his impulse to say he was merely a family practitioner. He liked these guys, so no point in sounding like a smart-ass. In his opinion, soft heart or not, Jade seemed well able to take care of herself.
After being introduced to the wives—his medical eye noted Linnea was about five months pregnant—and the little girls, he found himself actively involved in preparations for the cooking and being treated like one of the family. While on one level, it made him feel pleasantly at home, on another, he couldn’t help wondering if he was somehow being set up as a prospective husband for Jade.
He tried not to allow his uneasiness at this possibility to affect his enjoyment. While he had no intention of romancing her, much less marrying her—or any woman—he did like her family.
He and Steve were carrying more wood for the fire when Steve asked, “Practiced in Illinois before you came out here, did you? What persuaded you to move to the Wild West?”
Simple curiosity, or was Steve vetting him? Stop being paranoid, he warned himself. “In more ways than one, I got fed up with city life,” he said. “When a doctor finds himself thinking of his patients as cases, instead of people, it’s time to make a change.”
Steve nodded. “If it wasn’t for my mountain cabin, I couldn’t take my job.”
“You have a cabin in the Sierras?”
Without answering the question, Steve said, “Jade asked me to see if my department couldn’t come up with something on Alice and Tim. I’ll handle that when I’m back in D.C. and call you when we get results.”
Not if—when. Interesting. “Thanks,” Nathan said. “Both Jade and I are concerned about Tim’s past abuse. No way will I let the kid go back to that.”
Steve shot him a curious glance.
So he�
��d been more vehement than usual, so what? He wasn’t about to stand aside and allow helpless creatures be abused.
“I’ll let you know what I come up with,” Steve said. “She’s one of a kind, Jade. I met her for the first time when Karen married Zed. Jade and I both laughed at the matchmaking gleams in our respective relatives’ eyes. We knew right away we could be friends, but we had enough sense to realize we’d be at each other’s throats in less than a week if we got involved. Funny how your nearest and dearest always try to match you up with the wrong people.”
“I made my mistake all by myself,” Nathan said, disarmed by Steve’s sharing. He rarely talked about his divorce. “Can’t blame anyone else.”
“Come to that, I did the same,” Steve told him. “Makes for extreme wariness when it comes to getting close to any woman again.”
“Tell me.” He and Steve exchanged understanding looks.
The conversation about relationships and the discussions concerning Jade made for some awkwardness later when he sat next to her at one of the picnic tables while they ate.
“Tim’s fitting right in,” he said, nodding toward the separate table where every child except Erin was sitting.
“I was hoping he’d feel at home with my nephew and nieces,” Jade said. “At first he was afraid to get out of the truck.”
Nathan told her about the pony and what Tim said when complimented on his riding ability, finishing with, “But when I asked him where, he clammed up.”
“Probably the place with the frogs, wherever that is. I wish you’d heard him talking in that other language to Freddie. Maybe you’d have recognized it.”
“I get by in Spanish, but my Asian language ability is nil.”
They continued to discuss Tim, she seeming as reluctant as he to get on to any subject that might lead to something personal. Whatever her brothers might have in mind, it was clear Jade had no part in it.
When everyone had finished eating, Nathan tried to help with the cleaning up but was shooed off by Karen. “I asked Jade to show you the rest of the place,” she said. “I’m soliciting opinions on what more should be done with the gazebo and the pond, so keep that in mind.”
“Maybe Tim would like to go with us,” he said to Jade.