by Jane Toombs
Amy sighed. “And she never got over him. How romantic.”
He shot her a skeptical look. “I’m not saying my aunt never looked at another man. She just never married one.”
“Makes her human, but it’s still romantic. So you have a sister?”
“Diane. She’s a teacher in Hawaii. Unmarried.”
“Smart gal,” Amy quipped.
“Where does your brother live?”
“Russ? He has a horse ranch near here, in Carson Valley. That’s one of the reasons I answered your aunt’s ad for an associate. I wanted to be closer to him and my nephew and baby niece.”
David frowned. “He didn’t learn the first time, I take it.”
“Not all marriages are bad. Mari’s a great gal. They suit each other like you wouldn’t believe.”
“So you do believe in marriage as an institution.”
She nodded. “For some people. Not for me. I’m happier single.”
“I agree with that philosophy. Totally.”
“Ground rules for friends,” Amy said.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Maybe we ought to set a few others while we’re at it.”
He grinned at her. “Ones we can keep like the first rule or ones we can’t?”
She shook her head at him. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah—fatal attraction.”
“It’s chemistry,” she sputtered. “Hormones. Pheromones.”
“All of the above. But how does that stop me from wanting to pull over and haul you into my arms right now?”
He watched her start to bristle, then deliberately take a deep breath before speaking. “If we’re able to ignore it, the temptation will eventually fade.” Her tone was cool.
That raised his eyebrows. “If you believe that, I don’t know how you ever got to be a psychologist.”
“I can do anything I make my mind up to do,” she said coolly. “Including ignoring.”
She’d just laid down a challenge. David smiled. He hadn’t felt like taking up any challenges for more than a year, but he sure as hell meant to run with this one.
Chapter Four
As the week passed, Amy found she was having a hard time controlling her impulse to go outside and talk to David during her lunch break. By noon Friday she broke down and found him in the side yard, washing off with the hose.
“Just wondering how the kittens are doing,” she said, trying not to be affected by all those water droplets glistening on his bare torso. Good grief, did she really feel an urge to lick them off one by one?
“Growing. Even Sheba.”
Putting any crazy thought of temptation firmly aside, she decided to zero in on his conviction the runt was a female. “If you mean the little black one, how do you know it’s a she?”
He shrugged.
“Well,” she said, “I guess Sheba’s no stranger name for a male than Hobo for a female. Actually, if you look you can tell.”
“I did. They all look alike to me back there.”
“Female anatomy in kittens sort of resembles an exclamation point.”
“You could come over tonight and show me.”
Not to his apartment, not at night. Bad idea. “How about tomorrow instead?”
“Whatever. Then we can—explore.” His smile was devilish.
“The countryside, you mean?” she said quickly. “Okay, but not up quite so high this time.”
“That’s what friends are for—to take you to the heights.”
“We’ve been there.” She put a pinch of tartness in her tone.
“So now you expect the depths? How about Sutro’s Tunnel? That’s ground level and a tad below.”
“Never heard of it.”
“How about the V&T Railroad?”
She shook her head.
“Virginia City?”
“That I’ve heard about from my little nephew. He claims camels live in Virginia City.”
“He’s right, but only during the annual camel races. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad still runs between Virginia City and Gold Hill. Want to take a ride on the rails with a genuine steam engine pulling the cars?”
She smiled. “Why not? If I survived the sailplane, the V&T ought to be child’s play.”
“There’s a tunnel along the way, with an interesting tradition to go with it.”
Analyzing the teasing light in his eyes, she said, “Maybe I don’t want to follow tradition.”
“Where’s your when-in-Rome spirit?”
Left behind long ago, she almost told him. Along with my spirit of adventure. “I’ll come by tomorrow about ten,” she said. “That way you won’t have to pick me up or drop me off. See you then.”
She turned from his mocking gaze and returned to the house. He could make fun of her wanting her own transportation all he wanted to, but she was determined to play it safe. At least until this nearly irresistible urge to touch and be touched by him wore itself out from lack of fuel.
If she wanted to help David face his denial, she certainly couldn’t afford to be caught up in a sizzling affair with him. Even if she wasn’t trying to act as a covert therapist, getting intimate with the nephew of the psychiatrist who was monitoring her last six months of pre-licensure would be a mistake, to say the least. Besides, she had no intention of becoming involved with any man at this stage in her life. Maybe once she had that license in her hot little hands she’d feel differently. After all, what was wrong with having an affair with an eligible man if the circumstances were right?
“You look somber,” Gert told her as she came into the office.
“I was thinking about David,” Amy said truthfully. Under Gert’s inquiring gaze, she had no choice but to go on. Since she certainly wasn’t going to go into the chemistry between them, she came up with something that had been bothering her. “He seems straightforward and, well, honest.”
“Which makes you wonder about the trouble he had in New Mexico over a year ago.”
Amy nodded. “I realize it may be none of my business.”
Gert glanced at her watch. “We’ll discuss it after office hours.”
Later, after the office had closed and the receptionist left, Gert suggested they enjoy some limeade on the front porch. “David’s left for the day, so now we can talk,” she said. “I doubt he’d care if I told you, but I’m sure he wouldn’t care to overhear it being told.
“First of all, he was in one of those high-falutin’ law firms in Albuquerque, not yet a full partner, but being groomed to be—though still low enough on the totem pole so he had to take cases none of the others wanted. This case was one of them. Before it came to trial, David began to suspect his wife, Iris, was having an affair. Anyway, the case itself doesn’t matter. What does matter was that while it was being tried, one of the jurors claimed he was bribed.”
“By David’s law firm?”
“Not specifically, but the hint was there. Naturally the judge dismissed the jury and set a date for a new trial. The senior partner of the firm, Brent Murdock, seemed to support David, but that was an illusion. Murdock subsequently handed him his walking papers, offering a lot of false sympathy of the we-know-you’re-innocent type, but for the sake of the firm’s good reputation, you have to go. At the same time, Iris announced she was getting a divorce.”
“A double blow,” Amy murmured. “Do you think David was set up?”
“Of course. Especially since, once the damage was done, the juror retracted his bribe accusation. Before David left Albuquerque, he got an anonymous letter claiming the writer had something on Murdock. David believed it was from the juror, but by then he was too dispirited to follow up on it. Who wouldn’t be? With Murdock handling the divorce, even though he hadn’t taken a divorce case in years, it was soon evident to David that he was the man Iris had been seeing on the sly.”
“It sounds so tawdry.”
“Exactly. David went into law with high ideals, only to be betrayed by a man he respected a
nd trusted—Murdock. It led to disillusionment with the law itself. I believe what Murdock did to him was far more traumatic than Iris’s betrayal. As far as she’s concerned, my feeling is good riddance. A shallow woman, interested only in herself.
“In any case, David went into a depression which he refused to have treated. It’s taken him over a year to recover.”
“Do you think he really has come back all the way?” Amy asked. “He’s still refusing to consider returning to law.”
Gert sighed. “I think he misses Sarah, too.”
Amy blinked. Iris was the ex-wife. Who was Sarah?
“She’s his six-year-old daughter,” Gert continued. “A shy child, but smart. She was a preemie and has a limp the orthopedists say can’t be surgically fixed.”
The runt who might be handicapped. No wonder he’d insisted the black kitten was a female. “Does his ex-wife have custody?” Amy asked.
“It’s joint. David had enough fight left to insist on that. He’s paying child support, but he hasn’t once asked to have Sarah come here to visit.”
So David hadn’t faced up to his responsibility for his daughter’s emotional health, either. Divorce was tough on kids. Sarah might even be wondering if he’d left because of something she did.
Amy could see there was a lot of work ahead of her in her undercover plan to treat David. She wished she could talk to Gert about it, but there was the possibility Gert would order her to cease and desist. Then she’d have to.
“I’m glad you and David recovered from your temporary misunderstanding,” Gert said. “I was hoping you’d be friends.”
“I think we’re beginning to be,” Amy told her. No more than the truth, if one ignored the underlying problem of sexual attraction.
Was it possible that they could solve that by getting it out of their systems? She shook her head. Too risky. What if lovemaking merely accelerated the need?
Amy spent the next morning before ten looking for an apartment, not wanting to burden Gert any longer than necessary. She found two possibilities, but neither would be available for a month. When David let her into his place at ten, she told him what she’d seen.
“Why don’t you move into this complex?” he asked. “The guy above me is moving out tomorrow. I don’t think they’ve rented it yet. How much are they asking for the places you saw?”
She told him, and it turned out the rent was less in his complex. Since money was a consideration, she upgraded her instinctive answer from “no way” to “better think about it.” After all, living in the same complex as David didn’t mean she was moving in with him.
Hobo seemed to recognize her scent when Amy put her hand into the box for the cat to smell, because she made no fuss when Amy picked up the kittens one by one and looked at their tiny behinds. “Two girls, two boys,” she told David after the kittens were once more nestled against their mother. “And you did guess right with Sheba. Have you named the others yet?”
“She’s the only one I plan to keep—along with Hobo. I’ll let the new owners of the other three name them.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve already found people to take the kittens,” she asked as they stood up and moved away from the kittens.
“If they don’t back out. As Grandpa Severin used to say, ‘There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.’ Not to mention the other slipups along the way.”
“I learned fairly late that life wasn’t fair,” Amy said. “It’s a chastising experience at any age. You were lucky, though, to know your grandfather. A lot of us don’t get to.”
“I’m his namesake.” David smiled. “We were what he called ‘good buddies’ when I was young.”
“Was he a lawyer, too? Gert said your father was.”
“No, he raised cattle. I was sure I was going to be a cowboy when I was a kid.”
“Do you occasionally wish today that you’d been able to be?”
David frowned at what sounded to him like a shrink question. After living with his aunt for those two months before he found this apartment, he could spot one a mile away. Still, Amy was also a shrink, so she probably couldn’t help thinking that way. “No.”
“Really? Not even a smidgen?”
“Before I reached my teens I had a cowboy period, a fireman period and a cop period. None really stuck with me.”
“Except law?”
Another shrink question. He glanced at her, trying to decide if she was just making conversation, oblivious to how she sounded, and found her looking at him expectantly, her lips slightly parted. Which made him forget all about questions.
Holding her gaze, he took a step toward her. How green her eyes were, like the ocean, wide and deep enough to drown in. Her pupils dilated and for a moment she didn’t move. He was close enough to touch her before she started backing away.
“I—uh—weren’t we going to Virginia City?” she stammered, as she dodged around him and headed for the door.
She insisted it was her turn to drive. It was pure luck they met Tom, the apartment manager, on the way to her SUV. David introduced them, and mentioned the soon-to-be-vacant apartment.
“If you’ve seen David’s, you know what it looks like,” Tom told her. “I haven’t rented it yet, got to clean the rugs and paint the place first. Won’t take long. With David here to vouch for you, if you want it, let me know by Tuesday, okay?”
Amy agreed she’d let Tom know, and they walked on to her SUV. Though unsure whether it was a good idea to have her living that close, David knew he wanted her to take the place.
“Never driven one of these,” he said when they reached the vehicle.
“Do you really want to try or is this some macho ploy to put you behind the wheel instead of me so you won’t have to let a woman drive?” she asked.
“Whoa, Doctor. I thought it was an innocent observation, but you shrinks analyze everything so how do I know what you thought I meant?”
Amy bit her lip. “Sorry.”
“I’m easy—you can drive. I doubt it’ll seriously disturb my masculinity.”
“I guess I’m still reacting to that phony persona you tried to lay on me before we sorted out who each other was.”
They got in and he grinned at her. “Cal’s a great guy. You might like him.”
“Cal?”
“Yeah, I borrowed his persona, as you call it—dogs, beer, the works. Might have overdone it a tad.” To get rid of you before the fire started, he didn’t add.
“A tad?”
“So I’m a ham actor.”
On the drive up to Virginia City they traded names of actors and movies for worst performances of all time.
As she parked the SUV near the V&T depot on a back street in the town, Amy said, “To be fair, sometimes old movies just seem awful because the mores of the years they were filmed in were so different from today’s. Take smoking—in old movies everyone seems to be lighting a cigarette, taking a drag or putting one out.”
“Cal may drink beer, but he doesn’t smoke,” David said.
“I think I’ve heard enough about Cal.”
“Someday I’ll introduce you.”
She slanted him a look. “Who knows, I may like him better than you.”
When they reached the depot, the locomotive was just pulling into the station. They bought tickets and joined the other passengers waiting to board the open cars.
“How long is this trip to Gold Hill?” she asked.
“About two miles around the curves and through the tunnel.”
“The tunnel with a tradition?”
“You got it. Once the V&T was the richest—and the ‘crookedest’—railroad in the country. This is all that’s left of it.”
“Crooked as in winding or as in nefarious?”
“Could be both—most railroad magnates got rich quick.”
The conductor called “All aboard,” and the train huffed away from the station toward Gold Hill—downhill all the way.
When they approached the tunnel, Da
vid glanced at Amy. From her don’t-touch-me expression he knew she expected the tradition involved a kiss. That might have been his original intention, but, since he’d made up the tradition for the tunnel in the first place, he had the right to change it.
When the train plunged into sudden darkness, he reached for her hand and held it in his, brushing his thumb lightly over hers. Her hand soft and warm in his made him want more, like touching her in any way did.
When the car burst into sunlight again he let go. She raised her eyebrows at him. “That’s it?”
“The meaning’s what’s important. You know the area is full of gold and silver mines, active in the old days. If two members of the opposite sex held hands in that tunnel, it meant a bonanza was ahead for them both. If they failed to do this, they faced a borrasca.”
Not bad, he thought, for a spur-of-the-moment tradition.
“I know bonanza means good luck, but what’s a borrasca?” Amy asked suspiciously.
“Another Mexican word meaning just the opposite. Bad luck, a disaster. They’re both mining terms.”
“That’s a rather romantic tradition.”
He nodded, trying not to look smug.
At Gold Hill they got off and walked around what was almost a ghost town, then reboarded the train for the uphill ride back to Virginia City. At the tunnel, he felt her reach for his hand, and a spurt of pure delight washed over him as their palms met and he felt her thumb brush his in a subtle caress. Bonanza, right enough, even though she did let go when the tunnel ended.
After they left the train in Virginia City, they walked up the steep hill to the main street and wandered along the quaint wooden sidewalks past the preserved old buildings now housing museums, casinos and gift shops, stopped for ice cream cones and continued on to a bench, where they sat while finishing the cones.
“I’ve been thinking about your accusation,” Amy said. “You’re right. My questions have been, well, you might say probing.”
“I did say.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to remember which hat I’m wearing.”
“Just a plain sunbonnet is good enough for me.”