by Jane Toombs
She stared at him. “Why a sunbonnet?”
“Sun’s warm and we’re steeped in history up here. A sunbonnet would put you in character.”
She shrugged. After throwing the paper from her finished cone in the trash barrel next to the bench, she said, “Anyway, to be fair, I’ve decided it’s your turn to ask me probing questions if you want.”
“Let’s see.” While he thought, he noticed her lift her chin and sit a little straighter, obviously bracing herself, so he decided to come in obliquely and surprise her again. “Why are your eyes so green?”
After a moment, she smiled at him. “That’s an easy one. I inherited the Simon green eyes from my great-grandfather. We all have them. The rest of me is courtesy of my great-grandmother’s genes. I look a lot like her. Great-Grandpa shocked the rather proper New England Simon clan by falling in love with a Broadway chorus girl and marrying her. He founded the Michigan Simons, a somewhat less stiff-necked branch.”
He stared at her and blurted, “I dreamed—” He broke off one word too late. Damn.
“You can’t leave me hanging.”
“My motto is never tell a shrink any dream.”
“But I’m your friend, not your shrink.”
He figured she wouldn’t let him off the hook until he told her. What the hell, cleaned up a tad, the dream wasn’t revealing. “The first night after I met you I dreamed you were on stage in a chorus line and I was watching you from the audience. Think your great-grandma was responsible?”
“Who knows? It’s strange you happened to hit on something like that in your dream.”
“Yeah.” He had no intention of telling her the rest of the dream. Just recalling it drove him partway up. “Ready to go on?”
“Walking or with asking probing questions?”
“Either.”
“I’ve given you your chance, so I’ll opt for walking.”
They left the bench and, eventually, the wooden sidewalk, then followed the road until they finally came to the entrance of an old cemetery, one that was clearly no longer used as a burial ground. No visitors strolled between the graves.
As they entered, Amy said, “I’m used to big, shady trees in cemeteries. This looks so stark.”
“When the mines were in operation, every last tree for something like a hundred miles in every direction was cut down for fuel or for mine timbers. For years nobody replanted trees up here.”
“Nevada has its own kind of beauty, though. I love the mountains.”
“We’ve got our share.”
“You talk like a Nevadan. Do you plan to stay in Tourmaline?”
He might be unduly sensitive, but wasn’t she verging on probing again? “As opposed to where?” he asked.
“The rest of the world.” Tartness tinged her words, making him smile.
“Haven’t made up my mind.” He pointed. “There’s a semishady cottonwood by that iron fence over there.”
On the way over to the tree, she paused to read a nearly obliterated inscription on a tilted stone. “‘He shot me once. Once was enough for E. Nuffe.’ Do you suppose the victim actually composed this epitaph?”
“Depends on how long the lead poisoning took to be fatal.”
She frowned at him. “Very funny.”
When they stood under the shade of the cottonwood, David pulled her into his arms and kissed her, her lips soft and responsive under his. She tasted like a sweet combination of maple-nut ice cream and of herself. He breathed in the faint scent of flowers. Aroused by the feel of her against him, he deepened the kiss, his mind gradually shutting down, overwhelmed by the passion gripping him. Who was he trying to fool? There’d been a time last year when he hadn’t felt any need for a woman, but, hell, in the past he’d never needed any woman with such desperate intensity as he needed Amy right now. She lit a fire that nothing short of having her would quench.
Amy clung to David, unable to think, pressing closer, wanting more of him, all of him, refusing to hear the tiny part of her that warned she was being unwise. Since when had a kiss turned her liquid with need? She doubted any other kiss had ever triggered the wave of passion engulfing her. The time, the location, the world all vanished. David held her, nothing else existed. Every moment since she’d met him had been leading up to this one. He made her crazy.
If she could melt into him, become a part of him, she would. His scent, uniquely David, surrounded her, his taste, tinged with mint from his ice cream was pure David. His name throbbed through her with every heartbeat.
His mouth left hers to trail kisses to her ear, where he whispered, “If we don’t stop, we’ll wind up making love right here in the dirt.”
The tiny rational core of her mind knew that was a bad idea no matter how much she wanted him at the moment, dirt or no dirt. His words brought her far enough out of her daze to understand they had to call a halt before it was too late. With a deep sigh, she released David. He held her for a long moment and then let her go.
“Close call.” The rasp of passion blurred his words.
She wanted to respond, to agree, but what was there to say? They’d come together like iron filings and a magnet. Irresistibly. And would do it again, given the chance, her inner voice reminded her.
“I suppose we should talk about it, but what’s the use?” she said finally.
He half smiled. “Never thought I’d hear a shrink admit talking it out wouldn’t help.”
“It’s—it’s irrational. On my part, at least. You’re a male and therefore—”
“Stop right there. What just happened to us had nothing to do with my testosterone level. It’s been simmering between us ever since you walked up to me at Aunt Gert’s.”
The truth, plain and simple. She may as well admit it. “Then we’ll have to take steps to see it doesn’t come to a boil again.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Got any ideas how?”
Ideas? With him standing no more than a foot away looking at her with those searing blue eyes, she could hardly think at all. What she really wanted was to be back in his arms, even though she knew better.
“What color are your eyes, anyway?” she demanded.
He blinked. “My driver’s license says blue.”
She scowled at him. “I mean what color blue?”
“Never thought about it. What’s that have to do with my wanting to haul you back in my arms and kiss you senseless?”
“More than you think. The exact shade of your eyes and what to do about this—this unreasonable attraction are both questions I can’t find an answer to.” She turned away from him, putting temptation behind her, and began walking toward town.
He followed her. As they reached the wooden sidewalk, he said, “Still friends?”
“We’re certainly not enemies.” She heard the tartness in her voice with a smidgen of dismay. It wouldn’t be wise to start blaming David when they were both guilty. Lust was a perfectly normal human condition, not wrong if two people harmed no one by giving into it.
The problem for her was that she’d decided to be his secret shrink. How in the world could she accomplish that if they became involved in an affair? Since she wasn’t officially his therapist, though, and he had no notion she was even his covert one, it actually wasn’t a professional therapist-patient association where sexual involvement of any kind was an emphatic no-no.
Still, she felt she had to give up one thing or the other. Should she forget trying to help him, even though she believed he was in denial about the past, and plunge headlong into an affair, or should she retreat to a precarious friendship and try to help him? How could she ever reach a decision?
“Hungry?” he asked. “The food’s not bad in there.”
She glanced around, saw they were walking past an old-time casino called the Bucket of Blood and shook her head. “Not yet. The cone filled me up.” She meant to stop there, but more words spilled out. “You tasted minty.”
“And you tasted like maple-nut.” He grinned at her, took her
hand and, holding it, swung their joined hands between them as they continued along the wooden sidewalk.
Unaccountably, her spirits lifted. She might not have made a decision, but that could wait until tomorrow. She and David still had the rest of the day to spend together and she was going to do her best to enjoy it. Who knows, maybe by some miracle they could manage to be just friends.
Her inner voice whispered Yeah, and maybe you’ll look up tomorrow and see turtles flying in the thermals with the hawks.
Chapter Five
David spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday trying to convince himself he didn’t want to get entangled with any woman, no matter how hot he was for Amy. Apparently she felt the same because he didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her while he worked in Aunt Gert’s yard.
On Wednesday morning, when he parked his pickup in front of his aunt’s place, she hailed him from the front porch. “Amy tells me she’s moving to your apartment complex this weekend. I hope you’re planning to help her with the move.”
News to him that she’d called Tom and agreed to take the apartment. He’d figured she might back out. “Amy hasn’t asked me,” he said.
“Don’t be an idiot. Of course not. She probably has some peculiar notion about not bothering you. You need to offer.”
He shrugged. “Okay, tell her I’ve offered.”
Aunt Gert gave him an approving nod. “Plan to have breakfast here with us at nine on Saturday.”
“Thanks, I will.”
There wasn’t a sign of Amy all that day. When he got home that evening, he found a manila envelope in the mail with no return address and an Albuquerque postmark. Inside was a page clipped from the Albuquerque Journal with a write-up of Iris Fenton and Brent Murdock’s June wedding—an elaborate affair, Iris in a white bridal gown, Murdock in a tux. An unsigned note tucked in with it had “So what about this?” scrawled across it in what David felt almost sure was the same handwriting as the anonymous note he’d gotten before he left New Mexico.
It didn’t surprise him Murdock had married Iris. His ex-wife was a past master—or was it mistress?—at getting exactly what she wanted, never mind running roughshod over the bystanders. Something like Murdock. The two deserved each other.
Instead of tossing the whole thing in the trash, David put the note and clipping back in the envelope and placed it in the same folder as the anonymous New Mexico note. He checked the handwriting against the first note and saw many similarities. As he put the folder away he told himself if he ever needed to try to trace the note, he’d look up that juror first. In the meantime he’d keep both notes safe.
The clipping upset him, bringing back the bad days in New Mexico. Aunt Gert believed it was depression that drove him to Nevada, but what actually had made him leave was he’d been afraid he’d lose control and kill Murdock. Easy enough to do with the old Texas Colt his grandfather had left him along with the legacy.
Gradually he became aware of Hobo brushing against his legs, mewing plaintively, and he realized she needed to be fed. He focused his mind on the cat, saying, “Mothering’s a hungry job, right?”
While she was tucking into her food, he had a look at the kittens. All but the runt had their milky-blue eyes open. He cradled Sheba in the palm of his hand for a moment. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “You’ll catch up.”
Amy had told him unless they had some Siamese genes in their ancestry, their eyes would change color, to green or yellow. He tried to keep his mind from drifting back to the past, but holding the runt had reminded him of Sarah. What must she think, his poor little daughter, her father gone and her mother married to a stranger? He didn’t give a damn about Murdock being Iris’s husband, but it grated on him to think of the bastard taking his place as Sarah’s new father. He was still brooding about it when the phone rang.
“Hi,” Amy said. “Thanks for your offer to help me move on Saturday. I’ve got some boxes and things in the back of the SUV that I can’t carry alone, so I really do appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
“How’re the kittens?”
He told her.
“Well, guess I’ll see you Saturday, then,” Amy said. “Thanks again.”
He hung up, smiling. With Amy moving into his complex, anything might happen. And probably would, given their incendiary attraction.
The woman who cooked for Gert didn’t work weekends, so Amy helped make the pancake breakfast Saturday morning. David arrived in time to fry the bacon he insisted had to go with the pancakes.
“There’s going to be a powwow at the reservation in July,” Gert told them as they ate. “I told Grandfather we’d all be there.” She glanced at Amy. “I made the assumption you’d be interested. Forgive me if I was wrong.”
“You were right,” Amy said. “I’ve never been to a powwow. Or met a genuine Native American medicine man. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Good. He’s looking forward to meeting you, too.”
Amy stared at Gert. “Me?”
“I called him last night and mentioned that I thought you were the second hawk, the female he dreamed about, so naturally he’s interested.”
At a loss, Amy echoed, “The second hawk?”
“He says David is the male hawk,” Gert answered.
Bewildered, Amy said, “I don’t think I understand.”
“You’ll have to wait until you meet Grandfather. It goes beyond the scope of science, but I’ve come to believe that he does have prophetic dreams.”
“He doesn’t even know me.”
“Makes no difference,” David said. “Grandfather is no ordinary man.”
“So you’ll be coming to the powwow, too,” Gert said.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” David told her.
When they finished eating, Amy started to help clean up, but Gert shooed her away. “You’ve got your own tasks to attend to today. I’ll just putter around here while you and David make the move. I know you want to be on your own, so would I in the same circumstances, but I’ll miss having you living here in the house. And, David, while Amy’s getting settled in, come back and pick up the things from the attic I’ve set aside for her to use.”
“Describe the ‘things,’” David said. “I need to know if it’ll be a one-man or two-man job.”
“It’s merely a bed, a dresser and some odds and ends,” Gert said.
“Two-man.”
“How about one man and one woman?” Amy asked. “I’m perfectly capable of helping.”
David gave her an assessing glance, then said, “Here’s my take. We’ll load the smaller attic odds and ends into the pickup and, on my way back here, I’ll stop and see if Cal can help out for a half hour with the heavier ones.”
“Our Cal from Tourmaline Nursery?” Amy asked.
“The one and only.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Whatever.”
Once they’d hauled the pickup load into her new apartment and he’d helped Amy carry up the boxes she’d had in her SUV, David got back in his truck and stopped at the nursery.
“Cal’s not here,” Max Conners, the owner, told him. “You must not have heard what happened. He was coming to work on his Harley last Monday and some hockey puck in a van sideswiped him.”
“How bad is he hurt?”
“Busted some bones. The worst is, the jerks in the van—two passengers and the driver—say Cal cut in front of them, so it’s his fault. One witness told the cops different, but then she changed her story to say she doesn’t know what happened. Cal thinks she got threatened by the van guys. It’s a bitch of a world, that’s what I say.”
David nodded. “Is Cal still in the hospital?”
“Naw, these days they don’t keep you any time at all. He’s home, his mom’s helping him. Lucky for me school’s out—I got his kid brother filling in here.”
“Got his phone number handy?”
After Max gave him Cal’s number, David drove back to his aunt’s. She was sitting on the porch with a hu
sky teen-age boy David recognized as the kid who lived next door.
“Randy’s going to help you move the heavy stuff,” Gert said. “I heard about Cal. At least he’ll be all right, poor thing.”
It didn’t take long to load the bed and dresser in the truck nor to unload and carry them up the stairs to Amy’s new apartment, after which David slipped Randy a couple of bucks and drove him back home. When he returned to the complex, Amy was taking the last few items from her SUV.
“Since that was Randy, what happened to Cal?” she asked.
“Bad news.” David went on to tell her about Cal.
“Bummer. What are you going to do about it?”
He stared at her. How in hell had she figured out so quickly that he intended to do anything?
“I know you’re going to help him,” she added. “Lucky for Cal he has a friend who’s a lawyer.”
He knew he’d probably have to resort to law, but the first thing on the agenda was to talk to Cal and get the name of the witness who changed her story. The all-too-familiar scenario left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Maybe I can help,” Amy said. “I figure you’ll probably interview the witness. Since she’s a woman, it might help if I went with you. Sometimes women talk easier to other women than to men.”
He found himself annoyed that she’d jumped into what wasn’t even a case yet before he’d so much as contacted Cal. Since she was right about women talking more freely to other women than to men, he let it go. He might need her.
“Gert sent over some limeade and cookies,” Amy told him. “Come on up to the apartment and we’ll have some while we discuss the case.”
“It’s not a case.”
“But it will be.”
“Stop right there. I don’t know if Cal wants me to do anything, so there’s nothing to discuss.”
Amy bit her lip. “Sorry. It’s your field, not mine. I got so excited about the possibility you’d be getting involved in law again, facing your bogeyman, so to speak, that I trespassed.”
David felt as stunned as if she’d whacked him over the head with a psychology textbook. Facing his bogeyman? It might not be a shrink phrase, but what she’d just said was certainly a shrink attitude. “Who appointed you my therapist?” he demanded. “If Gert sicced you on me, I swear—”