They came to a stop at the edge of the creek, Ian lying on top of her. Neither of them moved.
“Do you want to tell me what that was—” he began, then glanced up the hill and spotted the tractor, which now sat where he had just been lying, the engine stalled. He looked down at her, a stunned expression on his face.
Colby tried to find her voice, too aware of the muscular length of the man whose body pressed into hers.
She scooted out from under him as if someone just set a match to the seat of her pants. She tried to sit up, moaned and sank back down on the grass, feeling as if the tractor had actually run over her.
Ian slumped beside her. One palm braced his forehead. “You just saved my life,” he said in a shaken voice.
She slipped a hand inside her jacket, pulled out his keys. “Now I remember why I charge extra for house calls.”
He took them from her and dropped them in his shirt pocket. Despite his pained expression, a hint of a smile played about his lips. “Are you all right?”
“A little flatter than a few minutes ago, but I’ve been meaning to do some ab work,” she said.
He stared at her for several seconds, shaking his head. A half smile spread across his face. “Just send me your bill. I’ll expect it to be a big one.”
Colby studied the blue sky above them. They could joke about it now, but she didn’t want to think what might have happened if she hadn’t found him in time.
Ian sobered, too, and she wondered if he was also weighing the close call he’d just had.
“I can’t believe I did that,” he said finally.
“Accidents happen.”
“But I endangered your life, too.”
“Oh, hey, the life of a veterinarian is a risky one.”
That prompted another smile.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It just started tipping, and over it went. Serves me right. The only reason I got on the blasted thing was because I overheard Dillard and Willard Nolen talking about how unfortunate it was that Oak Hill had been bought by a city slicker who would never do anything with it.”
Chagrin laced his voice, and she realized that what they’d said mattered to him. He cared what they thought. He’d gotten on that tractor in an attempt to prove them wrong. The realization touched her somehow, made him more human to her, vulnerable in a way that only increased his appeal. She glanced out at the field where rows of fallen hay now lay. Despite resenting the fact that he’d been the one to buy Oak Hill, she had to admit he seemed determined to give new life to the place. She admired him for that. “It looks like you were doing a fine job.”
“There’s no reason for you to be so kind. I make a lousy farmer, but thanks for what you just did. I don’t know too many people who would have done that,” he said.
“If I’d taken the time to think about it, I doubt I’d have done it myself.”
“Yes, you would have,” he said quietly. “You’re not the type to stand around waiting for someone else to do things for you, are you?”
Colby knew his comment was a compliment, and yet something inside her wanted him to say something altogether different. What, though? That she was feminine and beautiful? That she made Rachel look like last year’s prom queen? Right.
Maybe she was the one with the concussion.
She tried to get up, pushing off with her left hand, and letting out a pained yelp.
“What’s wrong?” Ian asked, sitting up and looking a little gray himself.
She rotated her left wrist and barely suppressed another moan of pain. “I think I’ve sprained it.”
Ian felt sick with guilt. He got to his feet, swaying with the willow tree just behind him. “Come on. I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
Before she’d realized his intent, he bent over and scooped her off the ground, delaying her protest for a few seconds because of the absolutely satisfying fit of his arms. His chest felt exactly as it should have. Broad and firm. Masculine in a way that made her feel protected, something she would have sworn she couldn’t care less about.
His arms felt just right, too. Tight and secure around her. The only thing wrong with the picture? He was about as steady on his feet as a seasick sailor. “Ian, this is ridiculous. Put me down. I sprained my wrist, not my leg.”
“Can you walk?” he asked, sounding as if he hoped she would say yes.
“I’m fine. You’re the one with the possible concussion.”
When he’d lowered her to her feet, she said, “You wait here and I’ll call an ambulance.”
He shook his head. “We tried that once and almost turned into pancakes.”
She smiled. “Are you sure you can make it?”
He nodded, and with one hand at her elbow, set off up the hill, his expression determined. She suspected that he felt much worse than he let on.
At the house, a short altercation ensued over who would get behind the wheel. Colby came out the winner since she could manage to keep them on the road with one wrist incapacitated, Ian’s ability to stay upright still in question.
She got them to the hospital’s emergency room door without incident. She knew most of the doctors and nurses, and of course, all ears perked up when she relayed the story of the near-fatal tractor incident. It would be all over town within an hour or two. And because she didn’t have enough money to pay everyone for their silence, she would just have to live with it.
Two separate nurses wheeled them into individual examining rooms. Molly Cramer took charge of Ian. A sweet girl with big, blue eyes and a perky smile, she went to Colby’s church. Unfortunately, Colby heard everything the young woman said to Ian. The conversation centered around Molly’s awareness that Ian was the recently relocated bachelor the single women in town had been talking about since he’d arrived.
Colby tried not to wince when the nurse took an X ray of her wrist. While she waited for the results, she had to endure Molly’s all-too-audible giggles and admonishments to Ian. Little did Molly know that she’d be wasting her time with all the flirting.
A young resident returned a few minutes later to tell Colby what she already knew. Her wrist hadn’t been fractured, but she did have a sprain.
They wrapped it for her and advised light use for a few days. Once they’d finished with her, she was released and free to go. She went back to the emergency room to check on Ian and found him waiting by the door.
“How’s the wrist?” he asked.
She held up her bandaged arm. “It’ll live. How about you?”
“Just a knot the size of an egg. I’m a free man.”
“Come on, then. I’ll drive you home.”
This time, he got into the truck without arguing.
21
NEITHER OF THEM said much during the drive back to Oak, Hill. Ian’s head pounded, and he felt subdued by the reality of what had nearly happened that afternoon. Apparently, Colby felt the same, quiet, too, and concentrating on the road in front of her.
She stopped the truck in the driveway and left the engine idling. “Would you like some help getting inside?”
“No, I’ll be fine. I think you’ve done quite enough for me today.”
“It was nothing.”
He cocked a brow at her and shook his head. “Right.”
He opened the door but didn’t move. “Sure that wrist is all right?”
She gave him a stiff wave. “Be good as new soon.”
“You really did save my life, you know. I won’t forget that.”
“I’ll be sure to send you the bill,” she said, a smile on her lips.
After six now, the light had begun to fade, casting shadows across her face. He sat there in the twilight, knowing he should go and yet not wanting to. The wrongness of that did not escape him. “Would you like to come in?” he asked before he realized his own intention. “I could fix us some dinner.”
She looked down at her wrist, toyed with the bandage and then shook her head. “I’d better not.”
She was right to turn him down. Since the moment he’d found himself lying at the edge of the creek with her pinned beneath him, things somehow felt different between them. The urge to kiss her now nearly overpowered him. Just as he wondered where the devil that thought had come from, the screen door of the house wheezed open. Luke stepped out. Ian waved him over, glad for the diversion.
“What happened?” Luke asked, eyeing the scrapes on Ian’s face.
“I kind of had a run-in with the tractor,” Ian explained. “Dr. Williams came by and saved me from myself.”
“Are you all right?”
Ian wondered if he’d imagined the note of worry in his son’s voice. “I’m fine. Thanks to me, Dr. Williams has a sprained wrist, though. Luke, this is Colby Williams. Colby, my son Luke.”
“Hello, Luke,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. You might know my daughter, Lena.”
Luke scuffed a tennis shoe against the pavement. “Yeah, we’ve met.”
Colby studied him for a moment, and then said, “Well, I’ve got to get going.”
“I owe you one,” Ian said.
“We’re all good,” Colby said.
He waved as he watched her drive off, telling himself what he felt just then was nothing more than gratitude.
22
Colby had been home for less than an hour when Phoebe called, wanting to know everything. A tennis buddy of hers who worked with a nurse at the hospital told her that Colby saved Ian McKinley’s life.
“The town grapevine is up to the speed of light now, I see,” Colby said, shaking her head.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Phoebe asked indignantly.
“Phoebe, I just got home. It was no big deal, anyway.”
“No big deal? Did you really push him out of the way of a rolling tractor?”
“Sort of.”
Phoebe’s whoop of laughter sounded less than ladylike. “Incredible! How could a man resist a woman who saved his life?”
“Phoebe—”
“Well, really, Colby. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
“The man is engaged. What is it about that word you don’t understand?” Colby asked, exasperated.
“Things change. You never know.”
“My dinner’s burning. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up, feeling only slightly guilty for the exaggeration. The pot on the stove did need stirring. She removed the lid and checked the boiling potatoes.
It was way past time Phoebe gave up on this particular venture. Colby thought about those last few moments at Ian’s before Luke appeared. The tension between Ian and her was easily explained. People who went through traumas together often felt a temporary sense of closeness.
That night, Lena joined Colby at the dinner table without being prodded to do so for the first time in weeks. Colby hid her surprise and sat down with her daughter as if her presence were nothing out of the ordinary.
“What happened to your wrist?” Lena asked, any concern that might have prompted the question adequately concealed.
With the way things had been going between them, Colby was surprised she’d asked at all. “I had a little accident at the McKinley farm. It’s nothing major,” she said, not wanting to elaborate.
Lena looked as if she wanted to know more, but didn’t ask. Colby asked her about her day, how school was, all the things she would automatically have asked her not so long ago.
Lena answered each of her questions in monosyllables.
Colby had nearly given up hope of a two-sided conversation when Lena said, “There’s a campout two weeks from this Friday. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is sponsoring it. Is it all right if I go?”
She realized then what Lena’s sudden appearance at the dinner table had been about. Disappointment stabbed at her, and she wished for the first time since Lena’s birth that the child didn’t have such power over her heart. “Sure.”
Lena dropped her fork, obviously startled by the unexpected response. Judging from her defensive posture earlier, Lena expected an argument. Colby wouldn’t give her one. She no longer had the energy. She got up and dumped the remains of her dinner into the garbage.
With her back to the table, she heard Lena get up and leave the room. Sighing, she began gathering up the bowls of vegetables they’d barely touched. For the first time in fifteen years, she disliked being a single parent. It had never been like this before. Always, she and Lena had been able to work out whatever minor difficulties they might have had. How small they seemed in comparison to this. Lena wanting her ears pierced. Lena wanting to meet Chuck Bailey at the ninth-grade dance. Lena wanting to learn how to drive out in her grandparents’ pasture. Those issues seemed so simple now.
She put the frying pan in the sink. With her good hand, she scrubbed it hard. She resented this sudden yearning for a partner to share these decisions. She chose to be single. And she couldn’t just pull a father for Lena out of a hat. She’d never wanted to marry anyone enough to give up her own independence.
Unbidden, Ian McKinley popped into her thoughts. Her hand stilled, and she stared out the kitchen window at the stars dotting the September sky. She remembered what it felt like to find herself stretched flat out on the ground with Ian on top of her, the unexpected surge of longing that swept through her. . . .
She cut the memory off.
Engaged. Taken. Spoken for.
So stop thinking about him, Colby, she told herself. Just stop thinking about him.
23
She stuck to her own mental guns for the next week, keeping busy at work and spending her nights making one-sided conversation with Lena.
On Thursday morning she stopped at the bank before dropping Lena off at school. They were sitting in the drive-through line when she spotted Ian coming out of the post office across the street, her first uncensored thought that it should have been illegal for anybody to look that good in a pair of blue jeans. He wore a worn-looking leather jacket, a Nike T-shirt and running shoes. Dark sunglasses hid his eyes, his black hair slicked back and wet, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower.
Warmth assaulted her midsection.
The car behind her tooted its horn. She pulled forward just as Ian looked up and caught sight of her. He waved. She waved back. Casually. Smiling as if she’d just seen him, too.
He crossed the street and stopped at the truck door. Colby lowered the window and said, “Hello.”
“Hi. How’s the wrist?”
“Fine. I already got rid of the sling. How’s your head?”
“Hard as ever, I’m afraid.” He smiled, and something inside Colby shifted. Despite what Dillard and Willard Nolen thought, there was nothing slick about this man. His crooked smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and hinted at possibilities. As weapons went, particularly deadly.
“Good,” she said, hating the breathlessness in her voice.
He ducked down and peered across at Lena. “Hi. I’m Ian McKinley.”
“Sorry,” Colby said. “Ian, this is my daughter, Lena.”
Lena looked at both of them curiously. “Hello.”
“I can see beauty runs in the Williams family. Nice to meet you, Lena.”
Lena actually blushed! But then, Colby’s own face felt warm, too.
The car in front of them eased away, and it was their turn to move forward.
Ian stepped back. “I’m holding things up. See you later,” he said, his gaze lingering on hers a second too long.
She waved goodbye, and pretending intense concentration on her banking business, ignored her daughter’s scrutiny.
AT SEVEN-THIRTY THE following Sunday, Colby and Lena arrived at church for the monthly women’s breakfast prepared in the fellowship hall by the men of the congregation.
A big, open area in the basement, the hall was used for dinners and get-togethers of this sort. The aroma of buttered toast and fried apples greeted them as they entered the room already abuzz with conversation. Lena waved at her grandparents and wen
t over to join them.
“I just want to make it clear that I’m not the one who invited him.”
Colby turned around to find Phoebe standing in defense mode with one hand on her hip. “Who?” she asked, knowing full well her friend could only be talking about one person.
“It was all Frank’s doing. He invited Ian to go fishing at our pond, and then he asked Luke and him to come to the breakfast.”
“As a deacon of the church, that was a nice thing for Frank to do,” Colby said, trying to sound unconcerned.
With a suspicious look on her face, Phoebe said, “You mean you don’t mind?”
“Why would I mind?”
“I just figured you would accuse me of trying to fix you two up again.”
“Now that you know he’s engaged to someone else, I know you wouldn’t do that,” Colby said deliberately.
“Of course not,” Phoebe said with angelic innocence.
“How are things with Frank and you?”
“I don’t know.” Phoebe sighed. “He’s just so distracted all the time now. He barely hears what I’m saying to him. It’s as if he’s in another world or something.”
“Maybe it’s something at work.”
Phoebe shook her head. “He says everything is fine.”
Josephine Robertson approached them, saying, “There you are, Phoebe. Reverend Thomas asked me to get together with you on the quarterly fund-raiser. Do you have a minute?”
“You two go right ahead. I’ll talk to you later, Phoebe.” Colby hung up her jacket and headed for the front of the room, stopping to chat with several people along the way.
Just as she headed over to speak to her parents, Davis Fralin stopped her with a tentative smile. “Morning, Colby.”
“I see they’ve got you on table-setting duty.”
“You know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen,” he said.
“Especially when they’re all men,” she said, smiling.
He laughed. “You might be right about that.”
A dairy farmer, Davis was a nice man, tall and broad at the same time. He had dark brown hair and shy eyes. His wife left him a year or so ago, and from what Colby knew about the situation, he’d been badly hurt by it. He’d been asking her out for the past few months. She’d turned down his invitations because she herself had no intention of getting serious with anyone, and she sensed that he wanted someone to fill the hole left in his life by his divorce.
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