by Nora Roberts
“Headaches?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Not as often as before, certainly not as intense. And yes, I still have anxiety attacks, but not as often or as intense either. I used to have night terrors, but they’ve throttled down to nightmares. I still have flashbacks, phantom pain sometimes. But I’m better. I had a beer at Clancy’s with Linda-gail. I haven’t been able to sit in a bar and have a drink with a friend in two years. I’m thinking about sleeping with Brody. I haven’t been with a man in two years.
“Every time I think about just driving out of town, I don’t. I even unpacked last night, put everything away again.”
Behind his glasses, his eyes sharpened. “You packed your things?”
“I…” She faltered a moment. “Yes. I don’t remember packing, and I know that’s a big X on the minus side of my mental health board, but I offset it with a big check mark byunpacking , and added another check mark by coming here. I’m coping. I’m functional.”
“And defensive,” Doc pointed out. “You don’t remember packing your things?”
“No, I don’t, and yes, it scared me. I put things in the wrong place once, too, and just don’t remember. But I handled it. I couldn’t have handled it a year ago.”
“What medications are you taking?”
“Nothing.”
“On doctor’s recommendation?”
“Not really. I tapered off of this, tapered off of that, then stopped taking all of them over six months ago. They helped when I needed them most. I know medications helped me find some sense of balance again. But I can’t live my life when there are meds suppressing this or coating over that. They helped me get through the worst of it, and now I want to get through the rest myself. I want to be myself.”
“Will you come to me if you decide you want medical help?”
“All right.”
“Will you let me do an exam?”
“I don’t—”
“A checkup, Reece. When did you last have a physical?”
Now she sighed. “A year or so ago.”
“Why don’t you come into my office tomorrow morning?”
“I have the breakfast shift.”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock. It’d be a favor to me.”
“That’s a lousy way to put it,” she replied. “All right. I like your house. I like that you’ve kept this room the way your wife liked it. I’d like to think that one day I’ll have a room and someone who’d care enough to keep it for me. I’m trying to get there.” She got to her feet. “I have to go to work.”
He rose as well. “Tomorrow, three o’clock.” And held out a hand as if sealing a deal.
“I’ll be there.”
He walked her to the door as Brody strolled out from the kitchen. When they were outside, Brody headed for his car.
“I’m just going to walk,” Reece told him. “I want the air, and I’ve got a little time before my shift.”
“Fine. I’ll walk up with you, and you can fix me lunch.”
“You just ate two cookies.”
“Your point?”
She just shook her head. “You’ll have to walk back again to get your car.”
“I’ll walk off lunch. You do blackened chicken?”
“Can I do it, yes. But it’s not on the menu.”
“So charge me extra. I feel like a blackened chicken sandwich on a kaiser, with onion rings. Feeling better?”
“I guess I am. Dr. Wallace has a way of smoothing out the edges.” She dipped her hands into the pocket of the hooded sweatshirt she wore against the stubborn spring chill. “He pressured me, very avuncularly, to go in for a physical tomorrow. But you probably knew he was going to do that.”
“He mentioned it. He’s the sort that pokes his nose in. Avuncularly. He asked me if I was sleeping with you.”
“Why would he do that?”
“It’s his way. You’re in the Fist, you’re his business. So I can tell you, if that woman had spent any time here, he’d know it. Sheriff’s dog’s in the lake again. Rather swim than walk.”
They both stopped to watch the dog paddle enthusiastically through the water, sending back a little wake that rippled through the reflection of the mountains.
“If I stay, I’m going to get a dog, and teach him to fetch a ball out of the lake like—what’s her name?—Abby did with Moses there. I’ll get a cabin so he can be outside when I work. My grandmother has a teacup poodle named Marceau. He travels everywhere with her.”
“A teacup anything named Marceau isn’t a dog.”
“He certainly is, and he’s sweet and adorable.”
“It’s a wind-up toy with a pussy name.”
She snorted back a laugh. “Marceau is very smart, and very loyal.”
“Does he wear cute little sweaters?”
“No. They’re dapper little sweaters. And though I have great love for Marceau, I’m thinking of getting a big, sloppy dog like Moses, one that would rather swim than walk.”
“If you stay.”
“Yes. If I stay.” And as she imagined Moses did, Reece took a running leap and dove in. “I’d like to come over to your place tomorrow night, fix you dinner and stay the night.”
He walked a little farther with her, strolling by a house where a woman had planted pansies in a small circular bed in the middle of her lawn that was guarded by gnomes in pointy hats.
He wondered about people who dotted their lawns with plaster people and animals.
“Would staying the night be a euphemism for sex?”
“God, I hope so. I can’t promise anything, but I hope so.”
“Okay.” He reached out to open the door of Joanie’s. “I’ll wash the sheets.”
SHE KEPT HER doctor’s appointment and considered it another major step. She hated,hated the exposed sensation she had when wearing nothing but the little cotton gown.
And if she couldn’t comfortably be naked in front of a doctor, how did she expect to manage it later with Brody?
In the dark, she thought as she sat on the examination table while Doc’s nurse took her blood pressure. All the lights off and her eyes closed. Hopefully, his closed, too.
Drunk would also be a good thing. Lots of wine, lots of dark.
“A little high, sweetie.” Willow, the nurse, was Shoshone. Her blood showed in the dense black hair she wore in one thick braid, and her deep, liquid brown eyes.
“I’m nervous. Doctors make me nervous.”
Willow patted Reece’s hand. “Don’t you worry. Doc’s a cream puff. I need to take some blood. Make a fist, and think about your happy place.”
Reece barely felt the needle, and gave Willow top marks. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been stuck after the shooting. Some of the nurses had hands like angels, others like lumberjacks.
“Doc’s going to be with you in just a minute.”
Reece nodded, and was stunned when Willow’s statement proved to be the literal truth.
Doc looked different with the white lab coat over his plaid shirt, with the stethoscope around his neck, those blinding white running shoes on his feet. Still, he gave her a wink before picking up her chart. “I’ll tell you right now you need ten pounds.”
“I know, but I needed fifteen a few weeks ago.”
“No surgeries other than the ones for the injuries you sustained in the shooting?”
She moistened her lips. “No. I was always healthy.”
“No allergies. Blood pressure could be lower, sleep pattern smoother. Your cycle’s regular.”
“Yes. It wasn’t, after. Birth control pills helped regulate it again. I haven’t had any need for them otherwise.” That might be changing tonight, she thought, and wondered if her blood pressure had just spiked.
“No history of heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes in your family. You don’t smoke, alcohol consumption light to moderate.”
He continued to scan, then set the chart aside with a nod. “Got a good foundation.”
All the while he kept up a careless conversation heavy on town gossip. “Did you hear Bebe’s oldest boy and two of his cohorts got caught shoplifting candy bars from the mercantile?”
“He’s under house arrest,” Reece said. “Sixty days, no chance of parole. School, home, Joanie’s, and two hours every afternoon doing whatever chores Mr. Drubber can find for him.”
“Good for Bebe. I heard Maisy Nabb threw all Bill’s clothes out the window again. Plus his MVP trophy from when he quarterbacked the high school football team.”
It wasn’t so bad, she realized, not really so bad to go through all this with conversation. Real conversation about people they both knew.
“Rumor is he lost the money he was supposed to be saving to buy her an engagement ring playing poker,” she told him. “He claims he was only trying to win enough to get her a ring worthy of her, but she’s not buying it.”
“She tosses his stuff out three, four times a year. He’s been saving to buy her a ring for about five years now, so that’s about fifteen, twenty times his clothes have ended up on the sidewalk. Carl’s grandson in Laramie won a scholarship to U of W.”
“Really? I haven’t heard that.”
“Fast-breaking.” Doc’s eyes twinkled with the scoop. “Carl just heard this afternoon. He’s busting buttons over it. I’m going to call Willow in, do a pap and breast exam.”
Resigned, Reece put her feet in the stirrups. She stared at the ceiling, and the mobile of butterflies that circled from it, while Doc rolled his stool between her legs and Willow assisted him.
“Looks healthy,” Doc commented.
“Good, because it hasn’t been getting any exercise in quite a while.” When she heard Willow smother a laugh, Reece just closed her eyes. She had to remember some old saying about being careful of thoughts. They become words.
When he was done, Doc patted her ankle, then stood to come to the side of the table for the breast exam. “You do your monthly self-exams?”
“Yes. No. When I remember, I do.”
“In the shower, first day of your period. Make it a habit and you won’t forget.” His thumb brushed gently over her scar. “You had a lot of pain.”
“Yes.” She kept watching the butterflies, the cheerful, colorful mobile. “A lot of pain.”
“You mentioned phantom pain.”
“I feel it sometimes, during a nightmare or just after one. During a panic attack. I know it’s not real.”
“But it feels real.”
“Very real.”
“How often do you experience the phantom pain?”
“It’s hard to say. Couple times a week, I guess. That’s way down from a couple times a day.”
“You can sit up now.” He went back to his stool as Willow slipped quietly out. “You’re not interested in continuing with therapy?”
“No.”
“Or in chemical aids.”
“No. I’ve used both, and as I told you, they helped. I need to finish this my way.”
“All right. I’m going to tell you that you’re a little run-down, and I don’t think that comes as a surprise to you. I also suspect your blood test’s going to come back borderline anemic. I want you to beef up your diet, literally. Iron-rich foods. If you don’t know which foods are rich in iron, I’ll have Willow print you out a list.”
“I’m a chef. I know food.”
“Then eat it.” He wagged a finger at her for emphasis. “I also have some herbs you can use to help you sleep. In a tea you drink before bed.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Holistic medicine?”
“Herbs have been used to aid in healing for centuries. I used to play chess with Willow’s grandfather. He was a Shoshone shaman, and a hell of a chess player. He taught me quite a bit about natural medicine. He died last fall, at the age of ninety-eight, in his sleep.”
“Pretty good recommendation.”
“I’ll mix the herbs for you and drop them by, with instructions, tomorrow at Joanie’s.”
“Not to be, ah, fussy, but I’d like a list of the herbs, too.”
“Sensible. I want you back here for a follow-up in four to six weeks.”
“But—”
“To check your weight, your blood, and your general well-being. If there’s improvement, we’ll go to three months for the next. If there’s not”—he rose from his stool, put his hands on her shoulders, looked hard into her eyes—“I’m going to get tough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl. I hear you make a hell of a pot roast with all the trimmings. That’s my fee for today, seeing as I browbeat you into the exam.”
“That isn’t right.”
“If I don’t like the pot roast, I’ll bill you. Go on and get dressed.”
But she sat for several minutes when he’d gone out and closed the door behind him.
14
BRODY REMEMBERED to wash the sheets, but as his work-in-progress sucked him in for a straight six-hour stint, he nearly forgot to dry them.
When he surfaced from the driving rain and spring mud he’d tossed his characters into, he had a vague and nagging jones for a cigarette. He hadn’t taken a long, deep drag on a Winston for three years, five months and…twelve days, he calculated as he caught himself reaching for the pack that wasn’t there.
But a good writing session, like good sex, often teased the urge back.
So he just sat and imagined it for a while—that simple, that seductive, that deadly pleasure of sliding one of those slim white cylinders out of the red-and-white pack, digging up one of the dozens of disposable lighters he would have scattered around. Sparking the flame, taking that first easy draw.
And damn if he couldn’t taste it—a little harsh, a little sweet. That, he supposed, was the blessing and the curse of a good imagination.
Nothing stopping him from going into town right now and buying a pack. Not a damn thing. But it was a point of pride, wasn’t it? He’d quit, so that was that. Same deal with theTrib , he reminded himself.
Once he closed the door, he didn’t crack it open again.
And that, he supposed, was the blessing and the curse of being a stubborn son of a bitch.
Maybe he’d go downstairs and get some oral satisfaction from a bag of chips. Probably should make a sandwich.
It was the thought of food that reminded him Reece was due in a few hours. That made him remember the sheets in the washing machine.
“Shit.”
He shoved away from the desk, headed downstairs to the utility room and the elf-sized washer and dryer. Once he had the sheets tumbling, he turned back to survey the kitchen.
The breakfast dishes were in the sink. Okay, so were last night’s dinner dishes. The local paper, and the pages of his daily copy of theChicago Tribune he subscribed to—old habits die hard—were spread out on the table, along with a couple of his notebooks, assorted pens and pencils, a pile of mail.
He accepted the fact he’d have to clean it up, which was only a minor pain in the ass. And since that was offset by the guarantee of a good, hot meal and the distinct possibility of sex, it was a reasonable use of his time.
Besides, he wasn’t a pig.
He pushed up the sleeves of his ratty, and favorite, sweatshirt, then took the piled dishes out of the sink. “Why do you put them in there in the first place?” he asked himself as he squirted in soap, ran hot water. “Every single damn time you do this, you have to pull them back out again.”
He washed, he rinsed, he wished the cabin had a goddamn dishwasher. And he thought of Reece.
He wondered if she’d kept her appointment with Doc Wallace. He wondered what he’d see in those big dark eyes of hers when she walked in his door that evening. Ease, nerves, amusement, sorrow.
How would she look working in his kitchen, putting food together the way an art
ist creates. Using shapes and colors and textures and balance.
Then there would be the scents, the tastes—of what she prepared and of her. He was getting uncharacteristically wrapped up in the scents and tastes of her.
He set the dishes to drain and got to work on the table. It occurred to him he’d never really shared a meal with anyone in the cabin. Beer and pretzels maybe, if Doc or Mac or Rick dropped over.
He’d hosted a poker game a time or two when he’d been in the mood. More beer again, chips, cigars.
There’d been wine and scrambled eggs at twoA.M. with the delightful Gwen from L.A. who’d come to ski and had ended up in his bed one memorable night in January.
But those casual interludes didn’t have quite the same resonance as having a woman cook you a meal and share it with you in your place.
He took the papers into the utility room, to stack on the pile he hauled out for recycling weekly. Though he frowned at the bucket and mop, he gathered them up.
“See, not a pig,” he muttered as he mopped the kitchen floor.
He should straighten up the bedroom, probably, in case things went that way. If they didn’t go that way, at least he wouldn’t have to look at the mess while he suffered through a restless night alone.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, reminding himself to shave. He hadn’t bothered with it that morning.
She’d probably want candles, so he’d dig some out. Pretty sure he had something that would do, and he had to admit it was nice to sit down to dinner with a pretty woman in candlelight.
But when he caught himself wondering if it was the right time of year for tulips, he stopped short.
Absolutely not. That was crazy thinking. When a guy went out and bought a woman flowers—especially her favorite flowers—he was just asking for her to pick up serious signals. Dangerous and complicated signals.
No damn tulips.
Besides, if he bought flowers he’d have to buy something to stick them in. He just wasn’t going there.
A clean kitchen would have to do it, and if she didn’t like it…
“Wine. Damn it.”
He knew without looking all he had was beer and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Grumbling, he prepared to leave the housekeeping for a drive to town when inspiration struck.
