“Got more lost.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Well,” she said slowly, enunciating every word. “If you read the instructions at the cabin, there are specific warnings about what to do if you get lost out here. They do not include walking further into the woods.”
Nick was looking up at her with the same expression Jamie had the day that Grace found the goats in the lettuce bed—completely guilty and completely preoccupied with getting away with it. Except Jamie hadn’t been pale and sweaty.
He hadn’t struck her as an absolute idiot, but he was certainly acting like one at the moment. Perhaps it was the fever. She crouched down to his level.
“Are you all right? Because, I hate to be blunt, but you look like hell.”
He wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his jacket sleeve. “I might’ve pushed it a bit. I’m…not good at pacing myself, I guess.”
“Well, your doctor should’ve given you specific instructions on how much exercise your body could manage at this point.”
There was that dimple again. “Yeah, well, I’m…not good at following instructions, I guess.”
Grace smiled in spite of herself. “I can see that.”
There was no way in hell that a woman with eyes like that—with a damn hat like that—could be hiding a meth operation in these woods. Was there?
“And I thought I smelled something,” Nick said.
Grace scrunched her face up as if she were trying not to laugh at him and having a difficult time of it. “Well, there are a lot of things out here to smell,” she said in that science-teacher voice of hers.
“No, this was weird, like ammonia—a lot of ammonia.”
She stood as if she’d been stung, sniffing the air in all directions and scanning the trees.
He stood with her, looking around. “What?”
“I don’t smell anything like that. Just a trash fire somewhere. Probably the Taggarts—”
“But what was it that you were worried about? What smells like ammonia out here?” Yes, Dr. Grace, what?
“Well, as I told you last night, some people have reported seeing a big cat out here—a pain—a mountain lion. Sometimes they mark their territory and their food caches—”
“A mountain lion?” No. He knew the smell of a meth lab pretty damn well. It wasn’t like a giant litter box, there was more to it. Sulfur and other fumes. She was right, though, the smell had disappeared beneath the smell of a trash fire. Or he had imagined it.
“Yet another reason not to walk further into the woods when you are lost,” she repeated in that teacher voice again. And, damn her eyes, she was about to smile at him.
For the briefest moment, he had a mental flash of shutting her up by sinking his hand into that hair of hers, and kissing her—hard.
“But that trash fire smelled pretty nasty for a minute there.” She sniffed the air. “Could that have been it?”
He took a deep breath. There was nothing on the air now except her scent. “I—I don’t think so, but hey, I could be imagining things.” Is that perfume or is that the way you smell all the time?
Nick stepped away from her, making an awkward show of sliding down the embankment to retrieve his battered pack. Dammit! He was on a case—an important case that could ruin lives and reputations and have political repercussions. He did not need to look at Dr. Grace as anything other than a potential suspect or innocent bystander. And he didn’t need his body suddenly deciding to wake up and attempt one last fling. And he sure didn’t need his mind to be playing tricks on him.
Maybe he had imagined the smell. Maybe he needed to get his carcass back home and hand this over to a healthy agent whose brain cells were intact, because his clearly weren’t. Alison would be happy to settle him into that extra room of hers and force homemade soup on him and nag him into going to the doctor and then… Nope. He’d rather become a quick snack for Grace’s pet painter.
Yanking his backpack loose from the rocks, he climbed back up. He was pretty sure nothing in the pack was breakable, but he made a show of rattling it and poking around inside before shrugging into it.
“I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll follow you from now on,” he said, staring at his shoes.
“Follow me?”
He looked up and found her staring at him in dismay. Well that bothered her. A lot.
“Back to the house?” he added, with just the right tone of confusion.
“Oh. Of course.” She started to turn away, then looked back. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look— Well, actually you look green around the gills, as Pops would say.”
“Just a little nausea. I’ll live.” He shifted the pack with a grunt. “So Pops? You…actually call your dad ‘Pops’? I haven’t heard that in years.”
She frowned. “Pops is short for Grandpops.” She pulled her own backpack off and crouched over it, taking off her gloves, and digging through the contents. “What my brother always called our grandfather. Logan Woodruff.”
“Oh. Sorry. Trish mentioned that he’d passed away recently. Condolences on your loss.”
She only nodded. He decided to press a little.
“The folks down at that tavern where I ate last night called him ‘The Woodsman’. They had some good things to say about him—and this place.”
Her expression changed. A brief flash of pain, and then nothing. “Hopefully you had the trout.”
“It tasted great last night. Right now, not so much.”
There was the barest hint of a smile. “I understand,” she said, continuing to rummage in her pack.
“What are you looking for?”
“Ginger.” She fished out a plastic pill bottle and stood up, undoing the top and tilting it toward him. “Hold out your hand.”
He did so, and a piece of what looked like sugar-dusted candy fell into his palm.
“As long as you’re not on blood thinners, this is safe, and it should help.”
“Ginger, like ginger ale?”
“Exactly. Except most ginger ale has very little real ginger in it.” She put the bottle back in her pack.
“So, do I eat it?”
“Just chew on it. See if it helps. Now—” she hefted her pack and pulled her gloves back on, “—we can sit here until your stomach settles or we can make our way home, slowly.”
He popped the ginger into his mouth. “Don’t slow down for my sake,” he mumbled around the chewy morsel. “I bet this stuff’ll cure what ails me.” If only it were that simple.
It could not be that complicated. There was no explanation Grace could imagine, sinister or otherwise, that made any sense except that Mr. Nick Crowe was exactly what he said he was: an idiot writing a book who didn’t know his own limits and had likely seen her set out this morning and decided to follow. For one thing, no one could pretend to be as sick as he was. And he was either unaware of it, which would make him rather stupid, or unwilling to admit it, which would make him rather…stupid.
“So, were you born here then?” Nick asked.
Apparently her long silence had gotten to him, or perhaps it was her expression as she looked over her shoulder now and again to see how he was holding up. She hoped she wasn’t glaring at the poor man.
“No.”
There was a huff, then what sounded like a resigned sigh. “So, where were you born then?”
Grace supposed she could be sociable at least, no matter how stupid he was. “Philadelphia.”
“Home of cheese steak and the Eagles. That’s—That’s a long way.”
“Yes.” She could almost feel his frustration as he stared at her back.
“How did you end up here?”
Grace almost smiled. He wouldn’t give up.
“As I said, my grandparents lived here. And my grandfather’s parents and my great-grandfather’s parents and so on. It goes back a ways.”
“But not your parents.” It wasn’t a question, but it was pretty obvious that her parents weren’t around at th
e moment anyway.
“No. They’re in Philly. Well, my mother and sister are. My father is probably in Washington.”
“D.C.?”
He seemed impressed. And that was another point for “stupid”.
“Yes, sadly enough,” she said.
“Oh, a politician then.”
Perhaps not quite so stupid. “No, not that bad,” she said solemnly.
He laughed, and she gave him back another point.
“And you?” she asked.
“For the moment, Washington…D.C.”
“Oh.” Insert foot in mouth and proceed. “You’re not a—”
“Politician?” He paused long enough for her to squirm a bit. “No, not that bad.”
It was her turn to laugh. Perhaps not stupid at all.
“For the moment? Not for long then?” she asked, turnabout being fair play.
“Well, I—I move around a lot.”
“For the research?”
“That, and the promotional stuff. I decided with so much traveling there was no point in settling in any one place. I’m never there.”
Grace couldn’t imagine that kind of life. Rootless and wandering. She would feel lost. “You don’t call any place home?”
There was a pause. “I suppose Cleveland comes close. My mom’s there, and my sister Alison with her son. It’s where I grew up.”
A sister. Alison. Suddenly Nick Crowe seemed a bit more real to her. “So, is Nick Crowe the name you write under? I read, but mostly non-fiction—”
“No, I write under a pseudonym. And mostly fiction. Actually, all my books are suspense type thrillers—political intrigue, spies, drug cartels, and so on.”
But he had said he was researching here, not just writing, hadn’t he? And he had been in Colombia— “What on earth does Patton Springs have to do with any of that?”
Exactly, Dr. Grace.
“Oh, well, this one’s about illicit drug production.” Nick kept his eyes on her back, watching for any reaction.
“Like I said. What on earth does Patton Springs have to do with that?” she repeated, not missing a step.
Now you are stuck, McKenzie. Do you poke again and risk tipping your hand? Is she that good an actress?
“Well, I’m trying to draw parallels and contrasts between the kind of people who traffic and use cocaine and the kind of people who cook and use meth.” He focused a moment on negotiating a rocky outcropping in their path. “It meant research in Colombia, then New York, then up here, and, eventually, Atlanta.”
He tried to see her face, but she was quiet, head down, listening intently as she walked, so he forged on with the tale that he had rehearsed, playing out the line.
“It’s been done before, but I’m trying a narrower focus with this story. There are a lot of misunderstandings about the disparities and class distinctions. Despite the stereotype, the majority of crack users are white, for example. What it comes down to is showing how the drugs change the lives of the real people who create and traffic them—the impact on their families and children. Then I contrast and compare the impact on the lives of the real people who use them—their families and their children. It sounds complicated, but it really is simp—”
She had stopped and he nearly ran her down, skidding to an awkward halt on the leaves.
“Whoa!” Did I hit a sore spot?
She looked surprised. But not the kind of surprised he’d expected.
“That sounds amazing. I had never really thought about it that way before. I mean, I know that we have meth labs around here. But— I can’t imagine— Illicit drugs aren’t my area of expertise at all.” She shook her head and smiled—smiled—at him. “I imagine there’s a wide disparity between the users of cocaine and methamphetamines because of the cost differential and the ease of production. And then there would be differences in access to healthcare and the way they’re handled in the judicial system. Gathering and analyzing all that information, then putting it in the form of a fictional story. How fascinating.”
Even with that stupid hat on—with wisps of dark red hair escaping from the brightly colored knit to flutter against her cheekbones—she was mesmerizing. And those vivid green eyes regarding him so intently. She was actually interested in this nonexistent book that he wasn’t writing. And despite the fact that she sounded like a professor, he did like the sound of her voice.
A drop of moisture slid onto his chin and he jumped. Was he drooling while he stood here gaping at her? He swiped his jacket sleeve across his sweaty face.
“You look like you are running quite a fever.”
Her concern was sincere. Either she was the best damn actress in the world or…he was back to his conclusion that his instincts were shot to hell and he needed to get out of here.
Maybe he should go write a book before it was too late. He had enough stories to tell.
Before he had time to react, she had pulled her hand out of her glove and reached for his face.
When her fingers touched his temple, a cool cascade slid through him, like water over long-parched ground.
Not exactly the sensation he had expected—
As Grace had expected, his skin was hot—he even shivered a bit at her touch. And with that telltale shudder, she almost pulled away. But beyond the obvious heat from the fever she could sense something else—a brooding pestilence slithering away from her touch. If she closed her eyes, she was sure she would see some malignant darkness lurking at the edges of her vision.
For a moment she hesitated. Every impulse told her to retreat, but another, stronger instinct held her there, calling on her to close her eyes and delve deeper. Only a little bit deeper—
“I’m sorry—”
She heard Nick’s voice as if from a distance, but it was enough to wake her. Jerking her hand back, she was surprised by how cold the air suddenly felt against her skin.
As if he realized he hadn’t really done anything to warrant an apology, Nick looked down at himself in confusion. “What happened?”
Steadying her whirling head and queasy stomach, Grace said, “You have a fever. You need to take something—”
“I know that. But what happened just now?”
“You know that you have a fever? And yet you came out— Of course you know. You—You are either stupid or insane. I can’t tell which.”
“Wha— Why are you yelling at me?” Nick reached up and touched his forehead, right where her fingers had been.
Grace softened her tone. “I’m not yelling.” For a moment her fingers tingled with the memory of his shivering response to her touch. She yanked off her other glove. Taking off her pack, she sifted through the contents and pulled out a packet of powder. “Do you have any problem taking aspirin?”
“No, but it doesn’t usually…I mean…no.” He stuttered to a stop.
She refrained from glaring at him as she handed him the packet. “These are some fever reducing herbs. Unless you have some unusual allergies, you should be okay to take them.”
Nick looked at the packet, clueless. “How?”
“Dissolve it in water.”
“Actually, I feel a lot better now.” He rubbed his hand across his brow and looked utterly confused.
“It won’t last.” And that so-called parasite in there is much bigger than one packet of herbs. She pulled her gloves back on and hefted her pack. “Your fever seems to have broken for the moment, but you should still take it.”
He obediently pulled out his water bottle and unscrewed the top. He held the unfolded packet over the opening. “All of it?”
She nodded, folding her arms to calm her skittering nerves and hide her hands, which had started to shake. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Why did I touch him?
Nick made some rather comic faces. “Gah. Why does it have to taste so bad? Couldn’t you mix some sugar with it?” But he resumed drinking, his eyes on her the whole time.
For a moment, she saw Tink, sitting in her hospital bed, her brown eyes far too big in h
er pale face. “Dr. Grace, why does the good medicine taste bad sometimes?”
“Are you all right? You look a little pale yourself,” he said after he had finished.
“I’m fine.” But I shouldn’t have touched you.
“I guess I may have overdone it, huh?” There was a hint of apology in his voice.
“I think that’s an understatement.”
“I swear, the doctor said I could resume normal activities,” Nick said, then looked a bit sheepish. “I suppose that means hiking in the mountains isn’t ‘normal’.”
“I suspect not.” Either you don’t realize you aren’t in remission any longer or you do and you’re ignoring it. Either way, you shouldn’t be out here. Grace sighed. “Perhaps it would be best if you went back to your doctor to be checked out thoroughly. You don’t seem to have fully recovered—”
“No. They said I was fine.”
The answer was almost too quick. And a muscle in Nick’s jaw twitched, giving away his agitation. So, all signs point to stubborn.
“Well, I’m not a doctor, but, at a minimum, you need lots of rest. I can recommend some dietary changes that will help, plus probiotics and vitamins, if your doctor hasn’t already?”
He shook his head, looking like nothing so much as an animal caught in someone’s headlights.
Grace frowned. “Well, some doctors are a bit conservative about alternative medicine, but if you can tell me the name of the…parasite you have, I can recommend some herbs that might have a real benefit.”
Nick’s face was a study in concentration. “I told you. I have no idea, Grace. It was about twenty-seven letters long.”
The sound of her name tingled in her ear. It must be the way he said it, in that mellow voice of his. He had said her name before, hadn’t he?
“Well, that does make it a little difficult, but if you have any of your prescriptions, I might be able to surmise—”
“I don’t—I don’t think natural remedies are really my thing.”
Why in the name of all that is holy did you choose our mountain? You could’ve gone to any bed and breakfast around here, or another farm!
More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling) Page 7
