by Tami Hoag
“Hello, Sarah!” the boy called, giving her a merry grin that revealed two dark gaps where teeth were missing. One small hand emerged from the pile of leaves to wave up at her. “I come to visit with you.”
Sarah muttered a prayer in German under her breath and pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “Are you hurt?”
“Not so much as I might have been,” he conceded. “In my coat I tore a hole,” he said, his English translation of German thoughts spoken slightly out of order.
He pulled back a flap of dark cloth along his left elbow to illustrate the point for his sister. The blue cotton shirt beneath his jacket had fared no better. Jacob's brows knitted together in belated concern as he took notice of the bloody scrape on his arm.
“Stay right where you are, young man!” Sarah ordered, pulling back from the window.
Matt was already out of bed, thumping around the room with his cane, searching for something.
Sarah glared at him. “And just what do you think you're doing?”
“Someone's hurt. I'm a doctor. I'm going to help,” he said in a voice that brooked no disagreement. He yanked open the closet door and shoved aside half a dozen shirts, hangers singing along the iron rod. “Where's my medical bag? Don't tell me Ingrid didn't pack my medical bag.”
“Fine,” Sarah muttered through her teeth. “I won't tell you.”
It seemed futile to try to stop Matt now that he had already gotten out of bed. The horse was out of the barn, and she had more important things to do than chase him. She had to get to her brother. She had no idea how far Jacob had fallen. He might have broken something or injured himself inside. A hundred terrible fears sprang up in Sarah's throat. She rushed out the door of the bedroom and down the stairs with Blossom hot on her heels, the long-bodied hound negotiating the steps like a Slinky.
A shaggy chestnut pony grazed unattended in the front yard. Sarah ran past him, a handful of skirt and apron knotted in her fist to keep the garments from tangling around her legs. Jacob sat exactly where he had fallen. The boy was chest-deep in fallen leaves, but he didn't look so pleased about his predicament as he had initially. He was cradling his arm against him and trying valiantly not to cry. Big, bright tears swam in his eyes, and his mouth trembled in spite of the fact that he had pulled his lower lip between his teeth and was biting down for all he was worth.
Sarah hurled herself to her knees in the leaves in front of him. “Let me see, bobbli,” she said gently, her voice trembling as much as her hands as she reached out toward him.
“I&m not a baby,” Jacob snapped. He twisted away from her, more out of fear of pain than defiance. “It's just a scrape is all.”
“How about letting me be the judge of that?” Matt suggested.
He was winded and pale, half-dizzy from trying to descend the stairs faster than was prudent for a man in his condition. But he managed what he thought would pass for a brave face and gratefully sank to his knees in the cushion of the leaf pile.
Jacob stared at him with owl eyes. “Who are you?”
“My name is Matt. I'm a doctor.”
“You're English.”
“If that means I'm not Amish, then I guess you're right. Is that okay with you?” Matt struggled to maintain a sober face as he asked. The boy was adorable, maybe seven or eight with yellow hair and a dusting of freckles across his impudent nose. The smile he gave Matt was a smaller version of Sarah's, but his eyes gleamed with sudden excitement rather than dry amusement.
“Ya, sure,” Jacob said, looking Matt up and down with wonder. “You ain't wearing no trousers,” the boy observed.
“Jacob! Your manners!” Sarah hissed, her sense of propriety all mixed up amongst her fears. Her heart was still going a hundred miles an hour at the idea of her baby falling from a tree. She had been the one to look after Jacob most of his young life. Their mother had taken ill after his birth, and Sarah, who had no baby of her own, had gladly seen to Jacobs care. She had never grown out of thinking of him more as a son than a brother.
Matt took no offense at the boy's lack of manners. He scooted a little nearer Jacob. “Nope. These are my lucky running shorts. Want to know why they're lucky?”
The blond head bobbed.
“Because I used to wear them all the time back in college when I ran in races.”
“What is this college? Is it a town?”
The question knocked Matt speechless for an instant, until it occurred to him that the Amish probably didn't go in for higher education. “It's the kind of school a guy has to go to if he wants to become a doctor,” he explained.
“And did you win the races?” Jacob asked, typically unconcerned with the idea of school. Races, however, were of great interest. He stared up at Matt, waiting for his response, unconsciously relaxing his hold on his injured arm.
“Sometimes,” Matt said, slowly reaching out. “Let's have a look at this. So you like to climb trees, do you? I used to be the champion tree climber on my block when I was a kid. The second best tree climber was a girl. Can you believe that?”
“No.” Jacob pulled back a litde as Mart's fingers closed around his wrist, but he slowly relaxed and straightened out the arm. “I don't know any girls can climb trees except for Sarah.”
“Is that a fact?” Matt shot Sarah a surprised grin and chuckled at the blush that crept across her cheeks. “I'd like to see that.”
“Jonah Voder is the best tree climber I know,” Jacob went on, warming to the topic, forgetting all about Matt examining his arm. “He's ten and he can climb like a squirrel. I can climb pretty good, but sometimes my reach is not far enough. I'm only eight and I'm not so big as Jonah Yoder is.”
Sarah leaned in to get a look at the scrape, her expression worried. “Is it broken?”
“Heck no, it's just a scrape,” Matt said, rolling his eyes at Jacob. “Girls.”
“Girls,” Jacob parroted derisively. He gave his sister a superior look. “Heck no, Sarah. It's not broke.”
“It's a doozy of a scrape, though,” Matt said. “Really gross.”
“What is this gross?” the boy asked.
“Gross is like really yucky looking,” Matt explained, making a face that indicated it was something a boy could appreciate in a way no one else could. It was a look that breached the culture barrier. Gross was a concept relished by all boys everywhere, even if they didn't use the same word for it.
Jacob eyed his wound with new delight. “Gross,” he said, obviously liking the way the new word sat on his tongue. He looked up at Matt and they both grinned.
“Radically gross!”
Jacob giggled. “Rad-ic-cally gross!”
“Well have to clean it up and put some goop on it,” Matt said, sobering.
The boy looked up at him, suddenly not so brave. “Will it hurt so very much?”
“Nothing a champion tree climber like you can't handle. At least you won't need stitches, like I did,” Matt said, showing off the line on his chin.
Jacobs eyes widened in a horrified awe. “Did you get that falling out of a tree?”
“No. I had a little accident at work.”
Sarah helped her brother up, clucking at him and muttering in German as she dusted the leaves off him and herself. She scooped up his wide-brimmed felt hat and clamped it on his head. Matt struggled to his feet and leaned heavily against his cane for a moment as the world swayed around him.
“Maybe we can get Sarah to whip us up some breakfast while you and I get that arm taken care of.”
Sarah glanced up, her stomach clenching at the sight of Matt, pale and wobbly. “Run along into the kitchen, Jacob. Sit at the table and wait for us, and no playing with the toaster.” As the boy scampered off, she took a step toward Matt. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” he said, forcing a weak version of his sexy grin. “I'm still a little light-headed from that kiss is all.”
She looked at him as if he'd just insulted her, turned on her heel, and hurried off toward the house with a rustle of skirts.
<
br /> Matt watched her go, bemused. Flight wasn't the usual effect he had on women. He scratched his throbbing head and frowned down at Blossom, who had come to root through the leaves like a hog sniffing for truffles. The kiss he had shared with Sarah had stunned him. It had been the lightest of kisses, almost chaste, but the electricity had darn near knocked his socks off. She had to have felt it too.
Well, he was feeling too weak to think about the mysteries of the female mind just now, let alone try to subjugate them. And there was an injury to tend to. Dredging up the last of his energy reserves, he started toward the house, almost tripping over the basset hound that had settled herself on his feet.
“Why aren't you in school today?” Sarah asked as she unloaded first aid supplies from her arms onto the pine harvest table in the sunny, spacious kitchen.
Jacob jumped back from the counter where he had been fingering the trigger of the shiny chrome four-slot toaster. “Our teacher has the croup so we don't have no school.”
“You haven't any school,” Sarah corrected.
“Nope.”
“What? No substitute teacher?” Matt asked, motioning Jacob to have a seat on the table.
“There is only one teacher in our Amish school,” Sarah explained. “We have none in reserve.”
“And I suppose this is a one-room school-house with privies out back,” Matt said, half-joking.
Sarah gave him a cool look, her chin lifting. “Of course.”
Embarrassed, Matt wished he could disappear into the linoleum. But seeing no graceful way out of his blunder, he simply ignored it, clearing his throat and turning attention to Jacob once again. He cleaned the boys scrape, his touch as delicate as he could keep it as he worked out the bits of tree bark and dried leaf.
Sarah hovered at his elbow, looking ready to throw herself between them at the first sign of any real pain from her brother. Every time Jacob winced, Sarah flinched and sucked in a little gasp. For every stray tear that squeezed its way out of Jacobs eyes, Sarah shed two. Matt watched her out of the corner of his eye, torn between amusement, sympathy, and annoyance.
“I'm just cleaning it and applying a dressing,” he said. “This isn't an amputation we're talking about here. And I assure you, I know what I'm doing. I'll have you know I graduated fourth in my class from the University of Minnesota med school.”
“How many was in it?” Sarah asked, not quite joking.
Matt gave her a look. “Very funny. Why don't you sit down before you pass out? Or better yet, get started on that breakfast you promised me.
She cast an anxious glance at Jacob, who was more interested in playing with the dispenser of adhesive tape. She forced herself to back away, step by agonizing step, gnawing on her lip and blinking back tears.
“Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” Matt said sarcastically. “Take some comfort in knowing I can't run away from you. If I screw up, you can pummel me to a bloody pulp with the bludgeon of your choice.” He turned to Jacob and made a face. “Girls. You'd think she'd never seen anything gross before.”
Jacob sniffled and giggled and swung his feet over the table edge.
While Sarah set to work on the breakfast, Matt and Jacob settled themselves at the table and discussed things of interest to boys. Mostly Jacob told Matt everything he knew about farming, how good the corn crop looked, how they were getting ready to harvest, and how he was going to help. He talked a steady blue streak, and Matt looked grave and nodded at appropriate intervals. Sarah watched them out of the corner of her eye, thinking Matt was awfully sweet for listening and asking questions. He probably didn't give a hoot about how dry the corn was, but he paid attention as if it were of great importance to him.
What a good father he would make, she thought, wishing she could ignore the sweet pang of longing in her breast. She set Matt s breakfast down in front of him, along with a steaming cup of coffee, trying not to think about the comfortable domesticity of the scene.
“Does Mom know you are here?” Sarah asked Jacob as she handed him a glass of milk and set a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies on the kitchen table.
Jacob eyed the cookies like a starving creature, reaching slowly for the biggest one even though he hadn't asked permission. “Ya,” he said. “I had done my chores and Pop said for me to come visit with you.”
“Did he?” Sarah murmured more to herself than to Jacob. She couldn't stop the little rush of temper that spurted up inside her. Isaac hadn't sent his youngest son to merely keep her company or to keep him out of the way on the farm. He had been sent as an unwitting observer. Jacob would eagerly relate all he had seen at the English inn. Sarah would never ask him not to. Her job was her own. She did nothing here to be ashamed of.
Her glance darted to Matt, and guilt slapped splashes of color high across her cheeks. They had kissed. She'd sat right on his bed and let him kiss her.
And Jacob had been scrambling up the tree just outside the window.
“Why were you climbing that tree?” she asked.
Her brother's eyes were round and innocent. He shrugged and talked around a mouthful of cookie. “Because it was there.”
“The perfect reason,” Matt said with a grin.
With the enthusiasm of a lumberjack, he ate the breakfast Sarah had fixed him. It had been ages since he'd had a big, calorie-laden, homemade breakfast. He usually took no time for breakfast, grabbing a peanut butter sandwich or a bagel on his way to the hospital. With his strength at low tide, however, he had no trouble convincing himself that he needed something more substantial. The eggs and fried potatoes and toast went down nicely.
He reached for a cookie and shook it at his new little compadre. “You'll have to be a little more careful next time, pal. Climbing trees is a lot of fun, but it's a long way down and there isn't always a pile of leaves handy to land on.”
Jacob nodded as he drank, some milk sloshing out to dribble down his chin. He wiped it off with his good arm and chomped another bite out of his cookie.
Sarah settled herself in her chair and set herself to the task of mending the tear in her brother's jacket sleeve.
“How far up were you?” she asked, feeling like a weasel for trying to wheedle information out of him. She was no better than her father was for sending him here. Poor Jacob.
“Not far.”
“This is not the place for you to be climbing trees,” she scolded, more cross with herself than with her brother. “The Woods often have guests here who would not appreciate looking out their windows to see little Amish boys staring in at them.”
So that was what the interrogation was all about, Matt mused, chewing thoughtfully on his cookie. Sarah was afraid her brother might have caught them kissing. Strange. She was a grown woman. She'd been married for heav-ens sake. What difference would it make if someone saw them kissing?
He watched her as she worked the needle and thread through the fabric of the coat with vicious stabs and jerks that betrayed her inner agitation. Several strands of silky brown hair had escaped the stranglehold of the bun at the back of her head and drifted down along her cheek into her line of sight. She tucked them back up under her kapp without looking up. She looked like a living work of art—“Study of a Nineteenth-century Woman.” A nineteenth-century woman with nineteenth-century sensibilities.
That was it. She was shy, reserved. The idea appealed to Matt in a way he wouldn't have expected. He was used to women who knew the score, women who moved at a nineteen-nineties pace, women who often as not took the lead in a physical relationship. Compared to them, Sarah was untouched, untried, innocent. Once again he felt a strong surge of pro-tectiveness swell inside him, and tenderness … and desire.
He wasn't going to be able to act on any of those impulses at the moment, however, he re alized with no small amount of regret. Ordinarily, he was relentless in his pursuit of something he wanted—especially when that something was a lady. But his exertions that morning had drained him. Fatigue weighed down on him like an anvil, pressin
g on his throbbing head, causing the muscles in his shoulders to tense. His ribs were aching, and the wound in his thigh was burning. He needed to lie down before he simply fell out of his chair and sprawled unconscious on the kitchen floor.
“Well, folks,' he announced, carefully standing up. “I think I'd better get back to bed. All this excitement has worn me out,” he said, sending Sarah a warm, meaningful look that caused her to frown and blush.
“You English sure keep strange habits,” Jacob said, reaching for his third cookie.
Sarah batted his hand away from the plate, scowling at him. “Have they set you out to live with the pigs at home? You have such manners.”
Jacob blushed.
“I don't usually spend the day in bed,” Matt explained, unperturbed. “I'm just not feeling so good right now.”
“Maybe you need some castor oil,” Jacob suggested. “That's what Mom always gives me.”
Matt grimaced. “I think I'll pass on that for now.”
“When you are better, Matt Thorne, I will show you how I ride my pony,' the boy said earnestly. “You can come to the farm. To the calves I will show you. It's my job to feed them and help clean their pens.”
“Gross,” Matt said with a wink.
Jacob giggled.
Sarah heaved a sigh and stuck herself accidentally with her needle.
The rest of the day did not go according to the Laws of Dr. Thorne, and Matt didn't care for it a bit. He was too used to being the boss, to being in control. Being an invalid did not sit well. Everything seemed to irritate him. The room was too light, too dark, he missed the noises of the city, he missed the energy, he missed being busy, he missed being able to do whatever he wanted to with his body.
He had gone upstairs after breakfast with the mistaken idea that a little nap would restore the strength he had spent that morning. He'd slept for six hours, awakened only long enough to take his medication and complain a little, then he'd gone under again.
This was no way to win a lady.
It was especially no way to win a lady who wouldn't stick around long enough for him to charm her. Sarah had made herself scarce, leaving only a little bell on the nightstand in her stead.
