by Jane Toombs
“This yardman better get back to work,” David said.
Amy slanted him a dirty look. Sure, rub it in, she thought, when you deliberately let me believe that’s what you were. She wondered why he didn’t explain himself right away.
“Amy may need some help transferring her things from the hotel,” Gert reminded David.
“No!” Amy cried. “That is, I mean I wouldn’t dream of bothering him when I’m perfectly capable of doing it on my own.”
Gert’s dark gaze assessed her. “I see I’m odd woman out at this rather peculiar interchange. Since I’m related to one of you and have invited the other to be my new associate, don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”
After a long moment of silence, David said, “She’s the one I thought might be a new patient of yours.”
Gert turned from him to Amy. “Apparently you didn’t tell him your name?”
“She said it was Amy,” David admitted. “I’d forgotten Dr. Simon’s first name, so I didn’t make the connection.”
“He told me he was David,” Amy confessed. “Since I had no other identification to go by, I’m afraid I thought he was your yardman.”
Gert’s chuckle turned into whoops of laughter.
Amy looked at David, who shrugged, but she thought she detected a quiver of a beginning smile. Maybe it was funny. Maybe she’d think so next year. Or the year after. She didn’t at the moment. He’d led her on, she was sure, once she’d mentioned she thought he worked for a landscaper. Come to think of it, hadn’t it been just after that he’d mentioned the wimpy rottweilers and wanting a beer?
So annoyed she couldn’t hold her tongue, she scowled at him and muttered, “I’ll bet you never did own a dog, let alone two.”
Raising her eyebrows, Gert said, “He does have a cat—and maybe even kittens by now.”
To Amy’s surprise, David grinned at her. “No dogs, and I admit I’m not really into beer, either. Truce. After all, you didn’t let on who you were, either.”
Now he was trying to charm her. She wasn’t going to fall for that, but, because she was to be his aunt’s associate, Amy squashed down her irritation. She didn’t have to like him, but, since he was Gert’s nephew, she should try to be courteous. “You have a cat?” she asked.
“You could say she picked me.”
“Kittens are imminent,” Gert added. “Now that we have the fuss momentarily settled, do come inside, Amy.”
After the two of them went into the house, David walked down the porch steps and picked up the shovel. Amy’s SUV was parked in front of his pickup at curbside and he could see what the truck had hid yesterday. A California license. Maybe that would have given him a clue to her identity. And maybe not. Even though he knew he’d improved, he still wasn’t focused as well as he used to be a year ago. Betrayal by two of the people he trusted most—his boss and his wife—had knocked him off-kilter.
As he was wrestling a large oleander into the ground, Amy came onto the porch and stood for a moment, her gaze on him. He was tempted to ask if she enjoyed watching the yardman, but decided she was peeved enough with him already. He was tamping the dirt down when she descended the steps. Would she walk past without acknowledging his existence?
“So you took a stray cat in,” she said. “A stray pregnant cat.”
He set the shovel aside. “The cat kept pestering me.”
“Nevertheless, it helped me decide that we should start over with our formal introduction of today and put the past behind us.”
“You mean yesterday and this morning at breakfast?”
“That’s the past, isn’t it?”
Her snappishness amused him. Either she riled easily, or, as he suspected, he was the cause. “Become friends, you mean?”
She hesitated. “Well, I suppose you could put it like that.”
Reminded of a court case in New Mexico, David chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
He decided to tell her. “I once watched while a judge lectured two men in court about one assaulting the other with a paintbrush loaded with paint. Apparently one had been criticizing how the other was painting a fence. The painter took it for a while, but finally turned and swiped the paintbrush across the other man’s face. The judge told them they were wasting the court’s time and ordered them to shake hands and be friends again.” He paused.
“So they did?”
“You don’t argue with a judge’s decision. ‘Me, I do that, Your Honor,’ the painter said, ‘but I tell by the look in his eye, he no be friends with me.’”
A reluctant smile crept across Amy’s face. “You caught me. I really didn’t mean friends, but I’m willing to try.” She stepped off the sidewalk over to where he stood, and offered her hand.
David clasped it in his, holding it while the potency of what had been between them from the beginning jolted through him. From the sudden widening of her eyes, he suspected she felt it, too. Back to square one.
As their hands parted, he said, “Friends,” very much aware that friendship wasn’t all he wanted from Amy.
Amy got into her SUV and drove toward the hotel, wondering just what she’d promised to David with that handshake. Actually they’d held hands, rather than shaken them, and when they finally let go, she hadn’t wanted to. What was it about the man that drew her? Sure, he was a hunk, but she’d met hunks before without her hormones acting up.
She remembered what her brother, Russ, had told her about his first meeting with Mari, now his wife. “She was sitting on a corral fence. She took off her hat and I saw this glorious hair and knew right then I was a goner. Especially since I’d already noticed her cute butt.”
David did have a cute butt. The thought made her laugh. She was overreacting to a purely chemical attraction, something she’d certainly get over. Especially since she intended to be too busy to spend much time with her new “friend.”
At the hotel, the lobby was empty. Mr. Hathaway, a short, stout man with white hair, was at the desk. “Checking out, are you?” he asked. “I hope you were happy here.”
“You have a nice quiet place,” she told him. “And delicious food.”
He beamed at her. “I do try to satisfy folks. I hope you’ll dine with us again. I say that because I understand you had breakfast with David Severin, so I expect you may be around for a while. I heard Dr. Gert was taking on a female associate, and I figure you might be her.”
Tourmaline was a small town, Amy reminded herself. Word got around small towns with the speed of light. “Yes, you’re right.”
“David’s a nice young man. Too bad about that trouble he had in New Mexico. Can’t believe any of it was his fault. His wife must have, though, because she divorced him.”
A divorce? Amy was torn between not wanting to listen to gossip and finding out as much as she could about David. Her better nature lost. “A shame,” she said. She had no clue what the trouble Mr. Hathaway was talking about might be, but she knew pumps needed priming.
“He wasn’t disbarred, you know, so others in New Mexico must have felt he wasn’t guilty.”
David was a lawyer? All the more reason to stay clear of him. Since she hadn’t any idea what had happened, she said nothing, merely nodded at Mr. Hathaway, hoping he’d tell her more.
“Women are like that,” he said. “Desert a man just when he most needs support.” She must have frowned, because he added quickly, “Don’t mean you, of course. Or Dr. Gert, come to think of it. I amend my statement to say some women are like that, my ex-wife included.”
She waited, but apparently his gaffe had rattled him into giving no more information about David’s past. “It’s been nice talking to you,” she told him.
He winked at her. “Always have time for a pretty girl.”
As Amy drove toward Gert’s, she mulled over what she’d heard about David. He’d obviously been practicing law in New Mexico and had gotten into some kind of legal trouble there. It hadn’t been serious enough to get h
im disbarred, but had evidently caused his wife to divorce him. She knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she learned more, but who to ask? Certainly not his aunt. Or, heaven forbid, David.
Was he practicing law here? The massive landscaping overhaul he was doing single-handedly at Gert’s seemed to argue against it. Still, he could’ve taken time off.
Gert had told her to pull her vehicle into the drive past the house and park it where an extra cement slab had been laid down. Amy was grateful she’d be able to use the back door, thus avoiding David offering to help her move her things in.
When Amy was through settling her belongings into her bedroom and had changed into jeans and a polo shirt, she went downstairs to the office where she knew Gert would be. As she walked into the waiting room, Gert was just putting the phone down. She gestured Amy to a seat.
“That was Hal Hathaway, thanking me for choosing a young, good-looking associate. He thinks the town has enough old fogies as it is.”
“News travels fast in Tourmaline,” Amy said.
“Hal makes sure of that. He’s the town’s prime gossip. I assume he got his chance to talk to you when you checked out of his hotel.”
Amy nodded.
“I’m sure he told you some things about David. How much?”
“Well, that David was divorced and there’d been some kind of a problem in New Mexico.”
“Over a year ago, yes. David was at a low point when he came here. I felt he needed some therapy, but being a relative, it wasn’t ethical for me to treat him. I tried to get him to go to a psychiatrist in Reno, but he refused. I have little doubt that he would have refused therapy even from me, had I been able to offer it.”
“I don’t know him well,” Amy said cautiously, “but he doesn’t seem to be in a depression now.”
“Hard work in the sun and fresh air has been good medicine.”
“The landscaping,” Amy murmured.
“Exactly.”
“Mr. Hathaway mentioned David was a lawyer.”
“Is. He passed both Nevada bar exams.” Gert sighed. “I remember him telling me when he was ten that when he grew up he was going to be a lawyer and help people, just like I was a doctor and helped them. Law was his dream. But now—” She paused and shook her head. “He’s disillusioned with the profession. Who knows if he’ll ever go back.”
“If he passed the exams…?”
“I think he took them just to shut me up.”
“He’s in denial.” It wasn’t a question, Amy was offering a diagnosis.
Gert shrugged. “I’ve told you this because I know you’ll hear more gossip. I also realize that you and David got off on the wrong foot. He’ll work things out eventually. Try not to be too hard on him.”
“No, of course not.” Even as Amy said the words, a plan was forming in her mind. Though she was Gert’s associate, she wasn’t related to David, so it wasn’t exactly unethical for her to try to help him. Not that she’d be overt. With his negative attitude toward therapy, it’d never do to let him realize she was going to be attempting to steer him into overcoming his denial, so he could return to the profession he’d once loved.
She felt really noble for about ten seconds. Then it hit her. She, who had absolutely no use for the legal profession, was going to try to find a way to get this man to embrace law again? What a crock. On the other hand, she’d gone into psychology because she wanted to help people understand their problems and overcome them. David had a real problem. It shouldn’t matter what it was, she was a psychologist and it was her duty to help him face up to his.
Should she discuss it with Gert? For a moment or two she wavered, then decided actually there was no need to, since she wasn’t going to officially be David’s therapist. Hers would be a covert operation. If it didn’t work, no harm would come to him. There was a good chance she could pull it off, in which case he’d be better.
“Given time, I believe David and I can become friends,” she said.
Gert smiled at her. “I hope so. Now I’ll show you around a bit so you’ll know where everything is when we start seeing patients tomorrow.”
David, T-shirt slung on the porch rail again, inserted the last of today’s shrubs into its hole, a hibiscus the nursery owner thought was hardy enough to survive a Nevada winter. Time would tell. He’d given it a southern exposure near the house so the plant would have a fighting chance.
“So are you through for the day?” Amy’s voice came from behind, startling him.
He turned to look at her. “More or less.”
“I’ve been thinking about our contract—you know, to try to be friends. It occurred to me if you don’t know much about cats, I might be of some help when yours delivers her kittens. My mother always had cats, so I got to be an amateur expert in kittens at an early age.”
Taken aback at her friendly offer, David hesitated, finally saying, “It’s true I don’t know much about cats.”
“Most of them just go ahead and have their kittens, but some can be difficult about it. I could come over and meet her so she’ll know me when the time comes.”
Come to his apartment? He stared at her. What had brought on this sudden switch? She couldn’t be coming on to him, so just what was she up to?
“Just to meet your cat, I mean.” A tinge of coolness in her voice told him that Amy hadn’t changed all that much.
Let’s see how far he could push her. “You could drive over with me now and get acquainted with Hobo while I take a shower and clean up.”
“Hobo? What kind of name is that for a female cat?”
“How was I to know she was a female? Gert clued me in, but I’d named her by then. Coming with me?”
She frowned—being in the same place with him while he showered wasn’t such a good idea. Time to set things straight, Amy thought. “Ever since we first met I seem to hear you telling me the best way to get places. Since we’ve decided to be friends, I want to be up front with some things, one of them being that I do not like controlling men.”
He let out a bark of surprised laughter. “Me? Controlling?”
“You tend to take charge without consulting me. First you wouldn’t let me drive to Tiny Tim’s by myself, you had to show me in person. It didn’t seem worth an argument so I let it go. Then you wouldn’t tell me how to get to the hotel, even though I asked you to give me directions. You insisted on taking me there. Again I didn’t protest because, well, actually I didn’t expect to see you again.”
David thought it over for a moment or two. “I see your point, but I think you’re being a tad sensitive about what’s meant to be controlling and what isn’t. Try this on—maybe I was merely trying to be a gentleman.”
“What about the fact you just asked if I was coming with you to your place to hang out while you showered?”
He shrugged. “You didn’t say yes or no and I badly need a shower. I was trying to speed things up.”
He could see she was considering that.
“I see your point, too,” she said finally.
“That’s what friends do—give each other a little slack when necessary.” He waited to see how she’d react to that.
He thought her “True enough” was a bit forced. For some reason she was determined to stick to the idea of them being friends. Well, why not? He might be wary of any other type of involvement with a woman, but what was the harm in being friends with Amy?
“Compromise is also what friends do,” she said. “So I’ll follow you to your apartment to meet Hobo. That way you won’t have to drive me back here.”
She was one up on him there. Could be fun to have her for a friend.
“Sounds good,” he told her, and gave her the address in case they got separated on the way.
Then he watched her walk away. She’d changed into jeans, and as he took note of her curvy bottom, he decided it might not be all that easy to be “just friends” with Amy Simon.
Chapter Three
At his apartment, David pointed out
the cat to Amy and started for his bedroom to grab some clean clothes before he showered.
“Wait,” Amy called after him. “Hobo and I need to be introduced by you.”
He paused. “Why? She’s a cat.”
“She’s your cat. And a very pretty tortoiseshell. Your introduction will let her know I’m okay.”
He rolled his eyes but walked back and knelt down beside Amy, who was holding out her fingers for Hobo to sniff.
“Hobo,” he said, “meet Amy. She’s a friend.” He rose and bolted for the bedroom before Amy could come up with another wacky idea.
He was back in ten minutes, showered and wearing clean jeans and T-shirt.
Amy was sitting on the floor petting the cat. “Where’s her box?” she asked.
“Litter box?”
“No, I mean her birthing box. For her to have the kittens in.”
“Gert didn’t tell me she needed that.”
“Hobo has to get used to the box ahead of time so she won’t go off and have the kittens in the corner of a closet or a dresser drawer left open. Or even on your bed. I don’t think you’d care for that since birthing is rather messy. You need to be prepared.”
“I wasn’t planning on becoming the father of kittens, you know.”
“Obviously. Do you happen to have a fair-size cardboard box somewhere?”
He found one, as well as an old blanket for Amy to put in the bottom of the box and several old towels to cover it. She placed the box in an out-of-the-way corner of the living room. “Now, put Hobo in the box,” she said. “She’ll sniff all around in it and probably jump out, but she’ll know it’s there. You can keep putting her in it when you’re home so she gets the idea it’s hers.”
“See what I got myself into for taking you in,” he told the cat as he lifted her gently and set her down inside the box. “Special cat food bowls that won’t tip over, water bowls that fill when you need a drink, kitty litter for the sandbox and now this.”
“She doesn’t seem to have any fleas,” Amy said.
“Gert told me she wouldn’t. Fleas don’t like high desert—the elevation here is almost five thousand feet.”
