“The man’s impossible.”

Laura Cresswood said nothing as the supervisory nurse, Sylvia Summers, continued. “He wants everything his way, including the exact timing of our visits—which is impossible to predict. Why he chooses to live up there on that mountain—”

“Especially with all that money,” one of the field nurses interrupted as she scooted past Laura’s desk.

“The man is a hermit,” Sylvia continued. “And he’s already run off two physical therapists.” She handed the chart to Laura. “Now it’s your turn. The chart should be labeled P.I.A., because the guy’s a genuine pain in the—”

“I’ve handled P.I.A.’s before,” Laura answered quietly. And I’m an expert on rich, demanding men.

“This is a really tough case, Laura. No one wants to deal with Adam Scott, much less stay on that mountain to give him his therapy.”

“You told me all that, and about the car accident.” Laura flipped back a page in the chart. “It says here he’s a widower. Was his wife killed in the crash?”

“Yes.” Sylvia ran a hand through her short-cropped hair. “A terrible accident. You know, since you’re taking this on as a private contract, you’ll be totally on your own. You’re a brave woman, Laura.”

Bravery has nothing to do with it, Laura thought as she closed the chart.

Dear Reader,

Have you ever noticed how, when your heart is troubled, it helps to go someplace quiet? We all have peaceful spots where we retreat when we need a moment of refuge. Mine is a small duck pond a few blocks from my home. I walk over there and stand on a small arched stone bridge. After a while, the sounds of the ducks quacking and the wind in the cypress trees and the gurgle of the low waterfall soothe my spirit.

But sometimes there are circumstances in life when we need a greater escape, times we need a special, remote place where we can go to experience…a healing. I’ve had such times myself, and I know firsthand the magical restorative powers of the vast national forests in the mountains of northwestern Montana. The primitive cabin in this story is very much like a real cabin in the Kootenai National Forest where I stayed with some friends many years ago. After I experienced the profound peace and beauty and wholeness of that wilderness, I knew I would use it as a setting in a story some day.

And though Laura Duncan and Adam Scott have retreated to the Montana high country for completely different reasons, it doesn’t matter what heartaches drew them there. What matters is their healing. What matters is that in the midst of that wildness and isolation, they find peace…and, more important, they find each other.

Darlene Graham

Your kind comments about my books are always very much appreciated. Visit my web site at http://www.superauthors.com or write to me at P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070.

Under Montana Skies

Darlene Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to Marilyn Watley.

Thank you, dearest friend, for taking me to high places.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

WAS THIS WRONG?

Her conscience squirmed, but Laura Duncan Crestwood reminded herself that she intended to pay Stuart back, even if it took her ten years. She refused to think of herself as the kind of woman who would actually steal.

In fact, she reminded herself and raised her chin, she was a nice woman. The kind of woman who complimented the chubby grocery sacker on his new jacket, listened to the elderly lady’s third repetition of an old story and smiled at every single baby she encountered, homely or not. A nice woman—who was robbing her soon-to-be ex-husband blind. Her chin lowered and her shoulders slumped.

Was this wrong?

“May I get anything else for you, Mrs. Crestwood?” the fashionable young clerk asked.

“I don’t think so.” Laura smiled a sad little smile and handed over the platinum charge card, the one embossed with STUART HAYDEN CRESTWOOD.

She sighed, folded her hands on the chest-high mahogany counter and studied the high-priced travel accessories under the glass.

Okay, she admitted, she was robbing Stuart blind, and probably deaf and dumb, too, but there seemed to be no alternative.

She watched the clerk scanning tag after tag on the heavy woolen sweaters and sturdy jeans that would serve her well in her new life in Montana. Stuart will have a fit when he gets these bills. Or a heart attack.

Well, she didn’t want that exactly. In fact, Laura wanted Stuart to live on and on. Live on, and be completely miserable with that piglet, Charlene. Laura smiled again, not quite so sadly.

Yeah. Wouldn’t it be just lovely if Charlene got fat, and Stuart got fatter? Yeah. Stuart would end up being the absentee father she’d always known he would be, and Charlene would morph into the whiny hag that lurked under that false-eyelashed facade.

A guilty frown replaced Laura’s smile. She couldn’t really wish for that. Unhappy parents wouldn’t be good for a child, and Laura truly loved kids. Unfortunately, nature had denied her the ability to bear one of her own.

And right there in the upscale sportswear shop, Laura’s eyes started to mist up. Because that was the reason Stuart was leaving her. At least that was her least-painful theory—that he’d only married her because she was a young sexy aerobics instructor who exuded health and…fertility.

When he discovered she wasn’t fertile, he’d moved on to the next sweet young thing—Charlene. Charlene, who was destined to be his fourth wife. Charlene, destined—Laura had learned only two days ago—to be the mother of the heir to the Crestwood fortune.

And that fortune, she’d learned later the same day, was now parked nineteen thousand miles off the coast of New Zealand. On the Cook Islands to be exact. In an offshore trust.

“Safeguarded,” Stuart had claimed, “from frivolous lawsuits.”

Safeguarded from Laura was what he meant. After splitting his assets with two previous wives, Stuart Crestwood the Third was not about to allow another divvying up.

“Fraud,” Laura’s attorney Irene had said as she studied the documents. “But no way to prove it. ‘Spouse of the Settlor’—very clever language.” She riffled the thick stack of pages with a thumb. “Your name isn’t anywhere in here.” Irene propped her elbows on her desk. “Face it, Laura. You will never get your hands on one penny of that nine million.”

Laura sighed, then shielded her eyes with a shaky hand. Alone and poor. Just the way she’d started. “Once, when I’d gotten to feeling so hollow, so dead, in this marriage, I actually asked Stuart for a divorce.”

“And?” Irene prompted.

“And he started yelling, saying stuff like, ‘You came into this marriage with nothing and, by God, you will leave it with nothing.”’

Irene shook her head and spread her palms over the compelling documents. “Unfortunately that was not an idle threat. It would take an entire law firm working full-time to beat this contract, not to mention your prenuptial agreement. Besides, Stuart keeps several big Dallas firms on retainer. None of them will touch your case. Let’s face it—Stuart has arranged things so that you can’t get at his assets no matter how costly a lawsuit you launch.”

Costly lawsuit? Laura couldn’t imagine how she was even going to pay Irene’s fee for this one brief consultation. Stuart had made certain he held all the purse strings.

The sportswear clerk coughed and looked at her apologetically. “Sorry this is taking so long, Mrs. Crestwood.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Laura flapped a dismissive hand at the pile. So many clothes! But she knew these things would have to last her a very long time. That was why she was buying the best.

She felt suddenly self-conscious, wondering if the young woman had noticed the tears in her eyes. She turned away, focusing on a nearby mirror, pretending to arrange her masses of blond curls.

How could you have been such a class-A idiot? she asked herself as she studied her reflection. No use mentally kicking herself for the millionth time for getting involved with a cold-hearted creep like Stuart Crestwood. She supposed she’d reaped exactly what she’d sown: all this stuff and not one shred of happiness.

When she met Stuart right after Gran had died, she’d naively thought he was the answer to a prayer. A handsome man, that powerful, that rich, interested in her, a girl barely out of her teens, a girl who couldn’t stick with anything, a—what had her second stepdad called her?—a dingbat.

Stuart had seemed so perfect, so together. Older. Wiser. Who would have guessed he was such a manipulator? Vicious. Cunning.

Thoughts of the real Stuart brought back the defiance Laura had felt that day in Irene’s office when she’d first gotten the bad news, when she’d first hatched this crazy plan.

She wasn’t going to wait for Stuart’s precious divorce to go through. She was leaving him. Without a trace. No lengthy, fruitless court battle like the other wives had fought. Not for her. All she wanted was a little boost to kickstart her new life, to help finance an education that would allow her to be self-supporting. This time she would create a life that was totally her own, without relying on Prince Charming to save her. Never again would she look to a man for security.

But her hand shook a little as she tucked a strand of fluffy hair behind one ear. She had never lived on her own, and she had never lived anywhere but Texas.

She was about to cry. “I’ll take these, too.” She added a pair of two-hundred-dollar sunglasses to the pile.

The clerk nodded and gave Laura a thin smile as the machine clicked and whirred obligingly, converting another little chunk of Stuart’s money into contraband for Laura’s flight to freedom.

“Do come back and see us again soon, Mrs. Crestwood,” the girl crooned as she slid the charge slip forward.

For a second, Laura wondered if she would miss that. Being Mrs. Stuart Crestwood, getting that reflected respect clerks showed when she whipped out a platinum card and signed that well-heeled last name, dropping a couple of grand as casually as if she was buying a pack of gum. Would she miss that? Without even checking the total, Laura scrawled Mrs. Stuart H. Crestwood.

Undoubtedly, in this radical new life she’d set up for herself, she would miss many things—the glittering social life, reported almost weekly in the Dallas Morning News; the mansion in Briarwood; never having to cook, clean or even run her own errands—but Stuart was not one of the things she would miss.

Her best friend, Janie, had urged her to “battle it out in court for any of the SOB’s money you can get. After all,” Janie had argued, “you’re already twenty-eight, honey, and even if you are petite and kind of…voluptuous, you’re no supermodel. You know what I mean? What are you going to do if you can’t find another man to support you? Spend your life working? Can you even imagine yourself being some…some secretary?”

Maybe Janie’s way was smarter. Maybe even easier. Laura was leaving Dallas unskilled and friendless—the future was so uncertain! But however uncertain, this way felt right to Laura. She would make a new life up north; she had to.

Laura gathered her bags of loot, feeling their weight and another twinge of guilt about the devious way she was doing this.

“Goodbye,” she told the clerk, and turned, wrapping her determination around herself like armor.

She’d be fine, somehow. Even if she ended up poor, it would be an honest poverty. Well, she’d make it honest. Eventually.

She crammed the sunglasses, with the tag still dangling from the earpiece, onto her nose, and marched out of the store with her chin up.

All that remained was to park her Mercedes convertible in an inconspicuous space in the crowded Wal-Mart lot, stuff her hair under the nondescript hat she’d just bought and call for a taxi.

Investment account, converted to cash.

Plane ticket, bought under an assumed name.

Mrs. Stuart Hayden Crestwood, vanished into thin air.

CHAPTER ONE

Four years later, fifty miles deep in the remote Kootenai National Forest of northwestern Montana

“THIS MAN IS IMPOSSIBLE.” Sylvia Summers, the nursing supervisor at Mountain Home Health Care, complained as she stood putting together a copy of a patient’s chart for Laura. “Even over the phone he comes across as brooding, wants everything his own way, including the exact timing of our visits. Can you imagine how hard it is to time our trips up to the Yakk River and then along that Sixteen Mile…cowpath to the exact hour? Why he chooses to live out there—”

“Even with all that money,” one of the field nurses interrupted as she scooted past Laura’s desk, “he lives an austere existence on the side of the mountain. Doesn’t even have a TV.”

“The man’s a hermit, who hardly speaks except to snap my nurses’ heads off,” Sylvia continued. “And he’s already run off two other physical therapists. Now it’s your turn.” She handed Laura the chart.

Another nurse peeked around the supply shelves and chimed in. “That chart should be labeled P.I.A., because if ever there was one, that guy’s a genuine pain in the—”

“I’ve handled P.I.A.’s before,” Laura answered quietly as she walked to her desk. And I’m an expert on rich, demanding men, she added to herself as she thought of Stuart Crestwood for the first time in ages. “Difficult patients don’t bother me. Remember Mr. Buchanan? Wouldn’t even get out of bed at first.” She sat down and pushed her glasses up on her nose, trying to focus her mind on the chart, in spite of the nurses’ discouraging verbal barrage.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Hon-nee child!” another nurse hooted. “Mr. Scott makes old man Buchanan seem like a sweet cuddly teddy bear.”

The others muttered their agreement.

Sylvia raised a palm. “Okay, girls. We’ve scared her enough.” She crossed to Laura’s desk.

“Listen, Laura, this is a tough case. No one wants to deal with this man, much less stay up on that mountain and do the hours of therapy necessary to—”

“You told me all that,” she put in, “and about the car accident.” She flipped back a page in the chart. “It says here he’s a widower. Was his wife killed in the accident?”

“Yes.” Sylvia sighed and ran a hand through her short-cropped frosted hair. “A terrible accident. Anyway, you’ll be taking this on as a private contract, with no supervisory visits. In other words you’re totally on your own. And once you and Mr. Scott sign that contract, I hope you’ll stay to finish the therapy regimen.”

Laura flipped more pages. Fractured scapula and humerus. Severe rotator-cuff tear, avulsed muscles, some nerve damage, adhesive capsulitis…. “This man’s surgery was almost a year ago. Why are we just now doing joint mobilization?”

“He shut himself off from people when he left the hospital. But now, all of a sudden, he wants full use of his shoulder back. It wasn’t happening fast enough to suit him with only two visits a week.”

Laura nodded and closed the chart. “I’m going to do joint mobilization once every day, assisted exercises twice a day, ice packs after each treatment.”

“Sounds good.” Sylvia glanced at her watch. “You’d better get going. As I said, Adam Scott demands punctuality.” Frowning, Sylvia bent her head, and said confidentially, “You know, you’re a brave girl to accept this assignment.”

Bravery has nothing to do with it, Laura thought as she lugged the heavy portable massage table and arm bike out to her old Toyota. The obscene amount of money this patient was willing to pay for a private full-time physical therapist for six weeks was her sole motivation.

When Laura had first taken off with Stuart’s money, she hadn’t realized how much she would change. Over the past four years, as she’d finished her education and forced herself to mature and grow, she’d come to realize that she wouldn’t really be free until she paid Stuart back every cent. The salary Adam Scott was offering would go a long way toward getting rid of her debt.

But the nurses’ descriptions of her new patient kept ringing through her mind as she steered her little car along the narrow gravel road that skirted the sheer wall of rock high above Sixteen Mile Creek.

When at last the road ended, she felt as if she’d traveled back in time. A weathered log cabin squatted in an open glade like an old hen brooding on a nest. Two quaint dormer windows twinkled in the September sunshine, and a sturdy native-rock chimney buttressed one side of the steep blue roof. A deep porch across the entire front seemed like the perfect spot for enjoying mountain vistas, but it didn’t have a stick of furniture on it.

And there, on that porch, stood Adam Scott, waiting for her.

His face was hidden in the shadows, but his long muscular legs, clad in worn jeans and hiking boots, were crossed causally at the ankle. He leaned one shoulder—not the bad one, she noticed—against the rough-hewn door frame.

His body looked so…young. So strong!

The relaxed powerful figure leaning against that door certainly didn’t fit the picture of the lame bitter recluse her colleagues had conjured up.

She peered through her windshield. He didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Well, he was close enough at thirty-eight, but somehow she hadn’t expected him to be such a…hunk.

Laura fumbled on the floor for her satchel and tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.

She glanced back up at him. He wasn’t leaning against the door frame anymore, and now his stance and folded arms radiated impatience.

She opened the car door and drew a deep breath. She climbed out, then carefully closed the door and walked up the path with what she hoped was self-assurance.

He came forward, scowling from under thick dark eyebrows, and the lump in her throat doubled in size, because now that he was in the sun, she could see that not only was he young and fit, he was extremely handsome.

He looked like a younger version of—who was that actor who’d played Marshall Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke?—James Arness. This guy had the same strong jaw. The same big hands. All of which kept him from seeming too perfect, too pretty.

His thick dark hair looked wild and untrimmed, with a few silvery strands sprigging at the temples.

His whole presence seemed unreal. As if he’d been plunked into this rustic setting by some visionary movie director: All right now. Stand there with the sun in your eyes—no, don’t shade them. Look mean. As if she’s a bug you intend to squash with your boot. That’s good. Oh—nice touch! Raising your arm and propping your palm rigidly against the porch post, like you aren’t even going to let her inside the cabin. Does somebody in wardrobe have a really worn-looking denim shirt?

The man fixed his dark eyes on her. When they caught the sun they flashed silver, like a…a wolf’s or something.

Laura averted her own gaze, feeling a little breathless. Not because she was climbing a steep grade, but because that look in his eyes had been so intense that it had left her feeling stunned.

As she climbed the porch steps, it occurred to her that the man before her might not even be her patient. He could be the hired help or a relative, perhaps.

But when he said, “Are you my new physical therapist?” in a low baritone, that small hope burst like a punctured balloon.

“Yes. I’m Laura Duncan—” Laura smiled and put out her hand as she took the last stair “—from Mountain Home Health Care.”

“And who is that?” He nodded toward the Toyota.

Laura dropped her hand and swiveled her head. Ned! She was so used to her ever present “safety man” riding in the passenger seat that she’d forgotten he was supposed to look real from a distance.

“That’s a safety dummy.” She looked up at her patient and smiled. “You know, to make it look like I have a passenger—I drive on a lot of isolated roads.” She stuck out her hand again. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He stared at her hand, then gave her a critical frown. “My right arm is injured, remember?” With that he turned his back and disappeared into the cabin.

Laura’s eyes went wide and she dropped her hand. Her throat got tighter as she felt herself blushing at her mistake.

She hesitated at the doorway, then peered in, wondering if he meant for her to follow. She couldn’t see him; her eyes were still adjusting from the bright mountain sunshine to the gloomy interior of the cabin.

“Well, come in, dammit.” His rich baritone came from somewhere in the darkness. “Don’t just stand there.”

Laura’s back stiffened, and she stood firmly rooted in the doorway. No amount of money was worth being cursed at. She’d had enough of that kind of treatment from Stuart.

She heard heavy footsteps, and in the next instant his face materialized in the shaft of sunlight pouring through the cabin door. She quailed at his fierce expression, but she stood her ground.

“What?” he said.

“Let’s get something straight, Mr. Scott. I heard about the way you treat the nurses. I’d appreciate it if you’d watch your language and your temper.”

He gave her another dark squint. “For the exorbitant amount I’m paying you, I can say and do just about anything I please.”

“Not to me.” Laura turned on her heel, stomped across the porch and clattered down the steps, marching to her car as fast as possible.

“Wait!” he hollered as he sprinted down the steps behind her.

“Okay, okay,” he said, coming up short beside her car as she tossed in her satchel and climbed behind the wheel. She saw him throw up his hands as she slammed the door.

He bent down beside the closed window as she started the engine. “Okay! No cursing!” he yelled through the glass.

Laura lowered the window a couple of inches but didn’t kill the engine.

“Look, Ms.—What’d you say your name was?”

“Duncan. Laura Duncan.” After four years she’d grown comfortable with her maiden name again.

“Ms. Duncan. Stay.” He backed up from the window, jammed his left hand into the pocket of his jeans and shrugged uncomfortably. “Please.”

Stuart used to shrug like that. An innocent-looking gesture that in Laura’s mind was as phony as a three-dollar bill.

“Please,” he repeated. “I’ve got to get this shoulder working again. And I can’t do it without a therapist.”

Laura held her foot on the brake while she stared out the windshield and considered.

He needed her skills, and she needed his money.

Four years of physical-therapy training had depleted every cent she’d filched from Stuart. All she had now was a simple little frame house back in Kalispell, this eight-year-old Toyota and her self-respect.

She gave Adam Scott a sidelong glance. “I suppose you know I’m the only physical therapist who’s prepared to work with you.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t look angry, didn’t even laugh derisively. He merely gave her another squinting assessment, then blinked as if coming out a dream.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all, Ms. Duncan,” he said. “I can’t say that I blame them. I can be difficult. But I promise, if you stay, I’ll treat you professionally. Now, won’t you please come inside?”

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHE STEPPED into the cabin, Laura’s misgivings about taking on this case only increased.

Thick-hewn beams, darkened with age, spanned the low ceiling, making the long rectangular room feel oppressive and gloomy. Her first impulse was to dart around to the windows set squarely into three of the walls and throw back the heavy wooden shutters.

Instead, she set her satchel at her feet and let her eyes adjust to the dim light while she waited for her patient to come back in.

He’d gone through a door toward the back to get another chair, she supposed. The fact that there was only a table and one lone chair in this barren room was spooky, not to mention the darkness and the general lack of…life about this place.

Laura rubbed her hands up and down her sweatshirt-covered arms. Even though it was early September and the last scraps of snow on the high peaks were long gone, the mountain air had a definite chill. She hoped she could complete Mr. Scott’s treatment program according to her six-week plan. Sixteen Mile Creek road would be impassable once the first heavy snows fell.

She eyed the massive stone fireplace. It was swept clean and cold-looking, like the mouth of a cave.

The walls of the room, rough knotty-pine planks, had absolutely no decoration, the wooden floor, no rugs. The place looked the same as Laura guessed it had for—what?—the past century or so.

On the round oak table was a solitary paper plate holding the remains of a plain bologna sandwich. What kind of man chose to live such an existence?

She turned and looked back out the front door, which stood open. Should she close it? No. If she did, this room would be as dark as night.

Beyond the shadows of the porch she spotted the corner of a well-tended garden, which she hadn’t noticed when she’d driven up. That was odd. She craned her neck to see more. It sloped down the sunny side of the mountain in neat rows. What did he do with all those vegetables? she wondered. As she watched, a big shaggy yellow dog sauntered into the picture and flopped down in a shady spot at the edge of the garden. Well, if the man had a dog, maybe he wasn’t all bad.

“Ms. Duncan?”

She whirled around, instantly blushing, embarrassed that she’d allowed his deep voice to startle her.

He clumped into the room, frowning and carrying a chair with his good arm. He banged it down opposite the one at the table. “Have a seat.”

Laura crossed the bare floor and after she adjusted the chair—the wooden legs made a terrible scraping noise—she sat, none too comfortably.

He lowered himself into the chair opposite and pushed the sandwich aside.

“Did I interrupt your lunch?” she asked. Her own had been a quick carton of yogurt and some crackers and fruit from the basket of goodies she’d packed.

“Let’s see the contract.”

Laura’s cheeks grew hotter. Okay. So he was going to be consistently rude. She supposed she could deal with that.

“Can we have some light?” she asked pleasantly.

Without a word he got up—the chair legs made that terrible scraping noise again—and rounded the table to the nearest window. He slammed the heavy wooden shutters aside. Light poured through wavy-paned glass onto the table-top, making the white paper plate glow.

While he returned to his seat, Laura dug the contract out of her bag. When she held it out, he snatched the pages from her hand. He reached across and rubbed his right shoulder, frowning as he read the document.

Finally he tossed the papers onto the table. “I asked for a male therapist you know,” he said flatly, and crossed his well-muscled arms over his chest.

“I know,” Laura answered quietly, “but as I told you, I’m the only one who would come. Didn’t Mrs. Summers explain that to you?”

Adam Scott scowled. “You are absolutely not what I had in mind.”

“I’m sorry about that, but let me assure you I am very good at what I do.” She smiled. “And you did ask me to stay. Tell you what, I’ll give you a complimentary treatment—” she picked up the contract, “—and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave.”

He glared at her and snatched the papers from her hand again, then slapped them on the table in front of him and held out his hand for a pen. “Where do I sign?”

She pointed out the three places where he would consent to her treatment plan, assure her of full payment and allow her to release his medical records to any insurance carrier. “Sign here, here and here.”

As the pen scratched across the paper while he signed his name, Laura noticed he still wore his wedding band.

He stopped after signing only two of the lines. “I don’t use insurance,” he stated in a tone that invited no discussion. Laura pointed at the fee figures. “Fine. Initial these, please.”

He gave her a grudging nod and did so.

One more piece of business. “Where will I be staying?” she asked as she handed him the carbon copy and put the signed original back in her satchel. She could always go back into the tiny town of Libby and stay at the modest motel there, but that would mean arduous daily trips up that Sixteen Mile Creek Road, and it would cost them valuable therapy time.

She’d noticed a smaller stone house a little farther up the mountain. It actually looked pleasant, inviting. Maybe she could stay there. One thing was certain: he was just about the most attractive man she’d ever seen, and she wasn’t about to stay under the same roof with him.

At last he smiled. A relaxed slightly crooked smile that bared strong white teeth.

“I was planning to put an extra bed up here.” He didn’t wait for her response to that. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and said, “Now you can see why I asked for a male therapist.”

“What about that small house farther up on the mountain? Could I possibly stay there?”

His face darkened.

Instead of answering her, he stood and crossed the room to the door. He braced his good arm on the frame and stared out at the lovely garden.

After what seemed an eternity, he said, “No. The stone house is closed.” He hung his head as if thinking, then spoke quietly. “I guess you could take the bedroom upstairs and I could…I could open up the stone house.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Scott, but my staying upstairs doesn’t address the problem. I’m not comfortable staying alone on this mountain with you in this isolated cabin—”

His long weary sigh interrupted her. For another moment he kept his head lowered. Then Laura saw his shoulders move, thought she actually heard a chuckle.

“Ms. Duncan, you certainly drive a hard bargain. All right. I know a reliable older couple down the creek. They’re—” his voice became gentle, “—they’re very nice people, very stable. If I ask them, they’ll come and stay in the house with you—they can sleep downstairs.” He said all this with his back toward her. “Over there.” He gestured at an empty alcove at the other side of the room. “The old guy has bad knees, so the stairs would be too much for him.”

When Laura remained patiently silent, he turned and looked at her. His dark eyes had a thoughtful squint, as if he was making a difficult decision. He swallowed. “And I’ll sleep in the stone house. Would that be satisfactory?”

“I suppose,” Laura said quietly.

He nodded and regarded her with cool detachment. “Good. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my first treatment right away. My shoulder is killing me.”

CHAPTER THREE

WHILE LAURA DUNCAN was applying her strong skilled hands to his bare back, Adam had to make an effort not to feel what he was feeling, not to think what he was thinking.

It scared him, the effect this woman had had on him when he’d first seen her. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it hadn’t just been that she was attractive. She’d looked…special.

No woman had looked that way to him since Elizabeth.

Of course, the few women he’d seen since he’d decided to go into hiding up on Sixteen Mile Creek couldn’t be considered much of a sampling. The husky postwoman delivering a package, those matronly Mountain Home nurses, the elderly Katherine. Nice ladies. None of them a threat to his precious memories.

Laura’s hands kept bringing his attention back to her. He could hear her gentle breathing becoming more labored as she worked diligently. She’d made him sit in one of the straight-backed chairs, facing backward, and was rhythmically digging her thumb into a muscle that had felt like a burning knot only seconds ago.

“You have a trigger point here, where a tight muscle is crossing a nerve and compressing it. I’ll be sure to use moist heat packs on it before the next treatment.”

Yes, even from a distance this woman had looked singular, unique. Despite her faded jeans and that neon-orange sweatshirt with that dumb slogan—PHYSICAL THERAPISTS HAVE PATIENTS—she exuded a kind of elegance.

He had watched her unload her belongings from the hatchback of that faded red Toyota like a magician pulling stuff out of a hat. First had come her personal bags, surprisingly compact, then she’d heaved out a big rectangle that looked like a folding table. After that she’d struggled with a contraption that looked like the front half of a small bike, mounted on a stand.

Then a CD player, a pillow, a gym bag that seemed too heavy for a woman of her petite stature, and a large gift basket—what was that for?

Finally, she’d taken out the life-size doll she’d called a safety dummy. The thing was done up to resemble a sort of Raggedy Andy cowboy with a painted-on face, plaid shirt, battered black hat, even an old pair of boots at the end of stuffed denim legs.

“The passenger door leaks when it rains, so better to keep him inside,” she’d explained as she lugged the dummy up the porch steps. “Meet Ned.” She stopped in the doorway and flopped the white muslin “hand” at him.

Adam had given the thing a dubious frown, but he’d admired the way she’d managed to cheerfully haul it and everything else up the cabin steps and inside without emitting so much as a groan.

“I’ll set up the massage table tomorrow. We can manage without it today,” she’d explained.

Now she was flattening her warm palm against the injured area, applying a gentle rotating pressure that seemed to pull the pain out. After a moment his eyes involuntarily closed with pure relief.

“Mr. Scott?”

His eyes flew open and looked straight into hers, only inches from his own. They were clear blue eyes, tilted up at the corners. No makeup.

“I’m afraid that was the pleasant part of the treatment.” She spoke softly, apologetically. Her voice was melodic and low, with a hint of a Southern drawl.

Her lips—moist-looking pink lips—parted, as if she was unsure about something. “Umm…for the next step, which may cause some discomfort, I’ll need you to be stretched out on your abdomen.”

She stood straight, swiveling at the waist as she scanned the room. Her breasts—perfect, very rounded—stretched the fabric of the sweatshirt.

“Where’s your bed?” she said.

Her gentle hands resumed massaging his shoulder muscles rhythmically while she waited for his answer.

Adam was so completely relaxed from what her hands were doing to him that he didn’t answer right away.

She leaned forward. “Mr. Scott? The bed?” she repeated.

He took a deep breath and reluctantly shoved himself to his feet. “Upstairs.”

He fumbled with his shirt, couldn’t find the armholes, gave up. “The, uh, stairs—” he pointed “—are in the kitchen.”

She followed as he led her through the door to the left of the fireplace, down a short dim hallway and into a bright kitchen at the back of the cabin.

NOW THIS ROOM is more like it, Laura thought.

Above the deep white enamel sink a solid bank of pleasingly spaced casement windows looked out on the verdant mountainside as it rose at an acute angle behind the cabin.

The varnished knotty-pine cabinets formed a cozy U around a waist-high chopping block. Thank God I’ll have plenty of ice, she thought when she noticed a large refrigerator, albeit an ancient rounded model, humming in the corner. An old wood-burning cast-iron cook stove completed the charming picture.

There were bird feeders outside the windows and fresh herbs growing on the sills in hand-thrown clay pots. A squat old teakettle stood on the stove, and a colorful quilt draped an antique rocker.

Adam jerked a leather strap on a plank door that groaned opened onto a narrow wooden staircase rising between two whitewashed walls. The stairs creaked as he clumped up them, Laura following.

At the top was an attic room that seemed even gloomier than the one below it. Laura’s first question when her eyes took in the enclosure with its bare-studded walls was going to be: Where is the bathroom?

She hadn’t noticed one downstairs. But when she glanced out the large floor-to-ceiling window set into the gable end by the stair landing, she saw her answer.

Below, at the end of a narrow footpath worn through the thick mountain grasses, looking like something from a picture postcard, sat a weathered gray structure. Complete with tin roof and quarter-moon hole in the door. An outhouse. Lovely.

She turned to her new patient and smiled bravely. “Please lie facedown on the bed with your shoulder near the edge. No pillow.”

He went to the heavy four-poster bed tucked up under the roof between two dormer windows, pulled off his boots, struggling with the left one, then did as she asked. Laura stood over him, warming some lotion between her palms and wondering how in the world she could continue. Though she’d admitted to herself right away that he was handsome, actually touching him had been a shock.

His skin was tanned, smooth and warm. As soon as she laid her hands on his firm back, she felt an electric thrill run through her fingertips, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Certainly a sensation unlike any she’d felt while touching any other patient.

She’d made it through the warm-up phase of the therapy on sheer professional concentration, but now she wondered if she could complete the painful stretches and manipulations necessary to remove scar tissue without communicating her nervousness to him.

He was lying very still, his back muscles relaxed and his breathing regular. Careful not to drip the lotion on his bare back, she leaned forward and realized the man had fallen asleep.

WHEN HE WOKE UP, he realized he was upstairs in his bed, but couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten there or what time it was. The sunlight slanting through the western dormers was low and golden, so it must be evening.

He was startled when he saw a cowboy slumping between the wall and the bed, denim legs sprawled straight out as if the man was drunk. Then he remembered.

The safety dummy. Her.

He’d been so relaxed when she’d finished the first part of the treatment that he’d trudged up the stairs in a fog, flopped on the bed the way she told him to and then?

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, flexed his injured arm and shoulder. It felt pretty good. And he felt fantastic. He hadn’t slept like this since…He heard voices downstairs. Doc and Katherine. The delicious spicy aroma of Katherine’s lentil soup drifted up. Was it dinnertime already?

Laughter.

Laura Duncan’s laughter.

Man. Having her here was going to be tough. Why did they have to send him a beautiful female physical therapist? It was hard enough looking at her, but when she touched him…

He couldn’t afford to let himself have these feelings. He needed a fully functioning arm and shoulder if he was going to do what he had to do, and he didn’t need to be distracted by the charms of his therapist. This arrangement would never work. Somehow he’d find another way to get his therapy done.

He pulled on his boots, which set off a twinge of pain in his shoulder, found his shirt, sneered at Ned while he buttoned it, then headed down the stairs.

The laughter fell off when he ducked his head around the narrow door at the foot of the stairs.

“Adam,” Katherine said kindly, and stepped away from the stove toward him. “Did you sleep well?”

“We were just getting acquainted with Laura.” Doc smiled up at him from the rocker.

Laura Duncan was standing at the chopping block, where the big gift basket sat with the cellophane all askew as if they’d been digging around in it. Evidently she’d been slicing chunks of cantaloupe into a crockery bowl, but now she stopped. She, too, was smiling. Everybody looked happy. He was glad to see Doc and Katherine enjoying themselves, but he had no intention of joining the party. For him there was no such feeling as happy. Only one thing drove his days and nights now. One thing. And Doc and Katherine knew that.

“Ms. Duncan, I need to speak to you. Alone.” He marched past her into the main room and waited with his boot propped on the big stone hearth.

IN THE KITCHEN, Laura looked from Doc to Katherine, confusion and embarrassment rendering her speechless. Things had been going so well!

She’d immediately liked Doc and Katherine Jones, lean white-haired retirees who wore Birkenstocks and sincere smiles. As soon as they’d walked in the back door of the cabin, their arms loaded with groceries, Laura had sensed their good humor, their kindness, their wisdom.

As the older couple bustled about putting away the food and chattering, it was obvious they felt at home and knew where everything was stored in the small kitchen. In no time they were all sipping steaming mugs of the herbal tea Laura had taken from her basket.

“We come up the mountain all the time,” Katherine explained. “We try to help Adam. I cook. Doc tends garden and does odd jobs.” She sighed. “Poor Adam—such a long recovery.”

After they’d helped Laura situate her gear, they’d given her a tour of the place—forty acres in the middle of a national forest. The last of such private land, Doc explained. The log cabin was built late in the nineteenth century, Katherine told her. The stone house, she said, was added later.

The whole time Adam Scott had slept soundly, and as the sun lowered, there had been an almost palpable peace about the breathtakingly beautiful old homestead.

Then, Laura thought, the minute the man stomped down the stairs, there was tension again.

Doc cleared his throat and scratched the top of his balding pate. “You’d better go see what he wants, Laura.”

“Yes,” Katherine added. “The soup will keep.” She turned to the stove and stirred it.

“Excuse me, then.” Laura laid aside the knife, wiped her hands on the apron Katherine had supplied and went into the main room.

She wished he’d lit a lamp. The pale evening light that filtered in through the lone unshuttered window didn’t allow her to see him, much less read his expression.

His voice rumbled, disembodied, from beside the fireplace. “We need to discuss this arrangement,” he said.

Laura dropped her hands to her sides and squared her shoulders. “Mr. Scott, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’m not the right therapist for you, after all. I’ll arrange some sort of replacement immediately and, of course, I won’t hold you to that contract.”

“What?” Even in the darkness, Laura sensed his sudden dismay.

She wished she had a plausible excuse. She’d tried to think of one all afternoon while he slept. But what could she say? I think I’m attracted to you, so it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to do your therapy? Though it was true, that sounded so unprofessional it made Laura cringe. “I’m leaving, but I’ll stay till I find a replacement.”

Wait a minute, Adam thought as he studied Laura in the dim light, she’s leaving? The strangest mix of emotions assailed him. He was a scientist, a logical man, but he couldn’t explain these feelings. Upstairs he’d been certain she should go, but the second she announced that she was leaving, his heart had started to beat faster and his breath had actually become short. She reached up self-consciously to adjust her tiny earring, making it glint, and he was struck again by how feminine she was, how even her slightest movement affected him.

“Ms. Duncan—” he found his voice “—I know I’ve been…less than cordial. But now that you’ll have the Joneses here with you…” His voice trailed off. He felt genuinely at a loss. When had his goal become keeping her here?

“Please, believe me, Mr. Scott, it’s not anything you’ve done,” Laura was saying. “And I like Doc and Katherine a lot. I just…I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes to complete your therapy. I know my limits.”

“But my arm and my shoulder—when I woke up they already felt better.” He stepped forward, feeling like a panic-stricken little boy. “I’ll double your salary.”

“Mr. Scott! I couldn’t let you do that.” Even in the darkening room, he could see her eyes widen with shock. “That would make my fee almost twenty-five thousand dollars!”

“I want you to stay,” he stated simply. She didn’t reply.

DINNER WAS QUIET, uneasy.

Katherine had lit a kerosene lamp in the middle of the table, which alleviated the gloom, and the food was delicious, especially Katherine’s homemade bread, but Laura sensed Adam’s tension. And the way Doc and Katherine addressed him—so kindly, so carefully, as if he was fragile and needed encouragement—bothered her. It also began to bother her that the Joneses had so easily given up their own beds for this man. What was their relationship? It seemed more than neighborly.

“Adam, aren’t you having any brown Betty? I made it just for you,” Katherine said.

“You don’t have to cook especially for me, Katherine. I told you that.”

After dinner Adam and Doc busied themselves setting up a bed for the Joneses in the small alcove on the other side of the fireplace. Laura didn’t ask where the bed had come from. This place was full of unanswered questions, some less important than others.

After she helped Katherine with the dishes, Laura washed up at the kitchen sink, visited the outhouse with a flashlight, then retreated to the attic.

It was Katherine, she assumed, who’d thoughtfully placed a vase of wildflowers on the chest and made up the bed with fresh sheets—his bed. Laura shook the thought off. She had to remain professional and detached.

She turned on the small bedside lamp and settled herself in, ready to pore over the thick sheaf of Adam Scott’s chart again.

“All right, Ned-o.” She glanced at the dummy propped against the wall. “Let’s see what this guy is all about.”

Adam Scott had had a long recovery indeed. Ruptured spleen. Pins in his broken shoulder. Months of surgeries, antibiotics, treatments. Yet he appeared to be in good physical condition, considering all his trauma.

Strengthening the arm and shoulder muscles and restoring complete range of motion would be the last painful step. Except…She thumbed through the chart, looking for psychotherapy referrals. None.

“Patient refuses” notations next to entries documenting offers of counseling and pastoral care made it clear that everyone who’d tried to help Adam Scott had been rebuffed. There was something disturbing about this case, about this man, something she couldn’t see just by reading his charts.

She flipped back to the biographical data. All the blanks were neatly filled in, and she’d read it all this morning. She sighed. “All the same, I reckon we got us a real pitiful one, Ned.”

She closed the chart, scooted under the thick down comforter and tossed her way into a restless sleep.

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT a sound, something softer than a moth’s wing, awakened her.

She opened her eyes a crack and without raising her head looked around the unfamiliar room. Rain pattered softly on the metal attic roof and the mountain air had grown so chilly that her nose felt cold.

Lightning flashed, and standing there, clearly silhouetted in the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the attic, was a man.

For an instant Laura was paralyzed by fear, as thunder rolled over the roof. Her heart raced.

Another bolt of lightning illuminated the figure. Though she couldn’t see clearly without her glasses, she recognized the build. Adam Scott. Of course. But what on earth…?

Waves of sheet lightning in the distance kept him constantly in view now. His pose was alert, still.

He faced the window, holding a pair of binoculars. They were bigger than normal, Laura thought, with a long extra piece in the middle, perhaps the night-vision kind she’d seen in thrillers.

She was about to let him know she was awake when, as the room darkened, she thought she saw him turn his head in her direction.

Laura lay stiffly in the dark, feeling that he was staring at her. The bed was under the eaves, cloaked in complete darkness, but even so, she wondered if he could feel her staring back.

She feigned sleep, waiting to see what he would do. After a long moment she heard him cross to the stairwell, cautiously, soundlessly. Just as he reached it, faint flashes of lightning in the distance made his silhouette visible. She watched him descend until finally his head disappeared below the landing.

Lightning continued to pulse in the distance, and she heard the sound of one stealthy creak as he opened the door at the bottom of the stairs.

The whole thing gave Laura a roaring case of the creeps.

THE NEXT MORNING she awoke before the sun peeked over the mountain. She padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor to gaze out the window onto the dewy green expanse of meadow between the cabin and the outhouse. What had he been looking at last night?

Doc was hiking stiffly up the misty path. When he spotted Laura standing in the window, he raised his arm and gave her a jaunty salute.

Everything below looked normal. So idyllic and beautiful, in fact, that she could hardly believe the unsettling incident last night had happened.

Beyond the meadow, Sixteen Mile Creek sparkled in the deep valley, the narrow road beside it winding lazily down, finally intersecting with a bigger road. The view from this window clearly showed the route up to Adam Scott’s property—the only route. He must have been checking that. But why?

Shivering slightly, she slipped into her plaid robe and slippers and made her way gingerly down the creaky stairs, concerned that she might awaken Katherine.

But Katherine was already bustling around the kitchen.

The fire crackling in the old stove, the eggs gently boiling in a pan, the teakettle steaming, all made the small room feel toasty warm and inviting. Laura hated to venture out into the chilly morning, but she needed to make a trip to the outhouse. After she returned, she started to wash her hands at the sink.

“Oh, use the basin, dear.” Katherine suggested. “That pipe water is freezing.” Katherine poured hot water from the kettle and cooler water from an old-fashioned pitcher into a matching basin. Laura submerged her hands in the warm water, then washed her face with the glycerin soap Katherine had provided, marveling at how this primitive setting seemed to enhance the simple pleasures.

When she was finished washing, she accepted a warm bran muffin and a fragrant mug of tea from Katherine.

“There’s a small jar of strawberry preserve in my basket,” Laura offered.

“No!” Katherine exclaimed. “You don’t need to use the things from your basket.”

“But I want to.”

“Well, I make gallons of cherry jelly every year.” Katherine reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a pint mason jar and unscrewed the lid. Then she opened a drawer and produced an ornate silver condiment spoon. All the homey touches in the kitchen were likely this older woman’s doing.

“Thank you.” Laura took the jelly, thinking how much nicer her stay would be with this lovely woman around.

“No trouble.” Katherine smiled. “By the way, Doc and I are strict vegetarians. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll do the cooking while we’re here.”

Laura took a bite of the muffin—heavenly. “Mind?” she said, and swallowed. “I’m a vegetarian, too!”

Katherine’ s smile grew wider. “Why don’t you sit down on that stool?” She pointed at a well-worn bar stool that looked hand-hewn. “We can chat while I finish filling these hummingbird feeders.”

While Katherine measured a batch of red nectar into a large bowl and slowly stirred the mixture, the two women talked about ordinary things.

How well Laura had slept: “Pretty well,” she hedged. “It’s so very quiet up here.”

Where she came from originally: “Texas—Dallas. But I could never go back. So hot. So hectic.”

Where Doc and Katherine came from: “Seattle. Doc isn’t a medical doctor, you know. He’s a botanist.”

How the older couple had long dreamed of retiring up on Sixteen Mile Creek: “Because there is no more beautiful place on earth.”

Laura had to agree. “Where’s your house?”

“Oh, quite a distance back down the road. It takes a good thirty minutes to get there, but one can go faster in a canoe when the creek’s high. There’s also the shortcut—nothing more than a rough logging road. I don’t recommend it to the uninitiated.”

When Katherine showed no signs of volunteering any information about Adam Scott, Laura decided to ask.

“How long have you known Mr. Scott?”

“Oh, many years.” Katherine smiled as she used a little funnel to fill the feeder.

This seemed to Laura a cryptic answer. She tried again.

“What, exactly, does he do for a living?”

“Oh, he doesn’t like to talk about that much.” Katherine screwed the lid on the feeder, carefully turned it over and held it up by its chain, examining her handiwork. “All done,” she said cheerfully.

“And Mrs. Scott? Did you know her?”

Katherine dropped the hummingbird feeder onto its side, and as the sticky cherry-colored liquid gurgled out, the woman did nothing to stop it. She touched her gnarled fingers to her heart and paled, staring at Laura while the mess ran over the side of the cabinet top and onto the floorboards.

“Oh, dear,” Laura said as she jumped off her stool and righted the feeder. “Let me help you clean that up.”

Katherine swung her gaze to the red liquid dripping at her feet, but still she didn’t move.

“Did I say something wrong?” Laura asked gently as she snapped off a handful of paper towels and started soaking up the puddle.

“No.” At last Katherine seemed to come to herself. “No, dear. You didn’t.” She turned toward the sink and ran water over a dishrag. She twisted the rag, wrung out the water, then started furiously mopping up the mess on the counter-top. “It’s…well, Adam’s wife is…” Katherine stopped cleaning and looked at Laura with eyes full of something unspoken. She seemed to be gauging how much to reveal. “Adam’s wife is deceased.”

“I know that. I read it in his chart. I was just wondering about her.”

“I see.” Katherine resumed scrubbing the counter, and Laura could see that her hands trembled.

“She died in the car wreck?” Laura asked gently.

Katherine nodded. “Instantly. The car plunged off the side of a mountain back in Washington.” She kept on scrubbing.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Laura whispered. “No one told me exactly how it happened.”

Katherine continued to clean.

Laura sensed the woman was holding something back. She squatted down with the paper towels and started wiping up the mess on the rough wood as best she could.

“I’m sorry.” She looked up at Katherine’s back. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Tension built in the quiet kitchen while the ashes in the old cast-iron stove collapsed with a pop and a hiss and bird song filtered in from outside.

Finally Katherine turned and looked down at Laura. Her wrinkled old eyes communicated an unspeakable sadness when she spoke. “I…I did know Elizabeth. Quite well. And I knew their little girl, too. Anna. She died in the accident, also…with her mother.”

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS CHILD HAD DIED, too?

Laura stared up at Katherine’s seasoned face in disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” she managed. “How old was his daughter?”

Katherine’s hand stilled on the dishrag and she stared out the window. “Three.” She spoke as if in a trance.

“How awful,” Laura said.

Katherine nodded. “Elizabeth and Adam had waited several years to have her. Elizabeth was a research scientist and did not want her demanding career goals to interfere with a child’s happiness. She had waited until…she and Adam had reached a certain level of success and then…then they had Anna.”

“I see,” Laura said quietly. She still didn’t know what to say.

Katherine turned on the spigot in the sink. Water blasted out and she rinsed the cloth under it, shaking her head. “This water drains by gravity from the spring. Never reliable. Sometimes a torrent, sometimes a dribble. And always freezing.”

“Katherine, are you okay?” Laura asked.

Katherine nodded. Laura reached out and clasped the older woman in a hug.

And that was how Adam Scott found them, embracing.

“Ms. Duncan!” he boomed from behind the screen door, then jerked it open.

Laura and Katherine broke apart as he stepped into the room, but not before they gave each other one last parting pat. When their gazes met as they released each other, Laura thought she read warning in Katherine’s.

“Are you ready to go to work?” Adam frowned at Laura’s attire. “I’d like my morning treatment as early as possible.”

“Uh, no. I’m sorry. I’m not ready.” Laura cinched her robe. “I, uh, I need to go up and put my scrubs on, and—” she pulled her mop of hair back “—I’ll be right down.” She turned, jerked on the leather strap on the narrow door and dashed up the stairs.

In her embarrassment and haste she hadn’t closed the door completely and when she got to the landing at the top she froze when she heard Adam say her name.

“What were you and Ms. Duncan talking about?”

“I think you know.” Katherine’s voice sounded tearful.

Laura clutched the railing.

She heard Adam’s sympathetic reply— “Ahh, Katherine,” —and then his heavy bootfalls as he crossed the room. “Are you all right?” he asked tenderly.

She heard Katherine sniffling and saying something in a small pained voice. Then Adam murmuring softly. He finished with something that sounded like, “You mustn’t keep upsetting yourself.”

Laura crossed the room to start dressing and tried to ignore the conversation below her, but the voices continued to drift clearly up the stairs.

“Adam, I think we should be honest with this young woman.” Katherine’s voice was louder, firmer now.

Adam’s tone sounded exasperated. “No. That’s not a good idea.”

Laura coughed loudly, hoping they’d realize she could hear them. Evidently they must have gotten the idea, because she heard Adam’s footsteps again and then a creak as the stairway door closed.

ADAM HAD PUT his finger to his lips as soon as he’d heard Laura cough. Katherine was a little hard of hearing, and it was easy for her to forget how well sound carried in the quiet cabin, but he had no excuse for being so careless. After he closed the door to the stairs, he led Katherine into the front room to continue their conversation.

“Laura and the people at Mountain Home Health Care don’t need to know any details. The fewer people who know, the better. That way nobody can inadvertently lead Gradoff to me before I’m ready.”

“Adam, I told you before—this is a dangerous scheme. You don’t know—”

“I know what I’m doing, and I’m sticking to my plan.”

“But now Laura will be staying up on the mountain with us. How can we possibly keep the truth from her?”

“How much did you tell her?” Adam struggled to keep his voice from sounding alarmed.

“I told her about…both of them. It states on your chart that you’re a widower and I just blurted out the part about Anna.” Katherine’s eyes filled with tears when she said the name.

“Katherine.” Adam looked down at her snowwhite head and his heart contracted. It was bad enough that his brainstorm—his greed—had killed Elizabeth and Anna. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life. His guilt was his punishment to bear. But to see how Doc and Katherine also suffered…

He stepped closer to her. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not, but I won’t speak to her about it again. She’s such a nice person, but still, I know I shouldn’t have said anything.” A note of fear rose in Katherine’s voice. “What if she goes back down to town and talks to someone about what I’ve already told her? How long do you think it would take Gradoff to connect you to a widower who had also lost a three-year-old child?”

Adam didn’t answer. He could send them all away and accelerate his plan, but his arm wasn’t ready. His only choice was to make sure Laura stayed here and didn’t go back to Kalispell until he was ready.

“Don’t worry,” he said firmly, “I’ll make certain she won’t want to talk about it again.” Adam softened his voice. “Katherine, please be patient. You have no idea how grateful I am to you and Doc for all your help. It won’t be long now. Toeless is coming up any day. He has some new information. He’s good at what he does, and Ms. Duncan is evidently good at what she does, too. My shoulder actually felt better after only one treatment. Look—” he wiggled his fingers on his right hand for her “—hardly any pain this morning. When she comes down, would you please tell her I’ll be waiting for her in here?” He put his good arm around Katherine’s thin shoulders and hugged her. “And don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

She patted his fingers, and Adam smiled at her, vowing to end this ordeal as soon as possible.

LAURA CAME DOWN the stairs a few minutes later feeling composed and professional: clean bright blue scrubs with Mountain Home Health Care stenciled on the breast pocket, hair up in a tight braid, immaculate white athletic shoes, equipment bag slung over her shoulder.

She improvised a hot pack, pouring steaming water from the kettle over a folded towel and rolling it up inside a plastic bag. Then she was ready to face her patient.

She found him in the barren front room, going over some papers at the oak table and sipping coffee from a heavy white mug. The shutters had been thrown back from all the windows, thank goodness, making the room a study in soft sunshine and glowing warm wood.

“Mr. Scott?”

He looked up with the mug poised at his lips. He was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, in anticipation of his treatment, she supposed, with only thick gym socks on his feet. He jerked his head toward the massage table, still folded, by the fireplace. “Doc and Katherine suggested we set the table up over there.” He sipped the coffee and resumed reading the papers.

“That’s nice,” Laura said. She crossed the room to the bed, which Katherine had already made up. It was also Katherine, she assumed, who had placed a folded thin cotton blanket across one side.

Laura pushed on the mattress with a palm. “For now, this will be good enough. Nice and firm.”

He grunted and kept reading.

She picked up the cotton blanket—it would be useful—then crossed the room and dropped her bag beside him. “You’ll need to sit backward in your chair like you did yesterday.”

He pushed the chair out from the table, scraping the wood floor, then flipped the chair around and sat facing away from her.

“Here.” She tucked the cotton blanket over the back of the chair for his comfort. “You’ll need to remove your shirt, please.”

He jerked the sweatshirt up and off in one swift move, tossed it on the floor, then draped his arms over the chair back. Laura unrolled the hot pack and positioned it on his shoulder. While she waited for it to warm the muscles, she bent and dug in her bag. She pulled out a CD, positioned the player on the oak table and found the lone electrical plug in the room.

As the beat of the Pointer Sisters’ “Slow Hand” filled the room, Adam gave her an irritated glance over his shoulder. “Is that really necessary?”

“Well, no,” Laura admitted. “But it helps. You and I are both gonna get mighty bored with these therapy sessions. The music will keep us moving.”

He shrugged and turned his back to her again.

As soon as Laura laid her hands on him, she decided she’d been wrong. There was never going to be anything boring about touching this man. She blocked out that thought and concentrated on her work.

She massaged the places where she knew the pain was lodged and wished she’d chosen a different song to start with. The beat was all right, but the words…

Having these thoughts made her a little uptight, but fortunately her hands worked automatically, and her body took up the rhythm subtly, too. Halfway through the song, she smiled as she felt Adam relax.

By the time the song was over, the muscles in Adam’s back felt as fluid as a bank of shifting sand. His head rested on his forearms and his eyes were closed.

Was he asleep again? Laura wondered. Did this guy even get enough sleep? Maybe not, if he was always peering out the attic window in the middle of the night. She had to talk to him about that. If he wanted to play lookout with night-vision binoculars, he had to do it somewhere else.

“Mr. Scott?” she said softly, and he cracked his eyes in a squint at her. “Time for the second half of the treatment—the resistance training and stretching maneuvers.”

Without being told he went to the massage table and lay down.

Laura got out the lotion, gave him some cross-fiber friction massage before starting the stretches. She carefully and slowly brought his arm up, then down, stretching the joint until she felt restriction. She knew how far she could push a patient, but he seemed to be getting tense too quickly. She could feel his muscles guarding, resisting her.

“You know about my wife and child,” he said suddenly in the midst of a particularly difficult stretch.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I was so sorry to hear that. Now you must relax, Mr. Scott.”

But instead of relaxing, he twisted away from her hands and bounded up off the table, facing her, his bare chest heaving with rapid breaths. Every fiber of his body seemed tense now.

“Let’s get something straight, Ms. Duncan,” he said in a low voice. “My wife and child are none of your business. And if you speak about either one of them again to anyone, ever, I will have your license suspended for violating patient confidentiality. Is that understood?”

Laura, stunned, could barely nod before Adam turned and stomped off toward the back of the house. Again she worried: What kind of patient had she taken on?

CHAPTER FIVE

LAURA DIDN’T SEE Adam again until it was time for the afternoon treatment. She was determined to keep her mouth shut, not upset the patient and make sure this session went better than this morning’s.

She was giving him a warm-up massage and hoping the music would ease the tension with this difficult patient when the front door creaked open.

The big golden dog she’d seen when she arrived yesterday sauntered into the cabin, barely giving the humans a glance. He made a sniffing patrol of the perimeter of the room before trotting happily to Adam’s knee, looking at the man with a curious tilt to his black eyebrows.

Adam opened his eyes and gave the dog a lazy affectionate smile. “Morton! Where the heck have you been?”

Laura could have sworn the dog smiled back.

“Are you hungry, boy?” Adam mumbled, and let one hand drop to scratch the dog’s ears.

“Who’s this big guy?” Laura said in a playful voice.

Morton broke from Adam’s fingers, wagging his tail as he gave Laura a curious sniff, then a frisky nudge.

“Morton! Lie down!” Adam commanded. The dog ignored him, continuing to wag his tail and gaze up at Laura. Adam sighed. “Morton’s the real boss around this place. You’d be wise to get on his good side.”

Was Mr. Scott making a little joke? Laura couldn’t believe it. Maybe he was relaxing.

Morton gave her thigh another nudge as if to say, “Pet me!”

Laura laughed lightly and Adam eyed the dog. “He knows a good thing when he sees it,” he said.

Laura laughed again, but kept her hands on her patient.

Morton finally gave up and collapsed on the floor, bringing his big head to rest on Adam’s foot.

THE NEXT DAY, Laura went exploring during her free time. She climbed far up the mountainside behind the cabin, to the level where the vegetation thinned and became alpine. When the landscape finally grew barren and rocky with the altitude, she turned and followed the creek back down into the trees.

Sixteen Mile Creek ran down from the mountaintop, a trickle, a gurgle, then a riot of white water, in places as wide and deep as a river. Laura followed its course down, down, for maybe a mile or so—she couldn’t really judge the distance—and came upon a densely forested area of old growth above the stone house.

She stopped, looking up at the canopy of trees. Some of them had to be eighty feet tall, with trunks so big she couldn’t get her arms around them. Lodgepole pine, reaching in perfectly straight columns to the sky. Larch, fluttering their feathery leaves in the breeze. Spruce, squatting like wide sentinels.

Overcome by the beauty, Laura sat down on the ground and then, in a fit of ecstasy, threw herself onto her back on the bed of pine needles, squinting at the rays of sun that peeked through the trees.

She lay still for a while, smiling like a child enjoying a delightful secret. Then, suddenly, she had the distinct sensation of being watched.

She sat up and peered through the tree trunks toward the creek. She stood and walked a few feet onto a cornice of stone that jutted out over the water. She heard the roar of a small waterfall and peered downstream, where it tumbled over a narrow natural bridge. Her gaze lifted to a mass of huge boulders, some as big as houses, towering above on the opposite bank.

And there was Adam Scott standing, legs akimbo, on the very top of a boulder, staring down at her.

Laura wondered how long he’d been watching. The idea made her nervous. For a tense moment they stared at each other. Then Laura thought, This is dumb. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

“Isn’t it gorgeous out here!” she shouted happily.

He nodded slowly, but there was no warmth in his squinty expression, no responding happiness.

THAT EVENING AT SUPPER, Laura observed Adam Scott closely. When he was around the Joneses, he seemed like a different man.

At the moment he was biting off the end of a sautéed asparagus spear, rolling his eyes heavenward.

“Where’d you get this dinner, Katherine? At the local drive-through?” He winked at her and she flicked a hand at him.

Laura noted again how Adam’s relationship with the Joneses seemed more than neighborly. Their ease around this table, for instance, as if they’d eaten here hundreds of times.

Tonight the room seemed less bleak. A modest fire crackled in the fireplace, illuminating the colorful counterpane quilt on the bed in the alcove. Katherine had swept and placed a checkered cloth and fat candles on the table. Doc and Adam had hauled in two stools made from sawed-off tree trunks.

“The cook always gets the credit!” Doc boomed, and plucked an asparagus spear off the platter. “I grew the blessed things.”

So, Laura thought, that explains the magnificent garden.

Adam raised a wine goblet—Katherine had gone all-out, even sending Doc on the long trip down to their house to fetch crystal—and said, “Here’s to you both, the wonderful cook, and the unappreciated old farmer.”

Laura frowned at him. Was this man, who petted the dog, teased the cook and toasted his neighbors, the same man who’d been so gruff with her? Since the mood was relaxed, maybe this was a good time to bring up the subject of the attic bedroom. She twirled a strand of her hair, considering this while Katherine ladled a delicious-smelling soup into bowls.

There was also the sensitive subject of a bath or shower. Before supper she’d tried to fix herself up, washed her face and brushed her hair until it made a halo around her face, but it needed a good washing.

She wondered where the shower was, wondered if there even was one. She was almost afraid to ask. Would he direct her to that icy creek, for heaven’s sake?

“Laura?” Katherine touched her arm, trying to hand her a basket of fresh-baked whole-wheat rolls.

“Thank you.” Laura folded back the napkin and lifted a roll, then passed the basket to Adam on her right, avoiding his eyes as he took it.

“I was wondering—” she directed her question to Doc and Katherine “—if you and Doc might be more comfortable in the upstairs room. That alcove seems so small.” She glanced toward the antique bed crammed in there.

“That’s nice of you, dear,” Katherine answered, “but Doc’s arthritic knees bother him. Climbing those steep stairs would aggravate his condition.”

Ah, yes. Adam had told her that. Now, how could she possibly mention that she didn’t appreciate Adam coming into the attic while she slept there? Maybe it wouldn’t happen again.

“Anybody seen Morton today?” Doc injected cheerfully.

“He showed up to eat right on schedule,” Katherine said.

“Who does Morton belong to?” Laura asked pleasantly.

“He doesn’t belong to anybody,” Doc said, after a few moments of silence. “He’s very independent.” His answer seemed like an evasion.

“He sprawls around wherever it suits him.” Katherine raised an eyebrow at the dog, who was lying by the fireplace, soaking up warmth.

“Digs in the garden,” Doc complained.

Adam finally spoke. “Actually, he’s mine.”

“Well, he’s a great dog,” Laura said, not understanding the undercurrent of emotions she sensed.

“He sure is.”

She took in Adam’s slightly narrowed eyes. He looked as if he was remembering something sweet—and very sad.

When dinner was over and Adam got up to leave for the stone house, Laura noticed that Morton trotted along after him. In the kitchen Katherine poured water from the big white enamel kettle into a dishpan set on the chopping block.

“This is the first time I’ve lived in a place without hot running water,” Laura said.

“Hot water? Up here there are lots of houses that don’t have it. How long have you been in Montana?”

“Four years. I trained as a physical therapist in Missoula, and of course I’ve done a lot of camping since I moved up here. What I mean is, I’ve never actually lived like this.”

Katherine’s kind eyes smiled over her reading glasses. “It is rustic, but at least Adam has a phone and electricity now. He didn’t at one time. We’ve put a few more amenities into our house because we live there full-time. I think Adam wants to keep this place primitive.”

“Where does he live when he’s not up here?” Where does he work? Why has he chosen to recuperate way off in the depths of a national forest? Laura had so many questions about Adam Scott that she hardly knew where to begin.

Katherine took her time answering. She finished scraping leftovers into a large cast-iron pot—for Morton, Laura assumed.

“It’s hard to say where Adam lives now. He sold his beautiful home in Seattle immediately after he lost his family. He has another one in California, but it’s cold, a kind of villa. I don’t care for it.”

“Is that where he’s from? Where he works? Seattle?”

“Oh, not really. Adam can work where he pleases. He’s not tied to any one place. He has a house down in Aspen, too.”

Laura was amazed. “What exactly does he do?” she pressed.

Katherine snatched up a big battered pot and put it under the tap. After two nights of rain the water pressure was high and there was quite a din as the pot filled.

“I sure made a mess cooking that big dinner. We’ll need lots of hot water for scalding.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. “When you’ve finished washing, I’ll dry. I know where everything goes.” She turned off the noisy tap.

Laura wanted to quiz her some more about Adam’s work, but Katherine had already hefted the large pot full of water and was heading for the main room.

“This’ll heat up faster in the big fireplace,” she explained over her shoulder as she disappeared.

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