# Trading Secrets

Christine Flynn

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE–OR FOR KEEPS?Jenny Baker's return to bucolic Maple Mountain was propelled by her desire to mend her broken heart…and to repair a reputation shattered by big-city betrayal. Vowing to stay far away from men, she was surprised to develop an instant connection with her new boss, Dr. Greg Reid.After Jenny's discovery that her troubles had only begun in Maple Mountain, Greg was determined to help in any way he could–even if the only solution was to become the husband of his newest employee. Was this union of convenience just a temporary arrangement, or was it rooted in something more–true love?

## “Are you all right?”

Greg could only imagine what must be going through Jenny’s mind—if she was even able to think at all. She looked shell-shocked.

Jenny gave her head a slow, negative shake.

“I didn’t think you were.”

He murmured the words. He’d never seen anyone look as lost and alone as she did at that moment. Or, if he had, he’d never allowed the depth of that awful helplessness to register. It wasn’t as if he allowed it now. It simply happened as he knelt there, touching her.

Something twisted inside him. Something that made him feel what she felt, and left him feeling as vulnerable as she looked in the moments before he scrambled for the protective detachment that came so automatically with everyone else….

Dear Reader,

Celebrate those April showers this month by curling up inside with a good book—and we at Silhouette Special Edition are happy to start you off with What’s Cooking? by Sherryl Woods, the next in her series THE ROSE COTTAGE SISTERS. When a playboy photographer is determined to seduce a beautiful food critic fed up with men who won’t commit…things really start to heat up! In Judy Duarte’s Their Unexpected Family, next in our MONTANA MAVERICKS: GOLD RUSH GROOMS continuity, a very pregnant—not to mention, single—small-town waitress and a globe-trotting reporter find themselves drawn to each other despite their obvious differences. Stella Bagwell concludes THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION with In a Texas Minute. A woman who has finally found the baby of her dreams to adopt lacks the one element that can make it happen—a husband—or does she? She’s suddenly looking at her handsome “best friend” in a new light. Christine Flynn begins her new GOING HOME miniseries—which centers around a small Vermont town—with Trading Secrets, in which a down-but-not-out native repairs to her hometown to get over her heartbreak…and falls smack into the arms of the town’s handsome new doctor. Least Likely Wedding? by Patricia McLinn, the first in her SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW… series, features a lovely filmmaker whose “groom” on celluloid is all too eager to assume the role in real life. And in The Million Dollar Cowboy by Judith Lyons, a woman who’s fallen hard for a cowboy has to convince him to take a chance on love.

So don’t let those April showers get you down! May is just around the corner—and with it, six fabulous new reads, all from Silhouette Special Edition.

Happy reading!

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

## Trading Secrets. Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

## CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

## Contents

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 One

O nce a person hit bottom, the only way to go was up.

Not sure if she felt encouraged or depressed by that thought, Jenny Baker absently rubbed beside the sore abrasion on her forehead and unpacked another dish from the cardboard box. The house she would now call home was practically falling down around her. Paint peeled from the cabinets. A crack in the window over the chipped porcelain sink distorted the rain-grayed view of a weed-choked garden. But at least she had a roof over her head.

A pot on the floor caught drips from the ceiling.

Even the weather had turned on her.

Mid-August in northern Vermont was usually warm and sunny, a lovely respite between the harsh winters and the brilliance of the autumn to come. This far north the leaves were always the first to change, and that change would soon begin. In a few weeks, lush green would turn to shades of crimson and burnished gold. The leaf-peepers would arrive in droves. The loons and crows would fly south. But, for now, late summer reigned.

Jenny had always loved Vermont this time of year. The velvet green of the meadows, the farms and the rolling hills, the way the birch and maple leaves shimmered in the sunlight. It had all been exactly as she’d remembered, too, as she’d left the interstate for the slower, winding drive deeper into the country, heading toward Maple Mountain and home.

Unfortunately, the little black cloud that had hovered over her life for the past month had apparently followed her from Boston. Within an hour of prying off boards from a few downstairs windows and unloading her car—the latter of which had taken less than fifteen minutes now that her possessions had been reduced to little more than her luggage and four cardboard boxes—clouds had rolled in, dusk had descended and a summer thunderstorm had put a major damper on her new beginning.

Despite the rain, the optimist in her struggled to surface. Bemoaning her fate wouldn’t change it, so she focused on the good news—which was that the two oil lamps she’d found in the pantry provided plenty of light to see.

The not-so-encouraging part was that the storm had nothing to do with the lack of electricity. She wouldn’t have power even after the clouds passed. The house had sat vacant for years.

One of the lamps glowed from a beige Formica countertop. The other cast its circle of light from the pot-bellied stove that provided heat during the long, snow-bound winters. Not wanting to think about winter any more than she did the rain, Jenny set her bright-red cereal bowls on a fresh sheet of shelf liner and ignored the rhythmic plink of water into the pot. She had bigger problems than no electricity, no phone and a roof that leaked.

Until a little after ten o’clock that morning, she had lived in a charming brownstone in a trendy little neighborhood in Boston. She’d been within walking distance of a fabulous Italian deli, chic restaurants and great bars she and her girlfriends sometimes frequented during happy hour so they could fill up on free appetizers for dinner. She’d become acquainted with the woman at the corner news kiosk where she’d bought the newspaper for an elderly neighbor who sometimes didn’t feel like navigating her stairs. She’d come to know the guy who worked the flower cart during the summer and who slipped a few extra tulips into the bouquets she occasionally bought, just because he liked her smile.

She’d had good neighbors. She’d had a good life.

Until a month ago, she’d even had a good job.

Armed with her associate’s degree and the same dogged determination that had gotten her out of Maple Mountain, she’d worked her way up from the general secretarial pool of a major brokerage house to administrative assistant to a senior vice president. The man had depended on her for everything from keeping him supplied with antacids to handling the confidential correspondence, paperwork and computer accounts of clients with more money than some small third-world countries. Her job had been exciting, interesting and filled with all the opportunities Maple Mountain had lacked.

She had also been dating an up-and-coming broker with a brilliant future who had started hinting heavily at marriage and babies.

She reached into the box, her stomach knotting as she unwrapped a bowl.

She had honestly believed that Brent Collier cared about her. She had wanted to marry him, to have his children, to do his laundry—or, at least, send it out—and to live the rest of her life growing old with him.

But Brent had turned out to be the world’s biggest louse. And she, the biggest fool. He’d used her, used her feelings for him and ruined every ounce of credibility she’d had. Because she’d believed in him, because she’d trusted him, she’d been arrested, fired from the brokerage, questioned, her home searched, her possessions confiscated and her reputation ruined. Now her only prospect for employment was at the diner where, years ago, she’d worked her way through community college.

Taking a deep breath, she set the bowl in place, reached for another. It was still tourist season in the section of Vermont known as the Northern Kingdom, and the little town and surrounding villages would only get busier when the leaves changed. Because of that, there was at least a chance that the local diner could use another waitress. She was in debt up to the scrape on her forehead to the attorney who’d kept her out of jail. She still had a year’s worth of car payments to make. She had a roof to repair.

She was trying to imagine how she could possibly afford the latter when a sharp bang on the door sent her heart to her throat and the bowl in her hand to floor.

Chips of red ceramic flew in an arc across scarred beige linoleum.

“I know someone’s in there. I can see light. Open up, will you?” The deep, distinctly male voice faltered. “I need some help.”

Jenny didn’t budge. She’d already had one unpleasant encounter with a strange male today and she wasn’t at all interested in pushing her lousy luck with another. Her nearest neighbor was half a mile away.

The door rattled with another heavy bang. “Come on. Please? I’m hurt.”

Short of telling her the house was on fire and seeing sparks herself, she couldn’t have imagined anything he could have said that would change her mind about moving. Saying he was hurt did it, though. Even then, it wasn’t the claim that had her hand sliding slowly from her throat. It was the plea in his voice and the strain behind it.

Her heart pounding, she slipped through the dim and empty living room and peeked through the oval of etched glass on the front door.

The window needed cleaning. Between its film of dust and frosted etching, she could only see a blur of the dark-haired man on the other side. What she could see looked tall, broad-shouldered and built. From the way he held his left arm, she also suspected that he hadn’t knocked on the door. He’d kicked it. He looked as if he was about to do it again, when he saw her and took a step back.

Apparently sensing the door wouldn’t open until he was farther from it, he took another step and backed up as far as the sagging porch railing.

She’d used the lug-nut wrench for her tire jack to pry the boards from the kitchen windows. It still lay where she’d left it three feet away.

With her fingers wrapped around the long piece of metal, she cautiously eased open the door.

Thunder rumbled, rattling the panes of the old house as she peeked around the door frame. It was barely seven o’clock, but the rain robbed the evening of much of its light. Still, she could see easily enough as her glance skimmed his broad brow and lean, even features.

Her first impression was that he would be quite attractive—if not for his grimace. Her second was that he was drenched. The rain had plastered his dark hair to his head. Wet chambray molded his broad shoulders. Wet khaki clung to powerful thighs.

Her glance jerked to the arm he held close to his body.

Because of the distance he’d put between them, but mostly because he looked hurt, she eased the door farther open. The groan of arthritic hinges joined the savage beat of the rain.

He eyed what she held. “My car skidded off the road. About a quarter of a mile that way.” Pulling his glance from her weapon, he started to nod behind him. Wincing instead, he tightened his grip on his arm. “I’ve dislocated my shoulder. Any chance you can help me with it?”

Jenny watched the stranger’s forehead pinch. There had been a time when she would have aided him without question. But four years of living in the city and the events of the past month, had done a number on the naiveté she’d once possessed. For all she knew now, the guy was totally faking and once inside would do her all manner of bodily harm.

“Is there anyone else in the car?”

He shook his head. “I’m alone.”

“Where did you say you wrecked it?”

“By Widow Maker curve. That’s why they call it that. Look—”

“Which side?”

Swallowing hard, he sagged against the post. “West.”

His lips went pale. Having only recently become a cynic, Jenny felt her caution slip along with the wrench. Metal clattered against the hardwood floor. She doubted that even the most talented con could change color on command.

Praying he wouldn’t pass out, she stepped onto the porch, reaching toward him. “Hang on. Just lean there a minute. Okay?” He was big. Far bigger than she could handle alone. “Just let me get my purse and my keys.”

“You don’t need your keys. I just need you to help me.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she explained, wondering if he’d hit his head on something and his logic was impaired. She couldn’t drive without keys. “I’m going to take you to the doctor.”

“I am the doctor.”

Jenny had already spun on her heel. She spun right back, eyes narrowed. “I happen to know the doctor here,” she informed him, her doubts surfacing all over again. “Doc Wilson is barely taller than I am and happens to be as old as dirt.”

“I know he’s old. That’s why he retired. I took over his practice two years ago.”

“Then I’ll take you to his assistant.”

“Bess is at a potluck in West Pond.”

Jenny’s doubt slipped again. He knew Bess.

“Look,” he said, before she could come up with anything else, “I know you don’t know me. I don’t know who you are, either. Or what you’re doing here. But I promise I’m not going to cause you any trouble. My name is Greg Reid. I live in the house at the end of Main, a couple of blocks from the clinic. Check my driver’s license if you want. It’s in my wallet in my back pocket,” he told her, more color draining. “I’d get it myself but I can’t let go of my arm.”

She thought she detected desperation in the deep tones of his voice. Mostly what she heard was pain. The fact that he seemed to be doing his best to fight both replaced her skepticism with a sharp tug of guilt.

She was having one of the more rotten days of her life. But he didn’t seem to be having such a good one, either. All the man wanted was help.

It seemed wiser to abandon caution than to stick her hand in his back pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said, apologizing for his pain and her paranoia. “But there has to be somewhere else we can take you.” There was a hospital, but it was almost an hour and a half away. Skepticism turned to worry. Now that she was really looking at it, the angle of his shoulder looked strangely squared-off. “I have no idea what to do for you.”

“I’ll tell you what to do. It’s not that complicated.” His assurance came as lightning flashed. “Just let me sit down. Okay?”

Greg desperately needed to sit. Mostly because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand. Pain, searing and sharp radiated over his collarbone and chest, across his back, down his arm. He could feel sweat breaking out on his upper lip and the thought of letting go of his arm nearly made him nauseous. But at least the exasperatingly skeptical young woman uneasily stepping back to allow him inside looked capable of helping him out. He hadn’t been sure who he would find inside the old abandoned Baker place when he’d noticed the car and the faint glow of light from the window. As badly as he hurt and as hard as it was raining, he hadn’t cared so long as whoever it was could help.

His reluctant rescuer closed the door behind her as she followed him into the nearly dark and empty room. Light spilled from a doorway to his left.

“In here,” she said, moving past him. “There’s a stool by the sink.”

He followed her into the empty kitchen. As he did, a shard of bright red ceramic flew across the floor. Her foot had caught it in her haste to move one of the two oil lamps closer to the sink. There didn’t appear to be any furniture in the house. The only place to sit was the stool she had mentioned.

In agony, he watched her lift a cardboard box off it, then shove back the bangs of her boyishly short, sable-colored hair. She was young and pretty, and had he not been so preoccupied with the ripping sensations in his muscles, he might have paid more than passing notice to the lovely blue of her eyes. But she could have looked like a beagle and been built like a trucker for all he cared just then. All that mattered to him when he sank onto the wooden stool was the intelligence in those eyes. That and the fact that he was finally sitting down.

The base of the metal lamp clunked against the counter when Jenny moved it closer.

He looked even worse to her in the light. The moisture slicking his face was more than the rain that dripped from the ends of his hair and ran in rivulets down his neck. It was sweat. Fine beads of it lined his upper lip.

With his eyes closed, he shivered.

Growing more worried by the second, she touched her hand to his uninjured arm. Beneath the wet fabric, his hard muscles felt like stone.

“Hang on,” she said, letting her hand stay on his arm long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to fall off the stool. “I’ll get you a towel.”

She didn’t know if he was just cold, or if shivering was a sign of shock. But the thought that he could get worse than he already was had her silently swearing to herself. The book she might have looked up shock in was still impounded.

“Can you take off your shirt?” she asked, reminding herself that she could just ask him what the symptoms were. He was the doctor. “It’s drenched.”

“I don’t want to let go of my arm.”

She took that to mean he’d need help.

Two more boxes sat in the corner where she’d swept the floor and piled her blankets and comforter. Ripping open the nearest one, she dug under her sheets and pulled out a butter-yellow bath towel.

Hurrying back, she saw that he’d leaned forward to brace the elbow of his injured arm against his thigh. With his free hand, he fumbled with the first button of his shirt.

His awkward position and the wet fabric made the task harder than it needed to be.

She dropped the towel on the box she’d been unpacking. “Hold your arm. I’ll do this.”

His quiet “Thanks,” sounded terribly strained.

That strain and the intensity of his discomfort kept her from dwelling too much on how awkward she felt unbuttoning his shirt. Because he wore it with its long sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, she didn’t have to mess with buttons at his wrists. Once she reached his belt buckle, however, she did have to tug it from his pants.

He didn’t seem to care that a woman he didn’t even know had her hands inches from his zipper as she tugged the dry shirttail from the front, or her arms around his waist as she tugged from the back. In turn, she tried not to care about the way her nerves had tightened. He smelled of spicy soap, fresh air and something distinctly, decidedly male. As close as she stood to him, she could feel the heat of his big body radiating toward her, and the brush of his inner thighs against the outsides of her legs.

One of the droplets clinging to his hair broke free, sluiced down the side of his face and clung to the sharp line of his jaw.

Resisting the urge to wipe it away, she glanced back to his shoulder.

“You’re going to have to let go again.”

It seemed that he complied before he could let himself think too much about the pain involved. Biting down on a groan, he let her peel the wet fabric off his right side, then promptly grabbed his arm again the second she’d pulled it off his left.

The wet denim hit the counter with a soft plop, then slid to the floor.

Jenny barely noticed.

In the golden glow of the lamps, the sculpted muscles of his shoulders, arms and chest rippled with lean and latent power. The men at the club where she’d once been a trial member worked hours a week to look so carved and cut. There was no gym or health club in Maple Mountain, though. Never had been. Never would be. But it wasn’t his impressive and rather intimidating body that had the bulk of her attention as she reached toward the towel. It was the bruising that had already started to spread over his chest, the baseball sized lump beneath his collar bone and the way the edge of his left shoulder seemed to be missing.

“I don’t need that now.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The towel landed back on the box. “What do you want me to do?”

“Put your hand over the head of the humerus.”

Seeing what she was dealing with made her even more apprehensive. “You’re going to have to speak civilian.”

“The round thing under my collar bone.”

With caution clawing at her every nerve, she stepped back into the space between his legs and did as he asked.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the contact.

“That’s it.”

“Oh, geez.”

His reddened skin somehow felt cool beneath her hand but hot beneath her fingers. Bone protruded against her palm. Honed muscles knotted around it. Feeling them twitch and tighten as his body’s nerves objected violently to the damage, she jerked her glance to his face once more.

With his eyes closed, his lashes formed sooty crescents beneath the dark slashes of his eyebrows. The skin stretched taut over his cheekbones looked as pale as his beautifully carved mouth. His lips parted as he blew a slow breath.

Exhaling with him, she watched him open his eyes.

For the first time she noticed his eyes were gray, the silver gray of old pewter. Mostly she noticed the sheer stoicism that kept him from caving in to the pain and hitting the floor.

“Now what?” she asked, mentally bracing herself for whatever came next.

“The muscles have started to spasm, so you’re going to have to use some muscle yourself. Take my arm and when I let go, pull while you push the head over and down. I’ll brace myself against you.”

Glancing from the rigid muscles of his jaw and chest, she uneasily curled her fingers above his elbow. His big body stiffened the instant he removed the support of his own hand, but she was more aware of how her own body went still as that hand anchored at her waist.

With his strong fingers curved at her side and digging into her back, her voice sounded pitifully thin. “Like this?”

Teeth clinched, he muttered a terse, “Go.”

Shaking inside, feeling his muscles quivering, Jenny pulled on his arm. Its heaviness caught her totally off guard. Tightening her grip, she pushed on bone.

He grunted a breath. “Harder.”

There was no doubt in her mind that she was hurting him. His damp skin became even slicker, his breathing more harsh. Fighting the frantic urge to stop, she felt the bone slip.

He bit off another, “Harder.”

“I’m pushing as hard as I can.”

With the muscles constricted around it, the bone wouldn’t move far enough.

He grabbed for his arm again, told her to stop. As he did, Jenny jerked back to see his features twist while he cradled his elbow.

“I was afraid that wouldn’t work.”

Disbelief shot through her distress. “Then why did we do it?”

“Because it’s the easiest method of reduction. When it works,” he qualified, frightfully pale beneath his five-o’clock shadow. He took a few deep breaths, rocked a little.

They’d only made it worse.

“Oh, man,” he groaned.

“Oh, geez,” she repeated and put her hand on his shoulder to calm his motion.

Jenny had never regarded herself as particularly squeamish. She had never fainted at the sight of blood, and she could handle everything but eating gross insects or animal parts on survivor shows. She was learning in a hurry, though, that she apparently didn’t have a terribly high tolerance for other people’s distress. Either that or her basic sense of empathy was working overtime now that her reservations about him had taken a hike. Doing her best to shake off the uneasiness she felt herself at the misaligned body part, she wiped away a drip running from the hair at his temple to his jaw.

“Do you have anything for pain?” Another drip ran down the other side. She caught that, too. “In your little black bag or something? Is it in your car?”

“I don’t have mine with me.”

“Country doctors always carry little black bags.”

“Only when they’re making house calls. That’s not what I was doing. Come on. Let’s just do this.”

He shifted, the intensity of his discomfort making his voice tight enough to snap rubber bands. “We need more leverage. You’re going to have to take my arm and pull it down and out to the side.” He glanced at the sink beside him. “I’ll pull one way while you pull the other. The head of the bone should slip back into the socket.” He swallowed. Hard. “Take my elbow in one hand and my wrist in the other. Once you start to pull, don’t stop until I tell you to. Okay?”

It was most definitely not okay. “I’ll only hurt you again.”

“No,” he insisted, grabbing her arm as she started to back away.

This time, it was she who winced.

Apparently thinking he’d grabbed her too hard, he immediately let go.

“You’re helping,” he insisted. “We’ll try again. The longer this goes, the worse the spasms are going to get.”

The plea in his voice underscored the need to hurry. But it was the way he’d said “we” that kept her right where she was. He couldn’t do this alone. And without her, he would only get worse.

“Okay,” she conceded, rubbing where he’d grasped. “But try something you know will work this time.”

“This will.”

At his assurance she opened her mouth, closed it again. Since he had far more at stake than she did, she decided not to push for a promise—and worriedly waited for him let go of his arm again.

Letting go was clearly something he didn’t want to do. Grimacing along with him when he finally did, Jenny curled her fingers around the top of his corded forearm and grasped the hard bones of his wrist with the other. His breathing sounded more rapid to her in the moments before he hooked his free arm over the edge of the sink.

Breathing rapidly herself, she asked, “On three?” and watched him give a sharp nod.

Desperately hoping he knew what he had her doing, she counted to their mark. When she hit it and pulled, the sound he made was half growl, half groan and had her heart slamming against her breast bone. A sick sensation gripped her stomach. But she could feel the bone in his arm moving, and even though that made her a little sick, too, that movement was exactly what they were after.

Sweat gleamed on his face.

Jenny could feel perspiration dampening her skin, too.

His breathing became more labored. With his jaw clenched, air hissed between his teeth. “Rotate it down.”

Thunder cracked overhead. The drip of rain into the pot picked up its cadence. Jenny barely noticed the crunch of ceramic beneath her shoe as she shifted her stance to carefully increase her leverage. She was too busying praying he wouldn’t crumple when, hearing a sickening pop, she felt the bone lock into place.

For an instant she didn’t move. She wasn’t sure she even breathed. She wasn’t sure Greg was breathing, either.

“Can I let go?” she ventured, afraid to believe the maneuver had worked.

He said nothing. With his eyes closed, he sat dragging in long drafts of air, looking too weak or too spent to move.

With as much care as she could manage, she slowly eased the pressure of her grip.

The lump wasn’t there. Reaching toward him, she placed her palm where the head of the bone had been. The muscles beneath her hand still felt horribly knotted, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he still hurt. Yet, she could tell from the way the tension drained from his face that the worst of the pain was gone.

Close enough to feel the heat of his thighs once more, she helped him lean from the sink to straighten on the stool. He’d barely reached upright when his whole body sagged, and his dark head fell to her shoulder.

His relief was so profound that she felt it to the very center of her soul. Her own relief joined it as she cupped her hand to the back of his head. She didn’t question what she did. She didn’t even think about it. She simply held him close and let the sensation of reprieve wash over them both.

She’d had no idea what she would have done had the second attempt not worked. He could have argued all he wanted, but she doubted she could have watched him go through that agony again. She was not a strong person. She could fake it when she had to, but she’d pretty much used up her supply of sheer nerve for the day. The best she could probably have done was haul him into town and get someone, anyone, else to help them. Or left him while she’d raced off in search of help herself.

She tightened her hold, stroked her fingers through his wet hair. The man was stoic to a fault, and probably stubborn to the core. He would have fought her every step of the way.

He was getting her wet. She could feel the dampness of his pants seep into the sides of her jeans. Though she could feel his heat through the arms of her thin pink sweatshirt, she could also feel the gooseflesh on his broad back.

She’d wrapped both arms around him. Thinking to keep him warm, she drew him closer.

Realizing what she was doing, she felt herself go still.

A fine tension entered her body. Greg became aware of it at nearly the same instant the unfamiliar peace that had filled him began to fade. For a few surreal moments he’d had the sensation of being cared for, of being…comforted. He freely offered his support to others, but the quiet reassurance he felt in this woman’s touch, in her arms, was something he’d never before experienced himself. Not as a child. Not as an adult. Not even with the woman he’d been with for the past two years.

He lifted his head. Now that the pain that had taken precedence had reduced itself to a dull, throbbing ache, he was conscious of his lovely angel of mercy’s clean, powdery scent, the gentleness of her touch, the nearness of her body.

With his head still inches from hers, he was also aware of the curve of her throat, the feminine line of her jaw and her lush, unadorned mouth.

Her breath caressed his skin as it slowly shuddered out. Feeling its warmth, the sensations that had touched something starving in his soul gave way to an unmistakable pull low in his groin.

Caution colored her delicate features as she lifted her hand to the side of his face and brushed off the moisture still dripping from his hair. With a faint smile, she eased her hand away.

Stepping back, she picked up the towel she’d brought him earlier and draped it over his shoulders. “You’re better.”

“Much.” He cupped his throbbing shoulder with his hand, felt the alignment of joint and bone. He couldn’t tell if he’d torn anything major, or if his shoulder and arm were just going to be the color of an eggplant for the next few weeks. All he cared about just then was that the searing pain was gone. “Thank you.”

With another small smile, she picked up the edge of the towel, wiped it over one side of his hair and took another step back. “You could use another one of these.”

“What I could use is something to make a sling. Or I could use this for one,” he suggested, speaking of the towel she’d draped over him. “Do you have something to fasten it with?”

He’d seemed big to her before. Now, with his feet planted wide as he sat watching her, his six-pack of abdominal muscle clearly visible between the sides of the towel and with the need for urgency gone, he totally dominated the small, dilapidated space.

Not sure if she felt susceptible or simply aware, anxious to shake the unnerving feelings, she turned to the box she’d opened earlier.

“How did you wreck your car?”

“I was trying to avoid a deer. The road was slick and I lost control.”

“Did you hit it?”

“Missed the deer. Hit a tree.”

She picked up another towel for him to dry off with and held up a safety pin.

“That’ll work,” he told her.

Only moments ago she had cradled his head while she’d quietly stroked his hair. Now there was no mistaking the faint wariness in her delicate features as she stepped in front of him once more.

He’d tucked the middle of the rectangular terry cloth under his arm and pulled one end over his shoulder. Apparently realizing what he had in mind, she caught the other end to draw to the other side and, while he held his arm, pinned the sling into place behind his neck.

“Thanks,” he said again, conscious of how quickly she stepped away. Glad to have use of his other arm, he took the hand towel she’d dropped on his thigh and wiped it over his face. She was disturbed by him. That was as apparent as the uneasy smile in her eyes.

They were even, he supposed. He was disturbed by her effect on him, too. He was also more than a little curious about who she was.

If she knew old Doc Wilson, she had to be a local. Yet, he knew he had never seen her before. He would have remembered her eyes. They were the crystalline blue of a summer sky, clear, vibrant. And troubled.

He looked from where she now bent to pick up what looked like bits of broken pottery to the cardboard boxes. One sat on the counter. Dishes matching the crimson red of the shards filled part of the cabinet above it. Another box sat empty, presumably relieved of the cleaning supplies and pots and bright-red canisters piled on the old electric range.

“Moving in?”

“Trying to.”

“That’s interesting,” he observed mildly. “I hadn’t heard anything about this place being rented or sold.” He knew he would have, too. Word would have hit the clinic or Dora’s Diner within minutes of papers being signed. “The way people talk around here, something like this doesn’t usually slip by.”

Without glancing up, she rose with several pieces of bowl in her hand and dumped them into the empty box.

In the far corner of the room, near the space a table and chairs should have occupied, bedding the color of spring grass and sunshine was laid out by four pieces of luggage.

“I imagine word would have leaked out by way of the power or phone company, too. My office manager has a cousin who works for one of the utility companies over in St. Johnsbury. I’m pretty sure someone would have mentioned utilities being hooked up out here.”

He clearly knew they hadn’t been. He just as clearly thought she was a squatter.

“I haven’t had a chance to have the electricity turned on.” Utility companies tended to want their customers to have jobs. And even if she did get work at the diner, it would be a while before she could afford a phone. “I just got here this afternoon. And I’m not renting or buying,” she explained, trying not to feel defeated by what she’d been reduced to doing. “This house belongs to my family. My name’s Jenny. Jenny Baker.”

He’d wiped the spare towel over his head, leaving his hair ruffled as it probably was after he’d dried from his shower. His focus never left her face as he set the towel on the counter and raked his fingers through his hair.

Without the pain clouding his eyes, his level gaze seemed harder to hold. From the way he watched her, she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.

She’d had to prove herself entirely too often lately.

“This place has been vacant since Grandma died three years ago.” A squatter wouldn’t know that. “The real estate market has been so bad since the quarry had all those layoffs that Mom hasn’t been able to sell it. She was barely able to sell the house I grew up in after dad died last year.”

With no other relatives in Maple Mountain, her mom had moved to Maine to live with Jenny’s sister, Michelle, and Michelle’s growing family. Jenny might have mentioned that, too, had Greg not been frowning at her.

“What?” she asked, thinking he could at least have the decency to believe her after causing her to break her bowl.

Greg rose from the stool. With his arm supported by the makeshift sling, he took a step toward her. The light from the oil lamps cast everything in a pale-golden glow. That soft light also had a certain concealing effect. Not only did it take the worst of the dinginess from the derelict-looking room, it helped mask the faint bruising that bloomed along her jaw and the raw scrape beneath her thick bangs.

It was the glimpse of the scrape that had caught his attention when she spoke. Until then, he’d only noticed the discoloration along her jaw when she’d turned her head.

She’d winced when he’d grabbed her arm a while ago.

“I hurt you.” He spoke the conclusion quietly as he glanced at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Wondering if there were more bruises he couldn’t see, his physician’s training and experience kicked in. “When I grabbed your arm,” he explained, since she suddenly looked puzzled, “I hurt you, didn’t I?”

“No. No,” she quickly repeated. The discomfort had been nothing compared to his. “You didn’t do anything.”

“Let me see your arm.”

“That’s not necessary.”

She’d suspected he was stubborn. She knew it for a fact when he reached over and tugged up her loose sleeve himself.

Three long bruises slashed her forearm.

Jenny stared down at them. “Oh,” she murmured. A few hours ago, they were merely stripes of pale pink.

“Bad relationship?” he asked.

“Bad luck,” she returned, pulling down her sleeve. “I’m not camping out in an abandoned house to escape an abusive boyfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She didn’t care to mention that a relationship was responsible for that bad luck to begin with. If she’d never met Brent, she wouldn’t have lost everything and been forced to move. “I was mugged this morning.”

Greg was clearly an intelligent man. He was also, apparently, a hard sell.

“It’s true!” she insisted, seeing his doubt, hating the awful helpless feeling that came with not being believed. “I moved from Boston this morning. This guy was hiding behind the bushes near my apartment while I was loading up my car. When I crossed from my stoop to my car with my last box, he shoved me down and tried to grab my purse. I’d had a really bad week. A really bad month, actually,” she qualified, her hands now on her hips, “and I wasn’t about to let some greasy little jerk in a hooded sweatshirt take what little cash I have, my credit cards and my car keys.”

“So you hung on to your purse,” he concluded flatly.

“You bet I did. That’s when he grabbed my arm to make me let go. But that wasn’t going to happen,” she assured him. “When he started dragging me, I wrapped myself around a parking meter and kicked him in his crotch. The last I saw of him, he was limping down the hill holding himself.”

Greg lifted his chin, slowly nodded. Hitting a sidewalk would explain the scrape on her forehead. The force of being grabbed explained the fingerprints on her arm. The bruising on her jaw could have been caused by colliding with the metal pole of the parking meter, the ground or even the guy’s hand.

His glance moved from her boyishly short, sassy hair to her running shoes. He figured she was somewhere around five feet four inches, 120 pounds, tops. Considering that there didn’t appear to be a whole lot to her curvy little body musclewise, he didn’t know whether to admire her gutsy tenacity or think her utterly foolish. He’d known gang-types to maim or kill for pocket change. Having worked his residency in an inner-city hospital, he’d treated their victims often enough.

“Did the police catch the guy?”

Her glance shied from his. “I didn’t want to deal with the police.”

“You didn’t file a report? Give them a description?”

“Of what? An average-size, twenty-something Hispanic, Puerto Rican, black, Haitian, Mediterranean or very tanned white male in baggy black pants and a gray sweatshirt with the hood tied so all that showed was eyes?”

“What color were they?”

“Brown.”

“There had to be something distinguishing about him.”

“If there was, I was too busy hanging on to my purse to notice it. I’ve had enough of detectives to last me a lifetime. The last thing I wanted to do was put myself in the position of having to answer to them again.”

Sudden discomfort had her glancing down at a broken nail. “So that’s what happened to my arm,” she concluded, looking back up. “How’s yours? You’re bruised up way worse than I am. Do you want me to drive you over to the hospital in St. Johnsbury or should I take you home?”

It was as clear as the blue of her eyes that she had said more than she’d intended when she’d mentioned detectives. It was also apparent that she felt a little uneasy with him now that she had.

His shoulder throbbed. His arm ached like the devil. The discomfort alone should have been enough to distract him. But it was the thought of how he’d felt when she’d held him, those few moments of odd and compelling peace, that made him decide to make it easy on them both.

He could use an X-ray, but the drive to St. Johnsbury was miserable on a rainy night, and Bess would be available eventually. His house was only a couple miles away.

He opted for home, and watched her give him a relieved little nod before she walked over to blow out one of the lamps and, now that dusk had given way to dark, carry the other with them to the front door before she blew out that one, too.

## Chapter Two

T he wipers of Jenny’s sporty four-year-old sedan whipped across the windshield, their beat as steady as the drum of rain on the roof and the road in front of her. Though she kept her focus on what she could see in the beam of her headlights, her awareness was on the man occupying her passenger seat.

She really wished she hadn’t said what she had about the detectives.

“You said you live in the last house on Main,” she reminded him, desperately trying to think of how to fix her little faux paux. “Do you mean Doc Wilson’s old house?”

“That’s the one. He and his wife retired to Florida.”

“Doc Wilson’s wife always wanted to live in Florida,” she mused. “I just hadn’t realized they’d gone.”

She glanced over, found him watching her, glanced back.

“By the way, I’m sorry I doubted you back there. About being the doctor, I mean. Since my mom moved, I don’t hear much of anything about Maple Mountain.”

“Forget it.” Absently rubbing his shoulder, he distractedly added, “I just appreciate the help.”

She lifted her chin, kept her eyes straight ahead.

In the rain and dark, she couldn’t tell if anything had changed along the narrow two-lane road into town. She doubted anything had. Little had changed in the twenty-two years she’d lived there before moving on herself. So it wasn’t likely that much had changed in the four years she’d been gone. Teenagers probably still stole their first kisses under the old covered bridge. The old men who gathered to play checkers at the general store, probably still discussed the weather and farm reports with the same laconic zeal they always had, and regarded anything invented after 1950 as newfangled. The good-hearted-but-opinionated church ladies probably still baked pies for every function. Every season and major holiday was celebrated with a festival or a parade on the town’s four-block-long main street. And with the way the locals loved to talk, something the disturbing man beside her had noted himself, there was rarely such a thing as a secret.

The uneasiness she felt turned to dread.

There was so much about all that had happened to her that she didn’t want anyone here to know. And Dr. Greg Reid already knew part of it.

Her tires hummed on wet pavement as she passed the white scrollwork sign that let visitors know they’d arrived—Welcome To Maple Mountain, Population 704.

“You should come by the clinic in the morning and let Bess check you over.”

He had a delicious voice. Deep, rich, like honey laced with smoke and brandy. Without pain tightening it, it also held authority, and thoughtfulness.

“Why?”

“Since you didn’t want to deal with the police, I assume you didn’t bother going to a hospital, either.”

She gripped the wheel a little tighter, forced herself to smile. “All I have are bruises.”

“Your pupils looked fine, but I should have taken a look at your forehead.”

He’d checked her pupils? “It’s just a scrape. Nothing a little makeup won’t cover.” Fervently wanting to forget that morning’s incident, wishing he would, too, she cut a quick glance toward him. “You’re the one who needs to be checked over. You could have broken something. Or maybe you hit your head and didn’t even realize it.”

His only concern had been his arm. Considering the pain he’d been in, and the intense and rather intimate relief they’d shared once his body parts had been aligned, she hadn’t thought to be concerned about anything else herself.

She turned her attention to the street, mostly so she wouldn’t hit the truck parked in front of the general store, partly because thinking about how he’d sagged against her did strange things to the pit of her stomach.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to St. Johnsbury?”

“Positive. I’ll leave a message for Bess to stop by when she gets in.”

“But what if she’s late? If you did hit your head, you shouldn’t be by yourself. Is there anyone home to take care of you?”

“I live alone, but I’m fine. Honest.”

She sighed. “Are you right-handed or left?”

“Right.”

It was his left arm he was holding, even with the sling. “At least you can undress yourself,” she concluded, “but I’m still worried about your head.”

She was worried about him.

“You don’t need to be,” Greg assured her, unwillingly touched that she was. “I only hurt my shoulder. You’re the one who hit her head.”

She went quiet at that.

The storm and the dark had cleared the street of summer tourists. Cars lined the block in front of Dora’s Diner and the video-and-bookstore seemed to be doing a fair business. Something appeared to be going on at the community church, too. The square white building was surrounded by vehicles, and its simple spire was lit and gleaming like the blade of a sword. But the end of the street was nearly deserted as they left Maple Mountain’s not-so-booming commercial district and passed two blocks of tidy little homes.

Greg’s was the last house on the right before the road through town disappeared into a forest of birch, maple and evergreen trees. It was a comfortable old place with a porch that wrapped around three sides and, as far as Greg was concerned, more rooms than a bachelor needed. But use of it had come with his contract with the community, and he could walk to the clinic. Because of its size he’d also been able to convert the pantry into a darkroom so he had something to do during the long winter nights.

He should have left the porch light on, he thought. Without it, with the rain, he couldn’t even see his front steps.

Jenny Baker seemed to notice that, too. In the green glow of the dashboard lights, he saw her hesitate only a moment before she reached to turn off the engine of her cramped little car. “Stay put for a minute. I’ll get the door and get you inside.”

“You’ve done enough. Thank you,” he quickly added, softening his abruptness. “But I can take it from here.”

Cold, wet, and with the steady ache reminding him that his arm had been literally ripped from its socket, getting inside was exactly what Greg wanted to do. He wanted a hot shower. He wanted to get ice packs on his shoulder before the swelling got worse than it was.

He had no intention, however, of further imposing on the intriguing and rather mysterious woman now turning toward him. He didn’t want to be intrigued by her. He didn’t want to think about what he’d felt when she’d held him. He didn’t want her on his mind at all. There were questions about her that begged to be answered, but he didn’t want to be that interested.

“Are you sure?” she asked, the concern he’d heard in her voice now evident in her face.

“Positive. Thanks.”

Jenny opened her mouth, closed it again. He wasn’t simply being stubborn. He didn’t want her help anymore. And if didn’t want it, she wasn’t about to impose it on him.

She couldn’t, however, let him go without clearing up one little detail.

He’d already turned to open his door.

“Wait,” she said, splaying her fingers over his thigh to stop him. Drawing back her hand when his glance shot toward it, she curled her fingers into her palm.

“I need to ask you not to say anything about that remark I made. The one about having dealt enough with detectives.

“As long as you’ve lived in Maple Mountain,” she continued, not sure which made her more uncomfortable, him or her circumstances, “you have to know that people love to talk…and I’d really rather that didn’t get around. That oath you took says you’re not supposed to repeat what you hear, anyway.”

“That oath?”

“The Hippocratic one. You’re supposed to keep what people tell you confidential.”

Greg wasn’t quite sure what he heard in the quiet tones of her voice, desperation or defensiveness. Either way, he couldn’t deny his quick curiosity why either would be there.

“My silence is only required of doctor-patient relationships.” He tipped his head, studied the plea in her lovely features. “In this case, I was the patient.”

“Please…”

“Are you here because you’re in trouble with the law?”

“No. No,” she repeated, more grateful than he could imagine that she no longer had to deal with people with badges who refused to believe a word she said. “I was completely cleared. So, please, just keep what I said to yourself. Okay?”

Completely cleared of what? he was about to ask when a blinding white light cut him off.

A vehicle came to a stop behind them. The dual beams of its headlights filled the car, causing Jenny to flinch as the light reflected off the rearview mirror.

The solid slam of a door preceded the appearance of another beam from a flashlight a moment before a black gloved fist tapped on the window on the driver’s side.

Jenny rolled the window down. Rain pounding, she saw Deputy Joe Sheldon lean down to see who was inside.

Clear plastic covered the local ex-football hero’s State Trooper-style hat. A yellow raincoat hid his uniform. In between, sharp eyes darted from her to Greg and back again.

Sharpness turned to recognition.

“Jenny Baker,” he said, speaking in the unhurried, deliberate way of a native of rural Vermont. His craggy face broke into a grin, calling attention to the hook-shaped scar at the corner of his mouth and making him look as if he might ruffle her hair the way he’d done years ago when he’d dated her older sister. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m moving back, Joe.”

“You don’t say.” Rain dripped from the brim of his hat. “Didn’t think you’d be one of the ones to do that. Huh,” he grunted. “Then, that must be your stuff I saw in your grandma’s place. Thought we had ourselves a squatter.” Satisfied with his conclusion, he leaned lower so he could look past her. “Say, Doc. I saw your Tahoe in the ditch out by Widow Maker.” He took in the towel, the way it was pinned at his shoulder and the wet shirt lying in his lap. “You okay?”

“I am now. Thanks, Joe.”

“Gave me a scare there, Doc. Looked all over the place for you when I saw you weren’t in your car. Thought you might have taken shelter at the old Baker place,” he told him, explaining how he’d come across Jenny’s few remaining possessions. “Just came by here to see if you’d made it back.”

His glance narrowed on the makeshift sling. “Need any help getting inside?”

Jenny looked toward Greg. He didn’t want her help, but there was no need for him to refuse Joe’s.

“You might get his front door for him,” Jenny suggested.

“Not a problem,” the deputy replied and headed around to pull open the car door for him, too.

Jenny was worried.

Greg hadn’t said that he would keep quiet. After he’d accepted Joe’s offer to help him into his house, he hadn’t said anything to her, except to thank her again for everything she’d done.

He’d been profuse with his thanks. What she’d wanted was his promise.

As she walked the block from the diner to the clinic the next morning, under skies of blessedly brilliant blue, she still didn’t know which bothered her more. That he hadn’t promised, or that he had so obviously preferred someone else’s help over hers after what she’d been through with him.

To be fair, she supposed she couldn’t blame him for not wanting anything else to do with her. All he really knew about her was where she currently lived, that she’d recently been involved with detectives and that she was a tad desperate to keep him quiet about that.

A knot of quiet anxiety had taken up permanent residence in her stomach. With her hand over it, she smoothed the front of the cocoa-colored blouse tucked into her beige slacks and climbed the four steps leading into the white clapboard building that had housed Maple Mountain’s only clinic for over a hundred years. She had come home to start over. No matter what Dr. Greg Reid’s impression of her, she didn’t want him making that start any harder than it was already.

The screen door opened with a squeak a moment before a bell over the white wooden door gave a faint tinkle.

Six dark wood chairs lined one wall of the tidy, pale-green reception room. Only one was occupied. A teenage mother—one of the McGraw girls from the looks of her flaming-red hair—sat with a listless toddler, soothing the child with pictures from an office copy of Parenting magazine.

“Hi,” said Jenny on her way to the reception window.

The girl smiled and went back to pointing at pictures.

From inside the front office, a very pregnant brunette in a light-blue scrub smock and ponytail turned to see who had just come in.

“May I help you?” she asked, an instant before her eyes widened. “Jenny Baker!”

Pressing her hand to the small of her back, thirty-something Rhonda Pembroke turned to get a better look at the girl she hadn’t seen in four years. “Bess told me this morning that you were back. And Lois Neely was in here not two hours ago sayin’ you’ve moved into your grandma’s old place.”

Word had definitely preceded her—which meant at least one of the two men she’d encountered during her first hours home had wasted no time spreading it. Jenny’s money was on Joe as the culprit. Lois worked as dispatcher at the sheriff’s office, and Joe’s name had come up when Jenny had been met with virtually the same greeting at the diner an hour ago.

“Are you really going to restore your grandma’s house?”

Jenny’s smile faltered. She had no idea who had assumed such a thing, though she could see where someone might take it for granted. No one in her right mind would live there without redoing the place. Restoration, however, would cost a fortune she would never have.

“It certainly needs work,” she replied, deliberately hedging as she nodded toward the woman’s girth. “How are you and your family doing? Is this your third?”

“Fourth. I had a little girl while you were gone. But you didn’t come by to hear about me,” she insisted. “Who are you here to see? The doctor?” Her glance made a quick sweep of the bruises barely visible beneath the makeup on Jenny’s jaw. “Or Bess?”

Jenny felt herself hesitate. Being Greg’s receptionist and office manager, Rhonda would know that he’d been hurt. He might even have told her that she’d helped him, and the woman simply assumed that she was there to see how he was doing. Which she was. Partly.

It was whatever else he might have said that worried her.

“The doctor,” she replied. “Is he available?”

“He’s with a patient. But give me a minute.” Turning from the desk below the wide window, she dropped her hand from her back. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

A large bulletin board hung by the door that separated the waiting area from the exam rooms. Wanting to take her mind off her growing uneasiness, Jenny glanced over a poster for a senior citizens’ exercise classes at the local community center. She had no idea why the local seniors needed a formal exercise routine. Most of those she’d known growing up got plenty of exercise working their gardens and gathering berries in the woods in the summer and shoveling snow and snowshoeing in the winter. The people in the North Woods seemed to be of hardier stock than those she’d encountered in the city.

She was wondering if she could pick up a few extra dollars this winter shoveling snow for those who weren’t so hardy when the door suddenly opened.

There was a little more white in Bess Amherst’s tight crop of salt-and-pepper curls than Jenny had remembered, and the crow’s feet around her narrowed hazel eyes seemed to have fanned a little farther toward her temples, but she hadn’t otherwise changed since Jenny had last seen her. The midfifties, suffer-no-whiners nurse practitioner still wore her reading glasses on a silver chain around her neck, still preferred pastel plaid shirts and elastic-waist pants to the nurse’s scrub uniform Dr. Wilson had never been able to get her to wear, and still wore white athletic shoes—which more or less matched her short lab jacket.

Stylish, she wasn’t.

Interested, she always was.

Jenny had known Bess since she was a child.

“You’re too thin,” the woman immediately pronounced, hands on her hips. “I don’t know why you girls go off to the city and come back looking like waifs. Everybody’s always bragging about what great restaurants they have in Boston, but seems to me you girls never eat in ’em. And your hair.” Had it not been for the twinkle in her eyes, Bess might have looked as disapproving as she sounded. “How big-city you look with it all short and wispy like that.” She shook her head as she stepped forward, shoes squeaking. “Let me see that forehead of yours.”

Before Jenny could even say hello herself, Bess nudged back the sweep of her dark bangs. She smelled faintly of antibacterial soap, rubbing alcohol and—vanilla. “The doctor said he didn’t get a chance to look at that,” she said, frowning, as she concentrated on the two-inch sidewalk burn above Jenny’s right eye. “What have you put on it?”

“Nothing. I just dabbed at it with soap and water.”

“Well, you need to keep your hair away from it. And it needs ointment. Come on back and I’ll get you some. And don’t go putting any makeup on it. Not until it heals. It doesn’t look like it’ll scar now, but it will if you get it infected.”

Her shoes gave another chirp as she turned. After waiting for Jenny to pass, she closed the door behind her and glanced down the wide hallway to where Rhonda headed toward them, her hand at her back.

“How’s her head?” Rhonda asked.

“Just an abrasion. I’m going to give her some salve to put on it.”

“I told Dr. Reid you’re here,” she said to Jenny. Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper as she moved past. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to come home.”

Bess turned into a white room lined with black counters and lab equipment and pointed Jenny to a chrome-legged stool. A faint frown pinched her mouth. “She must have overheard the doctor tell me he wanted me to check on you. He felt bad that he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to check you himself.”

“He wanted you to check on me?”

“That’s the kind of man he is. If he thinks a person needs help, he sees that she gets it.” Her shrug looked vaguely preoccupied as she pulled open one of the dozens of drawers and motioned again for Jenny to sit. “Considering the pain he had to be in, I’m surprised he was thinking at all. Good that you were there for him.”

Taking out what she was after, she closed the drawer, collected a small packet, a gauze pad and paper tape and walked to where Jenny stood by the stool. Since Jenny hadn’t sat, she proceeded to work on her where she stood. “Hold your bangs back.”

“Bess, you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do,” she said, and pushed them back herself to dab at the scrape with the orange-brown pad from the packet.

Jenny didn’t know what was on it, only that it smelled awful and stung like the devil.

“It’s just too bad it took something like this to bring you to your senses and move back to where it’s safe. You’re lucky that hoodlum didn’t have something worse on his mind.”

Paper crackled as she opened a gauze pad. Removing the lid from a little silver tube, she looped a coil of ointment onto the pad and moved Jenny’s finger to hold it in place when she positioned it above her eye.

As desperately as Jenny wanted to leave the events of the past month behind, it seemed easiest to let the women assume she had come home only because she hadn’t felt secure where she’d been. The older residents of Maple Mountain had always regarded cities as dens of iniquity that lured and swallowed up their young people. Having one of their own back, battered and bruised, undoubtedly vindicated the attitude.

All Jenny cared about was that Greg apparently hadn’t mentioned her comment about having been cleared by the detectives. If he had, the outspoken nurse practitioner would have already demanded to know what he’d been talking about. Bess had been good friends with her mother.

“Keep this covered.” Deftly applying strips of tape, Bess secured the pad in place. With that done, she handed her the silver tube, a handful of gauze pads and the tape roll. “Use the salve twice a day.” The woman’s friendly scolding suddenly softened. “Welcome home, Jenny.”

Bess often had the manner of a field marshal, but Jenny knew there wasn’t a more sincere soul on the planet than the woman now patting her on the shoulder.

Jenny smiled back, accepting the welcome with guilty grace.

“Thank you,” she murmured, torn between the comfort of a friendly and familiar face and feeling like a total fraud. “And thank you for all this,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t appear terribly ungrateful as she held out her filled hands. “But I really don’t think I need it.” She couldn’t afford it even if she did. She had exactly $46.08 to last until she got her first paycheck—which, if she’d calculated correctly, would be less than two hundred dollars before taxes. “Can you just bill me for taking care of my head?”

“You do need that,” Bess informed her. Taking what Jenny held, she stuffed it into the small purse hanging by a thin strap from Jenny’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t come for an examination. Rhonda said you’re here to see the doctor. I imagine you’re wanting to know if he’s all right after helping him out last night. But that,” she said, pointing at Jenny’s forehead, “is a nasty scrape and it needs to heal properly. And don’t you worry about a bill,” she admonished. “All I did was slap a bandage on you. That antibiotic is a sample. No charge. Now, come on. You can wait for Dr. Reid in his office.”

Bess obviously knew all about the help Jenny had given her boss. Because she did know about it, and because Jenny asked if he would be all right, the briskly efficient woman confided that she had X-rayed and wrapped his shoulder herself last evening and that he would be just fine in a couple of weeks. She offered nothing else, though, before she ushered Jenny into the office near the end of the hall, told her the doctor wouldn’t be long and closed the door behind her.

Jenny stared at the carved panel of dark wood. She hoped desperately that she’d done the right thing coming here.

Wishing the nerves in her stomach would stop jumping, something she’d been wishing now for weeks, she slowly faced the neat and comfortable space. Across from her, the sunshine spilling through the slatted wooden window blinds cut a pattern of shadow and light over a maple pedestal table and four bow back chairs. A coffee mug sat on the table near stacks of open medical books. At the other end of the room, a large maple desk sat in front of a wall of bookcases and a hanging fern.

Between the warm woods, the colorful braided rug beneath the table and the old furniture, the room looked much as it always had. Quaint and rather charming in a reassuring, old-fashioned sort of way. It was only the laptop computer on the table by the books, the dish of peppermint candies on the painfully tidy desk and the wall of photos and certificates that gave any hint of the new doctor’s personality. If she were pressed for a quick assessment, she would say that the new doctor was far neater than the old one had been. More open to technology. And that he apparently possessed a sweet tooth.

That small weakness would have made her smile had she not felt so anxious. Too restless to stand still, wondering how long she would be left to pace, she moved toward the desk with its single file neatly centered on the blotter and pens standing upright like good little soldiers in their holder. As she did, she absently pushed back her bangs, and promptly bumped into the bandage Bess had more or less slapped onto her forehead.

With everything else she’d had on her mind, the abrasion and her bruises truly had been of the least consequence. In no time the soreness would go away. The scrape and bruises would heal. The other damage done to her life felt infinitely more immediate and would take far longer to remedy.

She couldn’t believe Greg had actually asked Bess to check on her. With her faith in the human species, men in particular, sorely shaken, she’d almost forgotten that every man wasn’t out just for himself.

That’s just the kind of man he is. If someone needs help, he sees that he gets it.

She let her hand fall. It had seemed so much easier to ignore what had happened to her yesterday morning without the chunk of white gauze that undoubtedly made the little injury that much more noticeable. It had been as if by ignoring the abrasion and bruises, she could ignore the incident. She knew she was playing ostrich, but she simply didn’t have the mental energy to deal with the assault and thwarted robbery on top of everything else. Not when she was trying so desperately to focus her energy on something—anything—positive.

Needing to focus on something positive now, she thought about Dora Schaeffer. Dora, bless her, had given her back her old part-time job at the café. She was feeling exceedingly grateful to the older woman when she turned to the wall beside her.

The ivory-colored wall was covered with a collage of photos. Many were large, matted photographs of the area’s flaming fall foliage, stands of bare birch trees in pristine fields of snow, apple trees blossoming in the spring. Most were photos of the local Little League team and individual players with gap-toothed grins. Snapshots of babies, some held by their proud parents, obliterated a bulletin board. A child’s handmade Valentine, its paper lace doily curling, dangled from one corner.

A black-framed diploma hung near the edge of the wall. Its placement by a state medical board certificate and a medical license seemed almost incidental, as if it were displayed only because convention or law required it.

It seemed that Gregory Matthias Reid had been awarded his medical degree from Harvard.

She was definitely impressed. A Harvard education was not only academically challenging to obtain, it cost a fortune. She knew. She’d heard brokers she’d worked with complaining about it, either because they were paying it off for themselves or their offspring.

His alma mater surprised her, too. The Harvard men she’d met wouldn’t have spent more than a weekend in this remote and rural community, and then only for one of the quaint local festivals. There were no ski lodges nearby, no reliable cell phone service, no latte machines, martini bars or night life. But then the only Harvard graduates she’d known were hungry MBAs clawing their way to the top of the shark tank. Those who swore to beat the stock market undoubtedly possessed less compassion per gene than those who swore to beat injury and disease.

Shaking off her thoughts before they could move to one MBA in particular, her glance dropped to the shades of coral and orange in a small gold-framed photograph. The photo sat askew among the books and files jammed along the credenza. In it, the good doctor stood with a view of the Eiffel Tower at sunset in the distant background—and his arm around a drop-dead-gorgeous blonde.

The woman was tall, built like a model and had been blessed with long, corn-silk-colored hair that flew in the breeze. Jenny couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but her smile was wide, her teeth perfect. It wasn’t the perfection, however, that had Jenny picking up the picture. It was the air of utter self-assurance the woman seemed to exude.

With her own self-confidence having disappeared along with her life as she’d known it, Jenny was wondering if she would ever feel certain about anything again when the door opened and Greg walked in.

## Chapter Three

A dark-blue sling covered Greg’s left arm. Much of it was hidden by the white lab coat he wore open over a forest-green golf shirt and tan khakis, but there was no hiding that he’d been injured. Even if one side of the coat hadn’t been draped over his shoulder, the bruising she’d seen last night would have given him away. It had darkened to the color of a Bing cherry and now crept to almost an inch above his collar.

It was the rest of him that had the bulk of her attention, though.

Even with his arm bound in a sling, there was nothing about him that hinted at any sort of vulnerability. Nothing to indicate how dependent he had been on her less than twelve hours ago. Beneath the dark slash of his eyebrows, his gray eyes smiled at her with a quiet intensity that weighed and assessed and put strange little flutters in her stomach.

Without the pain he’d dealt with last night, he was more than an attractive man. He was a man who looked big, capable and totally in control of himself and everything around him.

That quiet power seemed to radiate toward her, drawing her in as he looked to what she held.

Aware that she’d just been caught with one of his photographs, Jenny’s guilty glance fell before she smiled and turned to set the picture back in its place.

“I don’t suppose she’s a relative.”

Seeing which picture she’d had, he hesitated. “She’s…a friend.”

Wondering at that slight pause, thinking maybe her innocent interest had just caught him off guard, Jenny left the photo exactly as she’d found it. Of course he had a “friend,” she thought, stepping aside as he passed her to drop the file he carried onto his desk. The man was gorgeous. He was caring. He was a doctor.

Not that she was at all interested in him that way herself. As badly as she’d been burned, she had no desire whatsoever to face that particular brand of fire again. That didn’t keep her from appreciating the compelling aura of quiet strength surrounding him, though, or the ease of his manner when he turned back to her.

Though his eyes remained on her face, she had the interesting feeling that he took in every inch of her body as she stood by the credenza six feet away.

“I understand you’re here to check on my welfare.”

She tipped her head, studying him back. “I just wanted to know how you’re doing.” Considering what he’d gone through—what she’d gone through with him—she’d have to be as insensitive as stone not to wonder how he was. “You were in a lot of pain last night.”

“Not as much as I would have been in if you hadn’t been there. Thanks again, by the way. For everything.” A hint of self-reproach entered his eyes. “I probably scared the hell out of you, kicking your door like that.”

“You’re welcome. And you did.” She shrugged, seeing no reason to deny the obvious. He’d seen the tire iron she’d prepared to defend herself with. “But I think I was more afraid that you’d pass out.”

Reproach turned into a smile. “I did my best not to.”

She smiled back. “You have no idea how I appreciate that.”

There were slivers of silver in his eyes. She noticed them a moment before his glance dropped to the curve of her mouth. Last night, his own had been inches from hers. Too easily, she could remember the feel of his warm breath on her skin, and the quicksilver change in his eyes when she’d touched her hand to his cheek.

As his eyes lifted to meet hers now, she had the feeling he remembered those disturbing moments, too.

He also looked as if he’d rather not think about them.

Clearing his throat, he absently rubbed his shoulder as voices drifted toward them from the hall.

“So,” he said, dropping his hand to push it into the pocket of his lab coat. He nodded toward the bandage beneath her bangs. “I see Bess got hold of you.”

“She got me on my way in.” Feeling a sudden need to move herself, thinking it best to get her business here over with, she edged toward the door and closed it with a quiet click.

“There’s another reason I came by,” she admitted, reclaiming her spot by the picture of his friend. His relationship with the beautiful woman in the photo was none of her business. He was none of her business. At least not beyond extracting one small promise. “I really did want to make sure you were okay,” she hurried to explain. “And I’m really glad you are. But there’s something I need from you.”

Curiosity creased his brow. Or maybe it was caution. With the discomfiting feeling it was more the latter, she took a step closer, reducing the space between them so she could lower her voice even more. She didn’t think Rhonda or Bess would repeat anything personal that went on in the clinic. At least, she’d never heard that they had, and people in Maple Mountain knew who they could confide in and who couldn’t keep her—or his—mouth shut. But it sounded as if there were other people out there now.

“I know you omitted parts of what we talked about when you told Bess that I was mugged. I don’t mind that you told her,” she hurried on, “about the mugging, I mean. And I appreciate that you wanted her to check on me. But I need to know you won’t say anything about why I didn’t go to the police. I want to fit back in here the way I did before I left. This is really the only place I have to go right now,” she explained, the anxiety in her expression sneaking into her voice. “And I’d really hate to be the subject of speculation and gossip.” She’d had more than enough of that where she’d just come from. “It’s awful when you can’t go anywhere without someone whispering behind your back.”

Greg’s glance narrowed, his sense of caution growing in direct proportion to his interest. There was an air of style and polish about the lovely young woman anxiously watching him that she could have only acquired in the city. The unhurried, thoughtful pattern of speech possessed by many of those born in the region seemed to have been consciously trained from her voice. Dressed as she had been last night in a baggy sweatshirt and jeans, he hadn’t paid any attention to the layer of sophistication that set her apart from most of the area’s residents. But he hadn’t exactly been on top of his game last night, either.

The one thing he definitely had picked up was the feeling that she was running from something. Seeing the disquiet in her eyes, he was even more convinced of it now.

There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she was seeking escape. From what, he had no idea. He just knew that if there was anything he recognized, it was that need. Until he’d turned twenty, he’d lived with it nearly every day of his life.

Three months ago that need had returned with a vengeance.

That was when his father had died—and left him a fortune he absolutely did not want, one that his father never intended him to have, and which was exerting a certain control over his life simply because he now had to deal with the only thing his father ever truly cared about. His money.

The thoughts kicked up acid his stomach. Not a soul in Maple Mountain knew his inheritance existed. No one in Maple Mountain even knew his father had died. Or that he’d had one living for that matter. He didn’t speak of his past beyond what little he could get away with, and the last thing he would have wanted were condolences from well-meaning, good-hearted people who would have made him the main topic on the local grapevine—especially if they knew about the money.

When an inheritance was involved, people tended to want to know what a person was going do with it. And when. His attorney, his father’s attorney and Elizabeth Brandt, the woman he’d soon be moving in with, were certainly anxious for the information. Part of his problem was that just hearing those questions knotted his gut with reminders of why he wanted nothing to do with it at all. Every time any one of them mentioned the estate, he felt a powerful need to escape. The rest of the time, he simply felt…restless.

Except for last night. Only then, when he’d experienced the odd and compelling comfort in the arms of a woman he didn’t even know, had he not been aware of the restiveness he lived with nearly every other hour of the day.

Watching that woman now, he tried to tell himself he had only imagined that peace. Endorphins had probably been released into his blood when the trauma to his body had been eased. Or release from the pain had come as such a relief that he would have felt that comfort with anyone.

Rationalization helped. It just didn’t explain how the scent and feel of her had taunted every nerve in his body. Or how watching her mouth as she waited for his assurance made those nerves tighten all over again.

“I know what you mean about talk,” he confided, forcing his glance up. She seemed desperate for his discretion. Quietly so, but desperate nonetheless. “And I understand how important reputations are around here. Stop worrying. Okay? I’m not going to say anything.”

He wondered if she was always so easy to read. Or if the anxiety he sensed in her had simply robbed her of the ability to mask what she would prefer others didn’t see. The distress in her eyes faded with undisguised relief.

The warmth of her thankful smile washed over him, soft, inviting and as gentle as spring rain. The same pull he’d felt toward her last night tugged hard in his chest. He’d barely noticed it when a tap on the door jerked his attention from the sensation, along with the curiosity about her that grew with each passing second.

The door opened. Bess’s head poked around it, the silver in her tightly curled hair catching the overhead light.

“I just had the most brilliant idea.” With that announcement, she left the door open and walked in, smiling at Jenny before she looked to him. “Jenny’s mom and I still exchange Christmas cards,” she prefaced, ignoring his blank look and Jenny’s quick confusion. “She always writes one of those Christmas letters. A nice, newsy one that tells how her children and grandchildren are and how her garden was the past summer.

“In her Christmas letter last year,” she continued, looking thoughtful, “she mentioned that Jenny was still at the same big brokerage she’d gone to work for when she’d moved to Boston. Salomon something.”

“Salomon Bennett?” he asked, identifying the huge investment firm his more affluent acquaintances used.

“That’s it.” Bess gave a nod. “I remember she also mentioned that Jenny was still administrative assistant to one of the vice presidents. Since a job like that must require considerable organizational skill, and since Rhonda is going on maternity leave as soon as she goes into labor, we should hire her.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned to Jenny. “Can you do accounting on a computer?”

Greg’s eyebrow’s merged. “Hang on, Bess. We can’t just—”

“It depends on the program,” Jenny cut in, uncomfortably aware that Greg wasn’t nearly as enamored with the idea as Bess was. Not that she could blame him. What he knew about her hardly recommended her as an employee. “I’ve used several. But I just got a job. I’m starting at the diner Thursday. Dinner shift.”

Greg’s quick objection turned just as quickly to confusion. “Why did you take a job there?”

“Because I need it,” she replied, ever so reasonably.

Tolerance laced his tone. “What I mean,” he explained, “is why wait tables with your qualifications? Why not go where you can get a job that pays? You could apply at the bank or the school district over in St. Johnsbury. I know it’s a drive, but you’d make three times the money there.”

The man had the eyes of a hawk, the instincts of a wolf after prey. His powers of observation weren’t too shabby, either. She supposed all that came in handy when trying to figuring out how to help a patient, but when a person wanted to keep certain things to herself, those abilities were downright unnerving.

Her shrug didn’t feel nearly as casual as she hoped it looked. “As you said, it’s a long drive, and I don’t want the commute. Especially in the winter.” Both he and Bess should appreciate that. Ice and blowing snow often turned the hour-plus drive into two hours or more. “I worked at the diner before I left, so it’s not as if I don’t have experience there, too.”

She also hadn’t had to supply references to get the job. References were a major problem at the moment. No company hired without references, and she couldn’t give those she had. That was the main reason she’d come back to Maple Mountain.

“Aside from that,” she said, more comfortable with Bess’s faintly perplexed expression, “I don’t have an updated résumé to give you.” She smiled, hoping to end the conversation before either could ask more questions. It was obvious from Greg’s frown that something wasn’t adding up to him. “Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

The sound Bess made was somewhere between a tsk and a snort.

“You don’t need to show us a résumé. You’re qualified. You have a good work ethic.” Her tone turned confiding. “I know that because of how hard you worked to get your associate’s degree,” she told her, “and by how well you did for yourself in Boston. Even if you don’t know the program we use, Rhonda can help you figure it out. You’re experienced, and experienced is what we need.”

Looking utterly convinced that she had just solved their staffing problem, she glanced to where Greg stood with his forehead furrowed. “It’s not as if she needs character references,” she insisted, clearly not understanding his hesitation. “I can vouch for her myself. So can half the town. Aside from that, we haven’t had any other qualified applicants, and Rhonda is already overdue.”

“And feeling every minute of it,” the miserable-looking office manager announced in low tones as she walked in. “Sorry for the interruption, but Lorna Bagley just brought in her youngest with some sort of rash. I put them back in the isolation room since Bertie Buell is here for her blood pressure check. You know how Bertie is about being around anything she thinks might be contagious.”

At the mention of patients, Greg turned his frown to his watch. “You take Bertie, Bess. I’ll get the rash,” he said to Rhonda. “Tell Lorna I’ll be right there.”

Grasping the opportunity for escape, undeniably grateful for it, Jenny watched Bess, thwarted and disgruntled, head for the door as she backed toward it herself.

“Thank you, Bess,” she called, thinking of the bandage, the ointment, the welcome and for thinking of her for the job that, if not for Greg and his obvious reservations, she would have loved to take.

“I didn’t mean to keep you so long,” she said, turning back to see him move to the door himself.

He stopped an arm’s length away, his hand on the edge of the door, his body towering over hers. Glancing from the swath of blue covering the middle of his impressive chest, thinking it highly unfair that she could so easily recall how hard it had felt beneath her fingers, she jerked her eyes to his.

“Take care of that shoulder,” she reminded him, and slipped out with the feel of his uncertainty about her hounding every step.

The positive thing about a place as small as Maple Mountain was that neighbors always knew if a person had a problem or if they needed help. If someone hadn’t been seen or heard from for a while, someone else would inevitably call or drop by just to make sure everything was all right. People watched out for each other. People cared about each other.

Jenny had missed that.

What she hadn’t missed was the relative lack of privacy that came with such neighborly concern.

The people in and around Maple Mountain were a fiercely independent lot, opinionated to a fault about politics, their land and protecting it from anyone who might try to change the way of life that had worked just fine for them for however long they’d lived there. But for all that independence, they were also intensely interested in everything that went on around them. Strangers were easily identified, and a car didn’t pass through town that someone along Main Street didn’t note its license plate to see where it was from.

A car with plates from any state other than Vermont would elicit speculation about where its occupants were going and how long they would stay. A vehicle they recognized as belonging to their little part of the world invited solemn conjecture about its occupant’s destination. Especially if they knew, or knew of, its owner.

Old Parker must be heading into St. Johnsbury for that tractor part he’s needin’.

Bet Essie’s on her way out to her daughter’s to help with the twins.

Or observations about the vehicle itself.

Been a while since Charlie washed that truck of his.

Wonder how long it’ll be before Amos’s bumper falls off.

There wasn’t much that slipped by the locals. Where other locals were concerned, anyway. Visitors were treated politely, especially when they came to vacation on the lake in the summer and for the festivals that fed the town’s coffers. Their spending helped pay for everything from the newly paved parking lot at the community center to sports equipment for the elementary school. But only the residents warranted true interest in conversations at the diner or around the checkerboard at the general store. Especially if whatever that person was up to proved more interesting than what seemed to be going on anywhere else.

That was why Jenny wasn’t surprised when, by six o’clock that evening, she’d had no fewer than four visitors, including Joe who’d stopped by with a crowbar when he’d heard that she hadn’t wanted to pay ten dollars for one at the general store. He’d helped her pry off the particularly stubborn board covering the living room window and told her he’d be back tomorrow with a ladder and help her take the boards off the windows upstairs.

Carrie Higgins, who’d been Carrie Rogers when she’d hung out with Jenny’s older sister and Dora’s daughter, Kelsey, at the old grist mill behind the house, had stopped by to see for herself that Jenny was actually back and living in her grandma’s old place. Jenny hadn’t invited her in. She hadn’t invited anyone in because she hadn’t wanted to lie and say her furniture hadn’t been delivered yet, which was the only way she could think to explain why her bed was a pile of blankets and a comforter in a corner of the kitchen.

Carrie hadn’t seemed to mind the lack of an invitation. She’d just wanted to say hi and bring her a welcome-back Jell-O salad, the kind with pistachio pudding in it. So they’d stood outside under the old maple tree, Jenny holding the plastic bowl and Carrie holding her ten-month-old on her hip while her four-and six-year-olds tormented a caterpillar and promised each other they’d get together soon.

Gap-toothed Smiley Jefferson, who had the postal route and was the mayor’s brother-in-law, stopped to see if she would be putting up a mailbox, since the one out by the road had fallen to wood rot years ago, or if she’d be using a box at the post office.

Sally McNeff, who now ran her aging mother’s bookstore, stopped by on her way home from work to welcome Jenny home and tell her she was so sorry she’d been mugged.

Jenny had been alone for all of fifteen minutes and was inside washing the multi-paned front window when another vehicle pulled onto the rutted driveway.

Across the narrow ribbon of road that led into town, the land rose in a long and gentle hill. Only the trees at the top were illuminated by sunlight. In another hour it would be dusk. But just then the air glowed golden. In that gentle light she watched a gray bull-nosed truck rumble toward the house. She had already cleaned the outside of the glass, and light spilled across the dusty hardwood floor, taking some of the dreariness from the room. Or maybe simply illuminating it. In the brighter light, she could more easily see how badly the ivy-print wallpaper was pealing.

The truck pulled to a stop behind her sporty black sedan. Finishing the pane she was washing, careful of the crack in it so she wouldn’t wind up with a hole where the foot-wide pane had been, she tried to make out who was driving it. With the wide maple trees shading the weedy and overgrown lawn, all she could see was the pattern of light and shadow on the windshield.

Curiosity got the better of her. Leaving her task, she absently tugged her short white T-shirt over the waistband of her denim capris and moved to the open front door as the truck came to a stop. The screen door screeched in protest when she pushed it open.

Reminding herself to go through the collection of odds and ends on the back porch to see if a can of oil lurked in their midst, she sidestepped the loose board on the porch and came to a halt at the top step.

Greg climbed from behind the wheel. Before she could even begin to imagine why he was there, the slam of his door sent birds squawking as they scattered from the trees.

He had her yellow towel with him. Seeing her framed by the posts on the porch, he headed toward her, his stride relaxed and unhurried. Without the lab coat covering his golf shirt and khakis, she could see that the sling completely encased his arm, holding it nearly as close to his body as he’d held it himself last night.

She needed to forget last night. Certain parts of it, anyway.

“I hear Charlie Moorehouse loaned you his truck,” she called, thinking the comment as good a way as any to keep things neighborly.

She watched him glance toward Charlie’s newest acquisition. The fact that the old guy had lent the doctor his pride and joy attested to how grateful he had been to Greg for getting him through his last bout of gout.

“He’s saved me a lot of hassle,” he admitted, sounding grateful himself. She’d also heard that truck was an automatic. With the use of only one arm, he couldn’t have driven anything else. “He dropped it off for me after he and his son towed my SUV into St. Johnsbury.”

“How long before you get it back?”

“Not sure,” he replied, and stopped at the foot of the steps. He hadn’t come to exchange small talk. He wanted something. She could tell from the way his deceptively casual glance slid over her frame, his mouth forming an upside down U in the moments before he held out her neatly folded towel.

He also didn’t appear totally convinced that he should be there.

“Do you have a few minutes?” he asked as she took what he offered.

“Sure.” Despite a quick sense of unease, she gave a shrug. “I was just cleaning.”

Behind her, the window sparkled. Above, cobwebs laced the corners of the porch roof.

“That ought to keep you busy for a while.”

“Until spring, I would imagine.”

The U gave way to a faint smile. “Then, I won’t keep you long. Bess is on me to hire you,” he admitted, getting straight to the point. “She said she’s sure you’ll have no trouble picking up medical terminology and our procedures. Since you appear to have considerable office experience, I wondered if you wanted to tell me why I shouldn’t offer you the job.”

The question threw her. So did the intent way he watched her as she crossed her arms over the folded yellow terry cloth and waited for her to either recover from his blunt query or invite him in and answer it.

“Because I already have one?”

Something in his eyes seemed to soften. She wasn’t sure what it was. It hinted at patience, yet looked more like weariness. The draining kind of weariness that sucked the spirit from deep inside a man.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Unfortunately, she did. She also knew she had several very good reasons to ignore the quick tug of empathy she felt for what she saw. For starters, if he was tired, it was probably because he hadn’t slept well with his arm throbbing or aching or whatever it was probably still doing. More important, he seemed far more perplexed by her than interested in her sympathy.

Perplexed didn’t begin to describe what Greg felt when it came to the quietly pretty woman warily eyeing him from three steps away. The more he learned about her, the more bits and pieces of her past and personality he picked up, the more mysterious she seemed. And the more interested he became.

That interest bothered him. She wasn’t his patient, so he couldn’t excuse his curiosity about her as a way to better tend her needs. Even if she had been a patient, his interest went light-years beyond the professional. Yet he wasn’t about to fully acknowledge the inexplicable pull he felt toward her. He was already involved with someone. He had been for two years. Unlike the other men in his family, he would not cheat on a woman—even if he was having serious second thoughts about the relationship.

A familiar tension started creeping through him. Colliding with that struggle were all the problems he’d acquired since his father died. Not a week had gone by in the past few months that the mail hadn’t brought a new batch of documents, receipts and queries he didn’t want to deal with. He’d gotten to where he’d hated to see Smiley coming, and had finally asked his attorney to hold on to everything until he could get to Boston to take care of whatever needed to be done. His attorney had now taken to e-mailing him, wanting to know when that would be.

He shoved down the resentment, buried it as he so often did lately. Between the estate and Elizabeth, the last thing he needed was another problem, and Jenny Baker clearly had plenty of her own, but the clinic needed a competent office manager who could double as a receptionist. That should be all he considered right now.

“Is working at the diner what you really want to do? I’m not saying there’s a thing wrong with being a waitress,” he explained, dead certain she was in need of help herself. “But wouldn’t you rather have a job that used your skills and paid more than minimum wage and tips?”

Jenny was okay with omission. A little less comfortable with evasion. But there was no way she could look him in the eye and lie.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, when her only response was to glance away.

“Look.” The faint breeze chased a leaf across the porch. “We need an office manager. I trust Bess’s judgment, so I’m more than willing to listen to her when it comes to decisions about staffing. But you’re hiding something,” he told her, wondering if fear had driven her here, hoping for her sake that it hadn’t. “Or running from it.”

He held up his hand, cutting her off when she started to protest. “I don’t like owing anyone, Jenny. And after what I put you through last night, I owe you. Something isn’t right here.” His glance swept her face, quietly searching. “If you’re in trouble, I might be able to help.”

Jenny had no idea why he didn’t care to be obligated to anyone. She didn’t get a chance to wonder about it, though. The thought that he wanted to help caught her as unprepared as the quick pang of need she felt to let him. She had never felt as alone as she had in the past month, as alone as she had last night curled up in the dark. Unfortunately, dealing with the mess she’d made of her life was something she would have to do on her own.

Suddenly tired herself, she sank to the top step and motioned for him to help himself to a stair. Boards groaned beneath his weight as he tugged at the knees of his khakis and sat down a yard away. With his big body taking up more than his half of the space, he planted his feet wide on the step below.

The yellow dots on his brown socks were tiny ducks. Had she not felt so miserable she would have smiled at that totally unexpected bit of whimsy. The kids in the pictures in his office would have to love a guy who wore something like that.

“Thank you,” she said, genuinely moved by his offer. “But there isn’t anything you can do. Except for the job,” she conceded, almost afraid to think of how far a real salary could go. “The job really would make things easier.”

Something like regret entered his tone. He could help, but there were strings. “I can’t give you the job until I know what’s going on. I have Bess and my patients to consider.”

Her shoulders fell. “You don’t think I was mugged,” she said flatly.

“Honestly?” he asked, pinning her with his deceptively undemanding gaze. “I don’t know what to think.”

His bluntness she could handle. It was the way he had of looking at her, looking into her, that had her wanting to shy away. There was kindness in his darkly lashed eyes, but there was a lot of doubt and suspicion, too. “I wasn’t abused and I’m not hiding from anyone,” she insisted, making herself hold his glance. She was nothing if not honest. She wasn’t about to have him think otherwise. “What happened yesterday morning happened just as I told you. No one is going to follow me here and cause a problem, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise. Bess and your patients are safe.”

The insistence faded from her voice. “I made a bad choice that led to an even worse situation. It will never, ever happen again. Can we please just let it go at that?”

The masculine lines carved in his cheeks deepened with the pinch of his mouth. Seeing nothing promising in Greg’s expression, Jenny’s glance finally faltered. She blinked at the board between her white canvas shoes. The blue paint that had once made the porch look so bright and cheerful had been weathered and worn to little more than flecks and streaks on the splintering wood. Waiting for Greg to make his decision, she felt like that herself, exposed and worn, and were she to dig too deep, fully capable of breaking into dozens of tiny pieces.

“What about the detectives. You said something about having been cleared, but you never said what you’d been charged with.”

Her focus stayed on the boards. “I was never formally charged.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I was never guilty, so there’s no…”

“Jenny.”

From the corner of her eyes, she caught the motion of his hand a moment before she felt his finger curve under her chin.

His deep voice was as gentle as the brush of his thumb along her jaw. “I keep my word,” he promised. “Anything you say to me goes no further.”

For a moment she said nothing. She just studied the strong lines of his face while her mind absorbed his quiet assurance and her battered heart his quiet strength. In the past month she had grown reluctant to confide anything to anyone. It had come to the point where she honestly hadn’t known who she could trust anymore. Authorities who’d appeared to want only to help her had wanted only to find a way to trip her up so she would confess to a crime she had known nothing about. Friends she’d thought she could count on had turned their backs on her. She couldn’t even trust her own judgment.

Yet, this man had nothing to gain from her that wouldn’t help her, too.

His glance dropped to follow the motion of his thumb. As if he only now realized he was still touching her, he pulled a deep breath and eased his hand away.

It puzzled her that she hadn’t questioned the contact herself. What puzzled her more was what she’d felt in his touch, the quiet assurance that by trusting him, maybe things could be all right.

“I really wasn’t charged with anything. Just suspected and questioned,” she told him, still hesitating to mention exactly what she’d been suspected of doing. The words embezzlement and theft could immediately shade a person’s opinion. She’d learned the hard way that it was far easier to get a person to listen to her if he didn’t have a lot of preconceived notions.

“There is an explanation.” She hesitated. “I’m just not sure where to start.”

He rested the elbow nearest her on his thigh. With his hand dangling in the wide space between his legs, he looked as if he were prepared to give her however long she needed to take.

“Start anywhere you want.”

## Chapter Four

T he evening breeze rustled the bushes at the end of the porch and nudged at the grass and weeds stretching to the road. The quiet babble of the stream that curved the property line sounded softly in the distance. Breathing in the sweet scent of the balmy air, Jenny leaned over the towel still tucked against her and picked up a twig that had jammed itself into the crack of a step.

Start anywhere you want, Greg had said. Thinking of the dream that had led her into her little mess, the only place she could think to start was at the beginning.

“Have you ever wanted something badly?” she asked, focused on the slender twig as she slowly twirled it between her fingers. “I mean so badly that it becomes almost consuming?”

“Absolutely.”

His lack of hesitation intrigued as much as it encouraged. She glanced to where he sat beside her, his broad shoulders taking up most of the space. His expression revealed nothing beyond a quiet interest.

“What was it? To become a doctor?”

“No. But we’re talking about you,” he reminded her. “What is it that you wanted?”

She looked back to her twig. She would have thought the desire to be a doctor would be a passion so great it would eclipse nearly everything else. It seemed it would have to be, for a person to get through all those years of study and training.

“To get out of here. You know how this place is,” she said, unable to imagine what else a doctor’s dream could have been. Her own had been so simple. “Once a person graduates from high school, you can either go away to college, get married or go to work for your family or someone else’s. Most of the jobs that don’t require a family connection or a degree are at the quarry or in the shops, and once you start either place that’s where you’ll be for the rest of your life.” Her family hadn’t had a business to run. Her dad had worked at the quarry, her mom had been a homemaker, and they hadn’t been able to afford college for either her or her sister. “I’d wanted more than to get married at nineteen, the way most of my friends did. Or to work at the diner for the rest of my life wondering what I’d missed.”

“That’s why you worked so hard to put yourself through school.”

Bess had mentioned that just that morning.

She gave a nod, still twirling the little piece of wood. “An associate’s degree usually only takes two years, but it took me three because I had to work full-time. As soon as I had it, I headed for Boston. My savings had just about run out when I got a job at Salomon in staff support.”

“Staff support?”

“I was a secretary,” she clarified. “They don’t call secretaries secretaries anymore. At least, not there.

“Anyway,” she continued, now shredding away a bit of bark, “four years later, I’d worked my way up to administrative assistant to one of the company’s senior VPs. Then, a month ago,” she explained, going for the condensed version of her life to that point, “I found myself in the middle of a criminal investigation.” A piece of the bark fluttered to the step. “My boyfriend worked at Salomon, too,” she said quietly. “It seems that he had been using my computer to transfer rather large sums of other people’s money into his own bank accounts.”

“That’s where the detectives came in,” Greg concluded.

“About six of them. Part of them were at the city level. Brent had apparently taken some office equipment home with him, too, so there were theft charges against him along with the federal ones for embezzlement and I can’t remember what all else.”

The federal investigators had been the most frightening for her to deal with. The city police detectives had backed off on her once they’d realized only Brent had company property and how little of it there was. It had been over three weeks before the federal investigators had let her go, though, and then not until what had seemed like a dozen people had asked her the same hundred questions.

“I hadn’t known anything. Nothing,” she insisted. “But no one would believe me.” The strain clouding her expression slipped into her voice. “I obviously hadn’t even known the man I’d dated for over two years.” Which was just a few months shy of how long his little scheme had been going on.

She couldn’t believe how hurt, foolish and betrayed she felt. The emotions sat like a rock in her chest, making it hard to breathe at times, making every breath she took remind her of how easily she had been taken in. She’d been a kid from the backwoods, easy prey as far as a man like Brent Collier had been concerned. A trusting innocent armed with nothing more than a hunger to experience sophistication and excitement and no experience at all swimming with sharks. But what she felt more than anything else was anger at herself for the naiveté that had allowed her to be charmed by a man who’d wanted nothing but to use her.

“I’d even saved myself until I was twenty-three, waiting for the right man, and he’d just been using me in bed, too.”

She gave the stripped twig a toss. It was only when Greg reached over and handed her another one to peel that she realized she’d spoken her last thought aloud.

The admission brought color to her cheeks—and a look of sympathy from the man beside her.

He had to think her truly pathetic. Wanting badly to mask the depth of how very hurt, used and betrayed she felt, she tried to dismiss the emotional slaughter as inconsequential.

“Do you know what’s the real icing on this little cake?” she asked, able to mask everything but her agitation. “The investigators confiscated most of my possessions in case they’d been purchased with any of the illegal funds. They took my furniture, the great little paintings I’d collected at art fairs, and my television. They even took my clock radio,” she said, unable to imagine why they’d want something that had only cost $24.95 and would barely fetch five dollars at a flea market. “The only reason I still have my car is because I could prove I’d bought it before I’d met Brent. But you know what’s even worse than that? “I can’t get a job doing anything that requires references,” she fumed into Greg’s coaxing silence. “Even if I’d wanted my old job back,” which she hadn’t, considering how humiliating the whole scenario had been, “I couldn’t get it. I was fired. After the dust settled and I called my boss to change my status from having been fired to having quit, he informed me that the firing stood. He said that a person with access to privileged information should be a better judge of character than I was. If I was duped once, it could happen again.”