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“I can’t see any advantage to it,” he admitted, figuring the bartender syndrome must be at work. He had never confided in one himself. He rarely confided in anyone for that matter. But he could see where it would be easier for a person to admit certain truths to a stranger than to someone he knew. Friends and family had their own expectations, their own agendas.
“Life is easier with a partner,” she said simply. She gave a shrug, the gesture seeming to say her conclusion was nothing more than a plain fact. Snow was white. Birds had wings. Life was easier with a partner. “I read in Newsweek that studies show men even live longer when they’re married.”
He met her easy certainty with equal conviction. He’d heard about those studies, too. But he didn’t get a chance to tell her that he’d prefer quality over quantity. He’d pulled his left arm in a little to move his sleeve from his stinging skin. As he did, her hand ceased its soothing motions on the back of the denim carrier and she reached for his arm.
Curling her fingers a few inches above where he held the saw, she peeked toward his opposite shoulder. “What is it that’s bothering you? Did you hurt yourself back there?”
Justin’s first reaction was to brush off her question. His second was simply to breathe.
She’d moved in front of him, setting the can of gas on the drying ground, and lifted the edge of his sleeve. Gingerly, she touched the skin below the abrasion on his biceps. Unguarded interest shadowed her exquisite face. But it was the troubled look in her eyes that hit him like a physical blow. No woman had ever looked at him with such open and honest concern.
“You are hurt,” she accused softly. “What happened?”
There were flecks of pale silver in his pewter-gray eyes. Emily noticed them as his glance quietly searched her face. Feeling her heart catch at his scrutiny, she dropped her hand as she swung her glance back to the angry red abrasion emerging below the short sleeve of his shirt. What skin was visible looked raw and sore. The shirt itself was snagged, as if something rough had dragged across it, tearing and pulling its threads.
“The door hit it.”
“What door?”
“The one to your cellar. Come on,” he murmured, reaching for the gas can himself, “I could use something cold to drink.”
She snagged the can before he could, her sense of indebtedness growing stronger as they cut toward the little house her husband had repaired. Logic told her Justin couldn’t be hurt too badly. After all, he’d worked all afternoon hauling boards without a hint of hesitation or complaint. That she’d been aware of, anyway. But whether or not he’d been in pain before, he was now. And he’d hurt himself protecting her and her child.
“We’ll have to go in the front,” she said as they approached her house a few minutes later. “I have iced tea or lemonade. Which would you prefer?”
Leaving the chain saw by the can of gas near the back porch, Justin told her he didn’t care as long as it was cold and wet, and followed her past a propane tank at the side of the house. He was pretty sure from her preoccupation that she was thinking about the tree she needed to clear from her back door. He didn’t doubt that she wanted to get started on it.
All he wanted was to get his car running and get home.
That was what he’d been telling himself, anyway.
He pushed his fingers through his hair as he took the steps up her front porch, the motion more habit than exasperation. He wasn’t anywhere near as frustrated by the delays as he should have been. But then, he hadn’t intended to accomplish anything today anyway, he reminded himself, pulling open the screen door Emily had already disappeared through. That was the only possible explanation for why he didn’t feel like pacing out of his skin. Delays of any kind usually made him crazy.
The interior of the little house was dim. It was also cooler than it was outside. Drawn as much by curiosity as that coolness, he stepped over the threshold and let the screen door bump closed behind him.
Emily was nowhere to be seen. He could hear her, though. Her gentle voice filtered through a doorway to his right as she spoke to her baby. It sounded very much as if she were commiserating over how awful it must feel to be wet, and making assurances that she would remedy that situation in no time at all.
Figuring she must be changing her baby’s diaper, he pushed his hands into his pockets and took another step into a room that smelled faintly of cinnamon and lemon oil.
The starched white curtains had been drawn to keep out the heat of the sun, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could easily see around the neat and sparsely furnished space.
To his left, a stone fireplace took up most of the wall. Across from it, a simple wooden bench was filled with embroidered pillows. Beside him, a rocking chair had a small quilt draped over its back.
The reds and blues in the quilt were muted in the pale light, but the exquisite workmanship in the beautifully crafted piece was evident. Resisting the urge to touch it, he glanced toward the old treadle sewing machine beneath the narrow front window. Judging from it and the oil lamps atop a crowded book case, it appeared that Emily was into antiques.
She also seemed to have an eclectic sense of philosophy. Two small posters lay on the braided rag rug that covered most of the wood floor, presumably waiting to be put into the inexpensive frames propped against the wall. The smaller one was of a secluded mountain stream cascading into an enormous waterfall. The flowing script across the bottom read Go with the Flow. The poster next to it, larger and presumably for her daughter’s room, was of a teddy bear in a pink tutu looking out a window. It simply said Dream.
“She’s happier now,” he heard Emily say as she emerged from the bedroom and headed for the doorway across from him. “She wanted her bassinet. Please. Come in,” she invited, only to come to a halt when she reached the doorway herself.
Over her shoulder he could see a large wood table graced with a bouquet of flowers. Other than that, he could see nothing in the roomy, Spartan space but the basics. An old stove, an older refrigerator and white painted cabinets. He couldn’t even see a sink, but that was because the limb occupying her back porch blocked the early evening light—along with the sink itself. Part of that limb had punched through the window and was hanging like a bushy verdant waterfall nearly to the floor.
He heard her pull a deep breath, saw her slender shoulders rise. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that the Fates were having a field day with this woman. In the past few months, she’d lost her husband, had a child and been shafted—whether or not she wanted to admit it—by an itinerant who’d split with a chunk of her hard-earned cash. Considering the way the Fates had jerked her around today, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the broken window over the sink hadn’t just supplied the proverbial last straw.
The thought had him reaching for her shoulder. Before he could touch her, she let out a sigh and stepped away.
Frowning at himself, wondering what he’d thought he was going to do, he shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her head for the window by the refrigerator. She pushed open the unruffled white curtains to let in what light there was, then took an oil lamp from the top of the refrigerator and set in on the table.
He was thinking that the electricity must be out here, too, when she stooped to pick up the bar of soap that been knocked to the floor and headed for the sink, picking her way through the glass on the floor as she went. As if she tackled a jungle of foliage in her kitchen every day, she rustled her way through the leaves until she found what she was looking for.
Metal squeaked over the rush of water as his glance slipped down her long, windblown braid. Life here was as foreign to him as life on Mars. But nothing he’d encountered so far puzzled him more than this woman’s almost philosophical acceptance of what would have had anyone else he knew reaching for antacids, at the very least.
It was almost as if it hadn’t occurred to her to be upset just now. Luisa, his long-suffering cleaning lady, would have thrown her hands into the air and railed at the litany of saints she evoked for everything from world peace to a lost sock had she been faced with this mess. His mother—along with nearly every other woman he knew—would have stared blindly at the disorder, expecting someone, anyone, to materialize from somewhere and tend to it, lest she wreck her manicure.
Emily simply worked around it.
“You might want to wash,” she said, drying her hands with a towel she pulled from the refrigerator handle. The towel went over her shoulder as she reached into a cabinet. “The bathroom’s through there,” she said, nodding to a doorway on the other side of the refrigerator. “That would be easier than trying to get to the pump in here.”
He’d barely glanced past her when his brow furrowed. “The pump?”
“The water pump. I don’t have faucets.”
Curious, he pushed aside the bough hiding the gunmetal gray sink and stared at the tall, upright and decidedly old-fashioned metal spout with its long wooden handle. “This place must have been here since the turn of the century.”
“It has,” she replied over the clink of ice in a glass. “Mr. Clancy said the building was here when his father bought the place years ago. They sold it to us along with these two acres of land in exchange for a year’s work from Daniel. He worked for him for a wage after the land became ours.”
“You didn’t want to modernize?”
She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to keep the rose print wallpaper, too, tattered as it had been. She’d never had anything pretty on her walls before. But Daniel had stripped it and painted everything white.
“We were used to a simple house,” she said, reminding herself that this winter, she would repaint every room. If she got up her nerve, she might even pick colors that were outrageously bold. The only room she had painted so far was Anna’s and that was soft, shell pink. “The walls and the foundation were good, so Daniel only had to repair the roof and replace the windows.”
Daniel had been a good carpenter. He’d learned from his father and his father had raised more houses and barns than anyone in Haven County. There had even been a man in Hancock who would have hired Daniel to work in his cabinet shop, but Daniel had wanted to tend the land.
It had kept him closer to the old ways, made it easier for him to keep himself separate from their neighbors.
“I’m sure you must be hungry,” she said, refusing to let her thoughts carry her back when she was trying so hard to move forward. Ice cracked as she poured liquid over it. “I’ll put some antiseptic on those scrapes, then fix you something to eat.”
Soaping up after he’d given the handle a pump, Justin eyed the golden pie sitting on the stove. His breakfast of a large black coffee-to-go and two granola bars had worn off hours ago. “You don’t have to feed me,” he said, marveling at the way she minimized her lack. She couldn’t afford regular plumbing. He wasn’t about to take her food. “And my arm’s fine. It’s just bruised.”
“Your arm is not fine. You were out in that barn with the sore open and unprotected. It needs to be cleaned.
“And you didn’t have to help me, either,” she continued, her voice suddenly quiet. “But you did.” Gratitude shifted in her eyes as she held out a towel. “I know you said no thanks were necessary, but I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did for me and Anna today. So let me do what I can.” She lifted the towel a little higher. “Please?”
The thought of the barn and what had been in it already had him hesitating. Her unexpected plea had him hesitating even more.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Whatever he’d done, he’d done on instinct. When he’d dived for that cellar, he’d been protecting himself as much as he had her and her kid. “You gave me shelter. I’d say that makes us even.
“But I’ll take you up on the antiseptic,” he told her, ignoring the disagreement in her eyes as he took the towel she offered. She truly didn’t owe him anything. But he knew what it was like to feel obligated. If she hated the feeling as much as he did, he wouldn’t deny her the satisfaction of evening the score. “Where do you want me?”
Emily looked up at the mountain of male muscle towering over her. She didn’t know why he seemed so much bigger to her now than he had outside. But she didn’t think it wise to stand there watching his glance move over her face while she tried to figure it out. “It would help if you’d sit down,” she murmured and turned to gather supplies from the bathroom.
He’d drained the glass of lemonade she’d left for him on her well-scrubbed pine table and was leaning back in one of its straight-backed chairs when she returned and set everything on the table beside him. He was following her every move. She could feel it. But she didn’t let herself meet his eyes. She focused only on the fabric covering his biceps. She’d noticed the snags before. What she hadn’t noticed was the tear in the seam.
“I’ll fix your shirt for you,” she said, leaning over so she could lift his sleeve and see how far up the scrape went.
“Don’t bother. I have another one in the car. Wait a minute,” he muttered when he felt the sleeve scrape his sore skin. “I’ll just take it off.”
Before she could say a word, he’d bent his dark head and grabbed a handful of fabric between his shoulder blades. Seconds later, he dragged the garment over his head.
Emily swallowed hard as he dropped it to his knee. Until two years ago, Daniel had been the only man she’d seen in any state of undress. He’d worked hard and ate well, but his thin build had not been what one would call impressive. Justin’s…was. His shoulders were broad, every corded muscle in his tapering back and carved arms beautifully defined.
She’d seen pictures of statues depicting such beautifully proportioned men. She’d even seen pictures of men themselves in ads for skimpy underwear, though the first few times she’d encountered them while flipping through magazines at Mrs. Clancy’s and at the grocery store, she’d nearly turned pink with embarrassment.
The image of a half-naked man no longer startled her as it once had. Mary Woldridge, a checker at the market who’d become her friend, even said she was no fun to watch at the magazine rack anymore. The real thing, however, was rather disturbing. So was the four-inch-wide swath of bruised, raw and abraded skin that ran from Justin’s biceps to the top of his shoulder. Little splinters were visible between the streaks of blood that had dried and crusted in places, any one of which could have caught on his sleeve with his movements and caused a fresh jolt of discomfort.
He would have been terribly uncomfortable working with Mr. Clancy. But it was the thought of how he’d been hurting while he’d shielded her and her child that had her reaching to touch the skin below his reddened flesh.
“You’re already bruising,” she murmured. “Does it feel like you chipped bone?”
“I don’t think I did anything like that. It just feels a little sore.”
She met his eyes, sympathy in her own as she straightened. She needed more light.
Justin watched her turn away, the soft fabric of her dress shifting against her slender body as she moved across the room. The dress itself was modest to a fault. Demure, he supposed, though it wasn’t a word he recalled ever having reason to use before. The sleeves nearly reached her elbows and her delicate collarbone was barely exposed. But the memory of how she’d looked with the wind molding that fabric to her body had been burned into his brain. All too easily, he could picture the fullness of her high breasts, the curve of her hips, her long, shapely legs.
Thinking of how exquisitely she was shaped beneath that formless garment had his body responding in ways that were not wise to consider in such an intimate space. So he forced his attention to what she was doing as she turned back to the table and touched the match she struck to the wick of the oil lamp she’d set there. Moments later, a bright glow illuminated her lovely face. That light gleamed in her hair, adding shimmers of platinum to shades of silver and gold as she replaced the glass chimney and positioned the lamp near the jar of vividly colored flowers.
With the scrape of wood over scarred pine flooring, Emily tugged a chair next to his and sat down beside him.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
He held up the thumb of his left hand. “Just a couple of slivers. I can get them if you have any tweezers.”
She reached toward a gauze pad. “I have a needle,” she told him, pulling out the one she’d brought and sterilizing it in the wick’s flame. “You have them in your arm, too. Here,” she murmured, replacing the chimney once more. “Let me see.”
His bare chest was terribly distracting. Trying not to think of how incredibly solid it had felt, she took his thick wrist and moved his hand closer to the light. With his hand resting palm-up on her table, she could easily see two fine slivers of wood in the pad of his thumb.
His hands distracted her, too.
They were strong, broad and long-fingered. Good hands. Capable hands. Yet, they were nearly unblemished. There were no calluses, no scars, no healing scratches. Only the fresh-looking scrapes and nicks he’d earned that afternoon.
Fascinated, she started to touch the smooth pad at the base of his fingers, only to pull back as if she’d touched fire the instant she realized what she was doing.
“What’s the matter?”
With a sheepish smile, she ducked her head and went to work on his thumb, deftly slipping out a sliver with the needle and wiping it onto a gauze pad. “Your hands are very smooth. I’ve never seen a man’s hands that weren’t scarred and callused from years of work. Except maybe Dr. Fisher,” she amended, thinking of the kindly old physician in Hancock who’d delivered Anna. The other sliver joined the first. “But I can’t honestly say I paid any attention to them. Yours are the only ones I’ve noticed.”
“Is that good or bad?” He posed the question mildly, absorbed as much by her lack of guile as her brisk efficiency when she dabbed on peroxide with a cotton ball, then blotted at the bubbles. “No calluses, I mean?”
“There are some who would say that soft hands mean a person is idle. But Dr. Fisher is a very busy man. And you work with your mind.” She tipped her head, still looking intrigued as she finished with dabs of antibiotic cream. “Your hands don’t look soft, though. And they didn’t feel that way at all.”
“They didn’t?”
Emily kept her head down as she slowly wiped a bit of cream from her own fingers. “No,” she murmured, but she would give him no more than that. Her last observation had slipped out before she considered what she was saying. He didn’t need to know she could still imagine how comforting their solid, masculine weight had felt against her back when he’d wrapped her in his arms. He didn’t need to know how drawn she was by their strength. How drawn she was by him.
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
She thought he might be smiling—the way he had when he’d teased her about her chain saw. But he wasn’t smiling at all. He was watching her as if he knew very well she was thinking of his hands on her body. And she was. Though until his glance slowly wandered to her mouth, she hadn’t considered that he might have been thinking of that, too.
She wasn’t comfortable with the awareness shimmering between them. That was as obvious to Justin as the faint tremor in the breath she drew and the chips of sapphire darkening in her eyes. He wasn’t all that comfortable with it himself. But it was there, thickening the air, snaking through his body and washing wariness over Emily’s fragile features.
Pressing her hand to her stomach, she blinked twice and reached for the peroxide to continue with her task.
Clearly flustered, trying not to look it, she promptly knocked it over.
“Oh, mein!” She gasped, bumping the bottle again as she snatched for it. Solution spilled over the edge of the table. It pooled on the wood, splashed on his pants.
“I’ve got it.” Catching the bottle before it went over the edge itself, he turned it upright and saw her grab a towel.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, mopping at the wet spot on his thigh. “I wasn’t paying—”
“It’s okay. Really.” Catching her wrist, he stilled her frantic motions. “It’s okay,” he repeated, ducking his head so he could see her eyes. “Honest. No harm’s done.”
“I’m not usually so—”
“Emily.” Beneath his fingers, he could feel her pulse, its beat as frantic as a trapped bird’s. Incredibly with her mouth inches from his, his own didn’t feel much calmer. “You don’t need to be nervous with me.”
“I can’t seem to help it.”
His glance swept her guileless face. There wasn’t an ounce of cunning in this woman. Nothing false or deceptive about her. She didn’t seem to have any natural defenses at all.
Deliberately ignoring the urge to tug her closer, he slipped his hand from hers. “What was that you said?” he asked, thinking she needed to protect herself better if she was ever going to make it on her own. “What language?”
All she’d said was “Oh, my.” Emily told him that as she pulled back, handing him a towel for his pants, and made herself focus on wiping up the table. “It’s Pennsylvania Dutch.”
She must have been even more rattled than she’d thought to have reverted to the only language she’d heard spoken until she was six years old. She rarely spoke the old German dialect at all anymore. Except to Anna once in a while, so she’d know something of her heritage. She’d learned English in school and had spoken it most of her life, but she’d worked hard over the past two years to pronounce her words the same as her neighbors. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to belong.
Desperately.
Something like caution entered Justin’s deep voice. “Isn’t that what the Amish speak?”
“In their homes and to each other. In the Old Order communities, anyway,” she said, returning her attention to his abraded arm. “But they speak English, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was Amish,” she said, gently wiping antiseptic over his scraped skin. “And we were Old Order.”
She turned away, picking up her needle again. When she turned back, she frowned at his biceps. “You have one here that looks awfully deep.” Apology touched her eyes even as she began picking at the stubborn splinter. “I’m sorry if it hurts.”
