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It had taken his mom a while to forgive him for breaking up with Sara Jennings after he’d graduated from veterinary school, but ever since then she’d been on an on-again, off-again mission to find him a spouse. But he wasn’t in the market for a wife. He had too much he needed to accomplish before he even thought about taking on the responsibility of a committed relationship.
That didn’t stop him from wondering about Rebecca Peters, though. He couldn’t help being drawn by her attempts to care for animals that clearly made her uneasy, and the compassion that somehow pushed her past the worst of her discomfort. She was dealing with them, and her fear, far better than he had anticipated. There was no denying the physical pull he felt toward her, either, but he hadn’t been with a woman in months, so that chemistry was easy enough to explain. What had him most curious as he left Danbury Way, though, was the suspicion that she wasn’t all that happy with the reason she was in Rosewood.
There had been no mistaking the unease that had slipped into her expression when he’d asked what had brought her there, or how quickly she’d shied from the subject. Since she was still doing the same type of work she’d done in the city, he didn’t think the move was job-related, though he’d be the first to admit that he knew zip to squat about what it was she did for a living. Or why. All he knew for sure was that it had been a long time since he’d met a woman who so thoroughly intrigued him. He also knew for a fact that he’d never met one who seemed so clearly out of her element.
He just had no idea how totally out of her element she was until two mornings later when he picked her up for their day in the Catskills.
Chapter Three
He really shouldn’t be taking the afternoon off.
That thought had occurred to Joe more than once in the past couple of days. On any given weekend, the only spare time he had was Saturday afternoon. His Sundays were committed to chores around the house he was slowly renovating, and maintaining the five acres of property that provided elbow room for him and his pets. Sunday afternoon, weather permitting, he also tried to squeeze in an hour or so at Rosewood Park with his dogs to keep them socialized, before heading back home to finish whatever he’d left undone or clean up the mess he’d made doing it.
His weekday evenings inevitably seemed just as crowded.
With his current time constraints, he’d thought about calling Rebecca and asking her to just drop the questionnaire by the office so he could work on his loan application. The only reason he hadn’t was because he wasn’t in the habit of backing out on any sort of commitment—unless an emergency arose and he had no choice.
Poor planning on his part did not constitute an emergency. The good news, however, was that he’d only be gone for a few hours.
It was with that mental concession that he pulled onto Danbury Way.
The moment he did, he noticed the guy in front of the house on the corner stop mulching leaves with his lawn mower and follow his progress into Rebecca’s driveway. On the other side of the street, an older woman leaned on her rake, peering at him from beneath the rim of her purple gardening hat. Two trim, middle-aged gals in matching jogging suits pulled their attention from the Gone With the Wind-like mansion at the end of the street to check out his truck, him and the stylish woman emerging from the door of the Turners’ house on their way by.
He had the distinct feeling that not much got past the residents in this particular neighborhood as he headed to where Rebecca stepped off the low porch. The joggers had already continued on, their pace uninterrupted but their necks cranked back so they wouldn’t miss anything. He had no idea who else still watched them, though. His concerns were with more practical matters as he watched Rebecca tuck her keys into a small, backpack-style leather purse while trying not to drop the manila envelope that probably held her questionnaire.
Between the quilted, rust velvet, elaborately embroidered vest she wore with her matching scarf, mustard-colored turtleneck and slim, embellished jeans, she looked more like an ad for trendy autumn wear than someone actually planning to hike.
“Hi,” she called, walking toward him.
“Hi, yourself.” He forced himself not to frown at her boots. They looked very much like those she’d worn the first day they’d met, sturdy enough but with heels way too high and totally impractical for a walk in the wilderness.
Thinking she looked a little preoccupied, he decided to deal with first things first. “How’s the patient?”
“He hates me. They both do.”
“That good, huh?”
“I don’t know why else they leap out at me the way they do. I was getting out of the shower and Columbus jumped at me from behind the toilet.” The little monster had startled her so badly, she’d screamed. It had served him right that his cone collar had gotten him jammed between the cabinet and the wastebasket. “Magellan did it last night when I got up to turn off the TV.”
To keep an image of her body, naked and dripping, from forming, he kept his focus on her face. “Did they hiss at you?” he asked, his forehead furrowing with the effort. “Or swipe at you with their paws?”
“No,” she replied, as if scaring her were quite enough.
“Then, they’re probably just playing. ‘Pounce’ is like a game with cats.”
“Playing? I thought they were trying to stop my heart.”
He tipped his head, nodded toward his truck. “Why don’t you tell me what else they do while we’re driving. Maybe I can explain the behavior so you can deal with it better.”
“Would you?”
The phenomenon was interesting. He’d never felt gut-punched when a woman simply smiled at him. But that was what he felt when he saw the gratitude in her beautiful blue eyes. “Be glad to.”
As if aware that she’d just betrayed some vulnerability, she quickly looked away. He couldn’t begin to imagine why she should be uncomfortable needing help with something she didn’t understand. He just knew she did in the moments before he nodded to her boots.
“Can you walk any distance in those?”
Rebecca glanced at her feet, then to the rugged, lug-soled hiking boots Joe wore with his comfortably worn jeans and a gray fleece shirt. Her chunky heels were barely two inches high, practically flat as far as she was concerned. Thinking it couldn’t possibly be that difficult to walk through a meadow, she gave a shrug. “I can run in stilettos if I have to.”
Pure doubt creased his features. “You can?”
“I did it all the time in New York. Chasing down cabs,” she explained. “But you know, Joe, I never actually agreed to do this hike thing,” she reminded him, wanting to keep the record straight. “If you want, we can just go for a latte while I explain what I’m looking for on my questionnaire.”
“It’s too nice a day to be cooped up inside.”
“We can sit at a table outside, then. Latte and Lunch has café—”
“I don’t care for stuff in my coffee.” His eyes narrowed on hers. Like every other time he’d seen her, she had her hair smoothed back from her face and clipped tightly at her nape. On any other woman, he would have given little thought to the simple style. On her, it seemed to enhance that don’t-touch-me sophistication—and made him want to set it free.
Minutes ago, he would have taken her up on her offer to stay in town, simply because of the time it would save. Seeing her again, listening to her logic, the hike became something he wouldn’t miss for the world.
“You’re not nervous about hiking, are you?”
Joe watched her open her mouth, only to see her close it again. Like the other day in his office when she wouldn’t directly admit to being afraid of Columbus, he sensed now that she didn’t like to admit that there was something she couldn’t handle.
“Of course not,” she finally said.
“Good.” He didn’t know if it was stubbornness, determination or simple obstinacy that pushed the woman. All he knew was that he wanted to see how far it would take her. “Because I promised Bailey he could go for a run.”
“Bailey?”
They’d reached his truck. With the patterns of leaves reflecting off the windows, it was hard to see inside—which was why Rebecca hadn’t noticed that Joe wasn’t alone until he opened the driver’s door.
“He’s a sweetheart. I promise. Come on, boy.”
The simple command had barely followed his assurance before seventy pounds of blissfully panting German shepherd leaped to the ground and planted himself on his haunches by the open door.
From the corner of his eye, Joe saw Rebecca stiffen. “He’s totally harmless. Honest.” He curled his fingers around her wrist, drawing her attention from the dog to him. Aware of how skittish she was about animals, he wouldn’t have brought the dog had Bailey not been the most gentle canine on the planet. “He’s just going to say hi. Okay?”
Rebecca couldn’t have imagined anything that would have made her tear her eyes from the large amount of tan-and-black fur sitting six feet away. But Joe’s touch had done just that. She wasn’t sure, either, if it was the odd, calming effect that touch had on her or the quiet reassurance in his deep voice that had her giving him a barely discernible nod.
“Okay, Bailey,” she heard him say, “come meet Rebecca.”
As if pulled by a string, the dog immediately popped up on all fours, walked over to her and sat back down again. She’d barely felt Joe’s hand slip away before the dog held up its paw and, tongue lolling, blinked his bright eyes at her.
“He wants to shake.”
This was a bit more than she’d bargained far. There was only one reason that she hadn’t already backed out of this nondate with the man standing almost protectively beside her. And it was a nondate as far as she was concerned. Joe was her support system for the cats. Even before he’d offered to explain their behavior, she’d figured that as long as she had to be with them for another two months, it would be infinitely easier on her if she would ask him to do just that. As far as subjecting herself to the wilds was concerned, her less-than-enthusiastic willingness to face the experience was strictly for self—and job—improvement.
Those who knew her would say that if she was inspired by anyone, it would be some iconic fashion designer such as Coco Chanel or Yves St. Laurent. But the bit of inspiration she’d always remembered had come from a quote Mrs. Morretti, who owned a little Italian restaurant not far from where Rebecca had grown up, kept taped to the mirror above her cash register.
You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt.
Regardless of the fact that both Mrs. Morretti and Mrs. Roosevelt could have used some major style advice with their respective wardrobes, Rebecca had found the challenge pushing her off and on over the years. It pushed her now.
A hike held all the appeal of a root canal for her. Going would be the self-improvement part of the program. As for the job perspective, she figured the hike might help her better understand the suburban male, and thus better understand his apathy toward fashion. If she could find an angle, she might even be able to get another article out of it.
Trying not to look as tentative as she felt, remembering that Eleanor’s advice applied to the dog, too, she swallowed hard, reached down and when he didn’t bare his teeth, shook his paw.
“Nice…dog.” Not sure what else one said to a canine, she straightened as Bailey pulled back his paw and watched him look to his owner.
Joe gave him a pat on the head and motioned him back into the truck.
“It won’t take long to get to the trailhead,” he said, walking her around the blunt nose of the vehicle to the passenger’s door. “Less than half an hour or so. I brought granola bars, trail mix and water. If you want anything else, we can stop at the market on the way out of town.”
Not wanting to alter the experience with a request for a bagel and a latte, Rebecca told him that whatever he normally took with him was fine. Waving to Mrs. Fulton across the street, she climbed into the cab of the truck and promptly stiffened again.
Bailey, looking expectant, had claimed the console in the middle. The dog also apparently knew he couldn’t stay there. The moment Joe climbed in on the other side, the dog turned in the confined space, brushing her forehead with his long tail and settled on one of the small jump seats behind them.
She hugged the door. “You seem to be good with them. Animals, I mean.”
His deep chuckle sounded easy and oddly relaxing. “I hope so. I’d starve if I wasn’t. You never had any pets growing up?”
She couldn’t tell if he’d asked because he couldn’t imagine such a possibility, or because he didn’t want to talk about himself. Having never met a man who didn’t consider himself his favorite subject, she decided he simply found her lack of animal companionship as a child somewhat incomprehensible. Or, maybe, unfortunate.
Having been under a bit of stress when she’d first met him, she couldn’t quite recall if she’d mentioned the impracticalities of pet ownership in the city, or if having one had simply never occurred to her or her mom. If she had, he didn’t seem to mind if she repeated herself as they left Danbury Way with her neighbors still watching and headed for the Catskills.
Except to go shopping in Albany, Rebecca hadn’t been outside Rosewood since she’d arrived. She had also never in her life set foot in a national or state park. She knew there were people in the city who kept summer homes or lodges in New England where they “escaped” during the summer or skied in the winter. She wasn’t one of them. Neither were her friends, though Carrie Klein, her onetime roommate and unfortunately no relation to Calvin or Anne, had dated a stockbroker with a great little place in the Hamptons. Her vacations were always to the fashion meccas of the world. Rome. Milan. Paris. Stateside, she stuck with Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Or the beach. She liked to be where there was room service, cabs and at least some semblance of nightlife.
She didn’t consider herself spoiled. Heaven knew there had been times that the only reason she could afford to go out with her girlfriends from work was because the happy hour hors d’oeuvres were free so she didn’t have to pay for a meal. The designer clothes she wore came from sample sales, or sales at Barneys or Saks, but mostly from the Vogue clothes closet, which housed cast-off items from photo shoots.
Roughing it meant having to walk thirty blocks in the rain because she couldn’t get a cab. Though she wasn’t about to mention it, within five minutes of leaving Joe’s truck to follow a narrow dirt path through the woods, she would have preferred a walk in a downpour from Union Square to East 59th to the trek she was on now.
The trail was too narrow to walk side by side, so she followed Joe into the forest with bushes brushing her on either side. She kept shifting her focus between the bright orange day pack slung across his strong back to the vegetation attacking her legs and snapping beneath her feet. The dog had run ahead. He returned now with a short piece of tree branch in his mouth. Obviously, he didn’t mind the taste of dirt.
“How far is it to the meadow?” she asked.
She watched Joe take the limb from the dog and toss it ahead of them. With the dog making the bushes rustle as he took off after his new toy, she glanced down in time to avoid tripping over a skinny tree root sticking up through the leaves and pine needles. Seeing bits of bush clinging to her jeans, she brushed them off.
Joe glanced at her over his shoulder, waited for her to catch up. “Only a couple of miles.”
“Miles?” They were going miles?
“Only a couple,” he repeated. “It’s an easy walk.”
Easy was a relative term. In the interests of job research and self-improvement, however, she trudged on.
“Why do you do this?” she asked, falling into step beside him as the trail mercifully widened.
“I like being outside.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m cooped up inside most of the week.”
“Why else?”
Joe adjusted the weight of his day pack. “Because it’s a great way to unwind. It puts you back to basics.” Her inquisitiveness reminded him of his four-year-old nephew. Why was his favorite word.
“So it’s a primitive thing? Like you’re feeding your inner pioneer or something. You know,” she coaxed, when a frown creased his face, “like your inner child.”
He knew all about the inner child. His little sister was a psychologist who’d blithely informed him after a family dinner last year that his lack of a serious romantic interest was probably his inner child’s fear to commit. That remark had only fed his mother’s fears that, unlike his married siblings, he was going to wind up old and alone, which was no doubt why she’d resumed her efforts to find him a suitable mate.
He loved his family. He just wished they’d stay out of his love life.
“It’s not that complicated,” he assured her. “I just like being where you can hear the wind in the trees and get some exercise.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to join a gym?”
“Why pay to run on a treadmill when you can do this for free?”
She swiped at something small and pesky buzzing past her ear. “Because there are no bugs?”
“These aren’t bad at all. You should be out here during mosquito season.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I’m not crazy about things that suck blood.”
“So you don’t date lawyers?”
“Not anymore,” she muttered.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Joe glance toward her. The smile that deepened the vertical lines carved in his cheeks faded with his curiosity.
“Burned bad?”
The only lawyer she’d ever dated had been Jack. “Barely singed,” she murmured, though the experience had definitely contributed to the void that didn’t feel quite so awful at the moment. Marveling at that, she started to smile at the man beside her, only to notice that the path had turned—and that there were no longer any trees on their left.
They were now parallel to a ravine. With Joe between her and the edge of that rocky drop-off and a wall of trees to her right, she deliberately edged toward the foliage.
“Do heights bother you?”
Clutching the insulated water bottle he’d given her, she quickly shook her head. Heights normally didn’t bother her at all. “I used to work on the thirty-second floor. My apartment was on the tenth.” There had also been glass or a guardrail between her and all that space.
It only looked to be about ten feet to the bottom. A single story. Still, with all the rocks down there, a fall would hurt. Joe, however, seemed totally unfazed by how close he was to the edge as he told her that this section of the trail was short, only an eighth of a mile or so. Short or not, she needed to pay less attention to how he actually enjoyed being so far from civilization and more attention to where she was putting her feet.
Narrowing her focus to the path, she concentrated on where she stepped while he pointed out a squirrel darting up a tree and Bailey trotted ahead of him. It was only when the trail curved again, trees once more hugging both sides of it, and the path angled what seemed like straight up that she let herself be distracted by the scream of her thigh muscles and the rustling in the bushes.
She wanted to know if there was anything carnivorous in these woods. He told her there probably was, but that on the carnivore side, he’d personally never encountered anything bigger than a fox. What she’d heard was probably just a rabbit.
