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“The place is a dump. My sister—” How to tell her the cabin had been Leigh’s responsibility and that since her death he’d neglected it. Just as he neglected the animals, the books…Jenni.
“It’s not so bad.”
Not bad? One of the curtains hosted a foot-long tear. He hated to think of what lurked behind the doors of the bathroom and two bedrooms. Even after the maid’s cleaning.
Shanna took a brimming bucket from under the sink.
Striding into the narrow kitchen, he tossed the flower on the counter. “The sink’s leaking?”
“Good one, Doc. You get the prize.” She handed him the bucket. “Would you empty it in the toilet, please, while I put on the kettle?”
Just like her not to mention the condition of the house. He headed for the bathroom and dumped the water. About to leave, he stopped and looked. This was her space. Her secret space. Female essentials mussed the narrow, beige Formica around the antiquated sink and lined the chipped tub. Two blue-and-yellow combs, a big tube of hand lotion, glycerine soaps stuffed in a woven basket, a wooden tree strung with those ear danglers, Scooby-Doo lip balm— He did a double take. Scooby-Doo? Snorting softly, he shook his head. She was a rare something, this Shanna. And you’re in trouble, Rowan.
“Toilet working okay?”
He whipped around, the bucket clanging against a drawer. Arms crossed, she leaned in the doorway, one bare ankle slung over the other. Behind him the tiny round window let in the day’s light, tipping her cheekbones with rose.
“Yes,” he said, voice gruff. “It works.”
She smiled, glanced at the counter where he’d tarried. “Find anything interesting?”
He stepped toward the doorway. Her smile faded. A bouquet of meadows in summer caressed him. Oh, yeah. All woman. Easy angles, sweet-eyed. “Maybe I have.”
Her nostrils flared. “And it would be…?”
Today, three filigree chains swung like wind chimes from each of her tiny lobes. He tapped a trio. “Just…” You. “Little things.”
“Is there one in particular you favor?” Those blue eyes ringed in black swallowed him.
He perused the edge of her jaw, the line of her throat. “There is.”
A snippet of air against his knuckles. Hers.
Once, twice, his thumb grazed the satin of her neck. He tilted her chin. Her sweet mouth. Waiting for him. God, decades down the road he’d look at her features and be captivated. Still.
Paralyzed, he stared. Giving one woman, this woman the rest of his life? Out of the question. He wasn’t about to chance fate. Fate could involve kids. Fate had taken his parents’ plane into a mountainside. Left him and Leigh orphaned.
Like Jen.
Settling down was not in his Tarot cards. Neither was waking up beside the same woman until he was ninety-plus. Trouble was, within the space of two days his ethics had taken a lopsided turn out to left field. Because of her. Shanna.
Caught in her eyes, finger crooked under her chin, he wanted to wrap her up like a Valentine’s gift, kiss her till the cows came home, lead her through the open door of the bedroom five feet away, fly her to the stars.
But not forever.
“Mike?” she whispered.
He dropped his hand and stepped back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to go.” Two strides and he was down the hall. “I’ll find a guy in town to paint this joint.”
In a flash she was on his heels. “My brother can do it.”
He stopped. “Your brother.”
“Why not? He could use the money.”
“Fine.” She was close again. Too close.
The kettle whistled. He headed for the door, yanked it open.
“Where do I buy the supplies?” she called.
“Spot O’ Color. It’s on Riverside and—”
“I know where it is.”
“Great. Tell your brother to get on it ASAP. I want the dairy sold before fall.”
He slammed out of the cabin before she answered. Before he changed his mind, stormed back inside and kissed her like…hell, like a crazy man.
Chapter Three
She washed the bag of the last big-bellied black-and-white Holstein with Santex disinfectant. “Almost done, Rosebud.”
In the metal stanchion, the cow chewed her cud peaceably. Shanna hung the Westfalia Surge milking unit on a hook and affixed the suction cups to the animal’s sanitized teats. Hiss-click-hiss-click. The machine streamed milk to the sixteen-hundred-gallon stainless steel tank in the milk house.
Dressed in green overalls and rubber boots, Shanna knew a contentment she hadn’t felt since growing up on the Lassers’ farm. She liked the cows’ broad, docile faces, their big, dark eyes, their gentle natures. She fancied the classic bovine odor within the big flatbarn: a fusion of hay and manure and sweaty hide. And, physical as it was, she liked the work.
She’d like it more if she could stop thinking about the doctor and those moments in her washroom. When she thought—knew—he’d wanted to kiss her.
For the past two days, since striding from the cabin, he’d kept himself and Jenni hidden. Late at night the Jeep’s headlights would come down the lane and stop at the farmhouse. The next morning, after milking was finished, the car was gone again. She wondered if the child came and went with him.
Ah, why worry? she thought, releasing Rosebud from her milking apparatus. He made it clear you weren’t to interfere.
Prickles ran up her nape.
He stood five feet away, hands shoved deep into the pockets of black trousers. The sleeves of his gray dress shirt were flipped back on his forearms, the collar liberated of its tie.
Her breath quickened.
Ignoring the broody expression on her employer’s face, she pressed a wall button and, on a clang of metal, relinquished the last group of ten cows of their stalls.
“Checking to make sure I’m doing my job, Doctor?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Down at the far end of the parlor, old Oliver Lloyd, whistling to Tim McGraw’s “Where the Green Grass Grows,” hosed manure and urine from the step-dam gutter. On Tuesday, the slurry man would haul away the two-week store. The animals clopped down the alleyway toward the open double doors at the rear of the long barn. Shanna tagged behind them with Michael at her shoulder.
Approaching the paddock where the cows fed at extended troughs filled with a silage of corn and alfalfa, she scanned the doctor’s dress slacks—with creases down those long runner’s legs—and his black buckled shoes. “Fresh patties ahead. Sure you want to walk through here in those?”
His lips moved. “Where you going?”
Away. Far away. “To check the water system.”
He surveyed the galvanized vat near the opposite gate. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, but I check it regularly.”
He stared out over herd and land. A cluster of sparrows chirped in the eaves. From the western hills, the sun slanted long, spindly shadows beside the cattle as they found their places at the feed stanchions, tails lazily swishing flies.
“You’re an amazing woman, Shanna McKay.” He spoke without looking at her. “You come here out of the blue, answer my ad personally, befriend my niece who’s barely talked to a soul in three months, and milk ninety head of cows twice daily as if it’s the most natural thing for a woman to do.”
“It is,” she said and meant it.
He turned, his gray eyes searching hers. “No,” he replied. “It’s not. It’s damned hard work.”
In the natural light, he looked exhausted. Beneath the shirt, his big shoulders slumped a little. Shadows, like the prints of inked thumbs, lay under his eyes.
“And doctoring isn’t difficult?” she asked, beating back the urge to lay a cool hand to his cheek. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him.
A rueful smile. “At times.”
“There you go. All jobs have their rough moments.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he said, “I don’t know how you do it. But then you’re unique.”
“That’s not what you said in the cabin.”
His eyes returned to hers. “What did I say in the cabin?”
“That I was different.”
He flicked one of the three-inch gold dream-catchers she’d slipped into her ears at dawn. “Unique,” he repeated softly. A corner of his lips curved. “And possibly a little atypical.”
She felt the look he gave the ball cap controlling her messy hair clean to her toes. She wished she wasn’t in hot, heavy barn gear, but in some light, airy thing. Ah, who was she kidding? She wasn’t the light, airy type.
He looked back at the land. He did that a lot, she noticed. Gazed off as if taking a detour from what was on his mind.
A slight bump rode high on his long, thin nose. An austere, masculine mold cast his lips. Was he a timid kisser? She doubted it; she’d bet he was an openmouthed, migrant sort of guy. A tongue dancer. How many of those cute nurses have you kissed?
More than I want to know.
She headed for the metal vat. Plunging her bare arm into the cold water, she felt along the bottom for the outflow. Good, free of blockage. Stepping back, she shook her arm and swiped at the water droplets.
“Here.” Michael rolled down a sleeve. For a dime’s value of seconds she stood beguiled as he dried her hand and forearm with a strip of gray that matched his eyes.
His hands were large, the knuckles heavy with a light dusting of hair. She envisioned those hands holding a scalpel. Or maybe pressing a tummy searching for abnormalities and ailments. She envisioned his hands on her tummy.
She looked up and found his eyes dark with wonder, his mouth tight, the tiny scar pale. He had thick, spiky lashes. Black as pitch. How would they feel tickling her lips, her fingers?
Get real, Shanna.
Her hands reeked of cows; his had been washed with Ivory. Her hair was jammed under a Seahawks cap. His lay in a short, crisp style.
No matter how she viewed it, he was the princely physician and she the mere milkmaid.
His thumbpad, gentle and strong, brushed the veins of her wrist and, for a heartbeat, rested in her palm. An unfamiliar touch. One, if she were honest, she’d never experienced. Certainly not with Wade. She shivered. This dreadful magnetism was wrong.
“You’re chilled.”
Mercy. That bass voice. She looked to where his fingers cupped her wrist, where her flesh goose-bumped. How discordant, the magnitude of his hand to her bones. Argh! Absurd, fantasizing about a man whose knuckles and flipped sleeves had her insides on a wave drill. In social circles they were as comparable as a Lamborghini and a farm pickup. She was tailored to guys like Wade with his Tony Lama boots, black Stetsons, pearl-buttoned shirts—and smelling of saddles and horse sweat. Michael was…a surgeon.
Carefully, she stepped back and folded her arms over her chest. Hiding. “Nothing wrong with the valve. Truth is, the entire dairy’s in great shape.”
“So’s your kitchen drainpipe.”
“It’s fixed?”
“Put in a new seal when I got home from work.”
“You?”
A pleased little-boy smile. “I wasn’t always a doctor, Shanna. I learned to use a wrench before a stethoscope.”
Heat moved up her neck. “Sorry, I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
“I know.” They looked at each other for a long moment. He said, “I also bought a couple tins of paint. They’re on the doormat. Oliver can help. I should have thought of it before.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m not used to this selling business.”
Her smile faded. She had no business telling him what to do. No business feeling the way she did. About him or the child. But telling and feeling were two traits she’d never governed with discretion.
“You know, Doc,” she said, heading for the barn doors. “You really should reconsider and keep this place for yourself and your niece. The second you sign on that dotted line, it’s over. And that,” she speared him with a glance, “will be a flipping shame.”
Together they entered the warm, musky interior of the milking parlor.
A flipping shame? Michael thought, striding beside her. Dammit, woman, where do you come off with your assessments?
She knew nothing about the pain and fear he endured living in this place, in this community. What did she know about medical facilities short of resources, funding and expertise? What did she know about a life cut off in its prime?
“It’s like that Amy Grant song,” she continued. “‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ This place has all the amenities you’d ever want for raising a child. Fresh air, peace, quiet. Once you sell, it’ll—”
He stopped. “Did you not understand what I said the other day? I don’t need your advice on what’s best for this place or—”
She swung around. “Or what, Doctor? You’ll fire me? We’ve been there, done it, framed the picture.” She lifted the Seahawks cap and raked back the jungle of her hair. “Look. All I’m suggesting is don’t rush into something you may regret a month from now.”
