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“And we believe her, especially since Marti talked to some woman named Emmalina—”
“She was the wife of the minister at the time,” Kate filled him in.
“Right. And this Emmalina said Gram went to talk to the minister, that while she waited for him, she talked to Emmalina about being in love with a married man. And between the things she said and the fact that Gram was all wrapped up in a big coat on a warm day, we believe she was hiding a pregnancy,” Ry said.
“Noah also told me that Theresa says Hector took her baby from her before she even saw it or held it or knew if it was a boy or a girl.”
“We still aren’t sure if that’s a figment of Gram’s imagination or not.”
“But if it’s true, then that baby—which would be as old as our parents by now—could be what Theresa wants back,” Kate concluded.
“So you know plenty.”
“Am I not supposed to?” Kate asked, hoping she hadn’t gotten her brother into trouble.
“No, it’s fine. Anyway, this dream Gram has is that the baby is crying for her. She has problems with depression most of the time but when she has this dream, she really gets bummed out. She ended up crying all afternoon and there was nothing her nurse Mary Pat or I could do to cheer her up.”
“I feel so badly for her,” Kate said. She couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to have a child and then have it taken from her.
“Yeah, it’s lousy,” Ry agreed.
It was definitely easier to talk to him without looking at that handsome face, with his back draped in towels, without touching him while the heat packs did their job, and Kate was feeling more herself.
“We’ve notified this Tyson character that we intend to sue him for restitution over the land,” Ry went on to say. “Our lawyers are putting the finishing touches on that this week, but I think I’m going to have to take the bull by the horns over the baby. Do you know Tyson?”
Kate decided enough time had passed with the heat packs applied to his shoulders and since she felt she could better deal with massaging him, she removed the towels and packs. But before she answered Ry’s question, she warmed more oil between her hands and said, “I’m going to start on your spine to get everything in line before I work on your shoulder.”
“Sure, whatever,” he said.
Talking to him about his grandmother had helped dispel some of her reaction to him because this time when she began the massage, she had something to think about other than how smooth and sleek his skin was.
“Yes, I know Hector Tyson,” she said then, finally responding to what he’d asked. “Everyone does. He’s a cranky old man like my grandfather. In fact, I’ll be seeing Hector as soon as we’re done here. I’m sure you know about that holding barn he bought out from under you to try to keep Home-Max from coming in?”
“Yeah, I know about that.”
“Well, he’s closed on the deal and he wants the title. I agreed to deliver it to him tonight.”
“You’re a masseuse who moonlights as a messenger?”
“I’m a masseuse who’s also the city clerk.”
“Seriously?”
“The city clerk job in Northbridge is only a part-time position—we just aren’t big enough to need one full-time. And since being a masseuse in a small town is also not a huge moneymaker, I do both jobs.”
“Ah, that’s why you were only here this afternoon, not this morning,” he said, although his ah was tinged with some pleasure as she worked her way from his waist upward and began to address those wide shoulders of his, paying particular attention to the injured one.
“So why don’t I go with you when we’re finished here and you can introduce me?” he suggested then.
“I can think of about 100 reasons why not,” she answered before thinking better of it.
“Why is that?”
Of course he would ask, and now that her runaway mouth had gotten her into it, what was she going to say? That she was worried about her own visceral responses to him? That she didn’t want to risk what might happen if she was with him any more than necessary? That the rock-solid muscles of his back were not the kind of “rock solid” she was looking for and so she considered him a waste of her valuable time?
“I just don’t think that would be a good idea,” she hedged. “I’m going to Hector’s house as a civil servant. I can’t bring a date.”
“Who said anything about a date?”
She wished she hadn’t.
“No one,” she backpedaled. “I’m just saying that that’s what it would look like to Hector. And then you’d attack him and—”
“I’m not going to attack an old man. I just want to talk to him. Wouldn’t it be better to start off with an introduction from someone he knows? Someone who can say I’m family now?”
She didn’t appreciate having that table turned on her. But she did know that her brother would want her to help the Graysons in any way she could, especially in getting to the bottom of things for Theresa.
Plus now that she’d shot off her mouth about going to Hector Tyson’s house tonight and then made the other slips of the tongue that had compounded things, if she didn’t concede, this was apt to become a much bigger deal than she wanted it to. And then that could get back to her brother and it all just seemed like it could snowball if she didn’t bite the bullet and let Ry Grayson have his way….
“Ouch!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, not realizing that in the process of working on his shoulder her own frustration might have made her rougher than she should have been.
She was more careful as she stretched his arm toward his back.
“So what do you say?” he asked. “Will you do the honors with old man Tyson? Otherwise I’m just gonna follow you from here so I know how to get to his place and we’ll end up there at the same time anyway.”
“You weren’t planning to go tonight until you heard I was going,” she accused.
“But now that I know you are, I might as well trail you—it’s easier than finding him on my own. So what’ll it be? Together with an introduction—the way a family member would do with another family member? Or some awkward, coincidental, synchronized arrival on the old man’s doorstep that’ll be harder for you to explain?”
Kate was finished with his massage and rather than be quick about answering him, she left the room to get another warm, damp towel. As she laid it across his back and shoulders when she returned, she sighed elaborately and said, “I suppose—since you are family now—you can tag along.”
“Not gracious, but I’ll take it,” he said.
After another few minutes of silence that she let lapse to make it clear she didn’t appreciate being coerced into something she didn’t want to do, Kate used the damp towel while it was still warm to rub the oil off his back, hating that it gave her a tiny thrill to do it and to hear his sighs of satisfaction when she did.
And now her time with him wasn’t going to end here, she thought, knowing that it was also not a good sign that that excitement she’d been trying to dress up as dread in anticipation of his massage had returned with the prospect of taking him with her to Hector Tyson’s house.
But the massage and taking him to Hector’s house were one-time and one-time-only occurrences, she told herself. After this, there wouldn’t be any reason for her to even see Ry Grayson, let alone spend time with him. Or touch him.
If she could just get through the next hour or so, this would all be over with and she could go back to her single-minded husband-hunting.
That meant going home to her apartment to check the two Internet dating services she’d joined, and looking through the catalog of men she’d received in the mail today from Partner-Finders—the matchmaking firm she’d signed up with in Billings.
Stubborn determination—that’s what she had. Stubborn determination to find herself a mate.
And she wasn’t going to let Ry Grayson get in the way of it.
Even if the feel of every taut tendon and hard muscle of his back seemed burned indelibly into her brain.
Chapter Three
“I told you people before and I’ll tell you again,” Hector Tyson shouted, “these are nothing but the ramblings of a crazy woman and no, there was no baby, let alone one that I took away from her! And I don’t need to talk to anybody who’s threatening to sue me and trying to put me out of business on top of it!”
The old man redirected his venom from Ry to Kate. “First your brother Noah brought that Grayson woman he just married and now you bring this Grayson. If you Perrys don’t quit bringing them to my house, you’re not going to be welcome here, either! Now both of you get out!”
“I’m sorry we upset you, Hector,” Kate said, “but—”
“But nothing! Just get out!”
Kate wasn’t fond of Hector Tyson but she also didn’t like having been a part of aggravating him. And since the man was eighty-four years old and his face was now the color of beet juice with a vein throbbing in his temple, she was worried he might have a stroke or a heart attack.
“Let’s go,” she urged Ry, who was glaring at the cantankerous old man.
“I’ll leave,” he told Hector, “but don’t think this is over by any means. I believe there was a baby and I’m going to find out what happened to it, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“That’s not making it better,” Kate pointed out. “Let’s just go.”
Ry apparently felt the need to give Hector the hard stare for another moment. The hard stare that Hector was returning unwaveringly from squinted eyes.
But after that additional moment, Ry turned on his heels and went with Kate from the living room, across the entrance hall and through the front door of the Tyson home.
“Well, that was pleasant,” she said facetiously once they were outside in the fresh evening air again.
Ry laughed. “Ah, come on, you can’t tell me anything to do with that guy is ever pleasant. You said yourself that he’s cranky.”
Kate was surprised by how quickly Ry could switch gears. He’d been arguing heatedly with Hector for the last twenty minutes, but now he was once again as calm and relaxed as he’d been before meeting the surly elderly man.
“Was that all an act in there?” she asked as they walked to her car. Ry had ridden his motorcycle to his massage so Kate had driven them to Hector Tyson’s house.
“An act?” he parroted.
“I thought you were as mad as Hector was and now you’re happy as a clam again.”
“Ooh, clams sound good,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door for her and waited for her to get in. “I’d like to wring that old coot’s scrawny neck, but I’m not mad at you, so why would I take it out on you? Or let it ruin the rest of this warm summer night?”
That was reasonable. And levelheaded. “I’m glad you didn’t take it out on me. I’m just surprised that you can shake it off so easily.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t expect this to be amiable. It went about the way I thought it would. No sense stewing or brooding over it.”
Or throwing a tantrum, which was what she’d come to expect from men in her past and had thought she might be in line for again now. But Ry merely closed her door and went around the front end of her small sedan.
As he did, her eyes went with him, drinking in the view of him in jeans and a plain white crew-neck T-shirt that fitted him like a second skin and seemed to throw into relief not only that back she’d had her hands on such a short while ago, but also a chest and a set of flat, to-die-for washboard abs. And he didn’t brood, stew or throw tantrums. Kate appreciated that.
He got into the passenger seat then and once again said, “Clams—let’s have some. I don’t suppose there’s a seafood restaurant around here.”
“Sorry,” she said, wondering if he was just assuming they were going to go to dinner now.
“How about pizza, then?” he suggested enthusiastically. “Sometimes I can get clams on pizza and if I can’t have ’em fresh, that’ll do.”
“There is a pizza place, but I’ve never noticed if clams are one of the toppings they offer.”
“Let me guess—because you only eat cheese pizza.”
“I eat more on my pizza than just cheese, but I’ve never eaten clams at all, let alone that way.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re missing. What do you say—shall we go see if we can get a pizza with clams? You can broaden your horizons.”
“Dinner wasn’t part of this errand tonight,” she pointed out. “And what makes you think that I don’t have other plans?”
“Do you?”
“I have things to do at home.” There was that catalog of men waiting for her.
“One of the things you have to do at home is eat, though, right?”
“Yes.”
“So eat with me and then go home and do your things. I’ll buy you dinner as payment for taking me to meet Tyson.”
Besides the sandals on her fancy feet, she was dressed in navy blue scrubs—the clothes she worked in because the hospital preferred that anyone providing any kind of health services wear them. And while she had paid special attention to her makeup today and wound her hair into a loose knot at her crown that left wisps of curls around her face, it was the scrubs she was thinking of when she said, “I’m not dressed to go out to eat.”
“Come on, you can’t tell me that there’s a dress code to eat pizza in Northbridge,” he cajoled as Kate started the engine and backed out of Hector Tyson’s driveway.
She knew she shouldn’t agree to have dinner with him. But there were only leftovers for her at home. And she did love pizza….
“It’s just having a friendly meal together—surely we can do that?” he said as if he knew she was considering it.
“Friendly?” she repeated.
“Nothing but,” he swore zealously.
Friendly was safe. His zeal was a little disappointing somehow, but she didn’t want to analyze why that should be and instead merely told herself that as long as things between them could be friendly and nothing more, she could have dinner with him. Friendly was not going to gum up anything for her.
“I suppose I could do pizza. If it doesn’t take too long. And you do owe me for getting me into trouble with Hector.”
“Yeah, I know how you Good Girls avoid trouble,” he said. “I probably owe you a salad and a soda, too. And maybe my left kidney and my firstborn child.”
“Just the pizza will be enough,” she said wryly.
They were back on Main Street by then. She drove past the redbrick corner building that housed the small medical facility where she worked and where his motorcycle was parked, and went to the pizza parlor instead, coming to a stop nose-first at the curb there.
“Is this still open?” Ry asked since they could see through the storefront windows that the place was empty.
“Sure. But it’s after eight—most people in Northbridge have finished dinner and it’s too early yet for late-night snacking.”
“But not by much, I’ll bet,” Ry muttered as he got out of her car.
