“Besides that—which I found both annoying and endearing.” She slid her arms around his waist. “You’re a good man, Nathan. A really good man.”
“Thanks.” Normality, he promised himself. Just for an hour, they would take normality. “Is that because I didn’t give you a little swat on the bottom when you strolled out here in my shirt—even though I wanted to?”
“No, that just makes you a smart man. But you’re a good one. You didn’t see his face.” She lifted her hands to his cheeks. “You didn’t even notice.”
At sea, he shook his head. “Apparently I didn’t. Are you talking about Giff ?”
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Giff, and I don’t know many who think of him as anything more than an affable and reliable handyman. Nathan—” She touched her lips to his. “You just told him he was more, and could be more yet. And you did it so casually, so matter-of-factly, he can’t help but believe you.”
She rose up on her toes to press her cheek to his. “I really like you right now, Nathan. I really like who you are.”
“I like you, too.” He closed his arms around her and swayed. “And I’m really starting to like who we are.”
***
KIRBY had a firm grip on her pride as she walked into Sanctuary. If Jo was there, she would find a way to speak to her privately. Her strict code of ethics wouldn’t permit her to tell any of the Hathaways what she’d learned the night before. If Jo had come home after speaking with Nathan again, Kirby imagined the house would be in an uproar.
If nothing else, she could stand as family doctor.
But that wasn’t why she’d been summoned.
She had planned her visit to avoid Brian, using that window of time between breakfast and the midday meal. And she’d used the visitors’ front door rather than the friends’ entrance through the kitchen.
Since they had managed to avoid each other for a week, she thought, they could do so for another day. She wouldn’t have come at all if Kate hadn’t hailed her with an SOS after one of the guests slipped on the stairs. Even as she turned toward them, Kate came hurrying down.
“Kirby, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. It’s a turned ankle, no more than that, I swear. But the woman is setting up such a to-do you’d think she’d broken every bone in her body in six places at once.”
One glance at Kate’s distracted face and Kirby knew that Jo had yet to speak of Annabelle. “It’s all right, Kate.”
“I know it’s your afternoon off, and I hated to drag you over here, but she won’t budge out of bed.”
“It’s no problem, really.” Kirby followed her up the stairs. “It’s better to have a look. If I think it’s more than a strain, we’ll x-ray and ship her off to the mainland.”
“One way to get her out of my hair,” Kate muttered. She knocked briskly on a door. “Mrs. Tores, the doctor’s here to see you. Bill the inn,” Kate added to Kirby in an undertone, “and add whatever you like for a nuisance fee.”
Thirty minutes later, and more than a little frazzled, Kirby closed the bedroom door behind her. Her head was aching from the litany of complaints Mrs. Tores had regaled her with. As she paused to rub her temples, Kate peeked around the corner.
“Safe?”
“I was tempted to sedate her, but I resisted. She’s perfectly fine, Kate. Believe me, I know. I had to give her what amounts to a complete physical before she was satisfied. Her ankle is barely strained, her heart is as strong as a team of oxen, her lungs even stronger. For your sake, I hope she’s planning on a very short stay.”
“She leaves day after tomorrow, thank the Lord. Come on down. Let me get you a nice glass of lemonade, a piece of that cherry pie Brian made yesterday.”
“I really need to get back. I’ve got stacks of paperwork to wade through.”
“I’m not sending you back without a cold drink. This heat’s enough to fell a horse.”
“I like the heat,” she began, then came to a dead halt as Brian walked in the front door.
His arms were full of flowers. They should have made him look foolish. She wanted him to look foolish. Instead he looked all the more male, all the more attractive, with his tanned, well-muscled arms loaded down with freshly cut blossoms.
“Oh, Brian, I’m so glad you got to that.” Kate hurried down with her mind racing at light-speed. “I was going to cut for the fresh arrangements myself this morning, but this crisis with Mrs. Tores threw me off my stride.”
She chattered on as she transferred flowers from his arms to hers. “I’ll just take it from here. You don’t have any sense at all about how to arrange them. I swear, Kirby, the man just stuffs them into a vase and thinks that’s all there is to it. Brian, you go fix Kirby a lemonade, make her eat a piece of pie. She’s come all the way out here just to do me a favor, and I won’t have her going off until she’s been paid back. Run along now, while I take this upstairs.”
She headed up the steps, willing the two of them not to behave like fools.
“I don’t need anything,” Kirby said stiffly. “I was just on my way out.”
