She stiffened with the sudden urge to smack him across the cheek. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.” Her voice came out low and angry.
Tyler didn’t budge, continued to glare with his thick arms crossed.
She folded her arms and mimicked his stance, even though she knew doing so was immature.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
At a tapping on the sliding glass door, they both glanced at it to find Wyatt pressed up against the glass, his lips in a pucker with a whistle.
She relaxed her tight expression and gave him a thumbs-up.
Tyler nodded at the boy. “I’ll be right there, Wyatt. Go on and wait for me in your room.”
The little boy nodded back and then waved at her before racing off.
When he was gone, she turned back to Tyler. “If you don’t want your traveling nurse to interact with any of your family members, then you may have to consider providing them an alternate housing option so that they have a place to go when they’re not on duty.”
He stared at the sliding glass door for a few more seconds, then heaved a sigh. “You’re right. I can’t expect you to ignore Wyatt.”
She liked that Tyler was so quick to admit when he was wrong. He might be arrogant at times, but he also had a humility that seemed to balance him out.
“Listen, Tyler.” She let her anger dissipate now too. “You should know that I am well aware of how impressionable young children are, and I don’t want to lead them on.”
A breeze rattled the pinecones in a nearby spruce before the draft raced across her, sending goosebumps up her arms.
His gaze shifted to her arms, and he immediately began to shrug out of the flannel shirt he was wearing over the T-shirt. Before she could protest, he was draping it around her shoulders.
She didn’t necessarily want to wear his shirt, but if he was being polite, she needed to be too.
Was this the tender, teddy-bear side of Tyler that T.W. had mentioned?
“Thank you.” She wrapped the flannel closer, breathing in a woodsy pine-and-cedar scent. Earlier in the day, when he’d caught her after her tumble from the counter, she hadn’t paid particular attention to his cologne.
But now, as his shirt enveloped her, she was surrounded by the manly scent, and the warmth of his body remained in the fabric too.
He rubbed at the back of his neck, as though the stress and well-being of his entire family rested on his shoulders. Maybe it did. Maybe as the oldest child, he felt responsible for his dad and the rest of his family.
She’d felt that too when her family had been going through her sister’s leukemia battle. She’d wanted to swoop in and rescue everyone. She’d tried to control the situation and make everything better for as long as she could. Eventually, she’d learned that letting go sometimes took more courage than hanging on.
Her lessons hadn’t come easy and had taken plenty of time. Now, when she was working with patients and their families, she couldn’t forget people had to fight for life first before deciding when death was inevitable and that they had to let go. It was her job to walk the journey with them wherever they were and to be there to encourage and help, and she couldn’t rush their steps.
Normally she was patient and kind and able to handle even the angriest of family members. So why was she having trouble keeping her emotions under control with Tyler?
“You only have to put up with me for a week.” She picked up her plate with the remains of her meal. “Then hopefully you’ll get a nurse that you approve of more than you do me.”
With that, she crossed to the door, slid it open, and escaped from Tyler’s overpowering presence.
8
Even with the harness, carabiner, and belay rope holding him securely, Wyatt wobbled like a newborn calf on the two-by-four wooden beam of the new high suspension bridge.
“You got this, squirt.” Tyler stood only a foot behind Wyatt.
“Only a little farther!” came the encouragement from the ropes course manager, Cooper Hayes, below on the opposite side of the suspension bridge. Cooper peered up at them from behind dark reflective sunglasses, his baseball cap on backward and doing nothing to shelter him from the slant of evening sunshine.
“Good job, Wyatt!” shouted Anson, who was sitting in a camping chair next to Cooper, whittling away on another mushroom.
Tyler hadn’t done their usual Friday night activity since that fateful night earlier in the month when they’d been fly-fishing and he’d gotten the call from Mom that Dad had fallen in the bathroom.
