Hawks Mountain - Mobi (8 page)

During her time as a social worker in
Atlanta
, she’d made many trips to hospital ERs with her clients, where she’d seen that shape many times. The twin snakes, the rod, the
wings .
 . . a caduceus, the sign of the medical profession for over one-hundred years.

The cap had to be Nick’s. Otherwise, what was it doing in the house of a man who avoided all social contact? Certainly, after the greeting he’d bestowed on her, he didn’t have many visitors, if any. Unless someone gave it to him before he came here. Her gut instincts rejected that possibility. She had no idea why exactly, but she was sure the hat was Nick’s.

You have medical training, Mr. Hart
. She fingered the peak.
So that’s why you were so good at helping Doc Mackenzie with Jake.
But what were the two other patches that had been removed? She ran her fingertip over the arch above the place that had held the medical logo. And why remove them? Still more questions to add to the list entitled
Will
the Real Nicholas Hart Please Step Forward?

The rattle of cups against a metal tray signaled Nick’s impending return to the room with the coffee. She pulled her hand away from the cap as if she’d been burned and quickly averted her attention to a large framed picture above the mantel of a white tiger stalking through a jungle setting.

“Coffee’s ready.” He set the tray on the table.

She inhaled deeply.
“Hmm.
That smells good.” She met his gaze, and then quickly looked away. Immediately she concentrated on the coffee and began talking to still the emotions starting to churn inside her, emotions that Nick’s mere presence inexplicably brought to life. “Granny is a great cook, but she makes awful coffee. Then again I just may have gotten too used to drinking Starbuck’s while I was in
Atlanta
. It was my favorite stop on my way home from—” She raised her gaze to his face. A slight smile curved his mouth. Heat rose in her cheeks. “I seem to be babbling.”

He laughed, the first time she’d heard an honest-to-goodness laugh emerge from him. Suddenly she seemed to be able to feel every pour on her skin, every throb of her heart as though magnified.

“Yes, you
were .
 . . babbling, but I don’t mind.” He poured coffee into a large earthenware mug and handed it to her. “I’m assuming you were going to say on your way home from work. What did you do in
Atlanta
?”

“I worked for the Department of Human Services.” She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t want to. Elaborating would bring to mind all her failures as a social worker, all those families she couldn’t help, all the poverty and tragedy. All the things she’d come home to forget, especially one, the one that had driven her back here.
“How about you?
What did you do before you built this gorgeous cabin and retired to the mountain to write?”

“I was in the military.” He picked up the cream pitcher and shoved it at her.
“Cream?”

She shook her head. “What branch?” Now that she’d got him talking she wasn’t about to let this go.

“Navy.”

That answered one question. She glanced toward the ball cap on the table. The faded arch above where the outline of the caduceus appeared must be for a
Naval
insignia of some kind. She pressed on.

“Doing what?”

Nick opened his mouth as if to answer her. Then, just as quickly, snapped it closed. He stood abruptly and ran his hand through his hair, and then he looked around as if searching for something. When he turned back to her, he had that wary look on his face, the same one he’d had when Granny had invited him for dinner. “Listen, I hate to be a bad host, but I’ve got to get busy putting on the rest of the porch roof before it storms.”

The sky had been crystal clear when she’d arrived here, and she could see out the window that that hadn’t changed. Not a cloud, not even a fluffy white one, dotted the sky.

He wanted her out of here. Nick had shut down.

Short of digging in her heels and flatly refusing, she had no choice but to leave. She set her unfinished coffee on the table. “I should be going anyway. Granny will wonder what happened to me.”

As she walked toward the door, she wondered why she’d expected to get him to do what no one else in this area
had .
 . . talk about himself.

Because solving problems for
people is
what you do. It’s how you made your living in
Atlanta
.
It’s
part of who you are, what makes your soul sing.

Yeah, and if she’d been any good at it, she’d have been more successful at her job. It had taken a long time for her to realize that wanting to be successful and actually being successful were two totally different things. A cold hand clenched her heart. Timmy would still be with his mom instead of in a home with a father who looked at him as a gift for his infertile second wife. And Timmy’s mother would be—

No! She couldn’t go there. It was over.
Done.
She’d come back here to forget, not to rehash mistakes.

She turned to Nick to say goodbye, only to find him right behind her and her nose almost touching his chest. She teetered backwards. His hands came up to cup her shoulders to steady her. Her hands pressed against his shirt front. Their gazes locked. Sizzling electricity passed between them. Her skin burned under his grasp. Her heart hammered against her ribcage so hard she wondered absently why they couldn’t hear it.

Then his gaze dropped to her lips. So many emotions bombarded her at once that she couldn’t put names to them. He was going to kiss her, and she wanted him to.
God, how she wanted him to.

She had no idea when she stopped breathing, but suddenly, her lungs crying out for air brought her back to her senses. She jumped back. What was she doing? Talk about making the stupidest move
ever .
 . .

Becky turned away, effectively removing him from her sight. She’d worry about getting him out of her head later. Right now she needed to put a lot of space between herself and Nick, fast. She stepped onto the porch and quickly headed for the steps.

“
Thanks .
 . . for the coffee,” she called over her shoulder, trying not to think about the quiver in her voice.

Without a backward glance, she hurried down the stairs, and then fled across the yard and back down the mountain far from the mesmerizing, dangerous smile of Nick Hart.

Nick tightened his stranglehold
on the door frame and stared after Becky’s retreating figure until she disappeared from sight in the trees. He could still feel the imprint of her body on his, and his insides still churned with the desire to capture her lips beneath his. Taking a step back, he put the solid wood door between him and the woman who was beginning to infect him like a fever.

A few minutes ago he’d come very close to making two very big mistakes: telling her what he’d done in the Navy and then almost kissing her. Either would have opened doors he’d kept closed for a long time. He had no desire to be reminded of what painful shadows lurked behind them.

What in blazes had ever possessed him? He must have lost what little sanity he had. Letting her into his life would eventually mean letting the rest of them in, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

So, how did he prevent himself from turning into a simpering idiot with mush for brains every time he saw her? The easy answer was not to see her again. But, for some nebulous reason, Nick found that answer totally unacceptable.

Becky plucked a plump, red, wild strawberry nestled deep in the meadow grass. She waved it under her nose to inhale the sweet aroma before popping it into her mouth. The sugary juice coated her tongue and evoked memories of her childhood on the mountain: swimming in the creek, climbing the towering pines, picking wild berries with Granny, hiking on the ridge overlooking
Carson
 .
 . .

The ridge.

That thought brought to life something she didn’t want to think about, but something her traitorous mind kept resurrecting. Unbidden, her gaze swung in the direction of Nick Hart’s cabin.

Three days had passed since Becky had taken the loaves of homemade bread to their disarming neighbor. During which time, he’d haunted her thoughts incessantly. Try as she might to keep him out, when she least expected
it,
he would slip back into her head. Always accompanied by the memory of the almost-kiss and followed by a long list of questions.

Who was this mysterious stranger who had sweet-talked Granny Jo into selling him part of her beloved mountain? He’d said he was in the Navy. Add that to his mysterious medical knowledge, and she had to wonder if the ball cap was that of a Navy corpsman, and if it was, did it belong to him? If so, what was he doing here in the hills? What was he hiding from? Or was that an explanation born of the gossips and actually, he wasn’t hiding from anything?

So many questions, and Nick was not about to supply the answers. He’d made that quite clear that day at the cabin.

Then, bringing such thoughts to an abrupt stop, Becky would always scold herself with a reminder. What with her reluctance to talk about her time in
Atlanta
, what right did she have nosing into his life? And why was she even allowing herself to dwell on anything about him anyway? She no longer had to shoulder other people’s burdens. It no longer concerned her if babies had enough milk, if a young, single mother would have a roof over her family’s head next week or if a foster child was being treated well. She’d left all that behind her when she’d left
Atlanta
 .
 . . or so she’d believed.

Becky shook away her troubling thoughts. With her mind clear of everything except the beautiful meadow in which she stood, she concentrated on enjoying this glorious day. The warm morning sunshine beat down on her bare shoulders, and the smell of wildflowers filled her nostrils. Smiling, she pushed on through the meadow toward her destination—Honeymoon Falls.

As a teen, this was where Becky had come to sort things out, to try to make sense of the childhood that had vanished and the changes that had taken over her mind and her body, the strange feelings that confused her whenever one of the boys kissed her or held her hand.

The rustle of the bushes at the edge of the clearing drew her attention. The first thought that popped into her head was
bear
. Her heart stopped. Her breath caught. Her body poised to run. Then a female deer entered the meadow, followed by a small, spotted fawn. The doe raised her head and sniffed, checking for danger. Not wanting to frighten them, Becky stood stone-still. The slight breeze changed direction, blowing Becky’s scent toward the mother and baby. The doe flagged the threat with her white tail, and then hustled her fawn back into the shelter of the trees.

For a long time Becky stared at the spot where the animals had disappeared, wondering why Mother Nature had never given humans the knack of smelling danger before they found themselves smack dab in the middle of it. Shaking her head, she continued her journey toward the falls.

As always, she heard the pounding water long before she could see the falls. A smile curved her lips. Lord, but she loved this mountain and all its beauty. Hurrying on, eager to get there, she covered the distance to the falls quickly.

Pushing aside a large, thorny berry bush, she stepped into the clearing surrounding the deep, clear blue pool at the foot of the
falls .
 . . and stopped dead.

Sitting on a huge rock at the edge of the water, a book open in front of him, was a man. She had no need to see his face to know that it was Nick. The width of his shoulders, the way the sun glinted off his dark hair and the way her heartbeat caught in her chest, told her all she needed to know.

But as quickly as recognition set in an unreasonable panic crowded it out. The urge to run churned in her gut. She didn’t want to be alone with him, especially in this isolated place, especially after what had nearly happened at the cabin, but no matter how hard she tried, she still couldn’t make her legs move. Slowly, after finally forcing her legs to obey, she backed away, hoping to make her escape before he noticed her. Just as she reached the tree line, she halted.