Secrets Gone South (Crimson Romance) (2 page)

“Seriously,” Brantley said. “Take her out.”

Ha! If only he knew how to make that happen. But he knew how to distract Brantley. “Have you got any pictures of that church?”

“Oh, yeah!” Brantley brightened and reached for his phone.

• • •

On the first morning in her new apartment, Arabelle Avery was up way earlier than she needed to be because her body hadn’t gotten the message that she didn’t do surgery at the crack of dawn anymore. She missed surgery but joining Dr. Vines’s family medicine practice suited her lifestyle better.

She reached into her jewelry box for the plain pearl earrings that she wore almost every day, but she got distracted by the heavy gold charm bracelet that took up a lion’s share of real estate in the box.

Her life had been chronicled by the charms on that bracelet, starting with the disc bearing her date of birth and ending with the latest, a Santa Claus that had been in her Christmas stocking a few weeks ago.

In between, there were miniature milestone markers for almost everything that had ever happened to her. Ballet shoes, birthday cakes, graduation caps, stethoscope—and that was just the start. On the day Arabelle was born, her grandmother had bought the bracelet and the first charm. Then Mimi made it her life’s work to fill that bracelet up until she died. It was a thousand wonders that there hadn’t been a little gold casket in the safety deposit box with Arabelle’s name on it. Since that time, Arabelle’s mother had bought most of the charms, though occasionally her brother and father got in on the act, most likely when they didn’t know what else to buy. As a weapon, the bracelet would be at least as effective as a logging chain. Maybe that had been Mimi’s intent. She had believed in empowering women and if it could be done in fourteen karat gold, all the better.

Though she occasionally disdained it with affected boredom, Arabelle secretly loved the bracelet. She had only ever bought one charm for herself though, and she knew it would never be hung on the bracelet for the world to see. She had gotten it in Switzerland two years ago when all her family and friends thought she’d been in Kenya working with Doctors Without Borders—that is, everyone except Sheridan had thought that. Of course, if Carrie—her brother’s first wife—had been alive, she would have known too. The three of them knew everything about each other. Carrie, Sheridan, and Arabelle had had the kind of friendship that Luke’s present wife, Lanie, had with her book club friends, Missy Bragg, Tolly Scott, and Lucy Kincaid.

But now Carrie and Sheridan were dead, along with Luke’s best friend, Jake, who had been in the car with Carrie when she crashed. Jake had been a fixture in the Avery home from Arabelle’s earliest memories and he had been her first—though mercifully short-lived—crush at thirteen.

Lanie and the other book club girls tried hard to include Arabelle, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to embrace them. It was easier to be alone.

Though not completely alone. There had been a price and she was glad she didn’t have to judge whether it had been worth it. She searched the bottom of the jewelry box for the little box that contained the secret charm—a tiny gold and blue enamel baby rattle.

There had been a time when she’d had no secrets, no need to hide anything. That ended the night Luke married Lanie and her grief for Carrie resurfaced and slapped her in the face like a wave at high tide. By chance, she’d run into Will Garrett that night and when he’d offered comfort, she’d taken it. A month later, she’d found herself in Kenya pregnant, sick, and panicked. Her first thought had been to tell Will and raise her child—with or without his participation. But after learning—incorrectly, it turned out—that Will had gotten engaged, she’d gone to Switzerland. Her life was spinning out of control and she saw no reason to pull Will along for the ride. Looking back, she realized going to Switzerland had made no sense. She could have come home. Her family would have supported her. But she wasn’t making sense at the time and she could not face telling them that she had not only failed at Doctors Without Borders, she’d gotten pregnant after a one night stand. And the more she thought and the sicker she got, the more deeply she sank into despair. She was alone, helpless, hopeless, and the worst thing in the world for her baby. Sheridan, however, was desperate for a child and for a time it seemed the best thing Arabelle could do for her baby was to let her cousin adopt him. It was a decision she immediately regretted, but by then she was in too deep.

But now she had her baby back. And the only thing harder than not telling the world that he was her biological child was the thought of having him ever find out that she had given him away like an unwanted kitten. She couldn’t stand what that might do to him.

And that meant Will could never know. That was every kind of wrong that had ever been committed but it was the best she could do. Avery was all that mattered. She would pay the price for her mistakes by living a lie, but Avery would never pay.

Maybe she would go to Reed’s Jewelry and have that charm put on the bracelet after all.

But no time for that now. Happy babble emitted from the baby monitor on her dressing table, announcing that Avery was awake. He seldom woke crying, seldom cried at all. He was a sweet, serene child, a little shy but not in a fearful, debilitating way. He just liked to assess a situation before embracing it. He’d been that way from birth and she didn’t like to think about where he got that—though it certainly gave her food for thought on the whole “nature verses nurture” issue.

She entered his room to find him sitting up in his crib, having a very serious conversation with Jiffy, his stuffed giraffe. When he saw her, he dropped the toy, smiled flirtatiously, and placed his hands over his face.

“Pee pie, Mama,” he said, dropping his hands and speaking in a whisper. And she melted into the floor, like she did every time he called her Mama. She still felt a little guilty about that. But the child psychologist she had consulted with after David and Sheridan Avery Cooper’s plane went down had not only approved but encouraged her to gently lead him into calling her Mama. At seventeen months, Avery had been blissfully unaware that his adoptive parents were never coming home. Now, five months later, they would have faded from his memory altogether. At least that’s what Dr. Fields had said.

“Pee pie, yourself,” she said and pushed his straight, abundant hair off his face and tried to smooth the cowlick above his right eye. Where that ash blond hair had come from she did not know, but she was grateful for it. Had he been dark-headed, like Will and herself, she might not have dared to move to Merritt.

And she had needed to move to Merritt. Daycare and long hospital hours in a city with no family nearby had simply not been working. She knew that almost right away, but it had taken until mid-December to make the arrangements to move.

After spending the holidays with Luke and Lanie, they had encouraged her to stay with them permanently in the Avery family farmhouse but she had declined. She liked Lanie, even loved her on some level—loved how she loved Luke, Emma, and John Luke. But it had been hard to watch her marry Luke, hard to hear Carrie’s little girl call her Mommy.

But this apartment, located above Heavenly Confections, Lanie’s candy shop, was perfect. It was within walking distance to work, the shops, and church. Best of all, Lanie had turned the apartment across from Arabelle’s into a little home away from home for the children. Lanie had hired Judith Garth the minute word got out that she was retiring from her teaching job and was looking for a child to watch. John Luke, who was two months older than Avery, spent his days across the hall with Judith; five-year-old Emma joined them after kindergarten let out at noon. Judith had been happy to take on Avery as well, especially when she saw how good-natured he was. Not only did Avery get to be with his cousins, Lanie popped in and out from downstairs all day and Luke often walked over from his chambers in the courthouse to have lunch with them.

And Arabelle would be able to do the same. Unlike surgeons, family practice doctors usually got to eat lunch at lunchtime.

She lifted Avery from the crib. “Do you have wet pants?” she asked.

“No.” He vehemently shook his head and his blue eyes went wide. The heaviness of his night diaper said otherwise.

“I think you might,” she said, laying him on the changing table. “What do you say we get you a bath?”

Lanie, who was a master chocolatier, came to work early to make candy and she usually turned John Luke over to Judith to bathe and dress. Arabelle could have done the same with Avery, and she might have to sometimes, but not this morning.

She’d already missed too many baths.

“Jiffy a dirty boy?” Avery said in his sweet soft little voice.

“No, no, no!” Arabelle gave him a tickle under the chin, careful not to really tickle him. Tickling could be nothing short of torture for a child, no matter how well meaning the adult. All the books said so. “Avery’s the dirty boy.”

“Avery not
dirty
. Avery
hungry
.”

Judith was also willing to give him breakfast, but Arabelle would do that too. After all, how much longer would he actually need help with the spoon?

After five days on the job, Arabelle was batting about 50/50. Dr. Marshall Vines, Jr. had retired at the age of eighty-one and she had joined Dr. Marshall Vines, III in the practice.

There were a certain number of patients who had never been touched by anyone except “Dr. Junior” as they called him. They weren’t happy at the prospect of seeing his son, “Dr. Three,” but, Senator Avery’s daughter and Judge Avery’s sister or no, they were not signing up for some slip of a girl who ought to be getting her toenails painted and going to lunch.

Still, she was busy. This morning, she’d seen a sinus infection, a nasty case of the flu, and a stomach virus.

She scrubbed her hands especially hard after the stomach virus left. She’d always hated throwing up, but never more since Switzerland.

Her nurse bustled in.

“What have we got next, Kelly?” Arabelle turned and dried her hands.

“Semi-emergency needing stitches in room four. Dr. Three says he’ll take your ten o’clock if you’ll do it—says you’re better at that than he is.”

“Sure.” She walked down the hall behind Kelly. “This one is not going to rail at me because I’m not Dr. Junior?”

“I think he’ll be glad just to get immediate attention,” Kelly said with a laugh. “He walked in cold, of course.”

“Hence, semi-emergency?” To be honest, she didn’t really know what a “semi-emergency” was. She supposed bleeding, but not bleeding out.

And Arabelle opened the door to a full-blown, soul sucking, bleeding out emergency of the soul.

Will Garret sat on the examining table, his hand wrapped in a bloody towel. She should have been prepared for this—the seeing him, not the bloody hand. She had known she was bound to run into him, she just hadn’t imagined it here and now.

He looked up. How he managed to present her with that sweet smile was unbelievable. He was bound to be in pain. But there it was, complete with those distinctive dimples right under the impossibly high cheekbones. His dimples were not brief little indentions, like Luke’s and her own—
angel kisses
, Mimi had called them. No, they were deep crescent shaped dimples that she could have laid an index finger in if she dared to touch him.

And she was going to have to touch him, though not the dimples, not the deep cleft in his chin, and not his straight, fine, dark hair.

Kelly laid the chart on the counter. “The bleeding has almost stopped. Dr. Three gave him a quick look and said he didn’t see any nerve or muscle damage but for you to see what you think.”

Kelly seemed to be the only one capable of speech, which Arabelle did not think spoke highly for her own professionalism.

Will had not been expecting to see her either. His large, moss green eyes were wide with surprise—though he was more pleasantly surprised than she was. First, the smile; second, there was no fear in his eyes, like there was bound to be in her own.

“Hi, Arabelle,” he said in that rich, kind voice. Everything about this man was sweet and calm.

Though she’d just scrubbed her hands until they were practically raw, she turned to the sink and began soaping them again.

“Hello, Will,” she was finally able to answer. “Just let me get scrubbed up here and we’ll get a look at you. What did you do to yourself?”

“I was working,” he said with an air of disgust. “It was my own fault. I knew my carving knife was getting dull but I was determined to finish that one little fairy wing.”

Arabelle reached for a pair of surgical gloves and turned back to meet his eyes. “A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.”

Will nodded and looked at his hand. “That’s for sure, and I know better.”

She smiled just to show him she wasn’t afraid—not that he had any reason to think she would be. “Ever think of wearing gloves?” She snapped her own gloves on and let herself down on the rolling stool in front of him.

“I have to feel the wood.”

Well, of course he did. Will Garrett was open, honest, and hid nothing. Gloves were insulation, protection, one step removed. He would want nothing to do with gloves. She was glad for the insulation of her own when she reached for his hand and removed the bloody towel.

Yet she could still feel the warmth of his skin through the thin latex. He had such beautiful hands—smooth and long fingered, an artist’s hands. They were made more interesting by a few scars here and there. Now he would have another on top of his left hand but she would do her best to make sure it was minimal. It was the least she could do.

“You really did a number on yourself, didn’t you?” The cut started a half-inch from his index finger knuckle and ran almost two inches toward his wrist. It was still oozing a bit but didn’t look too bad. “I need to get a closer look. You’re going to feel some pressure.” That was doctor speak for
it’s going to hurt like hell.

“Do what you have to,” he said.

She parted the wound and was relieved at what she saw. “Good. It’s deep but I agree with Dr. Vines. No real damage.”