Just Kate: His Only Wife (Bestselling Author Collection) (27 page)

Gage’s grip on Aubrey’s fingers relaxed. “I never wanted to hold you back. That wasn’t the reason I proposed.”

“You could have come with me to Tucson.”

“And lived off your parents’ charity? I don’t think so,” he scoffed.

Alexander Stuart had generously offered to supplement the newlyweds’ income, enabling them to live in an apartment off campus while Aubrey attended school full-time. Gage’s pride hadn’t allowed him to accept the offer. She understood now what she hadn’t then. It was important to Gage he be able to support himself and his wife without assistance. Not an easy task for a twenty-year-old with no college and no job skills besides ranching.

“We basically lived off
your
parents when you think about it,” she ventured.

His eyebrows drew together. “That wasn’t the same. We both worked on the ranch and earned our keep.”

“You’re right,” Aubrey relented. She saw no reason to rehash a ten-year-old argument.

She didn’t think her father had intended to break up her and Gage’s marriage, not consciously anyway, but his attempt to facilitate her return to school had done exactly that by driving a wedge between her and Gage that grew wider with each day. Had they been older and more experienced, they might have found a solution. As it was, tensions mounted in the days following her father’s visit, escalating in a final blowout that ended with Aubrey packing her bags.

“I couldn’t win for losing,” Gage said, letting go of her hand. “Not after your dad dropped his bomb.”

“How so?” Her fingers felt oddly vulnerable without his wrapped around them.

“What choice did we have but to divorce? If I insisted you stay in Blue Ridge, you would have come to resent me for forcing you to give up your dream of working in medicine. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have,” he interrupted when she started to speak. “And if I went with you to Tucson and let your father support us, I’d have lost my self-respect and been miserable. Probably made both our lives miserable. The only other choice was a three-year separation, and I don’t think our marriage could have survived while you finished college.” He blew out a breath. “Whichever way I turned, I was screwed.”

“Oh, Gage, I’m sorry.” She hadn’t realized until now how cornered and helpless he must have felt, and it saddened her.

He shrugged. “So, I admitted I was wrong. Then came the divorce.”

“I wish I’d known that at the time.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure. Maybe we were doomed from the beginning.”

“Have you ever wondered what would’ve happened to us if we stuck it out?” he asked.

She considered lying. There was still a considerable attraction between them and she’d be courting trouble by giving him false hope. In the end, she opted for the truth. She owed him that much.

“Sometimes, sure. More so in the beginning.”

Closing his eyes, he ran a hand through his nearly dry hair and down the back of his head. He looked so tired.

“You’re ready to keel over,” she said. “What say we call it a day, and you get some sleep?” Speaking for herself, Aubrey could use a break from all the emotional unloading.

“All right.”

“Nap on the couch if you like. Grandma’s next door at Mrs. Payne’s. I’ll take lunch over to them and stay awhile, leave you alone to get some rest.”

“Nah.” He stood, bracing one hand on the table and using the other to hold the sagging waistband of the pajama bottoms. “Think I’ll head over to the volunteer fire station.”

“You can’t possibly work in your condition,” she insisted in her best bossy nurse voice.

“Believe me, I’m going to sleep,” he said with a laugh. “The old mot—” He stopped laughing and closed his mouth before continuing. “There’s a bunk at the station where I can crash.”

“Okay. In that case, you’re free to go.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He gave her a mock salute, and Aubrey shoved him through the kitchen door, laughing at the sight he made in her grandfather’s pajama bottoms.

On the front porch, she waved goodbye as he backed his pickup out the driveway, her emotions bouncing from one end of the spectrum to the other.

She was glad they’d talked and cleared the air of a few lingering issues. But by doing so, she opened herself to him, and the walls between them, walls she’d erected for both her own and his protection, had begun to crumble. If he kept holding her hand, kept staring into her eyes like he did, those walls might topple down completely.

Then where would she be? And more importantly, what would she do about it?

Chapter 5

A
ubrey lightly pressed the back of her hand to her grandmother’s forehead. The older woman lay in bed, her papery cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink and her eyes unusually bright.

“You mean to tell me, with all those years of training and all that fancy equipment, you still take someone’s temperature by touch?”

“Why mess with success?” Aubrey didn’t require a digital ear thermometer to tell her Grandma Rose’s temperature was well over a hundred degrees and climbing.

“I’m fine. A bit of allergies is all.” She pushed aside the sheet covering her as if to rise. “Happens every summer.”

Aubrey snatched the edge of sheet and deftly replaced it. “Stay put.”

“Like I have a choice,” Grandma Rose groused. She’d made excellent progress during the past week with her physical therapy, graduating to short bouts around the house with a walker. But she was still a far cry from getting out of bed or a chair unassisted.

The past week had also been noteworthy for another reason. Aubrey hadn’t seen or heard from Gage once since the day she’d made him lunch. Not that she had any reason to see or hear from him, she reminded herself firmly, nor did she necessarily
want
to. She would, however, like to know if everything was all right with him at home and if he’d resolved his differences with his father—strictly from the standpoint of a concerned friend, of course.

As promised, Kenny Junior had shown up to replace the threshold and Gus to change the round doorknobs to lever ones. She’d casually queried them both about Gage, but they hadn’t seen or heard from him, either.

“How sore is your throat?” she asked her grandmother, banning thoughts of Gage to the back of her mind where they rightfully belonged.

“What makes you think I have a sore throat?”

Aubrey sighed. “You haven’t touched the breakfast I brought you and made a terrible face when I forced you to take a few sips of apple juice.”

“Are you always so mean to your patients?”

“Only when they try to pull the wool over my eyes. Now, how sore is your throat? Scratchy or agonizing?” She gently prodded her grandmother’s neck beneath her jaw.

“Leaning more toward the scratchy side.” Her grandmother winced and jerked away.

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you,” Aubrey lied. She cradled her grandmother’s face in her hands and turned her head toward the window.

“What are you doing?”

“Open your mouth.”

Her grandmother obliged, but made it clear she didn’t like Aubrey peering down her red and swollen throat.

Aubrey went into the small bathroom and returned a minute later brandishing a bottle of extra-strength acetaminophen. She leaned down and kissed her grandmother’s burning forehead.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to the kitchen to break these up into smaller pieces for you.”

There was no doubt in her mind Grandma Rose needed to see a physician. When she obediently popped the tablet pieces in her mouth and accepted the glass of water, Aubrey realized her grandmother was sicker than she let on.

“I’m taking you into Pineville, Grandma.”

“What for?”

“To see your doctor. If he’s not available, we’ll go the hospital emergency room.”

“Nonsense.”

Aubrey went to her grandmother’s closet and slid open the door. “Would you like to change first or go in your nightgown?”

“All this fuss over a little fever.”

“You have a
high
fever.”

“How would you know? You never even took my temperature.”

Aubrey rolled her eyes and returned to the bed with a floral dressing gown she’d found hanging on a peg just inside the door.

“In addition to a fever, your glands are swollen, and your throat looks like it’s on fire. You’re sick.” She located her grandmother’s slippers beneath the bed and pulled them out. “When people get sick, they visit the doctor.”

“I hate going to the doctor.” Grandma Rose stared into space, her chin set at a stubborn angle. “Ever since the accident, all I ever do is go to the doctor. I’m tired of it.”

“I understand.” Aubrey sat on the edge of the bed and took her grandmother’s weathered hand in hers. “Getting old stinks. But it beats the hell out of the alternative.” The blunt observation delivered with such candidness earned her a slight lowering of the chin from her difficult patient. “I love you, Grandma. And I don’t want anything to happen to you. Certainly not anything I can prevent with a simple doctor visit.”

The chin came down another inch.

“Now, quit being such a grump and let’s get you dressed.”

“All right,” her grandmother said. “I’ll go. But not to Pineville. Today’s Thursday and the clinic is open.”

“The clinic? I don’t know...”

Blue Ridge lacked sufficient population to support a full-time physician and state-of-the-art medical facility. What the town did have was a two-to-three-day-a-week doctor and a one-room clinic built beside a ramshackle thrift store. The proceeds from the volunteer-staffed thrift store went to fund the clinic and the connecting helipad. In instances of serious illness or injury and when time was of the essence, patients were airlifted by helicopter to the hospital in Pineville.

Though she was well aware it had saved numerous lives, Aubrey didn’t like thinking about the helicopter. Her grandfather had been airlifted out of Blue Ridge twice. And while reason told Aubrey neither the helicopter nor the clinic had anything whatsoever to do with her grandfather’s death, she’s still felt better taking her grandmother into Pineville.

“That Dr. Ferguson is a nice enough young man, I suppose. You haven’t met him, he came here some years back after old Dr. Hunt retired,” Grandma Rose babbled. “You remember Dr. Hunt, of course. He’s the one who removed the fishhook from your scalp.”

“How could I forget?” Aubrey slipped the dressing gown over her grandmother’s head. “I still have the scar.”

She’d been twelve and Gage thirteen. They’d hiked the two miles to Neglian Creek crossing alone, promising to return with enough trout for dinner. Gage took her hand in his the moment they’d left the main road and never let go. Midway through the afternoon, a misaimed cast on Aubrey’s part resulted in disaster, made worse by their botched attempts to remove the hook. Gage, poor kid, had gone pale and shaky at the first drop of blood.

Aubrey had sympathized, given him a quick peck on the cheek and told him she’d be fine. He’d surprised them both when he took her by the shoulders and pressed his lips to hers. It had been their fist kiss. More followed each summer thereafter, increasing in frequency and intensity.

They’d discovered their secret spot earlier that same day. Tucked into the steep bank on one side of the creek and completely sheltered by the overhanging branches of a willow tree, it provided the perfect hideaway. For years afterward, they’d escaped there whenever opportunity presented itself.

It was the place they’d made love for the first time and, minutes later, where Gage had proposed.

“Dr. Ferguson is competent, mind you.” Grandma Rose appeared oblivious to Aubrey’s mental meanderings into the past. “But he’s no Dr. Hunt. Still, I’d rather visit him than go all the way into Pineville.”

Seeing as her grandmother’s health was what mattered the most and not which doctor she visited, Aubrey relented with a weary, “Okay.”

Perhaps the sorely outdated and grossly underequipped clinic had improved during the last decade. One could only hope.

* * *

Dr. Ferguson turned out to be staring fifty square in the face. But, Aubrey supposed, from her grandmother’s considerably older vantage point, fifty made him a young man. And, as reported, he was competent, if a bit brusque. Aubrey could see why her grandmother didn’t like him as well as his predecessor.

“You think she has strep throat?” Aubrey asked when he’d completed his exam and taken a throat culture.

“I think it’s likely, given her symptoms and the fact I’ve treated three cases in town since last week. Here’s enough penicillin to last ten days.” He handed Aubrey a box containing the capsules. “Bring her back to see me next Tuesday when I return for a follow-up.”

Aubrey didn’t need to read a book on body language to know when she was being dismissed. “Is there any chance you can come back tomorrow? Just in case she gets worse.”

“I’ll be fine, Aubrey,” Grandma Rose assured her.

“Aren’t you a nurse?” Dr. Ferguson asked. “I thought I remember your grandmother telling me you were.”

“Yes, but—”

“She couldn’t have a more competent caregiver than you.”

Her grandmother pulled at her arm. “Aubrey, honey, can we go home? I’m tired.”

“Of course.” She did look bedraggled. It was thoughtless of Aubrey to prolong the visit. “We appreciate your help, Dr. Ferguson.”

“How long are you staying in Blue Ridge?”

“Another four weeks or so.”

“I’m glad to finally meet you. No offense, but I hope this is the last time.” He took firm hold of Grandma Rose’s left arm and helped her stand. “We want your grandmother to make a speedy and full recovery without any complications.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Grandma Rose said feebly, latching on to Aubrey’s elbow.

The three of them shuffled outside to Aubrey’s SUV. Being hoisted into the passenger seat robbed Grandma Rose of the last of her strength, and she dozed during the five-minute drive home. They arrived to find Gage’s pickup truck parked in the side driveway. Like before, a circular saw had been set up on the lowered tailgate and building material was strewn across the lawn.