Mountain Mystic (7 page)

Quickly, Victoria got out and retrieved her medical bag and Naomi’s file from the cardboard box on the backseat. By the time she returned her attention to Joshua, he stood at the edge of the porch, hands on his hips.

“Hello!” he shouted, and when the front door opened he climbed the steps.

Victoria walked up beside him, surprised at the tension she could feel in the air. She wondered if it was coming from the woman or from Joshua. Calmly, she caught and held the wary gaze of the blonde behind the screen door as she asked, “Naomi Marlowe?”

“What do you want? I haven’t got the money to buy anything.”

“Only a flatlander fool would come hell and gone up this mountain to sell you somethin’,” he told her.

Victoria’s eyes widened at Joshua’s curt response and the subtle change in his speech. His voice had always been rich and strong, but now had an edge to it that proclaimed him a native son. The woman they’d come to see noticed it too and gave the duo on the porch a little more respect when he made introductions.

“I’m Joshua Logan, and this is Victoria Bennett. She’s an associate of Dr. Grenwald’s.”

“I paid my bill,” Naomi told them, and started to close the wooden door.

“It’s not about that, Naomi,” Victoria told her quickly. The door stopped closing, and Joshua listened as she continued in a warm, natural way that was full of confidence, yet reassuring and nonthreatening. “Dr. Grenwald has asked me to complete the files on some of his patients. I’m a midwife. I wondered if we could talk for a few minutes?”

“Midwife?” Naomi asked, straightening a little and opening the door wider.

Joshua mentally tipped his hat to Victoria. She’d managed to melt the iceberg a tiny bit. He waited to see how far she could get.

“Yes. I’m opening a practice in this area, and Dr. Grenwald is my backup physician.”

“Bodewell’s a long way.”

“Just my main clinic is in Bodewell. I’ll be seeing patients in Mention on Tuesdays. I handle deliveries at Bodewell Hospital.”

“My heart’s set on havin’ this baby at home. That’s what Ma did,” Naomi said as her sharp eyes moved over Victoria, noting the medical bag. “I’d feel a heap better if I had a granny with me.”

Knowing the term “granny” was synonymous with midwife to the people in the community, Victoria explained, “I’m sorry, but I can’t attend home deliveries.”

Naomi’s face fell.

Victoria continued gently. “The hospital won’t support my practice if I do.” Victoria broke off as if just remembering something. “They did agree to dedicate one room for an alternative birthing center, which is more like a home setting, if that’s what you’re interested in. Mother and baby can usually go home in about twelve hours. It’s cheaper too.”

Perking up, Naomi asked, “How much less?”

“Maybe I could come in? I could answer your questions about the ABC room at the hospital, and you could help me complete this file.”

When Naomi agreed, Victoria explained that Joshua didn’t want to offend, but he really needed to
stretch his legs. Would Naomi mind if he waited outside? Shortly, Joshua was left standing on the porch, exactly where he wanted to be. He breathed a sigh of relief. If the other visits went as smoothly, he might actually get home without picking up any more emotional echoes for his collection.

Lately, the only emotions he was interested in were Victoria’s, and she kept them hidden, where he couldn’t touch them. He knew as much about her as any Joe off the street. She’d been through a bad divorce, and she wanted a life of her own, separate from her past.

Absently, he rubbed his arm where her hand had rested, and wondered what to do about Victoria.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Victoria told him as she pulled up alongside his house. “I think four of the six are going to come into the clinic next Tuesday. Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome.” Joshua forced himself to get out of the truck without asking Victoria for a date. All day the thought had been on his mind. Ever since she came out of Naomi’s house, eyes shining and wearing a smile that would have lit up New York.

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to take many more days like this one—cooped up in the truck with her fragrance hammering away at his resolve. She smelled like cinnamon and spice. And sex, if he told the God’s truth. He couldn’t explain it, but his attraction to Victoria went way beyond incredible perfume.

When the other truck door slammed behind him and he heard Victoria’s footsteps, he closed his eyes. Hadn’t he suffered enough today? The woman had touched him every three seconds, asking for or lending support, inviting him to share a joke, pointing out a clump of wildflowers that refused to give in to the change of seasons. None of those touches had been remotely sexual, and every one of them had made him intensely aware of her as a woman.

“May I come in and borrow your phone? I won’t have one until next week, and I wanted to check the messages at my office.”

“Since when have you needed an invitation to come inside?” asked Joshua, resigned to the inevitable.

“Since you made such a fuss last time!” Victoria told him. “Besides, you weren’t living here then.”

“What difference does that make?” Joshua made a sound that was clearly intended as a snort of disbelief, and he unlocked the door. “You waltzed into the old cabin too, and I was living there then as I recall.”

Victoria ignored his remark, knowing he was right. “May I borrow the phone or not?”

Sometime within the next fifteen minutes he was going to kiss her, and to hell with whether or not it was a good idea.

Pushing open the door with one hand, Joshua reached out and straightened the collar of her dress with the other, his thumb brushing against soft, warm skin exactly as he planned. The moment was electric. Joshua was fascinated by the differences between them, the contrast of dark and light. He’d definitely been celibate for too long.

“You can borrow anything you want,” he said. Slowly dropping his hand, he added, “Except the bed, although I might be willing to share.”

Victoria felt the heat of a blush roar through her. All day he’d been friendly but withdrawn, as if he were keeping himself separate from the world around him. Now his eyes met hers, and he held her gaze, creating a wordless intimacy. Suddenly the butterflies in her stomach woke up and started a frantic pounding against her rib cage, drumming a sensual red alert along all her nerve endings. With one look he’d cut
through the polite, professional demeanor she’d managed to maintain. With one touch he’d cut through her efforts to forge a harmless friendship.

She probably had a better chance of holding back the sunrise than keeping thoughts of being kissed from her face, because that’s all she could think about. An engraved invitation couldn’t have been more plain than the way her tongue darted out along the edge of her lips, and yet he waited, letting the silence between them build a tension that threatened to snap at any moment.

Nervously, she lowered her eyes, but got only as far as his mouth. She swallowed. Why did the man have to be so big, so gorgeous, so slow to take what he wanted? What was it about him that made it so difficult for her to hide her attraction? She’d had years of practice at pretending to be indifferent to sexual attraction, of convincing herself that she was better off alone. Now she blushed and her nipples got hard because a man stared at her with lust in his eyes.

Then why doesn’t he do something about it?
A certainty in Joshua’s expression convinced her that it was only a matter of time.
He enjoys the waiting, the tension. He likes to tease.
Victoria began to worry, not about if he was going to kiss her, but whether or not she could outlast him.

Starting anything with Joshua would be a mistake, she told herself firmly. She was so close to getting her life neatly arranged. She’d finally stopped wanting to be held in someone’s arms at night. She couldn’t let her emotions get all tangled up again. Especially not
in a relationship with a man who could affect her like this before he ever touched her.

Faintly, she heard herself say, “We should go in.”

“Yeah. We should,” Joshua echoed as he backed into the house and reached for her hand to draw her after him. If they went in, maybe he could avoid the inevitable, maybe he could get through the day unscathed. He managed to ignore the way the red dress shifted and flowed over her curves as she passed him, but the disappointed look on her face did him in. “Ah, what the hell!”

Victoria got only a glimpse of a big mahogany-colored couch, hardwood floors, watercolor paintings of Plains Indians, and lots of open space before Joshua kicked the door shut and pulled her hard against him, letting go of her hand as if he were certain she’d stay in his arms of her own volition. He murmured, “This morning I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.”

Then his lips came down on hers, giving her what she’d wanted since that first day in the cabin. He was tall and hard, drawing her up against the wall of his chest. Everything about him was deliberate, from the way he nibbled at her lips to the way he adjusted his body to cradle hers. As if he’d been thinking about this kiss for a long time.

Victoria melted into the sensation of being savored. She put common sense on hold and forgot everything but the feel of muscle beneath her fingers as they crept up his chest and around his neck. Three years was a long time to wait to be kissed again.

For Joshua, the contact of their lips had signaled
the point of no return. Her mouth was soft and yielding beneath his, allowing him to take his time. At the touch of his tongue against the seam of her lips she opened her mouth slightly. With no more invitation than that, he swept his tongue into the moist, welcoming warmth.

Everything about the kiss was an exploration, because he didn’t know what she was feeling. He didn’t have a window into her emotions to tell him what she wanted. All he had to guide him was the physical response of her body to his, the way her tongue twined with his, the way a tiny movement of her hips urged him silently onward. When Joshua realized his hand was straying to the first of the buttons that had driven him crazy all day, he finally broke the kiss.

Joshua touched his forehead to hers and allowed himself to catch his breath. Kissing Victoria was like running a marathon, and he needed his second wind. So did she, because she drew in a extended breath and exhaled slowly. Long, pregnant seconds passed as neither of them moved. Joshua finally cleared his throat and stepped back.

With tiny movements Victoria squared her shoulders and smoothed her dress. As incredible as that kiss was, she knew better than to let a man know he had the power to shake her right down to her toes. What was that television commercial? Never let them see you sweat. Silently she added—or need, or want.

When she felt she could trust her voice not to come out in a rasp, she said, “I guess we had to … to get that out of our systems.”

“You don’t honestly think we got it out of our systems?” Joshua asked with a scowl. “I know it’s not out of mine. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“We tried that. It didn’t work.”

“Why do we have to do anything? Can’t we chalk it up to curiosity and forget it? It’s over and done with. We can go back to being friends.”

“Or we can go forward to being more than friends.”

“That’s not a good idea.” Victoria shook her head vigorously, causing the tendrils around her face to brush against her jaw.

“Neither is letting the tension between us get so thick you could cut it with a knife. I’m afraid that what we’ve got here, love, is an ongoing chemistry experiment.”

“Which is more than likely going to blow up in our faces if we don’t get smart. You’re busy being retired from whatever it was that you did, and I have a practice to run. Let it go, Joshua.”

“Not ‘it,’ ” Joshua corrected her softly. “
You.
Let
you
go. That’s what you’d really like. Then you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“About what?”

“About me. Takes two to tango, Vicky. You’re afraid that if I lead, you’ll follow.”

“That is ridiculous macho double-talk. The only thing I’m afraid of is being sidetracked when I need to be concentrating on my patients.”

“I don’t think so.” Joshua refreshed her memory. “Tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you in the cabin the first day we met. Tell me you weren’t disappointed tonight when I let the moment on the porch slide by without doing anything. Tell me you didn’t want that kiss every bit as much as I did.” When she opened her mouth to deny it, he cautioned her, “Be honest, Victoria.”

She pressed her lips together. Taking a deep breath, she admitted, “I’m as curious as the next person.”

“Curious?
Curious
is a little weak, Vicky. I think we both knew it was inevitable. The only question was how long we could hold out.”

“We?” Victoria raised her eyebrows and her voice. “I was holding out just fine. You were the one who couldn’t hold out.”

“Was that your idea of holding out?” Joshua retorted.

“Your male ego is obviously embellishing what happened between us.”

“My imagination’s pretty good, but it’s not good enough to imagine that sexy little hip push you did when you were belly to belly with me.”

For the second time since he’d known her, Joshua watched Victoria go quiet as the spark of anger vanished from her gray eyes; he watched her pull all the emotions off her face and tuck them back inside, where they belonged, although the faint stain of a blush remained. He was beginning to recognize her emotional control as a defense. Whenever the discussion
got too heated, whenever too much was at stake, she got quiet; she got control.

Victoria brushed past him, intending to leave. “If you’re still helping me, I need to go to the area around Logan’s Hollow on Thursday. I’ll have some more names to follow up.”

“What about the phone?” Joshua asked casually as she swept over the threshold in a dignified retreat. “I thought you wanted to call your office for messages.”

Instantly, she stopped, and cursed under her breath. When she didn’t say anything else, he guessed she was trying to decide how badly she wanted to check her messages. Must have been pretty badly, because she turned around.