Mountain Mystic (20 page)

At her laughter, the coldness in the pit of Joshua’s stomach unexpectedly began to fade. It wasn’t completely gone, but it no longer had a death grip on him.

“I’m not kidding, Victoria.” Derrick kept pressing. “There really is a market for this kind of book if it’s handled properly. Think about all the money that English fellow made with his little country-vet anecdotes! And I don’t even think he had a psychic in his books!”

“Probably not, but he had something I don’t have,” Victoria told him patiently, her hands primly folded in her lap. “The desire to be published. This journal is for me. Period. I thank you for your kind
words, and the opportunity, but
really
I don’t think I’m interested.”

Those words evaporated the lingering doubts, and Joshua smiled for the first time since coming into the room. Victoria was truly unique, a human being who didn’t want her fifteen minutes of fame. He couldn’t believe he’d finally found someone who preferred Joshua Logan to the connections that belonged to Indiana Jones.

He swirled the tobacco-colored liquid in his glass and observed, “The lady refused, Derrick. You’ll have to take no for an answer twice tonight.”

Derrick tossed back the last of his scotch and laughed. “I have not given up on you. I don’t plan to take no for an answer until I believe you really understand how much damage you might do to your career if you refuse.”

“Can you at least give up until after dinner?” Victoria cajoled. “If we make him mad, he’s liable to burn our steaks.”

She got a smile out of Derrick, who said, “In that case, consider the subject forgotten. But that means you’ll have to come up with another topic of conversation.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened to all the tiny churches with snake pits? I didn’t see a one on the way up here.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. “You city people will believe anything, won’t you?”

Quietly, Joshua smiled into his drink. Victoria was becoming one of “us” instead of one of “them.”

After dinner and a glass of wine, the three of them passed the time congenially enough. Joshua seemed unusually at ease with his agent, despite Derrick’s occasional reference to publicity. They were like adversaries who had long ago worked out a code of ethics and admired each other almost to friendship.

All the same, Victoria was glad when a phone call from the hospital gave her an excuse to leave gracefully. Derrick was staying in Joshua’s guest bedroom, and she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about saying good night to the agent and toddling off to bed with Joshua. She’d spent a lot of nights in his bed, but somehow this was different.

Joshua had made it quite clear that his house was to be considered her home as much as the cabin, but that evening she’d felt a tension in Joshua that hadn’t been there the day before. She attributed it to his need to get away from the world that was chasing him and trying to pull him back out there, where he had to live with echoes.

“Well, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure, but duty calls.” She held her hand out to Derrick, who clasped it warmly. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Don’t tell me I won’t see you again before I leave on Monday!”

“That depends entirely on the two pregnant women who are due to deliver in the next week.” Without thought, she fished her keys out of her sweater. “They may preempt my time this weekend.”

“You wear your keys?” Derrick asked.

“Just my truck key,” Victoria told him with a grin.

“What’s that other key?”

“Oh! I forgot. House key.” She deliberately left out whose house the key unlocked. “I wear a house key and my truck key. Saves time when I need to get to the hospital, like now.”

“Then I’ll say good night and hope everything goes well.”

“Good night.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Joshua said, and put an arm around her. When they reached the threshold, he lifted her coat off the hook and stepped out on the porch with her. “How long will you be?”

Surprised, Victoria considered his question. Joshua, being fully aware that babies loved to wreak havoc with schedules, never asked questions like that. “I don’t know. It’s a second baby. Might only be three or four hours. Then again …”

“You might be all night,” he finished for her.

“I might.” It was an apology.

“How soon do you have to be there?”

Now Victoria knew something was wrong. “I don’t have to leave this second, but I’ve got to go in the next few minutes.”

“Damn. That doesn’t give me much time.” He shook his head as if disturbed by the idea and resigned to reality. But he didn’t say anything else as he took her purse out of her hand to help her into her jacket and then handed it back to her.

Giving him an uncertain look, she slung the purse
over her shoulder and adjusted the strap. “Time for what?”

Joshua smiled at her and reached out with one of those strong hands to cup her jawline, letting it slide against his palm. The gesture was seductively innocent, more of a promise than a demand. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. He turned her world upside down instead.

“Victoria Elizabeth Radcliff Bennett, I love you. God knows I never thought to find you, but there you were right smack in the middle of my bed. And much too real to ignore.” He lowered his voice to almost a reverent whisper. “There. I’ve said it out loud. I can’t take it back even if I wanted to. I love you.”

Victoria blinked and struggled to register the words. It had sounded like he’d said he loved her. Her heart sped up and slowed down before it settled into a rhythm of slapping beats. Finally, searching his eyes, she whispered, “Say that last part again.”

Dropping his hand, he said in earnest, pronouncing each word distinctly so there could be no mistake. “I love you.”

Silence grew between them, and Joshua watched her for some sign of emotion, some indication of how she really felt about his declaration. For Joshua, those three terrifying words had stripped him bare. There was no more pretending he could walk away. At least not whole. He’d given her his heart and now he had to wait because he couldn’t feel Victoria’s emotions.

Instead of the gentle, amazed kiss he was expecting, she thumped him on the chest. “And you pick
now
to tell me? With him in there and me having to go to the hospital!”

Joshua rubbed his chest and laughed at himself for expecting a normal reaction from a one-of-a-kind woman. “Would you rather I waited God knows how long until you came back?”

Instantly, Victoria looked stricken and said, “No.”

“Now comes the hard part,” Joshua said softly, and he brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “Do you love me?”

Victoria finally did kiss him on the lips and murmured, “Just my luck. I fall in love with a psychic who can’t even tell that I’ve been head over heels in love with him for weeks.”

“Joshua said I’d find you here to say good-bye,” Derrick Tremont said as he walked into her Bodewell clinic early Monday morning and looked around curiously. “So this is what a midwife’s practice looks like.”

She got up from her table in the corner and joined him in the now-empty waiting room section of the big space. With a sweep of her arm around the room, she said, “Every modern convenience that I could beg, borrow, or steal.”

“Looks like you’re pretty good at begging, borrowing, and stealing.”

“Fair to medium, I’d say. I had to be. Starting a practice is a pretty expensive proposition.”

“Looks like you’re doing okay,” he said, and unbuttoned his camel’s-hair overcoat.

“The people here have taken fairly well to me.” Victoria crossed her arms. “Of course, to give credit where credit is due, Joshua helped.”

“Oh, I think it took more than a little help from Joshua to win over the community.” He gave her a direct gaze. “You’re one of the most gracious women I’ve met in quite a while.”

She returned his gaze just as directly, but with a crooked grin. “I could get used to your outrageous flattery, so don’t spoil me.”

“I’m telling you the plain, unembellished truth. Any other woman of my acquaintance would have screamed bloody murder to have found me ransacking her diary, but you tried to make excuses for me.”

“I’m not much on screaming,” Victoria admitted, and stooped to pick up a stray picture book, which she dropped into a plastic crate.

“I was serious about shopping that journal around as a proposal. If you’ll put it in manuscript form, I’ll represent you. We’ll get some bites.”

Victoria shook her head. “No. As I said, it’s private.”

“Then you should think about writing something not so private.” Derrick pulled a card out of his pocket. “You have a gift for capturing people and moments. You’re very real, Victoria, and you have a unique perspective, from what I’ve read. I mean that as a compliment.”

She took his card but said, “You keep forgetting that I have a career that takes all my time and then some.”

“You’re as stubborn as Joshua, you know?”

“I take it you didn’t get him to change his mind this morning?”

“The only thing I got out of this trip was a weekend vacation and his promise to consider a novel. He wouldn’t budge on the publicity though.” Derrick put his hands in his pants pockets and looked disapprovingly at her. “Like you and that damn journal.”

He didn’t intimidate her in the least because she’d gotten to know him better over the weekend. Derrick might be tall, pushy, and boisterous, but he was essentially a kind man. Only his concern for Joshua had dragged him out of New York to make sure his client understood the consequences of refusing the tour.

Except for dinner each day, she’d left them alone on Saturday and Sunday, so they could discuss business or anything else they wanted without an audience. She found that she’d needed the time alone to absorb the reality of falling in love with a man who loved her back. Joshua’s declaration had turned her world upside down, but she hugged the words to her like a patch of sunshine on a winter day. This time she was going to get her happily-ever-after. Just like Joshua, she’d come home to the hills of Tennessee.

Realizing that Derrick was looking at her expectantly, she smiled. She’d enjoyed her time with him; he could be quite funny if somewhat single-minded about her journal. “I’ll keep your card, but even if I were going to write a book, it wouldn’t be fiction. It’d be something like a low-budget how-to manual for
rural midwives. Something
I
could have used when I set up shop.”

Derrick looked pensive for a moment and then said, “I don’t have many contacts with university presses, which would probably be the place to start, but I’ll make a few calls and put you in touch with someone who does deal with that kind of book.”

“Oh, no! I wasn’t … I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Why not? It’s a couple of phone calls. Nothing more.”

Flustered at being taken seriously, Victoria said, “The manual was just a thought.”

Derrick winked at her. “So was the journal. I’m hoping you believe that one good turn deserves another. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

And then he was gone, leaving Victoria with the beginnings of an idea that wouldn’t go away. How hard could it be to organize her thoughts, list her problems and how she solved them? She’d spent weeks sorting out good ideas from the bad already.

A tiny part of her even admitted that she might be considering this book so she could hold herself up as successful and anoint herself with glory to prove a point to her parents. Thoughtfully, Victoria dragged her attention back to her appointment schedule, warning herself not to start counting on a book that wasn’t even definite.

For Joshua, having her near him was like having a charm that kept the echoes at bay, but the price he had to pay for his peace seemed too high. He’d lived his whole life knowing how other people felt, and now he could only sit and speculate as to why the woman he loved seemed edgy. He felt cheated somehow. Even though he pushed his mind to find her emotional echo, he came up empty. She’d learned to guard herself too well; he was still paying for another man’s sins.

Victoria wandered aimlessly around the cabin, first turning on, then turning off lights. Something was bothering her. Something she couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. He wasn’t certain if she was anxious, sad, worried, guilty, or any of the other hundred emotions that would account for her behavior. Joshua kept waiting for her to settle and talk to him, but even when she sat down, she didn’t grow calm or conversational. Victoria worried the edge of the sofa arm, running her finger up and down the piping. She’d been distracted during dinner, and now she was almost withdrawn.