Return to Lone Oak (Harlequin Heartwarming) (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

K
ATIE
NEARLY
FELL
off her lawn chair when Noah strolled out of her dad’s new house and onto the deck. Today. For her birthday dinner.

Judging by Noah’s look when he was faced with Katie’s entire family, he’d been left in the dark, too. Which made perfect sense, since he wanted nothing to do with her.

There were a couple of ways she could handle this. Be unfriendly and make him feel even more uncomfortable or...not.

Honestly, she wasn’t mad at him. She was annoyed as all get-out, but she wasn’t angry. She still had a couple things to say to him in regard to their conversation two nights ago, but now was not the time.

So she smiled and said hello. Her dad began introducing everyone—her sisters, their husbands and the kids—and Noah mentioned he’d met Lindsey, Zach and their boys out in the yard at his new house. He asked about Grandma Rundle, as well, who was having an “off” day and had stayed home with Annie, her caretaker.

“There are beverages in the cooler here and a seat over by the birthday girl,” Mr. Salinger told Noah after everyone had been introduced.

Noah thanked him heartily, helped himself to a beer and then looked for the empty seat. He made his way to Katie’s side and sat down as everyone went back to their own conversations.

“It’s your birthday?” he asked her quietly.

“Don’t tell me you forgot my present?” She leaned a little closer. “Or is my present just that you’re talking to me?”

“Low blow. I had no idea it was your birthday or that you’d be here. Or that half of Lone Oak would be here. I ran into your dad at the hardware store last night and he invited me for dinner. I thought it was a retry from when he’d asked me a couple weeks ago.”

“He’s like that. Full of surprises, without intending to be. I didn’t know you were coming, either.”

“I can leave, if you’re not comfortable having me here.”

“Noah,” she said, amused. “Do I look uptight?”

“You don’t get uptight. I forgot.” He tried to grin, as if he’d made a joke, but their fundamental differences were preoccupying both of them. “By the way, I wanted to thank you, again, for the painting help. The kitchen looks great.”

“Not a problem. I like it, too. And it no longer looks like ‘my’ house.”

Noah studied her. Made her feel as if no one else was around, his eyes understanding. “I don’t imagine that fixed everything, though.”

“Nope. I’m still basically as freaky as ever, where the house and my mom are concerned.” Katie could legitimately see the humor in her problems, at least while she was surrounded by her family in the middle of the day. As Noah had commented recently, night was a different story.

He touched her arm, just for a couple of seconds. Katie bit her lip and said nothing. She could do without mixed signals. She stood up to break the contact and went inside to see if she could help Claudia serve dinner.

A couple of hours later, they’d devoured burgers and hot dogs, as well as so many side dishes that Noah thought Claudia could give his mom a run for her money in the party-hosting department.

He saw Katie slip inside again while everyone else was still eating. He’d finished his meal and thought now would be a good time to get out of Dodge. Katie likely didn’t want him here, even though she’d gone out of her way to be friendly.

She was a class act. A lot of women would’ve caused a scene after their conversation the other night. He knew she didn’t understand—they hadn’t really talked enough for her to grasp exactly where he was coming from, and yet instead of being irrational and unpleasant today, she’d made him feel welcome.

Yeah, he really needed to do her the favor of disappearing.

Noah went inside, closing the door behind him to keep the air-conditioned air where it belonged. Katie was in the kitchen rinsing dishes.

“Hey,” he said, and she jumped a little.

“Hey.”

“I thought now would be a good time for me to take off.”

She looked up at him. “You’re leaving? Already?”

“It’s been more than two hours since I crashed your party. I figured you couldn’t wait to see me go.”

“You’re not bothering me. In fact, I think we have some things to talk about.”

“Like what?”

“Us. Not kissing. Et cetera.”

“Is there really anything else to say?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t said much of anything. Yet. I was a little stunned the other night.”

“Fair enough. When do you want to have this conversation?”

“Right now’s good.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’ve got cake and presents coming.”

Katie glanced at the kitchen table, covered with gift bags and colorfully wrapped boxes. She nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Will you stay?”

“Are you sure you want me here?”

“Noah, I like you, strangely enough. I’m not going to send you away just because you went freaky on me.”

“Freaky on you?”

She smiled. “Come on, admit it.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through...”

“No. I don’t. I’d like to, though.”

“Now’s not a good time.”

“Yeah, I know. Presents. Cake. Why are we standing in here arguing again?”

“You called me a freak.”

Katie laughed. “Will you stay?”

Noah was uneasy about returning to this conversation later, when they really got down to it, but he supposed he owed it to her. And the truth was that no matter how much he’d needed to cut off any kind of involvement at the pass the other night, he found he still cared about her.

“I’ll stay. As long as you don’t tell everyone else I’m a freak.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

She closed the dishwasher and came to his side, wrapping her hand around his bicep as they moved to the door. Her touch affected him, no doubt about it. Apparently his nerve endings hadn’t gotten the message about him having decided to be immune to Katie.

“I’m glad you’re here. Even if you didn’t mean to be.”

Noah didn’t say anything, wasn’t sure what to say. Because what he was thinking right then—that in a different life he’d be tempted to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her senseless—didn’t seem like quite the thing to throw at her.

“There they are,” Zach said, so that everyone paid attention when they came back out on the deck.

“What have you two been doing?” Lindsey’s tone suggested something similar to what had been on Noah’s mind and he was glad he wasn’t prone to blushing.

“Dishes, sister dearest. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“What’s a gutter?” Logan asked, making the adults laugh.

Savannah started to explain about gutters on houses as Wendell stood up and declared it was time for cake.

Claudia disappeared for a couple minutes while dinner plates were being cleared. Then she emerged from the house carrying a tall, round layer cake with creamy frosting and two big candles—a two and a seven. Noah glanced at Katie, who reclined in a lounger next to him.

“Vanilla?” he asked in surprise.

Katie’s eyes sparkled. “Red velvet cake with double-thick cream cheese frosting. My absolute favorite.”

Savannah leaned over. “She gets it every year, too. Spoiled much?”

Katie shot Savannah a smug shrug. “I’m the baby. Spoiled with my favorite birthday cake is the one perk.”

Savannah made a sarcastic choking sound as Claudia started singing “Happy Birthday.” Everyone joined in for an off-key performance, followed by a second verse involving smelling like a monkey that was led by the under-ten brigade.

Katie closed her eyes and appeared to be making a wish. Noah would have loved to know what it was.

Towering slices of cake were served, with scoops of Neapolitan ice cream on the side. Noah chuckled to himself at the combination of flavors. How completely Katie it was.

Katie set aside her half-eaten dessert when Owen, Billy and Zach brought her the pile of presents that had been on the table inside. She made a big show of opening everything from her family, especially those gifts from the kids. For someone who led such a wild and independent life, she would’ve made a wonderful mother.

“Did you like the pretty necklace from me and Allie?” Logan asked.

Katie took her new
K
initial necklace from the table in front of her, then leaned forward and hugged him. “This necklace is one of my favorites. In fact, I like it so much I think I’ll wear it right now. Could you help me put it on?”

She squatted down and turned around so her nephew could do the honors, balancing herself by putting her hands on Noah’s knees. He tried not to think about the urge that overcame him—to take those hands in his and pull her onto his lap.

The heart pendant that she always wore drew Noah’s attention and he wondered at its significance. Her eyes met his and he thought for a moment he could see the woman beneath the daredevil.

Then the little boy looped the new necklace around her neck and fiddled with the clasp for several seconds before he succeeded in fastening it. Katie stood and turned to thank Logan, letting him admire it, and Noah tried to get his thoughts under control.

Maybe sticking around to talk afterward wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

N
OAH
WAS
ALMOST
at his SUV when Katie caught up with him.

“You’re sneaking away?” she said, disbelieving.

“It looked like you might be there a while.”

When they got to his vehicle, Katie jumped into the passenger side.

“Need a ride home or something?” Noah asked.

“No. I told you I have things to say to you. Are you
trying
to be frustrating or does that just happen on its own?”

Noah felt like a ten-year-old who’d ticked off his mom. “I sometimes masquerade as an enlightened species, pretending I’m a doctor, but when you get down to it I’m just one of those pesky males.”

Katie stared at him, then smiled. “Sometimes you do surprise me, Dr. Fletcher.”

He circled around to the driver’s side and got in. “Where to, Queen Bee?”

“I don’t know. I’m easy.”

“Easy like a hurricane.”

The tips of her lips curved upward. “You haven’t kicked me out, though.”

“Not yet.”

“Wait a sec,” Katie said. “If you don’t mind taking me home later, let me grab my gifts and stick them in the back.”

Noah pulled into the Salingers’ driveway and helped her carry everything out.

“All set now?”

Katie nodded.

He backed out, unsure where to go. After a few blocks of aimless driving they were close to the park, so he pulled in there. They got out and walked toward one of the benches.

“I’m going to hit the restroom,” Noah told her, maybe partially to stall the conversation. He left her sitting on a bench under a good-sized tree.

When he returned less than five minutes later, he found her hanging upside-down from the lowest branch of that tree, her cast swinging in the breeze just like the rest of her. His heart constricted, as he imagined what would happen if her legs, which she’d slung over the branch by her knees, slipped. She might land on her head or neck and be paralyzed for life. At the very least, she might break her fall with her broken arm.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, automatically shifting a hand to the back of his neck to massage it.

“Hanging out.”

He held his tongue, realizing half of Katie’s pleasure was in getting to him with stunts like this one.

She levered herself back up into a sitting position on the branch. He wouldn’t have believed she could do it with just one strong arm, but she managed it. Made it look simple, in fact.

He turned his attention to the rest of the deserted park as she crept toward the trunk to climb down. He couldn’t watch.

When he heard her feet hit the ground, he spun toward her, his teeth clenched.

“Noah, it’s a tree.”

“You’re already injured. And you’re twenty-seven years old. Not seven.”

“You’re no fun.”

She sat down on the bench and Noah sat beside her, refusing to take the bait.

“So,” she said. “I’m calling your bluff.”

His eyes widened and he glanced sideways at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The whole no-more-kissing thing. I don’t think that’s exactly what you want.”

He groaned inwardly. “You can’t accept that I’m not stumbling over my own two feet to kiss you?”

She laughed. “Wow. Got me there. I’ve just been sitting here stewing.”

“I told you the other night how I feel—”

“No, you really didn’t. But that’s not my point, exactly. I don’t want a serious conversation about where we’re going. We aren’t going anywhere. We have no future together. Right?”

“Right.”

“Neither of us wants one. I’m leaving in a couple weeks.”

He nodded. “So you think we should just pretend there’s no problem?”

“Why does there have to be a problem? My point is that we’ve had some good times together and there seems to be a pretty strong attraction. Why are you overthinking it and turning
me
into the woman who hurt you so badly?”

“I never said she hurt me.”

“You didn’t have to.”

They were both silent for several minutes. Then Katie stood up and paced slowly in front of him, hands shoved into the front pocket of her sleeveless hooded shirt. “Will you tell me about her? What happened?”

“Why do you want to know?”

She sat back down on the bench, cross-legged, facing him. “You’ve listened to me carry on about my mom, Noah. I know I’m not very good at the friend thing, with men
or
women, but I’ve appreciated being able to talk to you about it. I just thought I’d offer you the same opportunity.”

He leaned back on the bench, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I don’t normally talk about Leah.”

Katie nodded. “That’s cool. If you don’t want to, I understand. I don’t usually babble about my mom to people I hardly know, either.”

She watched him, studied his face, each of his features. She propped her elbow on her knee, as if she didn’t plan to move anytime soon.

“Do you really want to hear about her?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not a happy story.”

She said nothing. Just waited for him to tell her.

He sighed. “I met Leah on the mission in the Congo. She was a fellow physician. Full of life. Spontaneous and always looking for adventure. She loved to skydive and white-water raft.”

“And
you
fell in love with her?”

“Fell hard.”

Katie ran her fingers slowly along his arm, back and forth, wishing she knew how to show him how sorry she was.

“She loved adrenaline, loved the rush of emergencies, especially. She’d started out in an E.R. in L.A. Loved working on the mission because we were always on alert, waiting for the next crisis to arise, in the midst of treating dying people who hadn’t had health care for years. She loved a good thrill and loved making a difference.”

He swallowed and Katie sensed he was just getting started.

“She was a good doctor. Very good. Except for that impulsiveness... In the end, it was the desire to save one more life that got her into trouble.”

“What happened?”

“Two kids turned up in the middle of the night. Somehow they got the message to her that their mother had been shot and needed care.”

“So she went with them.”

“She went against policy to do it. Didn’t tell anyone, didn’t ask for help. The situation in the area was volatile to begin with, and it had become even more so in the preceding week. We’d been forced to retreat two days earlier, move the medical camp south a few miles. Insurgents, rebels... Everyone was crazy. So many people had been shot, injured, blown to pieces. Leah walked right into that. Knowingly. To try to save the mother of those kids.”

“How’d she break the rules?”

“She needed permission to go. And she knew that. It was too unsafe.”

Katie closed her eyes and nodded, her stomach knotting up with tension.

“Anyway, she took off. It was still dark. Maybe, in some part of her brain, she thought the dark would keep her safe.” He scoffed. “No. I take that back. I don’t have a clue what she thought or
if
she thought. She just took off into the dark woods, to save a dying woman who was probably already beyond saving anyway.”

“Then what happened?” Katie nearly whispered, terrified of the answer but unable to keep from asking.

“When I woke up at dawn, I went looking for her. Looked everywhere. Couldn’t find her. I grabbed the head physician and a couple others and started searching the area. We tried to stay low. We found a man who’d been hiding just off the road, who’d seen Leah. He pointed us in the right direction. Dr. Howard and I knew it was imperative to try to find her and get her out of wherever she was.”

Katie barely breathed. Noah stared at the surface of the bench, and she wondered if he would continue.

“We located her by her screams. Knew it was her because she was begging for them to shoot her—in English. We made our way closer, then split up, hoping that would improve our chances of doing... something.
Anything
to get her out of there.

“The guys who had her—there were four of them—saw Howard first. One of them went toward him and chased him away with a knife, managing to nearly cut off two of his fingers. Kiss of death for a surgeon.

“A few minutes later, I was close enough to see them torturing her. I couldn’t take any more and I screamed at him to stop. Stupid, right? But I wasn’t thinking straight at the moment.”

Katie couldn’t imagine.

He closed his eyes and didn’t speak for some time. “Then they shot her.”

Katie felt sick to her stomach. She stood and paced, not knowing what to say or do.

There wasn’t a sound except for a light, peaceful breeze, blowing the leaves in the trees. It was so calm here. No hint of the violence that was a daily part of life half a world away.
So deceiving.

Shivering, she turned toward Noah and watched him. He didn’t look at her, didn’t even seem to know she was there. He stared sightlessly, the torment in his eyes proof that he was completely lost in the horrible memory.

She moved toward him, wishing there was some way to wipe all of this from his memory, to somehow make it all right for him. Time would help him, surely, but this was something he would never forget, never completely escape.

“Noah,” she said, standing directly in front of him. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s better to say nothing, believe me.”

“Yeah, well... Maybe that’s so.” She held her hand out to him. “Let’s walk.”

He looked up at her with haunted eyes. Finally, he accepted her hand and got to his feet.

They’d walked nearly a mile along the jogging path when she began to talk. “That’s the reason you don’t think you’re a hero, isn’t it?”

His jaw clenched.

“When did that happen, in relation to finding the little girl?”

“I found her minutes after watching Leah die.”

Katie nodded, thoughts flooding her head. After hearing the rest of Noah’s story, she was more certain than ever that he was a hero, but telling him that right now wouldn’t do any good.

“You’ve been through a nightmare,” she said quietly.

“We both have.”

Katie thought to herself that her nightmare had been a lot more mundane than his, no matter how much it had hurt. She absolutely couldn’t fathom what he’d been through.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Noah said, still holding on to her hand.

“I don’t know if this is better, but I’m curious... I understand that you think I’m similar to Leah, but why does that mean you can’t kiss me?”

He eyed her sideways.

“I know I’m acting like my bulldog sister Lindsey, not letting this go, but the point has nothing to do with kissing. Or very little, at least. It actually goes beyond that.”

They took several more steps before he asked, “Are you planning on enlightening me?”

She tried to figure out how to get into this without starting another argument. “It comes down to the way we live our lives.”

“We’re opposites,” he said.

“One hundred percent.”

“And you’re going to tell me I need to lighten up and not focus on the past.”

She tilted her head to the side, thinking. “No. Your past is pretty huge. I’m not in the position to tell anyone how to live. But...we’re here right now because, well, we have some things in common. Right?

“I spend time with you because for some strange reason I like you. Even though your worrying makes me nuts and your need for control makes me want to pull my hair out. This was all prekissing, by the way.”

“Prekissing. Gotcha.”

“Why do you hang out with me?”

“Free labor? Milkshakes?”

She pretended to slug him in the gut.

“Okay, okay. Same thing you said. Even though you drive me nuts, I like you. Like your zest for life, your take on lots of things.”

“I’m probably leaving in less than three weeks. So my question is, what is it going to hurt if we do continue to spend time together for a little while?”

He hesitated, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

“Just say whatever you were going to say. We’re being so uncomfortably honest I’m about to start hyperventilating,” Katie said. “You might as well get it out.”

Noah still took several seconds to speak. “When I’m with you, I spend half my time thinking about kissing you. Touching you.”

Something deep inside Katie sprang to life at these words. She inhaled slowly and didn’t look at him. “The same thoughts have occurred to me.”

Part of her wanted the ground to open and swallow her. She’d never been so frank about such things in her life. Had never shared feelings very well. Didn’t dare to think about why she could with Noah or why she was doing so now.

She heard Noah exhale shakily. “Well, then...”

Katie laughed nervously, then turned serious. “But you don’t want to get any closer to me, because you’re afraid something bad will happen to me—like it did to Leah.”

He thought about it for a while, then nodded. “I guess that’s part of it. The other part is that we have no hope of ever working out long-term.”

“Are you looking for long-term?”

“Hardly. Not now. I’ve got too much to get through first. You?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you don’t do serious or long-term, either.”

“You think right. Ready to turn back?” She glanced up at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon.”

They stopped on the trail and turned around. Katie wasn’t surprised when he didn’t seek out her hand again. But she missed his touch.

“I’m throwing out a challenge,” she said after several more minutes of silence. “I challenge you to see if you can let go and have some fun. With me. Until I leave town.”

She waited for him to say something. Frankly, she expected him to cut down her suggestion right away. But he just walked. Thinking. Always thinking.

“We don’t have a future together, and that’s how we both want it. You won’t have to spend a lifetime trying to convince me to quit jumping out of planes. I won’t have to needle you to give it a try. We just have a couple weeks together to do what we want, just two adults who happen to enjoy driving each other crazy.”