Saving Gideon (5 page)

Avery stood rooted to the spot as if her feet had somehow become one with the boards of the floor.

Louie wasn’t having the same problem. He jumped up from his bed of rags and trotted over to the bowl to eat, his stubby little tail wagging the entire time.

Then Gideon was back.

“Here.” He thrust a stack of clothing into her surprised arms.

Avery looked down at the garments. A pale blue shirt, no doubt Gideon’s by the size, a pair of black flap-front pants—also Gideon’s if the size were any indication—and a pair of socks—warm-looking, hand-knitted socks.

“I . . .” The words escaped her. “Thank you.”

“It’ll be a couple more days before the roads are clear. You can’t . . .” He waved a hand toward her, but didn’t finish the sentence.

“Traipse around in next to nothing?” She managed to hide her smile, but the twitch in her lips took the sting from her words.

“
Jah
.” He gave her a solemn nod, then turned to set a fresh bowl of water in front of Louie. When he straightened, he eyed her seriously. “I must apologize for what I said.”

“It’s okay.” Avery shifted from one bare foot to the other, suddenly unable to meet his steady gaze.

“It is not our way to judge. And that’s what I have done.”

“Really,” she started, “it’s all right.”

He answered with a curt nod of his head.

Avery stuck her hand out from under the stack of clothing. “Truce?”

“
Jah
.” He glanced down at her fingers but turned away without touching her.

2

S
unday morning dawned bright and sunny. Avery woke on Gideon’s couch to birds singing and impossibly clear sky visible outside the curtain-less windows. It promised to be a beautiful day. Another like this one, and it wouldn’t be long until the roads would be dry enough for the horses to travel. Not that she wanted to return to her father’s house and all of the inquisitive stares and insensitive questions. But she supposed it had to be done.

She had wasted no time last night changing out of her cocktail dress and into the clothing Gideon had given her. The shirt was gorgeous, the color somewhere between the Oklahoma springtime sky and the bluebonnets that grew like beautiful weeds all over east Texas. Although the garment covered considerably more of her than her dress, she found it a little too intimate to run around in just a man’s shirt and fixed on his pants as well. They were miles too big with a flap in the front held together with four buttons across the top. She’d tightened those as best as she could, cinched them around her waist with a scrap of cloth from the basket in the kitchen and hooked them over her shoulders with the attached suspenders. Then she’d rolled the legs up to just above her ankles to keep them from dragging on the ground. They were a little worse for wear—considering she’d slept in them. And she would die a million deaths if someone actually
saw
her in them, but at least she was adequately covered. Maybe now Gideon would stop looking at her like
that
.

The sun was faithful and warm, and the last drifts of snow on the north side of the barn were finally starting to melt. Avery stretched and propped her bare feet up on the wooden porch railing and watched the farm go by. At least what there was of it. She’d thought a farm would be a little busier than Gideon Fisher’s seemed to be. But what did she truly know about farms? Nothing. Big, fat nada.

Still, Gideon had disappeared in the barn about an hour ago—her traitorous companion hot on his heels—and neither one of them had come out again. Didn’t he have fields to plow and crops to harvest and what not? And wasn’t he going to church? After all, it
was
Sunday.

And what did she care?

Except that she had never felt more useless in her life. All she had done since she’d been here was wash the dishes in unnecessarily cold water—Gideon had showed her that very morning how he used water heated in a bucket by the fire to wash the dishes—and sit around. And that didn’t seem quite right.

Her father always had a billion things for her to do—appearances to make, volunteer work, benefits to attend. It wasn’t hard work, but it kept her busy.

Gideon had saved her life, clothed her, fed her, shouldn’t she give something in return? She was on a farm. There were no benefits to attend, but shouldn’t she do
something
?

She should. And she would start by finding her host and . . . and . . . well, finding her host was something, now wasn’t it?

Avery stood and started off the porch, stopping only when she got to the smooth patch of red dirt at the bottom of the stoop. She didn’t have on any shoes. She surveyed the uneven ground that separated her from the barn. A few tufts of brown grass lined the well-worn path that was mostly mud with only a few spots packed down since the snow had melted. Her Manolo Blahniks were no match for this type of terrain and that left her only one option.

Despite the rising heat of the day, the path was cool on the soles of her feet, but not unpleasant. In fact, the experience of walking barefoot across a country farmyard was surprisingly pleasant. The sun was on her face, the ground soft beneath her feet, the rolled up pants legs brushing against her ankles as she made her way to the barn.

Three dogs lay in the sunshine just before the cool, shadowy entrance to the barn—a beagle, a black and white border collie, and a spotty dog she guessed to be some sort of heeler. None of them moved anything save a small wag of their tails as she passed them by. Her furry friend was nowhere to be seen.

Avery stopped just inside the door, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to her new surroundings. It was dim even with the top half of the Dutch doors open on the other end. She could say one thing about the barn: it was neat. Fresh smelling, clean hay scattered across the packed dirt floor and perfumed the air as she trod on it. And it was big, with a trussed roof and expansive loft stretching the length of the barn. And empty . . . except for a lone cow in one stall and a couple of horses housed just to the left and opposite the tack room.

Okay, that was three things, but Avery was so proud of herself for remembering the term “tack room” that she wasn’t keeping count. An “uncle” of hers over in Ft. Worth, one of her father’s associates, owned a sprawling ranch. Avery had gone out there once, toured the barn and ridden a gentle mare . . . and she’d loved it. It was just so far from Dallas. She often thought of going again, but there never seemed to be enough time. There was always a party to go to, or a ribbon-cutting ceremony, or some sort of event to attend.

He was sitting off to one side in the corner of the wide wooden stairs, so quiet and still that she almost didn’t see him at all. Or maybe seeing him sitting there instead of milking a cow or throwing some hay confused her. He seemed to be taking the slower pace of the Amish culture very seriously.

“I—” she started, unsure of what to say now that she had actually found him. “I was looking for you.”

“And you found me.” Louie V. lay at his feet as if he had found a new master in Gideon Fisher.

“Right.” Avery rocked back on her heels, enjoying the prickly feel of the straw beneath her feet. “I came to see if I could help you with anything.”

“No.” Simple man, simple answer.

“Yeah . . . well . . . okay. I just thought I could do something. I feel okay, you know. Farms are busy places, aren’t they? I mean, isn’t there always something to do, sun up to sun down and all the time in between?”
Why was she rambling?

“I s’pose.”

“Well, then, what can I do?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothing?”

“It’s the Lord’s Day. We only do what is required of us on Sundays.”

Avery nodded. “Right. I was wondering about that. Church and all. I mean if you need to leave . . .” She couldn’t very well go with him dressed in her clothes or his.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought Gideon’s eyes hardened just a fraction, hiding that vulnerable light which crept into them when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“No.”

“You don’t have to stay here for me.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay.” Avery didn’t believe him. She waited for him to load up another excuse, but he didn’t.

After several tense heartbeats, she turned to go. A pile of quilts and a pillow stacked on the landing next to her host captured her attention. She didn’t know much about horses or the soft equipment they used, but these surely didn’t look like horse blankets. And she had never heard of a horse needing a pillow. For anything.

She turned to face him. “Did you sleep here last night?”

“Here?”

“Here. In the barn.”

Gideon crossed his arms over his chest, his nonchalant pose of earlier vanishing in one fluid motion. “And what’s it matter to you if’n I did?”

“Well . . .” What truly did it matter to her where he slept? “It seems sort of silly to me that I slept on the couch and you slept in the barn and nobody slept in that big, old bed in there.”

“It is not silly.” He stood and even with the distance between them, Avery was impressed by his formidable height. “We are not married. We are not chaperoned. The elders will be vexed enough to discover you’re here with me, sleepin’ in the house.” He shrugged. “That is not somethin’ else I need on my conscience.”

“What isn’t something you need on your conscience?” Avery eyed him, her brow furrowed.

“Compromisin’ your good standin’.”

Was he serious? “Because I’m here with you? Alone?”

Gideon nodded. “
Jah
.”

He
was
serious! And Avery was touched.

“But I’m an Englisher.” She uttered the term she’d heard Jack use to refer to non-Amish folk.

“
Jah
,” Gideon agreed. “But you are still a woman.”

Gideon’s comment rang through Avery’s ears for the remainder of the morning. Even after he pulled on his mud-caked rubber boots and loaded her into a wheelbarrow to take her down to look at her car. It was an odd, but fun way to ride down the country lane with the sun on her face and her fanny planted in a piece of farm equipment. She enjoyed it. And there was no way she could have made the quarter-mile trek down the road and back barefooted. She had a few tough spots on her feet from wearing high heels, but she had those regularly tended to keep them to a minimum.

Avery glanced down at her French-tipped pedicure as she stood on Gideon’s front porch. What kind of shoes did Amish women wear? She wished she had paid more attention to Jack as he had talked about his movie—the gonna-blow-
Witness
-out-of-the-water film that he had written and wanted her father’s funding to produce. She had only half listened as he spoke of his dream because she was too focused on him. Funny how that seemed a lifetime away when it had only been a couple of days.

Her car on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Not without a tow truck. Avery shuddered at the memory of the crumpled piece of metal that was once an S class Mercedes. From the looks of it, she was lucky to be alive and blessed to be in one piece.

She gripped the porch railing a little tighter, the paint flaking off under her hands as she sent up a silent prayer of thanks to whoever might be listening and to whoever was watching over her.

At least she had gotten a few of her personal items out of the car—her purse, her makeup bag, and her cell phone. There were fourteen missed calls from Jack and one from her father.

She pulled the shiny device from her pocket and studied it as if it had all the answers. But it didn’t. Anything it contained would only bring more questions. With a heavy sigh, she punched in the numbers to her voicemail and calmly erased all of the messages from Jack without listening to them. He didn’t have anything to say that she was willing to hear. Her father on the other hand . . .

“Avery.” His voice was as matter-of-fact and as coolly business-like as ever. “Jack tells me you’re having a ‘girls’ night’ in Aruba. I guess this means you won’t be back for the Cartwright benefit. I was depending on you to be there. Maris has another engagement and, well, I suppose we’ll find a way.” He sighed to show his frustration with her and her obviously selfish decision to take a vacation without first notifying him. “I trust you’ll be back before the Dunstan Pro-Am. I’ll expect you then.” No “good-bye.” No “talk to you later.” No “I love you.” Just a click and nothing more.

Avery stared at the phone for several seconds trying to decide what had just happened. Jack had gotten to her father first. He probably already had the money for his movie. She was supposedly off gallivanting in Aruba, and no one was looking for her. She wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not. She sucked in a slow breath, tamping down the anger that threatened her perfect day. Jack had gotten away with sleeping with another woman and still reaped the benefits of his relationship with her. Maybe it served her father right to lose that kind of money if he never once questioned where she was and why she was there.

She turned off the phone and slipped it back into her pocket.

The Dunstan Pro-Am was three weeks away. Three blessed weeks of peace and solitude. She had half a mind to actually fly to Aruba, only she wasn’t sure how she would get to the airport from here. Right now, though, “here” was as good a place as any.