Under Montana Skies

CHAPTER TWO

AS SHE STEPPED into the cabin, Laura’s misgivings about taking on this case only increased.

Thick-hewn beams, darkened with age, spanned the low ceiling, making the long rectangular room feel oppressive and gloomy. Her first impulse was to dart around to the windows set squarely into three of the walls and throw back the heavy wooden shutters.

Instead, she set her satchel at her feet and let her eyes adjust to the dim light while she waited for her patient to come back in.

He’d gone through a door toward the back to get another chair, she supposed. The fact that there was only a table and one lone chair in this barren room was spooky, not to mention the darkness and the general lack of…life about this place.

Laura rubbed her hands up and down her sweatshirt-covered arms. Even though it was early September and the last scraps of snow on the high peaks were long gone, the mountain air had a definite chill. She hoped she could complete Mr. Scott’s treatment program according to her six-week plan. Sixteen Mile Creek road would be impassable once the first heavy snows fell.

She eyed the massive stone fireplace. It was swept clean and cold-looking, like the mouth of a cave.

The walls of the room, rough knotty-pine planks, had absolutely no decoration, the wooden floor, no rugs. The place looked the same as Laura guessed it had for—what?—the past century or so.

On the round oak table was a solitary paper plate holding the remains of a plain bologna sandwich. What kind of man chose to live such an existence?

She turned and looked back out the front door, which stood open. Should she close it? No. If she did, this room would be as dark as night.

Beyond the shadows of the porch she spotted the corner of a well-tended garden, which she hadn’t noticed when she’d driven up. That was odd. She craned her neck to see more. It sloped down the sunny side of the mountain in neat rows. What did he do with all those vegetables? she wondered. As she watched, a big shaggy yellow dog sauntered into the picture and flopped down in a shady spot at the edge of the garden. Well, if the man had a dog, maybe he wasn’t all bad.

“Ms. Duncan?”

She whirled around, instantly blushing, embarrassed that she’d allowed his deep voice to startle her.

He clumped into the room, frowning and carrying a chair with his good arm. He banged it down opposite the one at the table. “Have a seat.”

Laura crossed the bare floor and after she adjusted the chair—the wooden legs made a terrible scraping noise—she sat, none too comfortably.

He lowered himself into the chair opposite and pushed the sandwich aside.

“Did I interrupt your lunch?” she asked. Her own had been a quick carton of yogurt and some crackers and fruit from the basket of goodies she’d packed.

“Let’s see the contract.”

Laura’s cheeks grew hotter. Okay. So he was going to be consistently rude. She supposed she could deal with that.

“Can we have some light?” she asked pleasantly.

Without a word he got up—the chair legs made that terrible scraping noise again—and rounded the table to the nearest window. He slammed the heavy wooden shutters aside. Light poured through wavy-paned glass onto the table-top, making the white paper plate glow.

While he returned to his seat, Laura dug the contract out of her bag. When she held it out, he snatched the pages from her hand. He reached across and rubbed his right shoulder, frowning as he read the document.

Finally he tossed the papers onto the table. “I asked for a male therapist you know,” he said flatly, and crossed his well-muscled arms over his chest.

“I know,” Laura answered quietly, “but as I told you, I’m the only one who would come. Didn’t Mrs. Summers explain that to you?”

Adam Scott scowled. “You are absolutely not what I had in mind.”

“I’m sorry about that, but let me assure you I am very good at what I do.” She smiled. “And you did ask me to stay. Tell you what, I’ll give you a complimentary treatment—” she picked up the contract, “—and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave.”

He glared at her and snatched the papers from her hand again, then slapped them on the table in front of him and held out his hand for a pen. “Where do I sign?”

She pointed out the three places where he would consent to her treatment plan, assure her of full payment and allow her to release his medical records to any insurance carrier. “Sign here, here and here.”

As the pen scratched across the paper while he signed his name, Laura noticed he still wore his wedding band.

He stopped after signing only two of the lines. “I don’t use insurance,” he stated in a tone that invited no discussion. Laura pointed at the fee figures. “Fine. Initial these, please.”

He gave her a grudging nod and did so.

One more piece of business. “Where will I be staying?” she asked as she handed him the carbon copy and put the signed original back in her satchel. She could always go back into the tiny town of Libby and stay at the modest motel there, but that would mean arduous daily trips up that Sixteen Mile Creek Road, and it would cost them valuable therapy time.

She’d noticed a smaller stone house a little farther up the mountain. It actually looked pleasant, inviting. Maybe she could stay there. One thing was certain: he was just about the most attractive man she’d ever seen, and she wasn’t about to stay under the same roof with him.

At last he smiled. A relaxed slightly crooked smile that bared strong white teeth.

“I was planning to put an extra bed up here.” He didn’t wait for her response to that. He crossed his arms over his broad chest and said, “Now you can see why I asked for a male therapist.”

“What about that small house farther up on the mountain? Could I possibly stay there?”

His face darkened.

Instead of answering her, he stood and crossed the room to the door. He braced his good arm on the frame and stared out at the lovely garden.

After what seemed an eternity, he said, “No. The stone house is closed.” He hung his head as if thinking, then spoke quietly. “I guess you could take the bedroom upstairs and I could…I could open up the stone house.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Scott, but my staying upstairs doesn’t address the problem. I’m not comfortable staying alone on this mountain with you in this isolated cabin—”

His long weary sigh interrupted her. For another moment he kept his head lowered. Then Laura saw his shoulders move, thought she actually heard a chuckle.

“Ms. Duncan, you certainly drive a hard bargain. All right. I know a reliable older couple down the creek. They’re—” his voice became gentle, “—they’re very nice people, very stable. If I ask them, they’ll come and stay in the house with you—they can sleep downstairs.” He said all this with his back toward her. “Over there.” He gestured at an empty alcove at the other side of the room. “The old guy has bad knees, so the stairs would be too much for him.”

When Laura remained patiently silent, he turned and looked at her. His dark eyes had a thoughtful squint, as if he was making a difficult decision. He swallowed. “And I’ll sleep in the stone house. Would that be satisfactory?”

“I suppose,” Laura said quietly.

He nodded and regarded her with cool detachment. “Good. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my first treatment right away. My shoulder is killing me.”

CHAPTER THREE

WHILE LAURA DUNCAN was applying her strong skilled hands to his bare back, Adam had to make an effort not to feel what he was feeling, not to think what he was thinking.

It scared him, the effect this woman had had on him when he’d first seen her. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it hadn’t just been that she was attractive. She’d looked…special.

No woman had looked that way to him since Elizabeth.

Of course, the few women he’d seen since he’d decided to go into hiding up on Sixteen Mile Creek couldn’t be considered much of a sampling. The husky postwoman delivering a package, those matronly Mountain Home nurses, the elderly Katherine. Nice ladies. None of them a threat to his precious memories.

Laura’s hands kept bringing his attention back to her. He could hear her gentle breathing becoming more labored as she worked diligently. She’d made him sit in one of the straight-backed chairs, facing backward, and was rhythmically digging her thumb into a muscle that had felt like a burning knot only seconds ago.

“You have a trigger point here, where a tight muscle is crossing a nerve and compressing it. I’ll be sure to use moist heat packs on it before the next treatment.”

Yes, even from a distance this woman had looked singular, unique. Despite her faded jeans and that neon-orange sweatshirt with that dumb slogan—PHYSICAL THERAPISTS HAVE PATIENTS—she exuded a kind of elegance.

He had watched her unload her belongings from the hatchback of that faded red Toyota like a magician pulling stuff out of a hat. First had come her personal bags, surprisingly compact, then she’d heaved out a big rectangle that looked like a folding table. After that she’d struggled with a contraption that looked like the front half of a small bike, mounted on a stand.

Then a CD player, a pillow, a gym bag that seemed too heavy for a woman of her petite stature, and a large gift basket—what was that for?

Finally, she’d taken out the life-size doll she’d called a safety dummy. The thing was done up to resemble a sort of Raggedy Andy cowboy with a painted-on face, plaid shirt, battered black hat, even an old pair of boots at the end of stuffed denim legs.

“The passenger door leaks when it rains, so better to keep him inside,” she’d explained as she lugged the dummy up the porch steps. “Meet Ned.” She stopped in the doorway and flopped the white muslin “hand” at him.

Adam had given the thing a dubious frown, but he’d admired the way she’d managed to cheerfully haul it and everything else up the cabin steps and inside without emitting so much as a groan.

“I’ll set up the massage table tomorrow. We can manage without it today,” she’d explained.

Now she was flattening her warm palm against the injured area, applying a gentle rotating pressure that seemed to pull the pain out. After a moment his eyes involuntarily closed with pure relief.

“Mr. Scott?”

His eyes flew open and looked straight into hers, only inches from his own. They were clear blue eyes, tilted up at the corners. No makeup.

“I’m afraid that was the pleasant part of the treatment.” She spoke softly, apologetically. Her voice was melodic and low, with a hint of a Southern drawl.

Her lips—moist-looking pink lips—parted, as if she was unsure about something. “Umm…for the next step, which may cause some discomfort, I’ll need you to be stretched out on your abdomen.”

She stood straight, swiveling at the waist as she scanned the room. Her breasts—perfect, very rounded—stretched the fabric of the sweatshirt.

“Where’s your bed?” she said.

Her gentle hands resumed massaging his shoulder muscles rhythmically while she waited for his answer.

Adam was so completely relaxed from what her hands were doing to him that he didn’t answer right away.

She leaned forward. “Mr. Scott? The bed?” she repeated.

He took a deep breath and reluctantly shoved himself to his feet. “Upstairs.”

He fumbled with his shirt, couldn’t find the armholes, gave up. “The, uh, stairs—” he pointed “—are in the kitchen.”

She followed as he led her through the door to the left of the fireplace, down a short dim hallway and into a bright kitchen at the back of the cabin.

NOW THIS ROOM is more like it, Laura thought.

Above the deep white enamel sink a solid bank of pleasingly spaced casement windows looked out on the verdant mountainside as it rose at an acute angle behind the cabin.

The varnished knotty-pine cabinets formed a cozy U around a waist-high chopping block. Thank God I’ll have plenty of ice, she thought when she noticed a large refrigerator, albeit an ancient rounded model, humming in the corner. An old wood-burning cast-iron cook stove completed the charming picture.

There were bird feeders outside the windows and fresh herbs growing on the sills in hand-thrown clay pots. A squat old teakettle stood on the stove, and a colorful quilt draped an antique rocker.

Adam jerked a leather strap on a plank door that groaned opened onto a narrow wooden staircase rising between two whitewashed walls. The stairs creaked as he clumped up them, Laura following.

At the top was an attic room that seemed even gloomier than the one below it. Laura’s first question when her eyes took in the enclosure with its bare-studded walls was going to be: Where is the bathroom?

She hadn’t noticed one downstairs. But when she glanced out the large floor-to-ceiling window set into the gable end by the stair landing, she saw her answer.

Below, at the end of a narrow footpath worn through the thick mountain grasses, looking like something from a picture postcard, sat a weathered gray structure. Complete with tin roof and quarter-moon hole in the door. An outhouse. Lovely.

She turned to her new patient and smiled bravely. “Please lie facedown on the bed with your shoulder near the edge. No pillow.”

He went to the heavy four-poster bed tucked up under the roof between two dormer windows, pulled off his boots, struggling with the left one, then did as she asked. Laura stood over him, warming some lotion between her palms and wondering how in the world she could continue. Though she’d admitted to herself right away that he was handsome, actually touching him had been a shock.

His skin was tanned, smooth and warm. As soon as she laid her hands on his firm back, she felt an electric thrill run through her fingertips, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Certainly a sensation unlike any she’d felt while touching any other patient.

She’d made it through the warm-up phase of the therapy on sheer professional concentration, but now she wondered if she could complete the painful stretches and manipulations necessary to remove scar tissue without communicating her nervousness to him.

He was lying very still, his back muscles relaxed and his breathing regular. Careful not to drip the lotion on his bare back, she leaned forward and realized the man had fallen asleep.

WHEN HE WOKE UP, he realized he was upstairs in his bed, but couldn’t figure out how he’d gotten there or what time it was. The sunlight slanting through the western dormers was low and golden, so it must be evening.

He was startled when he saw a cowboy slumping between the wall and the bed, denim legs sprawled straight out as if the man was drunk. Then he remembered.

The safety dummy. Her.

He’d been so relaxed when she’d finished the first part of the treatment that he’d trudged up the stairs in a fog, flopped on the bed the way she told him to and then?

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, flexed his injured arm and shoulder. It felt pretty good. And he felt fantastic. He hadn’t slept like this since…He heard voices downstairs. Doc and Katherine. The delicious spicy aroma of Katherine’s lentil soup drifted up. Was it dinnertime already?

Laughter.

Laura Duncan’s laughter.

Man. Having her here was going to be tough. Why did they have to send him a beautiful female physical therapist? It was hard enough looking at her, but when she touched him…

He couldn’t afford to let himself have these feelings. He needed a fully functioning arm and shoulder if he was going to do what he had to do, and he didn’t need to be distracted by the charms of his therapist. This arrangement would never work. Somehow he’d find another way to get his therapy done.

He pulled on his boots, which set off a twinge of pain in his shoulder, found his shirt, sneered at Ned while he buttoned it, then headed down the stairs.

The laughter fell off when he ducked his head around the narrow door at the foot of the stairs.

“Adam,” Katherine said kindly, and stepped away from the stove toward him. “Did you sleep well?”

“We were just getting acquainted with Laura.” Doc smiled up at him from the rocker.

Laura Duncan was standing at the chopping block, where the big gift basket sat with the cellophane all askew as if they’d been digging around in it. Evidently she’d been slicing chunks of cantaloupe into a crockery bowl, but now she stopped. She, too, was smiling. Everybody looked happy. He was glad to see Doc and Katherine enjoying themselves, but he had no intention of joining the party. For him there was no such feeling as happy. Only one thing drove his days and nights now. One thing. And Doc and Katherine knew that.

“Ms. Duncan, I need to speak to you. Alone.” He marched past her into the main room and waited with his boot propped on the big stone hearth.

IN THE KITCHEN, Laura looked from Doc to Katherine, confusion and embarrassment rendering her speechless. Things had been going so well!

She’d immediately liked Doc and Katherine Jones, lean white-haired retirees who wore Birkenstocks and sincere smiles. As soon as they’d walked in the back door of the cabin, their arms loaded with groceries, Laura had sensed their good humor, their kindness, their wisdom.

As the older couple bustled about putting away the food and chattering, it was obvious they felt at home and knew where everything was stored in the small kitchen. In no time they were all sipping steaming mugs of the herbal tea Laura had taken from her basket.

“We come up the mountain all the time,” Katherine explained. “We try to help Adam. I cook. Doc tends garden and does odd jobs.” She sighed. “Poor Adam—such a long recovery.”

After they’d helped Laura situate her gear, they’d given her a tour of the place—forty acres in the middle of a national forest. The last of such private land, Doc explained. The log cabin was built late in the nineteenth century, Katherine told her. The stone house, she said, was added later.

The whole time Adam Scott had slept soundly, and as the sun lowered, there had been an almost palpable peace about the breathtakingly beautiful old homestead.

Then, Laura thought, the minute the man stomped down the stairs, there was tension again.

Doc cleared his throat and scratched the top of his balding pate. “You’d better go see what he wants, Laura.”

“Yes,” Katherine added. “The soup will keep.” She turned to the stove and stirred it.

“Excuse me, then.” Laura laid aside the knife, wiped her hands on the apron Katherine had supplied and went into the main room.

She wished he’d lit a lamp. The pale evening light that filtered in through the lone unshuttered window didn’t allow her to see him, much less read his expression.

His voice rumbled, disembodied, from beside the fireplace. “We need to discuss this arrangement,” he said.

Laura dropped her hands to her sides and squared her shoulders. “Mr. Scott, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I’m not the right therapist for you, after all. I’ll arrange some sort of replacement immediately and, of course, I won’t hold you to that contract.”

“What?” Even in the darkness, Laura sensed his sudden dismay.

She wished she had a plausible excuse. She’d tried to think of one all afternoon while he slept. But what could she say? I think I’m attracted to you, so it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to do your therapy? Though it was true, that sounded so unprofessional it made Laura cringe. “I’m leaving, but I’ll stay till I find a replacement.”

Wait a minute, Adam thought as he studied Laura in the dim light, she’s leaving? The strangest mix of emotions assailed him. He was a scientist, a logical man, but he couldn’t explain these feelings. Upstairs he’d been certain she should go, but the second she announced that she was leaving, his heart had started to beat faster and his breath had actually become short. She reached up self-consciously to adjust her tiny earring, making it glint, and he was struck again by how feminine she was, how even her slightest movement affected him.

“Ms. Duncan—” he found his voice “—I know I’ve been…less than cordial. But now that you’ll have the Joneses here with you…” His voice trailed off. He felt genuinely at a loss. When had his goal become keeping her here?

“Please, believe me, Mr. Scott, it’s not anything you’ve done,” Laura was saying. “And I like Doc and Katherine a lot. I just…I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes to complete your therapy. I know my limits.”

“But my arm and my shoulder—when I woke up they already felt better.” He stepped forward, feeling like a panic-stricken little boy. “I’ll double your salary.”

“Mr. Scott! I couldn’t let you do that.” Even in the darkening room, he could see her eyes widen with shock. “That would make my fee almost twenty-five thousand dollars!”

“I want you to stay,” he stated simply. She didn’t reply.

DINNER WAS QUIET, uneasy.

Katherine had lit a kerosene lamp in the middle of the table, which alleviated the gloom, and the food was delicious, especially Katherine’s homemade bread, but Laura sensed Adam’s tension. And the way Doc and Katherine addressed him—so kindly, so carefully, as if he was fragile and needed encouragement—bothered her. It also began to bother her that the Joneses had so easily given up their own beds for this man. What was their relationship? It seemed more than neighborly.

“Adam, aren’t you having any brown Betty? I made it just for you,” Katherine said.

“You don’t have to cook especially for me, Katherine. I told you that.”

After dinner Adam and Doc busied themselves setting up a bed for the Joneses in the small alcove on the other side of the fireplace. Laura didn’t ask where the bed had come from. This place was full of unanswered questions, some less important than others.

After she helped Katherine with the dishes, Laura washed up at the kitchen sink, visited the outhouse with a flashlight, then retreated to the attic.

It was Katherine, she assumed, who’d thoughtfully placed a vase of wildflowers on the chest and made up the bed with fresh sheets—his bed. Laura shook the thought off. She had to remain professional and detached.

She turned on the small bedside lamp and settled herself in, ready to pore over the thick sheaf of Adam Scott’s chart again.

“All right, Ned-o.” She glanced at the dummy propped against the wall. “Let’s see what this guy is all about.”

Adam Scott had had a long recovery indeed. Ruptured spleen. Pins in his broken shoulder. Months of surgeries, antibiotics, treatments. Yet he appeared to be in good physical condition, considering all his trauma.

Strengthening the arm and shoulder muscles and restoring complete range of motion would be the last painful step. Except…She thumbed through the chart, looking for psychotherapy referrals. None.

“Patient refuses” notations next to entries documenting offers of counseling and pastoral care made it clear that everyone who’d tried to help Adam Scott had been rebuffed. There was something disturbing about this case, about this man, something she couldn’t see just by reading his charts.

She flipped back to the biographical data. All the blanks were neatly filled in, and she’d read it all this morning. She sighed. “All the same, I reckon we got us a real pitiful one, Ned.”

She closed the chart, scooted under the thick down comforter and tossed her way into a restless sleep.

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT a sound, something softer than a moth’s wing, awakened her.

She opened her eyes a crack and without raising her head looked around the unfamiliar room. Rain pattered softly on the metal attic roof and the mountain air had grown so chilly that her nose felt cold.

Lightning flashed, and standing there, clearly silhouetted in the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the attic, was a man.

For an instant Laura was paralyzed by fear, as thunder rolled over the roof. Her heart raced.