Suddenly Burke was bending down, gliding his arms underneath her, lifting her up. No, she thought, her dark purple skirt hitched up around her thighs, her white sweater askew, her face inches away from his, now her humiliation was complete.
“Please,” she protested, “I can walk.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Isabell sputtered, “put her down this instant. Haven’t you done enough?”
Burke eyed the old biddy over the top of Louetta’s head. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t done nearly enough. He hadn’t kissed Lily or Louetta or whatever the hell her name was. He hadn’t explained. He had yet to see her smile.
Wes Stryker’s voice cut into Burke’s thoughts. “She said she can walk.”
Reading the challenge in Stryker’s eyes, Burke tightened his grip around Louetta. Wes took a step closer and held Burke’s stare.
“Come on, you two,” insisted a woman with large brown eyes, a sultry voice and a protruding stomach that indicated a baby was due in a month or two. “Why don’t you go shoot some bottles off a fence or duke it out over at the Crazy Horse or do whatever else men do to compete for a woman’s hand. Melody, Jillian and I can take it from here. That okay with you, Louetta?”
As a doctor, Burke supposed the blush on Lily’s cheeks was a good sign. As a man, he didn’t want to let her out of his arms, let alone out of his sight. Since she nodded at the pregnant woman, he didn’t see what choice he had. He lowered her feet to the floor, slowly stepping aside as two women each slid an arm around Lily’s back.
There was a lot of noise all around him as people spoke amongst themselves. Burke stayed where he was, watching Lily walk away, regal even now.
He’d imagined her reaction to his return a hundred times. He would have liked her to welcome him with open arms. He would have settled for a small smile and a shy hello. He supposed he should have known this wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing about the past two and a half years had been easy.
She stopped suddenly in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder, bravely meeting his eyes. Her lips trembled. Although she didn’t smile, a look passed between them. He swallowed, but it only made him aware of the pulsing sensation in his throat and the growing pressure much lower.
Burke could feel all eyes on him, and he knew that this wasn’t the time or the place to say what he’d come here to say. Meeting her serious expression with a serious expression of his own, he said, “We’ll talk later.”
Her throat convulsed on a swallow. Neither nodding nor shaking her head, she allowed the other women to lead her away.
“For a doctor, you have lousy timing.”
Burke glanced at the man who had spoken. Wes Stryker looked the way a person would expect an ex-rodeo champion to look, all cheekbones and squint lines and stiff joints, rugged and haggard at the same time. Burke wondered if Lily was in love with the man. While he was at it, he wondered if it was possible that she was still in love with him. Releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, Burke squared off opposite the other man. “Maybe, but I’m told I have a good bedside manner.”
Stryker’s eyes narrowed. “I’m more concerned about your in-bed manner.”
“Sorry. I don’t kiss and tell.”
The other man’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Burke sensed a grudging respect in Wes Stryker’s expression.
“You gonna step aside, Wes,” somebody called from behind, “and let the new doctor run roughshod over you?”
Wes shook his head. “It looks like Boomer was right. My competin’ days aren’t over after all.”
Burke accepted the challenge, along with the hand Wes held out to him. Wes’s knuckles were bony, his palm callused, his grip bordering on painful. Squaring his jaw, Burke squeezed the other man’s hand in return.
Wes grunted. “May the best man win.”
Burke nodded stiffly, tightening his own grip. “Believe me,” he said, wondering whose bones would crack first, “I intend to.”
Bets were made among the other men. The old biddy who’d helped Lily earlier insisted that this was exactly the kind of thing the Ladies Aid Society had been afraid would happen. A few old-timers grumbled that folks needed a little fun and excitement now and then, and the meeting was finally adjourned. Burke and Wes might have gone on shaking hands all night if Doc Masey and another old man with white whiskers and tattered suspenders hadn’t broken them up.
The man on the right snapped one suspender and rocked back on the heels of worn cowboy boots. “Name’s Cletus McCully. Looks like you and Wes are evenly matched. That’s gonna make things more interesting, that’s for sure. Tell us, boy, where are you from?”
Refusing to give in to the impulse to cradle his right hand in his left one, Burke met the old codger’s inquisitive stare. “I grew up in northern Washington. My practice was in Seattle.”
“Ah, you must have met our Louetta when she went with her mother to that cancer research hospital last year. Didn’t do much good. Opal died right on schedule. She raised Louetta by herself, you know.”
No, Burke hadn’t known. And that wasn’t where he’d met Louetta. Since Cletus McCully didn’t need to know that, Burke held the old man’s piercing stare a few seconds longer, then strode out to the sidewalk with the country doctor.
The snowflakes were getting bigger, the air colder. Several men jaywalked across the street and disappeared inside what appeared to be the town’s only bar. Burke glanced up at the lighted window in the small apartment over the diner.
Following the course of Burke’s gaze, Doc Masey said, “Looks like you have more reasons than one for taking this job.”
Burke nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
The ensuing silence didn’t deter Doc Masey in the least. “No matter what the boys say, I don’t like the looks of this. It has trouble written all over it. Two men. One woman. Nope. Don’t like the looks of it one bit.”
“She’s not just any woman,” Burke said quietly.
“You love her.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Burke found himself nodding anyway. “Until I met her, I didn’t know I was capable. But yes, I love her. I have since the day I met her.”
“There’ll be hell to pay if you hurt her.”
Inhaling a deep breath of cold November air, Burke could hardly blame the old doctor for the warning. Miles Masey wasn’t stupid. Everyone had seen how Lily had reacted to Burke’s arrival. A person didn’t faint for no reason. Although they obviously didn’t know the circumstances, Burke had already hurt her. Oh, he’d had good reasons. The question was, would she be able to forgive him?
Tucking his chin inside the collar of his black overcoat, he accepted the key from Doc Masey’s outstretched hand and turned down the old man’s offer to escort him to his new residence. He was perfectly capable of getting settled into his new place by himself. Once he was settled, he would find Lily, or Louetta, or whatever folks around here called her. And he would try to explain.
Chapter Two
“Were those footsteps I heard on the stairs?”
Louetta pushed the cool cloth off her forehead and swung her feet over the side of her flowered sofa. Sitting up, she pretended not to notice the looks Lisa McCully and Melody and Jillian Carson cast one another.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Melody said, taking her turn checking the stairs.
“Me, neither,” Lisa agreed, trying to find a comfortable position on the rocking chair across the room.