A Family Practice. Gayle Kasper

Assessing the damage from yesterday?”

      She wasn’t sure how he’d unloaded the cycle from the back of her truck without help, but Luke was strong and muscular. Still, he shouldn’t have risked tearing open the laceration on his leg or putting strain on his shoulder.

      “I’m trying to fix it. I need to leave, Mariah.”

      His tone carried such resolve that it jolted her senses. She knew he’d be leaving, but still his words struck her with the force of a truck slamming into a mountain.

      If she hadn’t allowed that kiss last night, hadn’t responded to him the way she had, maybe she wouldn’t be so thrown off balance now. “How soon?” she asked.

      His gaze slid over her, and she read something indefinable in his eyes.

      Was he, too, regretting their kiss?

      Was there something—or someone—drawing him to the road?

      “Tonight,” he answered. “If I can figure out how to get the bike in running order by then.”

      “Tonight?” Mariah’s voice sounded like Bandit’s, at the bird’s most annoying, she was sure. But she couldn’t believe he’d even think of getting back on his bike before he’d had a chance to recover. “You’re not in any shape to ride again that soon. Your leg, your shoulder—you need time to heal.”

      He turned back to his bike, seemingly ignoring her concern. “So I’ll be a little uncomfortable,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll survive.”

      Mariah wanted to spin him around to face her, make him listen to reason, but he was absorbed in fitting some part to the silver machine. “Luke Phillips, I am not in the habit of patching up people only to have my handiwork undone. The least you can do is give your cuts and bruises another day or two.”

      The woman looked like a small firecracker exploding with fury. She was concerned about him. She cared. And that hit him where he lived. It had been a long time since anyone had cared what happened to him.

      But Mariah did.

      He knew she was right about his injuries. His thigh still hurt like the very devil, and his shoulder had stiffened up on him. Still, he couldn’t stick around. He had to keep moving—always hoping relief, peace, was just over the next rise.

      Mariah had treated his wounds with her herbs and salves, but Luke had battle scars worse than those, scars none of her medicines could heal.

      “I’ve infringed on your hospitality enough. I need to move on,” he said.

      He couldn’t explain anything beyond that. He couldn’t even explain it to himself. His heart ached from his son’s death, an anguish so deep he didn’t think he’d ever get over the pain. Mariah was a healer with her special medicines, but she couldn’t heal his deeper pain, couldn’t exorcise his guilt.

      He turned back to the cycle—and the part he wasn’t at all sure he could render usable again. He didn’t know much about mechanics; he only knew bodies—or at least he once had.

      The little bit he knew about motorcycles he’d picked up from repair manuals, like the one he’d packed up and put in storage, along with everything else he owned.