As he was wrestling a large oleander into the ground, Amy came onto the porch and stood for a moment, her gaze on him. He was tempted to ask if she enjoyed watching the yardman, but decided she was peeved enough with him already. He was tamping the dirt down when she descended the steps. Would she walk past without acknowledging his existence?
“So you took a stray cat in,” she said. “A stray pregnant cat.”
He set the shovel aside. “The cat kept pestering me.”
“Nevertheless, it helped me decide that we should start over with our formal introduction of today and put the past behind us.”
“You mean yesterday and this morning at breakfast?”
“That’s the past, isn’t it?”
Her snappishness amused him. Either she riled easily, or, as he suspected, he was the cause. “Become friends, you mean?”
She hesitated. “Well, I suppose you could put it like that.”
Reminded of a court case in New Mexico, David chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
He decided to tell her. “I once watched while a judge lectured two men in court about one assaulting the other with a paintbrush loaded with paint. Apparently one had been criticizing how the other was painting a fence. The painter took it for a while, but finally turned and swiped the paintbrush across the other man’s face. The judge told them they were wasting the court’s time and ordered them to shake hands and be friends again.” He paused.
“So they did?”
“You don’t argue with a judge’s decision. ‘Me, I do that, Your Honor,’ the painter said, ‘but I tell by the look in his eye, he no be friends with me.’”
A reluctant smile crept across Amy’s face. “You caught me. I really didn’t mean friends, but I’m willing to try.” She stepped off the sidewalk over to where he stood, and offered her hand.
David clasped it in his, holding it while the potency of what had been between them from the beginning jolted through him. From the sudden widening of her eyes, he suspected she felt it, too. Back to square one.
As their hands parted, he said, “Friends,” very much aware that friendship wasn’t all he wanted from Amy.
Amy got into her SUV and drove toward the hotel, wondering just what she’d promised to David with that handshake. Actually they’d held hands, rather than shaken them, and when they finally let go, she hadn’t wanted to. What was it about the man that drew her? Sure, he was a hunk, but she’d met hunks before without her hormones acting up.
She remembered what her brother, Russ, had told her about his first meeting with Mari, now his wife. “She was sitting on a corral fence. She took off her hat and I saw this glorious hair and knew right then I was a goner. Especially since I’d already noticed her cute butt.”
David did have a cute butt. The thought made her laugh. She was overreacting to a purely chemical attraction, something she’d certainly get over. Especially since she intended to be too busy to spend much time with her new “friend.”
At the hotel, the lobby was empty. Mr. Hathaway, a short, stout man with white hair, was at the desk. “Checking out, are you?” he asked. “I hope you were happy here.”
“You have a nice quiet place,” she told him. “And delicious food.”
He beamed at her. “I do try to satisfy folks. I hope you’ll dine with us again. I say that because I understand you had breakfast with David Severin, so I expect you may be around for a while. I heard Dr. Gert was taking on a female associate, and I figure you might be her.”
Tourmaline was a small town, Amy reminded herself. Word got around small towns with the speed of light. “Yes, you’re right.”
“David’s a nice young man. Too bad about that trouble he had in New Mexico. Can’t believe any of it was his fault. His wife must have, though, because she divorced him.”
A divorce? Amy was torn between not wanting to listen to gossip and finding out as much as she could about David. Her better nature lost. “A shame,” she said. She had no clue what the trouble Mr. Hathaway was talking about might be, but she knew pumps needed priming.
“He wasn’t disbarred, you know, so others in New Mexico must have felt he wasn’t guilty.”
David was a lawyer? All the more reason to stay clear of him. Since she hadn’t any idea what had happened, she said nothing, merely nodded at Mr. Hathaway, hoping he’d tell her more.
“Women are like that,” he said. “Desert a man just when he most needs support.” She must have frowned, because he added quickly, “Don’t mean you, of course. Or Dr. Gert, come to think of it. I amend my statement to say some women are like that, my ex-wife included.”
She waited, but apparently his gaffe had rattled him into giving no more information about David’s past. “It’s been nice talking to you,” she told him.
He winked at her. “Always have time for a pretty girl.”
As Amy drove toward Gert’s, she mulled over what she’d heard about David. He’d obviously been practicing law in New Mexico and had gotten into some kind of legal trouble there. It hadn’t been serious enough to get him disbarred, but had evidently caused his wife to divorce him. She knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she learned more, but who to ask? Certainly not his aunt. Or, heaven forbid, David.
Was he practicing law here? The massive landscaping overhaul he was doing single-handedly at Gert’s seemed to argue against it. Still, he could’ve taken time off.
Gert had told her to pull her vehicle into the drive past the house and park it where an extra cement slab had been laid down. Amy was grateful she’d be able to use the back door, thus avoiding David offering to help her move her things in.
When Amy was through settling her belongings into her bedroom and had changed into jeans and a polo shirt, she went downstairs to the office where she knew Gert would be. As she walked into the waiting room, Gert was just putting the phone down. She gestured Amy to a seat.
“That was Hal Hathaway, thanking me for choosing a young, good-looking associate. He thinks the town has enough old fogies as it is.”
“News travels fast in Tourmaline,” Amy said.
“Hal makes sure of that. He’s the town’s prime gossip. I assume he got his chance to talk to you when you checked out of his hotel.”
Amy nodded.
“I’m sure he told you some things about David. How much?”
“Well, that David was divorced and there’d been some kind of a problem in New Mexico.”
“Over a year ago, yes. David was at a low point when he came here. I felt he needed some therapy, but being a relative, it wasn’t ethical for me to treat him. I tried to get him to go to a psychiatrist in Reno, but he refused. I have little doubt that he would have refused therapy even from me, had I been able to offer it.”
“I don’t know him well,” Amy said cautiously, “but he doesn’t seem to be in a depression now.”
“Hard work in the sun and fresh air has been good medicine.”
“The landscaping,” Amy murmured.
“Exactly.”
“Mr. Hathaway mentioned David was a lawyer.”
“Is. He passed both Nevada bar exams.” Gert sighed. “I remember him telling me when he was ten that when he grew up he was going to be a lawyer and help people, just like I was a doctor and helped them. Law was his dream. But now—” She