“I don’t know.” Noah gave a shrug, embarrassed to find Mitch eying him with concern. How could he explain to this down-to-earth guy this strange fear that seemed to be clutching his heart?
It wasn’t just his belief there was a storm heading this way that was making him feel so edgy. He thought of those velvet brown eyes that had held his for a moment in time.
Chocolate Girl was out there in a town that was turning more dangerous by the minute, and for reasons he couldn’t rationalize even to himself, it terrified the hell out of him.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’M THE LOCAL VET!” Pulling a face, Cheryl did a pale imitation of Noah’s voice as she drove angrily along. Even with a few miles safely between them, she was still stinging from the encounter at the gas station, still smarting from the local vet’s remarks as well as her own part in the exchange. She wished she could hit the rewind button on that awful conversation. Why hadn’t she just turned and said “No problem” when Dr. Perfect jumped the queue?
That was what normal people did. Cheryl sighed. That was exactly what her response would have been two years ago: she would have shrugged and given an easy smile, bitten her tongue over a minor annoyance, instead of charging like a bull at a red flag, provoking confrontation…erecting barriers.
It was almost second nature to her now, putting up protective screens around her heart the second she felt her guard was down. One look at the local vet and her guard had fallen around her ankles like a pair of panties without elastic. Good-looking, friendly and able to deflect her barbs—a heady combination, and the very last thing she needed right now. The very last thing she needed full stop, Cheryl thought, forcibly pushing all thoughts of the handsome stranger out of her mind. Pulling over to the side of the road, she checked her map. The directions and landmarks that had seemed so straightforward when Mitch had given them to her were almost useless now with the wipers going at full tilt and visibility down to near zero.
If the weather had been bad an hour ago, it was dire now.
She had to be near her destination, Cheryl reasoned, running a finger along the map, following her journey from Turning Point. There was the garage where she’d filled up the Jeep, there was the crossroad where she’d swung left, and over there…Wiping the side window with the sleeve of her coat, Cheryl glanced over at the swollen river gushing rapidly alongside the road, its dirty gray surf rolling more like waves on an ocean, before she turned back to the map. She’d followed the instructions to the letter, so where the hell was the farmhouse? She thought about calling Mitch, but decided to leave that as a last resort. Mitch didn’t have time to hold her hand today. Maybe she could wave down a passing car. But knowing her luck, it would be that smug vet that stopped to help. His already overinflated ego would be pumped up a touch further when he saw the scrape she was in….
“Stop it,” Cheryl scolded herself. Why was she allowing herself to dwell on something so irrelevant? Wiping down the windows again, she was about to reach for the phone and admit she was hopelessly lost, when a driveway she could have sworn hadn’t been there a couple of moments ago appeared in her sideview mirror. Cheryl allowed herself a triumphant smile.
She’d made it on her own!
“THANK YOU SO MUCH for coming out to us.”
As Beth ushered her into the hallway, the first thing to hit Cheryl was the delicious smell of home baking.
“You have no idea how much I appreciate this,” Beth said. “I know how busy everyone is today.”
“It is Beth, isn’t it?” Cheryl asked, shaking the woman’s hand briefly. “I’m Cheryl Tierney. Mitch told me you’ve got a little guy in a lot of pain who needs to be seen.”
“I do. His name’s Flynn.”
“Flynn.” Cheryl smiled at the small boy lying on the sofa as Beth showed her through to the living area. The smell of baking gave way to that delicious new-baby smell, the powdery, milky scent of innocence. Cheryl glanced over to the crib in the corner. A tiny precious bundle lay sleeping quietly there. She turned back to the boy. His arm was elevated on a cushion, his green eyes staring up at her, and for a tiny guilt-tinged moment, Cheryl felt something so alien it took a second to register. The feeling that seemed to reach out and knot her stomach in one single-handed motion was jealousy. If Cheryl had made a blueprint of her life ten years ago, this was where she would have liked to be at the ripe old age of thirty-one.
At home with her babies.
Not a visiting nurse, frozen to the core, hair plastered to her scalp. Not a newly divorced, slightly brittle career woman, with a fitness regime that would rival that of any sports professional. Okay, Turning Point wasn’t exactly New York, and her ex-husband Joe was a lawyer rather than a firefighter, but the home Beth had created had Cheryl’s throat tightening. Long suppressed dreams momentarily surfaced as she glimpsed the life she had thought she’d be leading, and she felt a pang of homesickness for a city she still missed and a family that had fallen apart.
Oh, she’d fallen in love with Courage Bay. She’d embraced the healthy outdoor lifestyle with open arms, joined a gym within a few weeks of arriving and shopped till she’d dropped on rather too many occasions. Fashion was a newly discovered passion of Cheryl’s, now that her salary wasn’t tied up in Joe’s education. And she loved the challenges of her work as a trauma nurse at Courage Bay Hospital.
But as happy as she was, as fulfilled as her life might be, every now and then her loss hit her as if it had all happened only yesterday. Anything could set her off. An elderly couple walking hand in hand along the beach reminded her of her parents, a hotshot lawyer on a TV show resembled her ex-husband Joe, a baby sleeping in its pram recalled lost dreams. And now a seven-year-old boy named Flynn, with green eyes and blond hair….
“Hi, Flynn.” Cheryl smiled at him, pushing her own feelings aside, remembering in an instant why she was here. “My name’s Cheryl.”
“Are you a doctor?” he asked in a lisping voice.
His two front teeth were missing, and his eyes were so suspicious Cheryl found herself smiling.
“No,” she answered. “There wasn’t a doctor free to come out, so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me. I’m a trauma nurse.”
“What’s that?”
Cheryl didn’t mind the questions a bit; at least they took Flynn’s mind off his injury as she gently examined it. “Well, I work in the emergency department of a hospital in Courage Bay, California.”
“So you see lots of injured people, then?” Flynn asked his eyes widening. “Do you see guts hanging out and legs falling off?”
“Flynn!” Beth broke in. “Where did you learn to speak like that?”
“Oh, that’s okay.” Cheryl winked at her small patient. “It’s a perfectly good question. I see lots of things,” Cheryl replied assuredly as she examined his arm, wincing inside as Flynn bit back a yelp. She decided to prolong the rather gory conversation just to keep Flynn’s mind off his pain as she gently palpated the swollen wrist. “Lots of blood and guts, though I haven’t seen too many legs falling off.”
“Oh.” Flynn gave a disappointed shrug. “Hanging off, then?”
“Hanging off?” Cheryl frowned, as if she was thinking hard. “Yep, now you mention it, I’ve seen a few of them.”
“Sick!” Flynn exclaimed, and from his enthusiastic smile, Cheryl assumed that meant he was suitably impressed.
“Apparently sick’s the new word for cool.” Beth sighed as Cheryl finished her examination and gently placed the boy’s arm back onto the pillow. “Normally, I’d never worry Hal when he’s out on call.” She was ringing her hands in concern as she watched her son. “But Flynn’s been in agony since he fell, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him now. I gave him some painkillers,