Nate held up his hand and tilted it toward the pale glow from the lamp.
“Oh, that’s a pretty bad cut,” she said. “You must have hit it on the edge of the shovel.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“And you’ve managed to grind dirt into it.”
He couldn’t see her face clearly since the light was behind her, but Nate imagined she was giving him an accusing look.
“Yeah, well, that sometimes happens when a crazy woman throws me to the ground.”
“Crazy? I was defending myself!”
“I was only trying to get your attention.”
“Why? So you could scare me to death?” She got to her feet and stepped back to watch him stand up, too.
“I saw the light and thought someone was up to no good.”
“Yes, someone was. You!”
Nate tried to smother his temper. “I thought someone was trespassing.”
“Again. You! This is private property. My property.”
He paused, staring at her, then walked around her so that she would have to turn to keep an eye on him. When the light hit her face, he recognized her. The red hair—though he didn’t remember it being quite this red—almond-shaped green eyes, the heart-shaped face.
“Bijou?” he asked.
“Do I know you?” She frowned at him.
“Nathan Smith,” he said.
Surprise flared in her eyes, followed by a fleeting emotion he couldn’t name. Embarrassment? Dismay? She lowered her eyes so he couldn’t read her expression.
When she didn’t say anything else, he went on, “I thought your parents had sold this place.”
“No. It’s always stayed in the family.” She gave a small shrug. “Obviously, no one kept it up.”
He glanced around. “This is a lot of work. What are you doing back here, Bijou?”
“I could ask the same of you, Nathan, and the name’s Gemma now. I changed my name the minute I turned eighteen.”
“What did your parents, Wolfchild and, um, Sunshine, think of that?”
She reached up and pushed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears. “They realized that I was old enough to make my own decisions and they apologized for having given me a name that wasn’t cosmically suited to my personality.”
Nate hid a smile as he flexed his shoulders. He’d forgotten that her parents talked like that. They had been well-meaning oddballs in this community, but they hadn’t minded being out of step with everyone else in town. He hadn’t thought their daughter was very much like them, seeming to be more conventional—focused on school, friends and small-town life.
“Bijou is French for Jewel,” he pointed out, his gaze touching on those bright green eyes and richly colored hair.
“I know.”
Lifting his uninjured hand, he rubbed his left arm. He was going to be sore and bruised in the morning. “I’m guessing you chose Gemma since Wonder Woman was taken.”
One corner of her mouth tilted up as she lifted her eyebrows at him. He remembered that expression from years ago.
He held up his mangled hand. “Is there somewhere I can wash and bandage this before I head home?”
“Come inside. I’ll bandage it for you.”
“I’m a doctor. I can do my own bandaging.”
“I know that, and I’m a registered nurse, so I’ll do the bandaging. It’s my house and they’re my bandages.” Gemma paused to pick up the tablet and shut off the music.
Nate decided not to pursue the who-will-do-the-bandaging? argument. From what he’d seen so far, he would lose, anyway.
“That was...interesting music,” he ventured. “But you weren’t listening to it?” He didn’t have a very active imagination and didn’t know why she would listen to one kind of music to block out another.
“It’s Tibetan music. Frankly, I can’t stand it because it reminds me of the time my dad insisted we all needed to learn to play the zither.” She shook her head, a small smile on her lips. “Carly is absolutely convinced it’ll help the plants grow.”
He frowned. “Carly? Oh, yes, Joslin.” He vaguely remembered the two of them had been best friends, along with Lisa Thomas. Glancing around at her family’s property, he realized she had done what he couldn’t—kept her ties to their hometown.
“Come on,” she said briskly. “Let me look at that hand. It’s rude to keep the nurse waiting.”
Giving her a thoughtful look, he followed her inside. A nurse. In spite of her prickliness, this sounded promising.
“Don’t touch the door or the facings,” she said, pointing to what he could now see was a bright blue, glistening with newness. “I just painted them.”
“I know. I smelled the paint.”
While she scrubbed her hands at the sink, then bustled about, setting out a basin, a clean towel, disinfectant and bandages, Nate looked around the cozy cabin.
The living room held a dark blue sofa and chair with a huge, multicolored rug in the middle of the floor. A rock fireplace, probably original to the house, dominated one wall. A few sealed boxes were piled one atop the other along a wall, and a stack of paintings and photographs waited to be hung. A doorway opened onto a hallway, where he assumed the bedrooms and bathroom were.
The place was warm and inviting, not at all the den of hippie craziness his mother had claimed it to be. Also, it was rustic, but not primitive. Thinking about it now, he wondered why she had chosen that word.
“Come over to the sink,” Gemma commanded and he did as he was told, standing with his hand under warm running water. He was very aware of her gently clasping his hand in her own while she turned it this way and that, keeping it under the stream from the faucet. Nate liked being close enough to catch her scent, which was faintly flowery, no doubt heightened by the work she’d been doing out back.
He was about to ask what she’d been planting when she shut off the water and grabbed a handful of paper towels, which she placed beneath his hand to catch the drips, and directed him toward the table. Its scarred top spoke of many meals eaten by many generations. The chairs were a mishmash of styles, but all seemed to be as old as the table. Nate could imagine previous Whitmires sitting here, eating, talking, laughing. The place had a settled atmosphere. In spite of the modern furnishings, glowing electric lamps and the laptop open on a living room table, he could picture a woman in a long dress coming inside, removing her bonnet and pumping water at the sink to wash up. Maybe that’s what actually haunted the Whitmire farm—the ghosts of hardworking, happy people with established traditions going back generations. He shook his head at the fanciful thoughts. He never lapsed into daydreams like this.
Casting Gemma a wary glance, he ruefully decided that she wouldn’t know if this was out of character for him or not. They hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years.
“This cabin is nice,” he said, watching her pick up a rubber bulb syringe, fill it with warm water and expertly flush his cut with a disinfectant solution. “Your family farmed this land for many years.”
“More than a hundred, but my dad wasn’t interested in farming so he sold most of the farmland and established the campground.”
“But they stayed in this cabin, kept the family home.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she