Turn Left at Sanity, page 21
She couldn’t help her smile. “So you are an old-fashioned romantic at heart.”
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“Let me ask you something. If she’d left and I’d tried to rekindle things with you, would you have gone for it?”
She’d never thought about that before. So she did now. That was one thing she’d always liked about her relationship with Gord, and obviously the reason their friendship continued after the affair was all but forgotten. They could talk about anything.
Her head was shaking before she realized she knew the answer. “No,” she said. “I guess once you’d fallen for Terri, whatever happened, the sex was over for us.”
He nodded. They smiled at each other and there was the affection of friends. She admitted,
“I missed the sex for a while, though.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but I have a feeling one of my recent patients would be more than happy . . .”
“You mean Joe.” She didn’t feel like talking much about her and Joe. It was too new. Last night had been too blindingly fantastic for her peace of mind. However, what had happened between her and Joe was partly why she was in this office.
“Well, that gives me a great segue into what I’m doing here. First, I need your word that what I am about to tell you will remain confi-dential.” She’d heard about doctor/patient privilege on TV crime shows, but she wasn’t putting her aunts at risk based on a Law and Order rerun.
“I can’t have anything bad happen to . . . anyone else in the story who might have accidentally caused someone harm.”
His brow creased in a frown. “I’m not sure I can—”
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“Oh, no one died and there’s been no permanent harm.”
He looked at her for another searching minute, then at the bottle on his desk. He nodded. “You have my word.”
She didn’t know whether he gave his word as doctor or friend, but it didn’t matter. If he said he’d keep his mouth shut, he would.
Briefly, she described what had happened the night Joe had his attack, including the previ-ously unknown fact that both he and she had been secretly dosed with the cordial.
By the time she finished, Gord was sitting on the edge of his chair, dividing his attention between her face as she spoke and the bottle of cordial on his desk.
“And they slipped this stuff to both of you. In wine.”
“Yes. According to the aunts, it needs to be mixed with alcohol to become effective.”
He pulled a legal sized notepad toward him and started scribbling. “And how long after in-gesting the liquid did Joe have his attack?”
She eyed his notepad with disfavor and kept quiet until he glanced up and caught the direction of her gaze. “This is just for my own research. I gave you my word, Emmylou. This conversation stays between us.”
She nodded. “Okay. I think it was about an hour to an hour and a half later.”
“Did you feel any effects of the tonic?”
She hesitated. “I had no stomach trouble.”
“How about other symptoms? It’s supposed to be some kind of sex enhancer, the way you described it. Did you notice anything in that regard?”
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“Yes.”
“Come on, I’m a doctor. This is fascinating.”
“I felt extremely aroused. Before he even touched me.”
“How long did those feelings last?”
“Several hours.”
“And you said your aunt Lydia also took some of the stuff?”
“Yes. According to her, she also shared it with a man.”
He glanced up, his eyebrows raised in query.
Like her, he must have been wondering who Lydia’s new beau was. “I have no idea who it was, but she says they were both fine afterward.”
“And did she say whether it had an . . . arous-ing effect on her and her partner?”
“Yes, she did. According to her they had fantastic sex. She’s very angry with me for taking away the rest of the bottle.”
He smiled briefly. “I’ll bet.”
“So what do you think? Could the cordial or whatever it is have caused Joe’s attack? I just feel sick that someone in my house could have caused him harm.”
“Do you have any idea what’s in this stuff?” he asked.
“No. Olive and Lydia say it’s mostly herbs, but they believe the recipe died with Dr. Beaver.”
Gord removed the cork and sniffed, then re-corked it. “I’ll have a complete chemical analy-sis done.” He sat back and tapped his pen on the pad of scribbles. “My best guess is that this stuff may have contributed to Joe’s attack, but there were a lot of other factors involved. And no one else got sick, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”
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“But you’ll let me know what you find out?”
“Absolutely.” He stared at the liquid in the bottle intently. “You know, the more I learn about Emmet Beaver, the more I believe he was a genius.”
She rose to leave, oddly flattered to have her grandfather termed a genius. “Thanks for taking a look at that stuff for me.”
“Thank you for bringing it. I’m truly interested in Dr. Beaver’s work and a sample of one of his medications is quite a find.” He sounded pretty pumped. So long as there was nothing in that bottle that could have made Joe sick, she was willing to let him have his fun.
As she rose, Gord also stood. “Emmylou, I hope the same kind of fall-flat-on-your-face love happens for you, too.”
She smiled at him, and on impulse leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Thanks, Gord.”
What she didn’t tell him was that she had an awful feeling it already had happened. And with the man who was planning to destroy her town.
Meanwhile, now that she’d unburdened her conscience, she had to go get something for the town-wrecker’s dinner.
Something bland but interesting, not spicy but tasty. Or maybe she’d give him fish baked in milk and then play footsie with him under the table to distract him from what he was eating.
Joe wandered up Main Street, gazing into windows and doing something he never did.
Strolling. Stopping to chat to the people who knew him, and knew all about his business and
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his recent medical troubles—and that was pretty much everybody.
He wanted to buy Emmylou a present. It was difficult to think of the right kind of gift, though, for there were several things he wanted his gift to convey.
First, there was thanks for driving him to the hospital, visiting him, bringing him home—all that “going beyond the call of duty as an innkeeper” activity for which he was profoundly grateful.
He also wanted to buy a gift for Emmylou the woman, who’d given him so much joy last night.
If he were at home, he’d send a couple of dozen long-stemmed roses. An uncomfortable image flashed across his mind of the arrangement his office had sent him in the hospital. That same standard arrangement they sent everyone; was he as predictable with the long-stemmed roses?
Well, he wasn’t going to buy roses for Em.
There didn’t seem to be a florist in Beaverton, and besides, Emmylou had a garden full of flowers. She spent half her life out there tending roses, which obviously gave her pleasure. The last thing he wanted to do was send her the cut variety.
He wandered up Main Street. The trouble with wandering when there was no phone attached to his ear was that it gave him too much time to think. Too much time to remember the look on Emmylou’s face when she’d left his room last night.
Why hadn’t he pretended to fall asleep? At least then he’d have had the pleasure of holding her while she slept. He’d have given up his
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own rest. It wouldn’t have made much difference. After she left he had a crap sleep anyway.
If the shopping told a great deal about a town—and Joe had never thought about this one way or another, not being much of a shopper—then Beaverton was one very odd place.
Not that he needed a lot of extra evidence.
The art gallery specialized in a number of painters he was unfamiliar with whose work featured nudes. Nudes recumbent, nudes standing, nudes playing croquet, pairs of nudes going at it. As interesting as the art no doubt was, he kept walking.
He left there and wandered next door to the gift shop. Massage oil, scent o’ sex candles, lin-gerie that made him swallow hard when he pictured it on Emmylou, and hand-blown glass sculptures in sensuous flowing lines that made him think of naked women. The only thing unique to Beaverton was the plastic replicas of the town’s gigantic mascot, most dandruffed with dust.
He kept going.
The barbers in the barbershop he’d been warned never to set foot in waved gaily as he passed, the woman never stopping her snipping.
He wasn’t a stroller. A wanderer. A browser.
And yet, with no cell phone, no laptop, nothing to do, he didn’t know what else to do with himself. Emmylou had gone out so he’d decided to do the same, but all he wanted was to get her alone again. Desire for her thrummed beneath his skin in a steady beat, like his pulse.
He passed a bakery. Oh, how they all waved, but he wasn’t that naïve. Emmylou was a terrific cook. What could he buy her at a bakery that she couldn’t bake better herself?
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He waved back at the friendly strangers and kept walking. He knew he’d find something, if he just kept looking.
There was a dog lying with its head on his paws outside the bakery. When Joe looked down at him, his tail wagged feebly.
“Hi, Buster,” he said, squatting to pat the poor old beast. Buster licked his hand and wriggled his arthritic body—which for Buster was like turning cartwheels. “Oh, you’re a good old boy, aren’t you?”
Buster agreed, and wagged his tail some more.
“He sure did take to you,” said the kindly plain woman who owned not only Buster, but the Ranch of the Damned.
Joe rose. “Hi, Amy. Nice day.” And then was in-spired to ask this woman, who was obviously one of Emmylou’s friends, if she had an idea for a gift for his landlady.
“Emmylou’s a classy woman,” she said with a slight frown. “Most of what this town sells, she wouldn’t want.”
“I was afraid of that. I thought of roses, but there’s no florist. And anyway, she grows them.”
“I’ve got some new hybrid bushes in.”
“You have? You mean real rosebushes?”
“Sure.”
He beamed at the woman, beamed at Buster.
Of course giving a rosebush to a woman who loved to grow roses had to be better than the cut kind. “Perfect.”
Chapter 21
Emmylou had spent most of the time since she’d returned from Gord’s office dodging the aunts. Okay, so she had slept with Joe. So what? It was her business. His business. Not Olive and Lydia’s business. But did they know that? Oh, no.
And after all but fully consummating their relationship again over the breakfast table, what had he done? He’d gone, that’s what. He’d left the Shady Lady while she was on her errand to see Gord, and when she returned no one knew where he’d gone. It wasn’t that she cared exactly, but where the hell was he? A workaholic with no toys? She’d expected that he’d be haunting her every second, bored out of his mind, not that he’d disappear.
As always when she felt churned up, she picked up her caddy of garden tools and went outside, where the scent of roses soothed, the glossy leaves welcomed her, and the bees buzzed like old friends.
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She had no idea how long she’d been out there when she heard Joe’s voice. “Hi.” That’s all he said and she felt her heart jump.
She turned toward him in what she hoped was a casual way, and saw he had his hands behind his back and an air of suppressed excitement.
“Hi,” she replied.
“I had a good time last night,” he said.
The smile that bloomed came from somewhere deep inside. “Me, too,” she said.
“I wanted to get you flowers. So I did.”
He brought his hands out front and her jaw dropped. “That is so perfect,” she cried.
As she walked toward him, he held out a potted rosebush.
“I tried to find a color I didn’t think you had.”
Mr. I-don’t-know-what’s-in-my-sandwich had taken the trouble to learn the colors of her roses? All the parts of her that should have been strong and held out against his charm suddenly softened. She loved roses. He’d seen that and found her one she didn’t have growing in her garden.
“Thank you, Joe,” she said. She felt a little foolish. No, not foolish exactly, more flustered. How odd. She never acted like this. She couldn’t even raise her gaze from the tight bud of the apricot-colored hybrid tea rose. She reached out and touched the peachy pink edge that flirted from behind the tight green bud. “I can’t think of anything that would have meant more.”
“I’m glad,” he said simply.
There was a pause. Finally she glanced up and found him staring at her so seriously, she wished she’d kept her gaze on the rose.
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“Well,” she said after a moment. “Where should I plant it?”
They both looked around the garden, so overflowing with green stalks and leaves and colorful blooms that Joe wondered where she’d even find room for another rose. She didn’t seem to see any problem, however. “I want it to go somewhere prominent, so that I remember you every time I look at it”
Something to remember him by? He felt just a little huffy to be so quickly dismissed from her near future, until he realized that of course he was intending to go and had never pretended otherwise.
She was a practical woman, that Emmylou, not one to let a little romance cloud her thinking.
Romance. He considered the woman standing in front of him admiring her rosebush, clearly obsessed with finding it the ideal location. No doubt she was thinking about soil vari-ables and hours of sunlight and not about the man who’d given her the plant. Romance? He’d never seen a woman less given to romance than Emmylou.
He thought about earlier, in the kitchen. The fact that she was facing him at breakfast after they’d slept together hadn’t fazed her at all, but his kiss in front of her aunts had rattled her shutters, all right. They weren’t the sort of aunts to mind a little kissing over the breakfast table—
in fact, he guessed they’d be a damn sight happier to see Emmylou bent backward over a man’s arm than they were to see their daily bran flakes.
Suddenly, he got it, the thing that had both-
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ered him this morning. Emmylou had enjoyed sex with him, but she didn’t seem to have any romantic feelings toward him. Of course, that ought to make her his ideal woman, so why did he want her to try to talk to him about his feelings? Why did he want her to suggest a picnic or the movies or any one of a thousand foolish activities he wouldn’t have time for if he had his computer and phone?
He didn’t question his motives too closely, only followed the irresistible impulse to see if he was right.
“You see sex and romance as two different things, don’t you?”
“They are two different things,” she said, looking at him as though he weren’t too bright.
“Not to most women.”
“I am not most women.”
“Thank you, I can see that.”
“What is bothering you, Joe?”
“I don’t know. It’s strange to meet someone who only wants me for sex, I guess.”
She laughed. “You’re leaving in a few days. I had a great time last night. I loved our time together and I’m hoping we’ll do it again tonight, but I’m not going to swoon all over you and start planning the wedding. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No! I only want to feel like you’ll still remember my name a week from now.”
She patted his cheek. He could not believe it.
She patted his cheek. “I’ll always remember you with fondness, Joe. And I’ll have your beautiful roses to remind me of you.”
“So you equate romance with permanent commitment, is that it?”
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“Are you writing a thesis on this topic?”
“No. I’m making conversation.” Though he wondered why he bothered. It was clear the woman was more interested in yanking up weeds and slopping fertilizer around than she was in talking to the man who’d spent some of the nicest moments of his life inside her body.
All right. Fine, then. He’d talk about something she might find interesting.
“I haven’t told you why I’m here.”
She glanced up at him, her expression un-readable. “No. You haven’t.”
“I think you’re going to like what I have to tell you.”
This time her expression was perfectly legible. She looked astonished. “You do?”
What did she think he was doing here, destroying the place? She really had some opinion of him. He was anxious to let her know the truth. “I’m here to save Beaverton.”
“Really.” She was on her knees squinting up at him, so he must have misread her expression.
She looked disgusted, but how could she be?
Maybe she thought he was planning to take all the credit personally for saving her town.
“Well, not me personally, of course, but I’m here representing a company that wants to in-ject a great deal of capital into the area. They’re going to open a factory that will employ a number of people. If all goes well, the workforce will increase, businesses will prosper. The Shady Lady will be packed every night; Emmylou, we’ll put this place on the map.”
She looked at him the way she might have looked at one of the insects crawling among her
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roses, one she couldn’t immediately identify.
“What kind of factory?”
“It’s not the type of factory that’s important, so much as the benefits it will bring to the area.”
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