Trouble In Tourmaline

“Amy may need some help transferring her things from the hotel,” Gert reminded David.

“No!” Amy cried. “That is, I mean I wouldn’t dream of bothering him when I’m perfectly capable of doing it on my own.”

Gert’s dark gaze assessed her. “I see I’m odd woman out at this rather peculiar interchange. Since I’m related to one of you and have invited the other to be my new associate, don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”

After a long moment of silence, David said, “She’s the one I thought might be a new patient of yours.”

Gert turned from him to Amy. “Apparently you didn’t tell him your name?”

“She said it was Amy,” David admitted. “I’d forgotten Dr. Simon’s first name, so I didn’t make the connection.”

“He told me he was David,” Amy confessed. “Since I had no other identification to go by, I’m afraid I thought he was your yardman.”

Gert’s chuckle turned into whoops of laughter.

Amy looked at David, who shrugged, but she thought she detected a quiver of a beginning smile. Maybe it was funny. Maybe she’d think so next year. Or the year after. She didn’t at the moment. He’d led her on, she was sure, once she’d mentioned she thought he worked for a landscaper. Come to think of it, hadn’t it been just after that he’d mentioned the wimpy rottweilers and wanting a beer?

So annoyed she couldn’t hold her tongue, she scowled at him and muttered, “I’ll bet you never did own a dog, let alone two.”

Raising her eyebrows, Gert said, “He does have a cat—and maybe even kittens by now.”

To Amy’s surprise, David grinned at her. “No dogs, and I admit I’m not really into beer, either. Truce. After all, you didn’t let on who you were, either.”

Now he was trying to charm her. She wasn’t going to fall for that, but, because she was to be his aunt’s associate, Amy squashed down her irritation. She didn’t have to like him, but, since he was Gert’s nephew, she should try to be courteous. “You have a cat?” she asked.

“You could say she picked me.”

“Kittens are imminent,” Gert added. “Now that we have the fuss momentarily settled, do come inside, Amy.”

After the two of them went into the house, David walked down the porch steps and picked up the shovel. Amy’s SUV was parked in front of his pickup at curbside and he could see what the truck had hid yesterday. A California license. Maybe that would have given him a clue to her identity. And maybe not. Even though he knew he’d improved, he still wasn’t focused as well as he used to be a year ago. Betrayal by two of the people he trusted most—his boss and his wife—had knocked him off-kilter.

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.