The Doctor's Reason to Stay. Dianne Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ a way, not because she wanted to but because it was the best she could do. Rafe and Molly were doubling up on the lead horse, with Molly riding in a pink tandem saddle right behind Rafe, hanging on to him with her face pressed to his back. From Edie’s position, it was cute. But she wondered if Rafe was bothered by it, because he looked…uncomfortable. He seemed too rigid in the saddle, even to an untrained observer such as herself. Yet Molly looked happier than Edie had seen her looking in days. Possibly because Rafe had made her happy. Or it could have been about her honest need to hold on to someone strong for a while…something Edie understood better than she cared to, given the way the first time she’d really held on to someone had turned out. Of course, everybody needed that extra jolt in their lives at some time, didn’t they? Strength from someone else. Someone to support them on the journey, to guide them when they were lost.

      She’d certainly had those moments in her own life…moments with her mother, moments with Alex. Good and bad. Going down the right path, going down the wrong one. Rafe wasn’t the wrong path for Molly, though. He didn’t know that, of course, even though Molly obviously did. Most likely, he’d never thought of himself in terms of any kind of course for Molly, which was something Edie certainly intended to change.

      But the path Edie was on today had nothing to do with any of that. It was all about the path she was taking on the back of a very gentle horse named Ice Cream—a horse, as it turned out, who was absolutely perfect for a beginner to ride. Vanilla in color, she was mellow, plodding along in no hurry to get anywhere, and if it could be said that a horse was stopping along the way to smell the roses, that was what it seemed like Ice Cream was doing. Smart horse, taking in her surroundings—the path, the sky, the flowers. It wasn’t a bad way to go through life, Edie supposed. Too bad more people couldn’t take a lesson from Ice Cream. “So, when do we get to stop?” she called out, when they rounded the bend and she saw the lake ahead. “Right now, I hope, because this is a perfect place.” At least, that was what her aching backside was telling her.

      Like he’d been reading her mind about stopping, Rafe brought Donder, a well-muscled, brown and white Appaloosa, to a halt, then turned in his saddle to face her. “It’s only another five miles,” he said, without cracking a smile.

      “Five?” Pulling Ice Cream up alongside him, she looked square at him and saw, up close, his very stern expression, but also saw the corner of his mouth twitch up imperceptibly in a fight to keep from smiling. “Then why don’t you go on ahead, take part of the picnic food with you, while Molly and I stay here and have our picnic at the lake. Is that OK with you, Molly?” His eyes were dancing now. Beautiful. Mischievous. Unnerving. But she didn’t look away. It took everything she had in her to stay eye to eye with him, and keep a straight face at that. She managed it, though, with some struggle. “We’ll have our picnic right here, just the two of us, while Rafe goes on ahead and finds his own place to picnic.”

      Very straight-faced, Molly said, “You can’t take the lemonade with you, Rafey. It’s two against one. We get to keep it here. But you can come back and have some when you want it.”

      “I think you’ve been thoroughly told,” Edie remarked.

      “I think I’ve been charmed by the two most beautiful women in Lilly Lake,” he replied, slipping down out of his saddle then lifting Molly to the ground. Heading straight to Ice Cream, he steadied the horse and held up his hand to help Edie. And in that instant, when the silky skin of her palm slid across his, if there wasn’t a visible spark, there sure was an unseeable one, felt by both of them, because Edie and Rafe both pulled back in that moment of extraordinary awareness, and simply stared at each other. Speechless, almost to the point of dumbfounded. Edie wasn’t sure how long it was, but the intensity couldn’t be questioned. At least for her. As for Rafe…he was still holding tight to her gaze when she finally had to break it or become completely lost in it. “I, um…thanks,” she finally said, letting go of his hand. “For the compliment, and the help.”

      His answer was to arch his eyebrows. Then he turned away. Unaffected? Edie didn’t know about Rafe, but she surely knew about herself, and at that moment there was nothing in her, from her head to her toes, that wasn’t affected. Not one little bit of her anywhere. And try as she may, she couldn’t shrug out of the mood, or even shake herself hard out of it. Not after a minute, not after five minutes. Which meant she might be in deep trouble.

      * * *

      “So tell me about yourself,” Rafe said, as he spread the blanket on the ground. Molly was a hundred yards away, wading in water up to her ankles, looking for goldfish and bullfrogs, expressing a wish to find a whale and an octopus, too, while Edie and Rafe were laying out the picnic food. “Other than the fact that you’re a child life specialist and that my aunt thought highly of you…so does Molly, by the way, that’s about all I know.”

      “There’s not much to tell. I’ve been in Lilly Lake for a few months now. I work, I like to read, I have a cat…” She shrugged. Getting personal wasn’t easy for her because she’d spent most of her life trying to stay guarded. On purpose. One little slip of the tongue and the social workers had been on the doorstep, one misspoken word to her teacher that could be perceived as something wrong in her life and everything had gone crazy. The possibility had always been there that she could be snatched away from her mother, thrown into a foster-home where nobody loved her, and her mother forced into a nursing home until some kindly lawyer made it all better, or her mother died. Grim reality then, bad memories of it even now. “I’m from New York City originally. Born and raised there. Went to school there, didn’t ever have any call to wander very far away until I took this job in Lilly Lake. And I’m not married now, but you already know that.”

      “Not married now?”

      “Well, there were a couple of years in my life when I was. You know, naive schoolgirl meets big charmer. He wasn’t what I needed, I wasn’t what he wanted and in the end we didn’t even make any memories, good, bad or otherwise. So, you’ve never been married, have you? Your aunt told me you…”

      “She told you I avoid it like the plague. Right?”

      “Something like that.”

      “Well, she was right about that. I do avoid it, maybe not so much like the plague as I do like an entanglement I just don’t want to deal with. The thing is, Aunt Grace harped at me for my lifestyle, for being single. Yet she never married, and she never considered that a lack in herself.”

      “But she considered it a lack in you?” Edie asked.

      “I don’t honestly know.”

      “Maybe she just wanted to see you have a shot at something she missed.”

      He thought about that for a moment. Frowned. “She never seemed lonely, never really struck me as someone who wanted a permanent relationship in her life.”

      “Yet she was surrounded by so many friends, and she took in children all the time. She kept herself busy, Rafe, and she was devoted to the people in her life, but maybe, at night, when she went to bed, there were times when she would have preferred not going alone. It could be she didn’t consider your lifestyle a lack so much as she didn’t want you to go to bed alone every night either. I’d say that’s someone who truly loved you.”

      “I was lucky,” he said.

      “More than lucky. Blessed.”

      Rafe was quiet for a moment, his eyes fixed on something far off that wasn’t really there. Then he cleared his throat and drew in a deep breath. “So, what else is there to know about you?”

      “Not СКАЧАТЬ