Trouble In Tourmaline. Jane Toombs

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      “Yes,” he muttered, “she’s Amy, all right.”

      “And you’re David.” Amy’s voice was as frosty as her eyes.

      Gert rose from the glider to look at one, then the other of them. “Such antipathy can only mean, I do believe, that you’ve met before. This does explain at least part of Grandfather’s dream about the male hawk and the female hawk.”

      Recovering somewhat from the shock of discovering David was Dr. Severin’s nephew, Amy was confused anew by his aunt’s words. Gert had to be in her seventies and she had a grandfather? Good grief, how old would he be?

      “I’m forgetting my manners,” Gert said to her. “As I mentioned when we had that brief meeting in Reno last month, you’ll stay with me until you find a place to live. Do come in and I’ll show you to your room.”

      “Well, um, I’m at the Cottonwood Hotel at the moment.” The last place Amy wanted to stay was anywhere David might be living.

      Apparently sensing this, Gert said, “David has his own apartment to the west of town so you don’t need to worry about putting him out. It’ll be handier for you here than at the hotel until you find a place of your own.”

      Which was true. Especially if David planned to eat breakfast at the Cottonwood every morning. “It’s very kind of you, Dr.—”

      “Didn’t I just say the name is Gert?”

      Amy managed a smile, beginning to feel she was going to get along with her new employer. “Thanks, Gert.”

      “This yardman better get back to work,” David said.

      Amy slanted him a dirty look. Sure, rub it in, she thought, when you deliberately let me believe that’s what you were. She wondered why he didn’t explain himself right away.

      “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.

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