Ever After (46 page)

“Why did you stand there and listen?” Jamie sounded more annoyed than he meant to.

“Ask Juliana and Hyacinth. I think they wanted me to hear.”
Hallie went back into the bedroom. Jamie was stretched out on the bed wearing nothing but the big brace on his leg, a sheet corner across his middle. He was certainly glorious to behold! Honey-colored skin over muscles from the neck down. Abs that rippled. Thighs like tree trunks. He was like a god of old come to life.

“Hallie,” Jamie whispered.

Somehow, she managed to turn away and step into her closet.

“Damn Todd!” she heard Jamie mutter as she pulled out a clean T-shirt.

“Hallie?” Jamie said and there was a serious tone to his voice. “This morning Braden said something strange to me. He said he didn't think you know that I'm a doctor. I told him that wasn't true because Jared gave you my medical file—didn't he?”

That astonishing bit of information made Hallie feel like someone had knocked the wind out of her. She leaned back against the closet shelves to give herself a moment to recover. When she'd been given his medical report she'd been so upset over Shelly trying to steal her house that she couldn't keep her mind on what she was seeing. But whatever the cause, no, she didn't know that about him. Part of her felt angry that this had been hidden from her. Or maybe she was angry at herself for not figuring out something so very fundamental about this man.

But she wasn't going to go the route of anger. She looked around the doorway at him. She well knew that humor worked best with him. “You mean you can get a
job
? Earn a living? That you aren't going to live off a trust fund set up by some relative who probably had
two
jets?”

Jamie groaned. “You sure know how to wound a guy. I'm so hurt I may have to go back to the hospital.”

“You can't perform surgery on yourself?”

“Actually, I did sew up this one. It wasn't very deep, so I
took care of it.” He ran his hand across a scar that ran down the side of his left arm. “It happened a few weeks before the explosion. I was afraid that if anyone saw it, I'd be sent home.”

Hallie moved back into the closet so he wouldn't see her face. Suddenly, her joke didn't seem very funny. She could even envision Jamie sewing his own wound. She stepped back into the bedroom. “So. You have any other big secrets?”

Jamie knew that this was the moment when he should tell her that Shelly would be there in about three hours, but he couldn't do it. As much as he didn't like to admit it, Braden seemed to know Hallie well and he didn't want her to “freak out” as he'd said she would. Smiling, he put his hands behind his head. “You don't seem to have noticed that Todd is my identical twin.”

Hallie scoffed. “Todd is four inches shorter than you are and has a roll around his middle. You should get him to go to a gym sometimes.” She sat down on the bed beside him, and as she ran her hand over his chest, her face was serious. “Do you think you can work in a hospital?”

He knew she was referring to his PTSD. It was better but certainly not cured. “No,” he said honestly. “Not yet, but I might be able to manage part-time in a small clinic. It would have to be in a place with few doors and few patients and—”

Hallie kissed him. “One day at a time. Eventually, you'll be able to do it all.”

“Will you be there with me?”

She started to say yes, that she'd follow him wherever he went, that she couldn't imagine a life without him, but she didn't say that. She wasn't going to put everything inside her on the surface. Not yet anyway. She got up and with laughter in her voice, said, “If that's an invitation, where's the champagne?”

“It's coming. You like oval diamonds, right?” he said.

Hallie stared at him. She'd thought he meant dating past when his leg was healed, that they'd get to know each other in
a more ordinary way, that sort of thing. But he seemed to mean something more permanent. “Yes, I do,” she said softly, then turned away. “I, uh…” She couldn't think what to say. “I'll meet you in the gym,” she said at last and hurried down the stairs.

A
n hour later, Jamie was just stepping out of the outdoor shower beside the gym when he saw her. There was no mistaking who she was. Shelly was just as Braden had described: very tall, thin, with lots of blonde hair that stood out around a very pretty face.

What wasn't pretty was the way she was looking at him. He had on only a towel and the brace, an outfit he'd been wearing often lately. But the way this woman was looking at him made him feel, well, naked. Exposed.

He'd seen men look at women in that way, their eyes moving up and down, measuring their physical attributes like they were racehorses.

But Jamie couldn't remember a woman scrutinizing him in that way. His first instinct was to cover himself, but he didn't. He stood up straighter, his shoulders back, feet together.

Her eyes came back up to his and what he first saw there was anger, but then she changed and gave a little smirk, as though he wasn't worthy of her attention.

In an instant, she turned on her high heels and went toward the house, where Hallie was.

Jamie's only thought was that he
had
to get to Hallie before this woman did. He had to protect the woman he loved.

But when he took a step forward, he tripped on a stepping stone and went down hard on his uninjured knee. When he tried to get up, his brace caught on the stone and entangled him. His towel was on the ground a foot away and when he reached for it, a gust of wind caught it and sent it sailing.

Cursing, he struggled to get upright without a crutch, then looked down at himself. He couldn't burst into the house with no clothes on. He managed to hobble back to the gym and grab his sweatpants. When they caught on the back of his brace and he couldn't pull them up, his cursing grew angrier and louder.

It seemed to take forever to get his pants on and pull a T-shirt over his head. He grabbed his crutches and started for the house. The back door was locked. He banged on it and yelled to Hallie but no one came to open the door. Maybe they went upstairs, he thought and went around to the front door. It was also locked.

He had to go nearly full circle before he saw that the tea room doors were unlocked and he went inside. When he heard voices, he quickly went through the pantry to the kitchen door and looked inside.

Shelly was sitting at the kitchen table and Hallie was pulling things out of the refrigerator and putting them before her stepsister.

The scene made Jamie frown, but he understood about families and habits. When he and his brother were together, they seemed to know what each other was going to do before it was done. But Jamie hated seeing Hallie wait on Shelly.

He stepped forward, meaning to go into the kitchen to stop it, but the door closed in his face. When he tried the knob, it was locked. As he'd done outside, he knocked on the door and called for Hallie to open it from her side, but nothing happened.

It took Jamie just seconds to get across the room to the other door into the house, but it too was locked.

He gritted his teeth in frustration. He had no doubt that the two spirits of the house were doing this. “Is this what you did the day Hallie overheard Todd and me in the kitchen?” Jamie asked aloud, but there was no answer.

He hopped across the room on his crutches, back through the pantry, and as he knew it would be, the door was open a few inches. It looked like he was supposed to watch and listen, the darkness of the pantry hiding him from their sight.

Jamie looked at Shelly sitting at the table. He'd heard so much about her beauty that he was curious. He'd seen the professional photos she'd sent him and he'd thought she looked good but in a cool, remote way that didn't appeal to him.

Now as he looked at her, he thought of the old saying that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. Maybe Hallie and Braden saw Shelly as breathtakingly beautiful, but to Jamie she was far from it. She was tall and thin, shapeless really. His professional eye saw that she'd spent too much time in the sun. She wasn't going to age well.

Jamie thought Hallie was much prettier. He loved her curves, the shape of her face, the way she smiled at everyone. Hallie's hair was thick and soft and he knew it always smelled good, even when she was sweaty in the gym.

As he looked at the two women, he couldn't see why anyone would think Shelly was the pretty one. To him, Hallie beat her stepsister in all aspects of mind, talent, beauty, and personality.

Inside the kitchen, Hallie was doing her best to listen to Shelly. She'd been preparing a late lunch for herself and Jamie when Shelly had shown up. Like some black magic, she just seemed to appear in the Nantucket kitchen.

And once Hallie saw her, it was as though all the sunshine disappeared. It was like the doors and windows suddenly locked and the pretty little house became a prison. She hadn't seen or heard from Shelly since the day she'd come home and Jared had been sitting in her living room asking Shelly to sign some papers.

Hallie kept putting things on the table. Better that than sitting down and trying to talk with Shelly. She could argue for hours at a time, but all Hallie wanted was to get rid of her fast. Please, please, she thought, let Jamie stay outside. Don't let him come in here and see Shelly. Hallie didn't think she could bear seeing the two of them laughing and talking, flirting. Doing the things all men did with Shelly.

“I came here to work things out with you,” Shelly was saying. “But then I'm always apologizing to you.”

“You have
never
apologized to me,” Hallie said and was instantly annoyed with herself for taking the bait Shelly was dangling.

“I'm sure that's the way you see it. For once, could we just talk and not fight?” she said, looking around. “This is a nice house, but it will take a lot of work to get the garden up to what your grandparents had. I guess that's what you plan to do.”