Just Over The Mountain Read Online Free Page A

the hospital, she said to her father, “What are we going to do for a nurse?”
    “Call the registry. They’ll send someone out.”
    “I know that. I mean in the long term. We both know Charlotte is done nursing.”
    “I wouldn’t write her off that fast. She’s always been a feisty pain in the butt,” Elmer said.
    June thought it might take a bit more than feistiness this time.
    John was on call and had the ambulance for the night, so Elmer gave June a lift back to Grace Valley in his truck. As they rode, June called John on her cell phone and gave him an update on Charlotte’s condition. Then, instead of meat loaf at June’s, they availed themselves of roast beef at the Café. Sadie, who had waited patiently at the clinic, joined them. George always had a supply of dog food on hand.
    Charlotte was, as much as Elmer, a fixture at the center of the town. She’d been a nurse for forty years, all of them in Grace Valley. She had barely taken the time off to have her own children, and there were six of them. Nearly every citizen in the valley had crossed Charlotte’s path at one time or other. News of her cardiac arrest had spread through town and almost everyone who happened to be at George Fuller’s café wanted to know how she was doing.
    By the time June and Sadie got home, it was after ten…and her porch light was on.
    June knew she hadn’t left the light on. There was also a light on inside, and this made her smile.
    It was sometime last spring that she’d met him—her secret man. Jim Post was a DEA operative and he’d been working undercover in the Trinity Alps, the insideman at a marijuana farm. One of the growers had gotten shot and Jim brought him to June’s clinic where, at the point of his gun, he demanded she remove the bullet and tend the injury. The romance began shortly thereafter, and no weapon was necessary. June fell for the strong, handsome agent instantly.
    The only downside was that Jim was still at work for the DEA, undercover. For his safety, and June’s, no one could know about him. Having a secret lover was at once filling…and lonely.
    She let herself into the house quietly. She tiptoed through the living room and kitchen, toward the light, toward the bedroom. He reclined in the armchair in the corner, his feet up on the ottoman, the throw from the foot of her bed pulled over him and a book facedown on his chest.
    He’d grown a beard since the last time she’d seen him. A very handsome beard of light brown. His hair was shorter, though. It was almost a buzz cut. And he was not quite as tan, but then he’d been working in an office for the past couple of months, and summer was drawing to an end. There was a definite fall chill in the late-night air.
    Some secret agent, she thought with a smile. He didn’t so much as stir while she and Sadie studied him. She crept closer, knelt beside the chair, stealthily pulled the book off his chest and lay her head there. His arms came slowly and predictably around her.
    “What are you doing here?” she said. “You know it’s meat loaf night.”
    “Meat loaf didn’t appear to be happening. I waitedtill about nine, then decided if Elmer came home with you, you’d know by the porch light that I was inside.”
    “It’s the middle of the week. This isn’t a vacation, is it?”
    “No, it’s good news and bad news.”
    “I hate those,” she said, not asking for either.
    “I have a couple of days.”
    “Is that the bad news?” she asked, knowing better.
    “I’m being sent to the Ozarks…because I have such a lot of good goddamn mountain experience.”
    She was quiet for a moment. “That’s too far away.”
    “Don’t I know it.”
    “Why didn’t you just wait till morning to tell me that?”
    “I couldn’t do that to you,” he said. “There aren’t too many perks in this relationship. You’re entitled to the truth, at least.”
    She smiled against his chest but didn’t let him see. To tell the truth, she needed him