Just Over The Mountain Read Online Free Page B

right now. And he’d been the last person she’d expected to come along and give comfort of any kind, much less the best kind.
    “Why isn’t there meat loaf tonight?” he asked. “Patients?”
    “We had an emergency. My nurse. Our nurse, Charlotte. She had a coronary on the job today. A real bad one. We almost lost her.”
    “’Almost’ means you saved her?”
    “John and I, by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins. She’s not in good shape.”
    “I guess this means you can’t get away for a couple of days…on short notice.”
    “If we’d met when we were much younger,” she began, “would you have chosen another line of work?”
    “Would you?” he countered.
    “You’d have made a terrible husband.”
    “You’d have made a dynamite wife.”
    “Flattery has never worked on me,” she insisted, wondering if he could feel her smile against his chest. Hell, her whole body was smiling.
    “If you can’t get away for a couple of days, will you at least take all your clothes off?”
    “Well,” she said, sighing heavily, “I suppose since you’re going off to war again, it’s the least I could do.”
    His arms tightened around her. “I have one more piece of news. This one probably should wait until morning, but I don’t like holding things back from you.”
    This made her shiver, thinking sexual things instead of practical ones. “What is it?”
    “I don’t know if it’s good or bad. You’ll have to decide.”
    “Well. What is it?”
    “After this next job I’m going to be offered a chance to retire early, with full benefits.”
    She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. Her mouth hung open slightly. Did this mean the next job was really dangerous? Would take a long time? Did it mean she wouldn’t see him for months? He’d said “offered.” Did that mean he might say no? Would he say yes…and show up at her door, planning to stay for good? There were a lot of issues inside that simplestatement, though she had no intention of staying up all night talking. She was not at all opposed to staying up all night…but not talking.
    “Let’s not discuss it anymore right now,” she said. She bit his lower lip, but lightly. “I don’t want to waste any more precious time.”

Three
    I n the middle of the night June got out of bed, plucked an article of clothing off the floor in the dark and crept out of the bedroom. How could a man who was so strong yet gentle a lover, so considerate of her every desire, snore?
    It turned out she’d picked up Jim’s T-shirt, which she put on. It came to her knees and slipped off her shoulder, but she pulled it around her in a hug and smelled the scent of him. She would only have him for one more day, then he would be gone again. But at some point in the not-too-distant future, he would be back. For good. For good?
    She heard an objectionable snort come from the direction of her bedroom, but instead of grimacing, she smiled a secret smile. Adenoids. They’d have to come out.
    Sadie so liked having a man in the house, she hadn’t even left the bedroom with June, and Sadie usuallyclung to June’s side, following her everywhere unless she was instructed to stay. But even with that god-awful snoring, Sadie was content on the floor beside the bed.
    Jim was forty and had never married; she was thirty-seven and hadn’t either. Their time together had been so brief, there were a hundred things they hadn’t discussed. What if he took that early retirement, came to Grace Valley to start a new life, and they found they were totally incompatible?
    She sat on the floor, legs crossed, in front of her twenty-year-old record player. She leafed through old records in their dusty jackets. Her taste in music had always been odd; she liked things that would be more natural for her father. She put on a Perry Como record, the volume very low, and listened to his voice, like velvet, sing to her that she should make someone happy, just one someone happy…
    Perry Como, Andy