For the Sake of Warwick Mountain (Harlequin Heartwarming) (6 page)

“I should have returned to town.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” she said hastily. “Just demonstrating the efficiency of their mass-communication system.”

“You should have asked them about last night,” Matt said.

“Last night?”

“The lights in the woods. If they know everything that goes on around here, maybe they know what the lights were.”

Becca frowned. “I’ve never seen lights there before.”

“Thought you said it was hunters.”

“Did you hear dogs?”

“There was no sound, just lights.”

“Coon hunters would have had dogs with them.”

“Maybe it was car headlights from a highway.”

She shook her head. “Our land takes up forty acres behind the house. Past that is national forest. No roads.”

“Hiking trails?”

“Not in that part of the forest. Beyond our land the terrain’s rugged, filled with deep ravines. More suited for rock climbing than hiking.”

“You don’t believe ghosts caused the lights?” His brown eyes were mocking, and he looked entirely too appealing dressed in a beige fisherman’s sweater and jeans.

“I have no idea. Folks swear the Brown Mountain lights are caused by ghosts. Stranger things have happened in these mountains.”

“Doesn’t it worry you, not knowing who was out there or why?”

“The only thing that worries me is that the lights were extinguished when I spoke loud enough for whoever it was to hear. That indicates that whoever was out there had a reason to hide.”

He cast a covetous look at the basket of biscuits, then glanced back to her. “Want to take a look?”

“At what?” She blushed, realizing she’d been staring at him, appreciating the attractiveness that had placed him on the cover of
People
.

“At the woods where the lights were. Maybe there’ll be tracks or some other clue to what was out there.”

Going outside seemed like a good idea. The cozy intimacy of being in the kitchen with Dr. Wonderful was a bit much, and the cool morning air would clear her head.

“Okay.” She reached for her jacket on a peg by the back door.

“What about Emily?” Matt asked.

“She’s still asleep. I’ll leave the door open, so she’ll know we’re out back. Sound travels in the mountains. We’ll hear if she calls us.”

Becca stepped onto the porch and hurried down the stairs to the gravel path that led past the barn, chicken coop and vegetable garden to the large open meadow between the house and the woods.

“Wow,” Matt said behind her. “Did you plant these?”

Becca turned to catch him staring at the field in amazement. The sun had crested the ridge and reflected in the dew sparkling on the lush green grasses and the flashy yellow of the black-eyed Susans and brilliant white of the Queen Anne’s lace.

A man who appreciated the beauty of nature couldn’t be a total jerk, but she didn’t want to think about Matt’s redeeming qualities. She wanted reasons to resist his charm, as she was having a difficult time doing just that.

“They’re wildflowers,” she explained. “Granny used to graze horses and cattle here, but we haven’t had livestock, except for chickens, in years.”

She pressed ahead through the thigh-high grass. Matt walked beside her.

“Should you be watching for snakes?” he asked.

She felt a thrill of satisfaction at the concern for her in his voice, but quickly tamped it down. Plastic surgeon to the stars, she reminded herself, with a roving eye and probably the thickest little black book in Hollywood. “If I make enough noise and motion, they’ll get out of my way.”

“Do you own a gun?”

She stopped and looked at him. The man was definitely out of his element. “For snakes?”

He nodded toward the woods where he’d said the lights had been. “For protection.”

It had been a long time since anyone had shown such concern for her welfare, but the pleasure his caring gave her was dangerous, and weakened the walls that fortified her heart. “I told you last night. This isn’t the Wild, Wild West of Los Angeles. Crime isn’t a problem.”

“How can you be sure?” His gaze pierced her, held her captive so she couldn’t turn away from the intensity of those deep brown eyes. “Weirdos and crazies know no boundaries. You don’t know who was out there last night. Or why.”

With an effort, she wrenched herself away from his gaze and started down the meadow toward the tree line. “Then let’s see what we can find out.”

She couldn’t deny the glow of satisfaction his interest gave her, but she could resist it. She didn’t need a man to protect her. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself and Emily. “As a matter of fact, I do have a gun. Grandpa’s shotgun. And I know how to use it. Granny taught me.”

Dark memories inundated her. Five years ago, Granny had threatened to take that same shotgun down to Pinehurst to force Grady to marry Becca, but she’d talked her grandmother out of such drastic action. Much as Becca had thought she loved Grady at the time, she’d had her pride, and she wouldn’t marry any man who didn’t want her, especially under duress.

“Maybe you should start locking your doors,” Matt suggested. “At least until you figure out who’s been prowling these woods and why.”

Becca found the path that entered the woods and stepped into the shade of the trees. She knew these woods as well as her own house. She’d played here as a child, retreated here as a teenager and brought Emily here to teach her about her heritage. Becca felt comfortably at home in the dappled shade of the tall trees.

The path was narrow, so Matt followed behind her. “If no one uses these woods, how come there’s a path?” he asked.

“There’s more than one,” Becca explained. “This is the path we use to harvest firewood. Others have been worn by hunters, children playing, even by dogs, deer and bear.”

She heard Matt scuffing his foot at the hard-packed clay.

“Hard to make out tracks on this terrain,” he observed.

“It rained yesterday,” she reminded him. “If our midnight visitors left the path, we might find some traces.”

Keeping her eyes on the ground for signs of anything unusual, she plunged deeper into the woods, glancing left and right among the understory of dogwoods and wild azaleas for anything out of the ordinary. Once they neared the spot where Matt had seen lights, she didn’t have to search farther.

“Look at that.” Becca pointed to a large patch of disturbed ground a few feet left of the path.

Matt followed her directions, stepped off the path and prodded the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Somebody’s been digging here. Recently.”

A shiver traveled down Becca’s spine. “Question is, were they digging something up? Or burying it?”

CHAPTER SIX

M
ATT
KNELT
IN
the damp leaves and plunged his hands into the loose soil. The disrupted area of dirt was only a few feet in diameter, and as he dug into the turned earth, he discovered that the excavation had been relatively shallow, less than a foot.

“It’s not deep,” he said. “And no sign of anything buried.”

Becca knelt beside him, the fruity fragrance of her shampoo an intoxicating contrast to the musty scent of decaying leaves. “So we don’t know if they dug up something to take away, or I startled them before they could bury what they intended.”

Matt stood, dusted as much of the moist earth as he could from his hands and glanced around. “See any tracks?”

Becca rose to her feet and walked down the trail. “Here. Looks like a tennis-shoe print.”

Matt joined her and placed his foot beside the imprint in the damp soil. “Has to be a man’s. It’s larger than my foot, and I wear a twelve.” He couldn’t resist teasing her. “Don’t suppose your Tarheel ghosts wear tennis shoes?”

Becca ignored his teasing and continued to survey the area. “There’re more prints. Must have been at least two people.”

“Where does this path lead?”

“It circles back to the main road. Comes out between our farm and the Ledbetters’, where we passed the apple orchard on our way into town.”

Matt tried to picture the local geography. “So your midnight visitors could have parked by the road, entered the woods from there, then returned to their car without anyone spotting them.”

“Or hearing them,” Becca said. “Our farms are several miles apart.”

They searched the trail for several hundred feet, but found no more tracks or signs of digging.

“I’m going back to the house,” Becca said, “in case Emily’s awake. Want to look for more clues, Sherlock?”

“I prefer Spenser.”

“Who?”

“Robert B. Parker’s private detective. He’s my favorite.” Matt thought longingly of two Parker novels sitting on the bookshelf in his Malibu house. He’d bought them to take on his South Pacific cruise. Now he wished he’d thought to pack them when Dwight had sent him here. Without television or any other nightlife, a good book seemed like his only hope for entertainment. “But at this point, Spenser would probably opt for coffee and doughnuts.”

“Coffee we’ve got. But you’ll have to settle for buttermilk biscuits.”

“Suits me. Must be the mountain air. I’m hungry enough to eat anything.” He hurried to catch up with Becca, who had already started up the path leading out of the woods.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a reader,” she spoke over her shoulder.

“Why not?”

“Somehow I picture you always in a crowd. Hard to read with all that racket.”

She’d pegged him correctly, he realized with a start. Ever since he’d begun his practice, he had been surrounded by people. His staff, nurses, patients, other doctors. And when he hadn’t been working, he’d plunged into the Hollywood social scene with a vengeance. Constant parties with wall-to-wall people, inane conversations and too-loud music.

No wonder he’d needed a vacation. And suffered from that vague, underlying dissatisfaction that had haunted him the past year. He’d seldom had a solitary moment to himself.

He caught up with her as they left the woods, and walked beside her through the meadow. “You like to read?”

“Sure, but we’re a long way from a library or bookstores.”

“Ever thought of moving?”

The look she gave him couldn’t have been more incredulous if he’d asked if she’d ever thought of cutting off her head. “Never.”

“But you’re so isolated here.”

He could almost see the hackles rise on her neck. “Isolated from what? I have family, friends, neighbors. What more could I want?”

“Libraries, for a start,” he said. “Theaters, shops—”

“Don’t know how I’ve survived this long so far from Rodeo Drive,” she said with a dramatic and definitely sarcastic sigh.

“Also restaurants, concerts and art galleries,” he added.

Her smile was cynical. “Not to mention crime, traffic, pollution and all the other amenities of the rat race. I’ll stay put on Warwick Mountain, thanks.”

“Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re living in a time warp?”

She stopped to face him, and green fire flashed in her eyes. “Do I like the slower pace of mountain life? You bet. Do I feel deprived? Never. The news I glean from radio, occasional TV broadcasts and the Sunday paper makes me grateful I have such a safe and peaceful place to raise my daughter, away from the pressures and insanity of so-called modern life. I tried it once, and—”

She bit off whatever she was about to say, but not before he glimpsed the heartache in her eyes.

“And I didn’t like it,” she finished lamely.

Sorry to have stirred up what appeared to be bad memories, he changed the subject. “About those tracks in the woods...”

She started toward the house again. “What about them?”

“Do you have a local police force, someone to report them to?”

She shook her head. “All we have is the county sheriff. His deputies patrol this half of the county, but they’d lock me up for crazy if I called in a complaint of nothing more than strange lights and unidentified tracks.”

Matt glanced around at the encircling mountains and was struck by the seclusion of the Warwick farm. Becca’s nearest neighbors were the McClains, just around the bend from her house.

“Do you have 911 emergency service?” he asked.

She nodded. “Paramedics and firefighters man the rescue station halfway between here and town. If we need a deputy, the sheriff’s office dispatches the nearest car.”

Matt recalled the long drive up the mountain from town to the village. No way to open up an engine and speed around those dangerous curves without flying off the road. “So if you called for help, it could take a while.”

Becca shrugged. “I told you, crime’s not a problem.”

“Maybe I should stay here with you and Emily until you find out who was digging in the woods and why.” He couldn’t shake the protective instincts he felt toward Becca, didn’t know where they’d come from. Other than with his mother, he’d never experienced those feelings toward a woman before.

Come to think of it, he realized with a twist of irony, most of the women he’d known in California were certified man-eaters, more than able to take care of themselves. He’d always been more concerned about protecting himself from them. But Becca had that appealing mix of strength and vulnerability that made him want to fight dragons for her.

“Look, Matt, we’ve been through this before. Even if I believed that Emily and I were in danger—which I don’t—I can’t afford to have you stay here. The scandal could cost me my job.”

His temper flared. “And unsavory characters with homicidal tendencies creeping through your woods could cost you your life.”

“Good grief,” she said with a laugh that deflated his anger. “You’ve been reading too many mysteries. There’s never been a murder on Warwick Mountain.”

He wanted to say there was always a first time, but he knew when he was beaten. He’d have to move out today, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t keep an eye out for Becca and Emily from the village. Any vehicle heading up the mountain road toward Becca’s would have to pass by the feed store. It shouldn’t take him long to learn to recognize the regulars and spot a stranger.

Becca paused on the gravel path. “Go on inside. I’ll join you in a minute.”

She headed toward the barn. Matt entered the kitchen to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, went to the sink and scrubbed the dirt from his hands. As he finished, Becca stepped inside and plunked a huge and obviously heavy wooden box on the floor.

“Here’s Grandpa’s tool kit. You can take it with you when you go.”

Matt suppressed a sigh. He recognized here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry when he heard it. She hadn’t repeated her offer of giving him a hand with the feed-store measurements. Maybe he’d overstepped the line by suggesting he remain at her house.

Whatever the reason she’d closed him out, she hadn’t forgotten her Southern hospitality. With a bright but brittle smile, she served him the best and biggest breakfast he’d ever tasted, what he figured would be his last meal in Becca’s house.

* * *

“S
O
HOW
’
S
D
R
. W
ONDERFUL
settling in?” Aunt Delilah sat at Becca’s kitchen table, idly twirling the ice in her glass of tea.

Becca glanced away from the window where she’d been watching Emily give a picnic for her dolls in the backyard. “Don’t know. Haven’t talked to him since he left three days ago.”

Delilah’s gray eyebrows shot up in twin peaks. “You just abandoned him?”

“Why is Matt Tyler my responsibility?”

Her aunt had keyed in too closely on the guilt Becca felt from ignoring the doctor, especially when his coming here was doing the community a favor. But she didn’t dare spend time with him. More than village gossip, what she feared most was her response to him, an excitement that she hadn’t been able to control. Avoidance was her best hope. She’d suffered heartbreak once. She wasn’t about to set herself up for it again.

“You invited him here,” Delilah reminded her.

“I invited Dwight Peyseur.”

“And Matt’s filling in.”

“For the benefit of the community. Nothing to do with me,” Becca insisted.

“Then he might as well go home.” Delilah set her glass on the table with a thud. “Folks are too leery of his womanizing ways to let him treat them.”

“Womanizing ways?”

“Does
People
magazine lie?”

Becca squirmed in her chair. She’d sneaked that issue out of Bessie’s shop yesterday and read the article from start to finish. Twice. The story provided nothing concrete, nothing that proved Matt was anything more than a party animal, but the report included enough innuendo for even the least literal of readers to jump to some fairly steamy conclusions. Implications were clear that Dr. Wonderful had put in a lot of time with Hollywood’s plethora of female pulchritude.

“If people—and especially their children—need medical care,” Becca insisted hotly, “what difference does it make if the man’s dated every actress in Hollywood?”

“You think he has?” Delilah’s voice raised an octave in interest.

“I know no more about his sex life than you do,” Becca said with irritation. “The point is, why cut off their noses to spite their faces? He’s here to offer his services, and folks should take advantage of him, particularly the McClains and the Dickenses.”

“Takes time for people to trust him. Especially with their children.”

“But we don’t have time.” Frustration edged Becca’s voice. “He’ll be leaving in a month.”

Delilah pursed her lips, cast a quick glance around the kitchen as if to assure herself that they were alone, then leaned across the table like a conspirator. “I need your help, Rebecca.”

At the desperation in her aunt’s voice, Becca tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jake’s sister, Lydia.”

“Is her sciatica worse?”

“She’s ruining our marriage.” Delilah’s eyes clouded with tears. “In over fifty years, Jake and I have rarely had a cross word, but we’ve snapped at each other like quarreling dogs ever since that woman arrived.”

“I can’t keep her here,” Becca said. “As soon as Matt’s finished his additions to the feed store, I’ll be introducing him to the community, helping him with his rounds.”

Delilah shook her head. “Jake wouldn’t hear of Lydia’s leaving our house. Not while her sciatica has her in such pain. But she’s driving me crazy, expecting me not only to wait on her hand and foot but to keep her entertained. Today’s the first break I’ve had since she arrived, and I wouldn’t be out of the house now if Susie Ledbetter hadn’t volunteered to sit with her.”

“I can come up now and then to stay with Lydia if you need to get out more,” Becca offered.

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Delilah swept the kitchen with another surreptitious glance. “You can help better another way.”

“How?”

Delilah took a deep breath. “Sneak Dr. Wonderful into Lydia’s room.”

“Aunt Delilah, what are you thinking?”

Becca wondered if her aunt had slipped a cog.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Becca,” Delilah snapped. “I need the doctor’s medical expertise, not his—”

Her aunt fumbled for words.

“His what?” Becca couldn’t help enjoying her aunt’s embarrassment.

“Not his amorous abilities,” Delilah said with a grimace.

“Sorry.” Becca bit back a laugh. “I guess I misunderstood.”

“You sure did,” Delilah said sharply.

Becca tried to keep a straight face. “So, Lydia would let Matt examine her back?”

“She hasn’t heard the gossip or read the magazine.”

“What if Susie Ledbetter tells Lydia while she’s there today?”

“I made her promise not to. Told her Lydia couldn’t take any excitement.” Delilah reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I’m desperate, Becca. I have to have Lydia cured and out of my house or Jake and I will continue to be at each other’s throats. The woman has to be the world’s worst patient, and she’s driving me past my limits!”

Becca took pity on her aunt. “What did Lydia’s doctor in Blairsville recommend?”

“A few days of bed rest, then mild exercise, but Lydia refuses to get out of bed. Says the pain’s too intense.”

“You think she’s faking?”

Delilah shrugged. “Hard to tell. I believe she’s really suffering, but she’s also milking her ailment for all the sympathy she can get. She has Jake wrapped around her little finger, but he’s not the one waiting on her hand and foot.”

“And you want me to sneak Matt in to see her?”

Delilah nodded. “Jake’s going to town day after tomorrow. He’ll be gone most of the day. If you could arrange it then?”

Conflicting emotions warred inside Becca. Delilah had just presented her with a perfect excuse to call on Matt without seeming personally interested. But seeing him again so soon threatened to weaken the defenses she’d thrown up against him. She had hoped for a few more days to gather her senses. Much as she’d like, however, she couldn’t avoid him forever. And she couldn’t turn her back on her aunt’s obvious distress.