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After lunch, they worked some more. Gemma was happy sitting on the library floor, but Colin persuaded her to move to the living room. He took the couch and she sat in the big club chair and they read in silence.

But as the hours went on, Gemma found that she couldn’t concentrate. She kept looking at Colin, at his big body sprawled on the couch, one leg hanging down to the floor. There was a cold bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and she thought about suggesting that they open it. What happened afterward . . . Well, she’d leave that to fate.

At four, Colin stood up and stretched—and Gemma felt her heart start to pound.

“I need to go to the gym,” he said. “This is too much sitting for me. I’d ask you to go with me, but with your side, you can’t risk it.”

Gemma thought that what she needed was sixty minutes on a treadmill, forty-five minutes with the gloves, then an icy shower.

“Listen,” he said. “I want you in bed early tonight. You need time to heal. Promise?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“If you need me, you have my cell number, and I put Mike’s number on the desk in the library.”

“Mike the detective,” she said. “The one in Fort Lauderdale?”

“He’s home now, and he’ll know what to do in case of any problems,” Colin said. “By the way, Mike set up a makeshift gym downtown in what used to be his wife’s dress shop. It’s very informal, only invited people go, and we don’t have many women. But then, Mike scares them off.”

“How does he do that?”

“I think I’ll let Mike show you.” He started toward the door, but hesitated. “You’ll be all right here by yourself?”

“Perfectly fine.”

“Okay,” he said at last, then took a step toward her as though he meant to hug her or kiss her cheek good-bye.

Gemma knew she wouldn’t be able to stand that. She took a step back and the moment passed.

When he was gone, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. “He belongs to someone else,” she told herself, then immediately went back to work.

Without Colin hovering over her and making sure she didn’t strain herself, she started organizing. As far as she could tell, at some point in the life of the Frazier papers some industrious person had “cleaned up.” Gemma had always found tidy people to be maddening. Their one and only goal seemed to be to have everything appear to be “neat.” “Put away.” “Out of sight.” It didn’t seem to matter that bills were mixed in with the kitchen utensils, that research supplies were thrown in with the shoes. Just so everything looked good!

For Gemma, she put like things together, and if she didn’t have time to put something where it belonged, she left it out.

Unfortunately, whoever had stored away the Frazier papers had put them away by size. Small papers dated 1620 were in a box with small papers dated 1934. This lack of correct sequencing nearly drove Gemma crazy.

The first thing she did was take everything off the shelves in the library and storage room. A couple of times she reached too far and felt her stitches pull, but she learned to keep her elbow close to her ribs.

Once the shelves in both rooms were clean, she mentally categorized the space into decades. As she emptied the containers, she put dated papers into the proper areas. Once they were sorted, she would rebox them in archival storage containers that were acid free and wouldn’t eat up the contents.

She didn’t stop emptying and sorting until her stomach was growling. After a quick meal—and she silently thanked Rachel for her cooking—Gemma went back to work. When it grew dark, she turned on all the lights. She carried empty boxes from the house to the garage where there was now space since she and Colin had cleared out that area.

She fell into bed at 1 A.M., was up at six, and started work immediately. The days began to merge together as she went through everything and piled it high on shelves in the house. There were several boxes of account books in the garage that could be taken away to be stored elsewhere, but she had gone through everything inside the house.

When all of it was out, she went online to Gaylord library supplies and compiled her wish list for storage boxes. Gemma was torn between going to the main house and disturbing Mrs. Frazier or e-mailing her. Electronic mail won out.

Mrs. Frazier replied instantly, saying that she’d reimburse Gemma for whatever she spent.

Gemma put in her credit card number, pushed the SEND button on the order, then leaned back in her chair and looked about the room. If Colin were there she’d open the wine in the refrigerator and they’d celebrate. But he wasn’t there. In fact, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in days now.

An hour later, he called. There was static on the line and a lot of noise wherever he was. She could hear men shouting.

“Gemma?” he said into the phone, and she knew he was shouting. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you, but there’s no cell service here.”

“Where are you?” She had to shout the question three times before he heard her.

“At that ranger station,” he shouted back. “Fire fighting. Whole family here. You okay?”


Tags: Jude Deveraux Edilean Romance