Tristan gave her his best smile, the one that had made many a woman look as though she were going to melt. But Jecca didn’t. She just looked at him in question. “Yes, I’m a doctor. I work here in Edilean.”
She tilted her head as she looked up at him. “Do you like being a doctor or did you do it because that’s what Aldredges do?”
Tristan wasn’t used to pretty women standing in the moonlight and asking him about his innermost thoughts. He wouldn’t be surprised to be shown a mole they were worried about, or for a woman to step closer in invitation, but someone asking about his life was a first. “I—”
“If you say you want to help people, it doesn’t count,” she said.
He’d wanted to take the seriousness from her, but he was the one to laugh. That was exactly what he’d been about to say. He took a moment to consider her question. “Would it make sense to say that I don’t think I had a choice? From the time I can first remember, I’ve wanted to heal things, make them better. Kids used to bring me wounded animals and I bandaged them.”
“Isn’t your father a doctor too? Did he help you?”
“No,” Tris said, smiling. “He was too busy with real people. But he unders
tood. He said he’d done the same thing when he was a kid. My mother helped me. She got my dad’s old textbooks out of the attic, and together we learned how to make splints and sew up wounds. I think she probably asked my dad what to do, but it was nice for Mom and me to do it together.”
“I like that story,” Jecca said as she looked out over the lawn. “My mother died when I was very young and I don’t remember her. But my dad has always been there. He’s a great guy, and he’s taught me a lot.”
“You sound like you miss him,” Tris said softly. He couldn’t help himself as he stepped nearer to her. He’d never before felt so close to a woman he wasn’t related to. He wanted to take her hand and lead her into the dark, sit down somewhere, and talk the night away. “Do you—?” he began but cut off when the sliding door into the house opened.
“There you are!” Kim said to Jecca. “Everyone is looking for you.” She looked from Tris to Jecca in speculation, as though wondering if anything had been going on.
Jecca took a step forward, then glanced back at Tristan. “It was nice to meet you. I hope I don’t need to go to your office,” she said, then follow
That had been the last time Tristan had seen Jecca. He’d wanted to invite her and Kim to his house, but a patient had had a blood clot in her leg and had to be airlifted to Richmond. Tris had gone with her and when he got home, Jecca had returned to New Jersey. He knew without being told that in her memory he’d been relegated to “one of Kim’s cousins.”
He told himself it was all right, as Jecca was just nineteen and by comparison at twenty-seven, Tris was an old man. He’d had to content himself with trying to finagle information out of Kim. He’d always acted as though it meant nothing to him, but he asked Kim about her often. “How’s your friend . . . What was her name? That’s right. Jecca. How’s she doing now? You two have any new boyfriends? Anything serious going on with either of you?” He’d posed all his questions in an avuncular tone, and Kim had never seemed to see what he was actually asking.
She said Tris was a good friend for even remembering her college roommate, and an even better guy for listening to her babble on and on about whatever they were doing in school. Kim told him how Jecca’s father nearly drove her insane because he kept such rigid control over her, and how Jecca was doing with her painting, and all about any boyfriend that Jecca might have. Kim talked about their other roommate, Sophie, and about her own life, and she never seemed to notice that Tristan always maneuvered the conversation back to Jecca.
Every time Jecca had returned to Edilean to visit Kim, Tris had tried to see her. But every time something had come up, some emergency that as a doctor, he couldn’t overlook. On one visit, he’d been in France on a rare vacation. That he’d been there with another woman hadn’t been important to him.
One time when Tris was in New York he’d stopped by the art gallery where Jecca was working, but she’d been in New Jersey at the time. Once when he was at a conference in New York, he rented a car and drove up to see Layton Hardware, but Jecca wasn’t there. He’d had a glimpse of her father, who seemed to be as wide as he was tall and all muscle, but there wasn’t anything Tris could think of to say to him. That he was pursuing a girl he’d met when she was just nineteen? Joe Layton didn’t look like a man who would greet those words with a smile. Tristan had left with a new toolbox and driven back to Edilean.
But now it seemed that Jecca was coming to spend the entire summer in Edilean. At long, long last, he was going to have a chance to spend time with her. The age difference was no longer a hindrance, so now maybe they could at last get to know each other.
“Hey! I know,” Kim said on the phone. “You and I can go out with Jecca and Reede. Sort of an odd double date.”
Reede? Tristan thought. What did he have to do with Jecca? But then he thought that Kim was probably just planning to fix Jecca up on a date. “Jecca is coming to Edilean?” he managed to say. “How did you arrange that?”
“I pointed out that it was either me and Edilean, or her dad and New Jersey. She agreed instantly.”
Tris didn’t laugh. “So what’s this about Reede? He hasn’t been home in what? Two years now.”
“Oh dear, I think I’ve revealed something I’m not supposed to. I thse sed to.ink you better ask your dad.”
“Kimberly!” Tristan said sternly, sounding as old as he could manage. “What is going on?”
Kim was not intimidated by him. “Didn’t your mom tell you that she and your dad had reservations on some cruise?”
“I don’t remember. A lot has happened to me in the last few weeks. I can’t keep it all straight.”
“I know, and we’re all trying to help you.” Kim didn’t waste time on more sympathy. “Your mom swears she isn’t going to give up that cruise. She told my mom it took her half a year to talk your father into it, and if he doesn’t go on this one, she’ll never get him on a ship.”
“Kim? What does this have to do with Reede and Jecca?”
“I’m getting to that, just hold on. Your dad is going on the cruise and Reede is coming back to Edilean to take over your practice until you get well.”
Tristan tried to control his impatience. “That’s great of him. He needs to settle down. Maybe he’ll stay here.”