Callie had offered to swing by the unsold house just to make sure that nothing had gone wrong in the months since Willow and Dane had last seen it. Circling the exterior, everything looked fine. So she took Willow’s key out of her pocket and let herself into the house.
Because it was such a pretty October day, she left the kitchen door open while she worked. The old farmhouse needed airing out. The kitchen looked dusty, so Callie dampened a dishtowel and began to sweep the surfaces.
She had to admit that seeing the place so lifeless made her sad. She and Willow had eaten countless meals at this old wooden table, sipping wine and lamenting the lack of available men in Vermont. Now Willow was off with her very own mountain man, and Callie was still alone. But just as she draped the damp dishcloth over the oven handle, her pocketbook began to beep.
She still carried a pager since cell phone service could be unreliable in rural areas. The number on the display was unfamiliar, which probably meant that someone had misdialed. But she picked up Willow’s phone and called just to be sure. When a man’s voice answered, she said, “This is Doctor Callie Anders, and I was just paged?”
“Doctor Anders, where are you?”
The warm, husky sound of his voice made her heart speed up. “Hank?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ouch,” she laughed. “My mother is a ‘ma’am.’ How did you get my pager number?”
“The nurses at the hospital like me.”
Of course they did.
“Miss,” Hank tried again, “may I inquire of your whereabouts on this lovely afternoon?”
Her heart rate doubled at the idea that Hank wanted to see her. “Well…I was just checking up on my friend’s vacant house. And now I’m about to go outside and pick apples.”
“So where is this paradise?”
“On North Hill. Why? Are you going to help me?”
“You have me thinking about apple pie now.”
“I’m not much of a baker.”
“That’s okay. Where am I headed?”
Before she could talk herself out of it, Callie gave him Willow’s address.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Callie watched from the back meadow as Hank’s macho car crested the top of Willow’s gravel driveway.
When she’d first seen the cherry-red coupe in the hospital parking lot, she’d imagined that Hank was the only one in the world who put custom hand controls on a Porsche. But now that she’d gotten to know some of the study participants, she understood her mistake. There were plenty of people in the world interested in driving sports cars without the use of their feet. The paraplegic men in her study loved to talk about their cars, just like any bunch of men anywhere. She found herself repeatedly learning the same lesson from these guys: except for their disproportionate upper-body strength, they were just like everyone else.
The driver’s door opened, but it took Hank a couple minutes to assemble his wheelchair. Callie suppressed the urge to cross the grass to greet him. She’d never put a chair together before, and would be no help. But also, Hank just wasn’t the type of guy who wanted to be fussed over.
She waited until he was rolling toward her to hop down from the three-foot ladder she’d found in Willow’s shed. Callie rubbed one of the apples she’d picked on her jeans and took a bite. It was sour enough to make her pucker.
“That good, huh?” he asked, a big smile on his face.
“I think these are pie apples,” she said.
He held out one hand, exposing a riot of ink on his inner arm that crept up from his sturdy wrist into his T-shirt sleeve. “Let me taste.”
She handed him the bitten apple and he took a big bite. His eyes rolled back in his head with pleasure. “Wow. These are great.” He looked up into the branches of the tree. “And your friend has taken good care of this place. Check out that pruning.”
Callie realized it was high time to mention their common friends. “Hank, have you been here before? This is Willow’s house. I believe you know her.”
He looked up quickly. “As in Danger and Willow?”
Callie nodded. “Willow is my best friend. This is her farmhouse—they’ve been trying to sell it since last winter.”
Hank’s gaze traveled to the white clapboards of Willow’s house and then back to Callie. “I think I remember something about that.” He took another bite of the apple and frowned.
Callie said nothing, hoping she hadn’t shaken loose any memories of the day of his accident. “They have a nibble on the house, so Willow asked me to come by and air it out.”
Hank laughed. “What? Dane couldn’t chip a little corner off one of his gold medals to pay for someone to do his housework?”
“I don’t mind helping them.”
His dark eyes measured her warmly. “I’m kidding. Some things you just need a friend to do for you, right?”
Callie didn’t answer him right away, because she’d slipped into the spell of his chocolate gaze. “Right.” She cleared her throat.
“…And there’s apples in the bargain. How many did you get?”
She showed him the dozen or so in the basket.
“That’s a good haul. And it reminds me—I should get this butter out of the sun.” He patted the duffel bag on his lap.
“Butter?”
“For the pie.”
She laughed. “You aren’t fooling around.”
“Callie,” he grinned, “I am always fooling around.”
The sexy quirk of his full lips was so potent that it was all she could do not to tip forward into his lap. She’d replayed their kiss in her mind so many times that his mouth seemed to have a magnetic pull on her. She hoped he didn’t notice that she was staring.
Just then, an apple landed at Callie’s foot with a plop, distracting her. She bent over and picked it up. “Oh, God, look!” she said, turning the apple to show Hank. There were fresh bites out of it, where the snowy apple flesh was still glistening.
Hank looked up into the tree, and then pointed.
A gray squirrel sat on a limb directly overhead. As Callie watched, he began to chatter and complain.
She laughed. “I think he just said, ‘You bitch! That’s mine!’” Callie replaced the apple on the grass, and then looked up at the squirrel. “It’s all yours. We’re out of here.”
* * *
Callie led the way into Willow’s kitchen. But it took Hank several tries to mount the old stone stoop and wooden threshold. It occurred to Callie that until now, she’d only observed her study participants atop the wide, level hospital floors. She hadn’t stopped to realize that the rest of Vermont was probably far less passable. They lived in the land of ancient doorjambs and creaky floorboards.
He had mentioned before that his father had renovated Hank’s home after the accident. But surely most of the other study participants weren’t so lucky.
“Nice place,” Hank said, taking in the white kitchen cabinets and the overstuffed furniture on the opposite end of the room.
“Isn’t it cool? We had some good times in this kitchen. Willow was the cook, of course. My job was usually just pouring the wine.”
“Somebody has to do it,” Hank said. Then he pointed up to a shelf above Willow’s old fireplace. “What’s that?”
“A very strange violin. It’s pretty, but it’s in really bad shape.”
“Can I see it?”
“Well, sure.” Callie crossed to the hearth and stood on tiptoe. The old leather case had a coating of dust. She picked up the damp cloth she’d been using and swiped it clean. “This came with the house. Willow never knew what to do with it.”
She handed the case to Hank, who laid it on his lap. Carefully, he snapped the clasp open and lifted the lid. A velvet cutout lay atop the violin. Pushing this aside, Hank removed the old instrument from its case. “Damn, it’s a Hardanger. Look at all this inlay work.” He ran a finger over the designs worked into the wood. Picking up the instrument, he held its face up to his own, tiltin
g it back and forth, peering through the f-holes. “Huh,” he grunted. He plucked at the strings one at a time with his thumbnail. With the care of someone diffusing a bomb, he began to tweak the tuning pegs, plucking the strings at intervals to test them. “The bow is shredded. That’s a shame.”
Hank tucked the violin under his chin and began to pluck out a tune. It only took Callie a second to identify it. He was playing “Oh! Susanna.” She hadn’t heard that song since she was a kid, when her grandfather used to sing it. Well it rained all night, the day I left…
Hank only played for a minute or so. But by the time the last note was ringing in the air, her jaw had fallen open. “Wow. You play the violin?”
He shrugged. “Used to.” He tucked the instrument back into the case. “Do you think Willow would mind if I had a luthier in Montpelier look at this for her? I think it’s an antique.” His thumb massaged a line of stitching on the leather case.
“Take it. She won’t mind at all.”
Hank tucked the violin into the mesh bag on the back of his chair. “Well,” he said. “We’d better preheat the oven.” He rolled to Willow’s range and fiddled with the digital display.
And then, after he’d dazzled her with his hidden musical skills, Hank proceeded to bake.
“We don’t have any ingredients,” she argued at first.
“I brought flour, sugar and butter,” Hank said, pulling them out of his pack. “But if there’s any salt and cinnamon in those cupboards, this will taste even better.” He positioned himself sideways to Willow’s sink, turning on the tap. “And we’ll need a few drops of cold water. Can you scare up a mixing bowl from somewhere?”
Callie opened Willow’s pantry and began to pick through her spices. “Go slow. I’m still looking for cinnamon. Found it!” She smiled to herself. It had been a while since she’d had an unpredictable weekend like this. Even if she was about to be exposed as someone who could barely boil water, this was much more fun than sitting on the couch in her condo with a fresh stack of medical research articles in her lap.
As soon as Callie found a bowl and a knife, Hank poured in a heap of flour, and then began to cutting bits of butter into it.
“You didn’t measure that,” Callie pointed out.
“It’s about a cup and a half.”
“Okay…” She was in the presence of greatness. A hot man who baked pies from scratch? “Wait…what about a pie dish?”
He shrugged. “If we don’t have that, a cookie sheet will do. This is going to be a rustic apple tart. Oh—and we need something to roll out the dough. If there’s no rolling pin, I’ll use a bottle.”
She laughed. “MacGyver bakes.”
He rolled up his sleeves and began to knead the butter into the flour. She peeled and sliced the apples, all the while thinking warm, fuzzy thoughts about his muscular forearms as he worked. Callie practically needed to fan herself just watching him. She tore her gaze away, redirecting it to the apples she was supposed to be peeling.
When the dough was formed, Hank flattened it into a disc, then spread flour on Willow’s wooden work table. With a rolling pin and about ten seconds of effort, he had a pretty butter-yellow crust, which he transferred to a baking sheet. “Let’s toss some cinnamon and sugar on those apples…” he said, taking the bowl from Callie. “You have plenty here.” With another careless sprinkle of ingredients, he piled the seasoned apples into the center of the crust, then crimped the edges around to encircle them.
“Wow,” Callie said appreciatively. “That’s beautiful.” She shook her head. “You and Willow. She’s one of those super competent ninja people, too, and she totally downplays it. ‘Oh, I have no useful place in the world. But let me serve you the bread I baked from the wheat I grew.’”
Hank snorted. “And here I was feeling like a loser because I can’t reach the oven timer.” He pointed to an old-fashioned timer on a shelf above the sink. “Could you set that thing for forty minutes?”
* * *
Even though they moved away from the oven, Callie still did not manage to cool down. They sat together on Willow’s couch, where Callie was only too aware of their proximity. She cleared her throat. “I liked your motivational poster,” she said. Yesterday she’d found a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on her office door. The caption read: “PURPOSE: It’s possible that your life is meant to serve as a warning to others.”
Hank winked, and then pointed the remote at Willow’s TV. “I don’t suppose you’re a Patriot’s fan,” he said.
“Can’t say that I’ve ever willingly watched a football game,” Callie admitted.
“That’s okay.” He winced at the screen. “Lately the Pats don’t know much about football, either. We’ll skip it.” He changed the channel. “Hey! Since it’s October, there are horror movies on all month long. Check it out—The Silence of the Lambs. A classic.”
Crap. Callie wasn’t good with horror films. On the screen, Jodi Foster wore a frighteningly intense expression. “I’m not brave…” she warned.
Hank only chuckled. “You can hold on to me.”
That didn’t sound so bad.
Callie put her feet up on Willow’s coffee table and watched Hannibal Lecter pace inside his holding cage. She’d forgotten about this part—the creepy escape scene. She lifted her eyes to the kitchen window and noticed that dusk would soon be upon them. The movie soundtrack upped its intensity, and suddenly Callie developed an urge to shut the TV off. “Seriously. I can’t watch this. Willow might not have a flashlight.”
“For what?” Hank asked, his eyes dancing.
“If it’s dark, I’ll need it to get back into my car later. To check the backseats.”
Hank’s mouth split into a big, sexy grin. “But what if he’s under your car? Watch your ankles.”
“Hank!”
He threw his head back and laughed. One of his big hands came out of nowhere and covered hers. Callie closed her eyes and appreciated the warmth of his hand. His thumb came around to stroke her palm.
It was much more fun to concentrate on Hank’s touch than on the movie. Now Hannibal’s guards were freaking out, and the camera kept cutting to the elevator doors. Callie cringed, knowing what would come next. That dreadful ambulance shot… “Okay, time out!” Callie said, grabbing the remote. She paused the movie and then threw the remote onto one of Willow’s chairs.
“You’re hysterical.”
“Shouldn’t we check on the pie, or something?”
Hank scraped a hand over his head. “Sure. In twenty-five minutes or so.”
“I’m sorry. But scary movies are not my comfort zone.” Callie let out a shaky breath.
When she turned to look at Hank, his eyes were full of humor and warmth. “Wait…you’re a doctor. But a little gore on the screen…?”
Callie hid her eyes behind one hand. “But there’s no creepy music in the E.R.”
She expected him to tease her again, but he had other ideas. Hank tugged her arm down, pulling Callie toward him. Startled, her other hand flew out to brace against his body, lest she topple onto his chest. Embarrassingly, she heard herself make an awkward little noise of surprise.
Hank only grinned. “Am I scary, too, Callie?”
“A little,” she admitted at a whisper. Because it was true. Even now the intensity of his chocolate gaze made her feel hot and a little out of control.
He ducked his head, brushing his lips against her cheekbone. “But I’m so friendly,” he said, his warm breath on her face. Next, those full lips pressed a moist kiss just above her jaw, and Callie began to tingle. His kiss slid sexily down her neck, setting fire to the sensitive skin just beneath her ear. “Kiss me, baby,” he rumbled. He raised her chin in one of his big hands, and their mouths finally met. He gave her a couple of soft kisses, his thumbs sweeping her cheekbones. Then, with a sexy growl, his tongue invaded her mouth with a firm sweep.
Oh, yes please.
She wrapped her arms around his hard body and held on for dear l
ife. His kisses were hungry, as if he were starving, and Callie was the last slice of apple tart. As his tongue made eager draws against hers, she felt the nervousness begin to burn right out of her. Rational thought became difficult as his mouth made eager love to her own.
With strong arms, Hank pulled her firmly against his body, his palms singeing her back. Again, his lips burned a trail from the corner of her mouth down her neck. Callie felt herself light up everywhere at once. His confident fingers slid under the hem of her T-shirt, his thumbs raising goose bumps on her stomach. His kisses soldiered on, his lips teasing her collarbone.
Following his lead, Callie’s own hands ducked under Hank’s shirt. She’d wanted to touch his inked chest since the moment she’d first laid eyes on it. But when her hands grasped his waist, he stiffened, his mouth stalling on her neck.
Whoops! She realized her mistake immediately. Callie had grabbed him right on the transition band—that tricky spot where his injury had wreaked havoc on his nerve endings. Anyone with paralysis had a hypersensitive spot, and she of all people should have known better.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, extracting her hands. Backtracking, she raised her hands to his head, skimming her hands over his short hair.
“Mmm,” he said approvingly, his arms relaxing around her. His hands slid up the bare skin of her back.
She kissed him again, and all seemed forgiven.
Then, with the slick grace of the well-practiced, Hank unclasped her bra. One hand reached up under the slackened silk, his thumb grazing the swell of her breast. And that was when she began to feel like tinder in a fireplace. His fingers were the matches. A single brush of his thumb across her nipple ignited her. Then both his hands cupped her breasts while his kisses thundered onward. The low moan she heard was of her own making. She was so deep into him then that she could taste more of him than of herself.
Hank eased her down onto the generous sofa. The weight of his hips on hers was tantalizing. How long had it been since she’d been touched? God—a ridiculously long time. Since Nathan. But here she was, flat on her back on Willow’s sofa, with the sexiest man she’d ever met splayed on top of her.