Marry Me by Susan Kay Law Page B

he warned her, but there was no heat behind it.
    “Hasn’t stopped the neighbors from coming over so far,” she replied lightly. Teasing him. The concept was strange enough to stun him for a moment. “That was the Blevinses on Sunday. You know them of course. I like her very much; she reminds me a bit of my sister Anthea.”
    He started on the stew, half listening to her bright chatter. Whyever she thought that he wanted to hear all about her visitors, he’d no idea. Still, he didn’t want her grabbing her food and running off with it. Listening to her babble was a small price to pay for those biscuits.
    “Joe seemed inordinately fond of my chess pie,” she said slyly, “maybe even more than five dollars’ fond.”
    “Joe? There’s not a chance he’s giving up a cent and you know it.”
    Jesus. Now she was beaming at him with delight, as if immensely proud of his pathetic banter. He’d have to remember not to give her any encouragement, because she clearly took the slightest bit and ran with it.
    “And I had Mr. Biskup over on Sunday, too. You do know him; he’s been here since before you came.”
    “Yeah, I know him.” Vaguely. Skinny old duffer with a beard down to his waist. At all hours of the day and night, he bounced around on the back of a nag that looked even older than he was, canvas packs piled high behind him like a lumpy throne. They’d passed perhaps three words between them the six months Jake had lived there before.
    “He showed me several of his sketches. They’re quite remarkable. But then I imagine you know that.”
    “Sketches?” he asked without thinking.
    “You didn’t know he was an artist?” She looked as shocked as if he’d up and confessed a penchant for rolling in the mud. Obviously the idea of living next to somebody for more than a day and not knowing all about them was abhorrent to her. He should be grateful she’d spared him that long.
    Maybe, he thought bleakly, if they’d had company as often as she did, formed friendships there, Julia wouldn’t have felt so alone.
    Ruthlessly he pushed the memory away. He’d wallowed in what-ifs for a long time and it hadn’t helped one bit. He’d come back there because it was time to try another way. He’d put this place to rest one way or the other.
    He glanced up to find her studying him, her mouth and eyes sober, as even he already knew they seldom were. “He mentioned you.”
    “Did he,” Jake said flatly, hoping it’d be warning enough.
    “He said you came with your wife then. Where is she?” Emily asked. And there, thought Emily, was all the emotion he never allowed to surface. Grief, oceans of it, deep, dark, turbulent, welling up from where it lived inside him, fresh as if born yesterday, old as if it’d been there forever.
    He thrust the plate at her. “Thanks for the food. I’m done.”
    There might as well have been “No Trespassing” signs posted all around him. It was not the sort of thing that Emily generally let stop her if she considered it beneficial to forge ahead. One of the first things William Goodale taught her was the usefulness of lancing wounds. But Mr. Sullivan was not a patient who’d put himself voluntarily in her care. And she had to remember she certainly did not know him well enough to make such judgments about him.
    She glimpsed a flash of white in the unruly thicket of his beard, as if he’d bared his teeth in a snarl. Really, did he think she’d be scared off so easily?
    She looked down at the half-eaten plate of food, his fingers, strong and dark, curled around the bent metal edge. His sleeve was rolled up and his wrists were thick and powerful-looking. But where the wind blew his limp blue shirt against his torso he was thinner than he appeared at first glance. Still strong, but as if he’d lost some of the sturdy weight he usually carried.
    “You keep it,” she murmured. “I’d consider it a favor if I didn’t have to waste it.”
    She turned and walked away, forcing