Mystic Cowboy(33)

“Well, no.” He chuckled, and all those muscles chuckled with him. Hell, she felt like laughing a little, now that she thought about it. “Not when it gets real cold. I find a place to crash—always a floor for me at Albert’s—or I head into the city. I do most of my gallery stuff in the dead of winter. Spent almost a month in New York last February.”

The photograph popped up again. She still had trouble seeing that urbane, sophisticated man as the same one in cut-offs, ladling stew into bowls. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t pull it off.

She got her tank back on and her jeans safely zipped. There. She felt mostly better now. “You can look.”

His head jumped up, but then he slowly looked over his shoulder. “You look...good.”

Now, how was she supposed to take that? Good that she no longer looked like she was going to faint? That her hair was throwing all caution to the wind? That she only had on one shirt?

He turned back to the stew. “Water’s behind you.”

Yes, that’s right. She was thirsty. And, now that she thought about it, hungry. And whatever was in it, the stew smelled better than anything she’d dumped out of a can in the last month.

Cup full of water, she sat down on one of the two blankets and hugged her knees to her chest. The sun was hitting the hills in the distance at a sharp angle, bathing the trees in gold while the grass was in shadows. Somehow, she knew the sunsets here were even better than the ones she saw from her little cabin.

Rebel handed her a bowl and just sort of folded cross-legged onto the blanket. Her blanket. He wasn’t touching her, but he was more than close enough to do it if he wanted to.

She was not going to think about that right now. Right now, she wanted dinner. She pulled her knees up and tried to balance her dinner bowl on them, all the while wondering if he’d hunted the meat himself.

“So, what about you?” he said between spoonfuls of the most mouth-watering stuff she’d ever eaten.

Maybe this was deer meat? She wasn’t sure she’d ever tasted it before. “What about me?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you just dropped a couple of grand on something I would have happily given you. You single-handedly supplied the whole clinic. You don’t seem to mind not getting a big doctor paycheck.” He fixed her with the kind of look that didn’t so much expect an answer as demand it. “Tell me about it.”

“Oh. That.” Suddenly, she didn’t know how to approach this situation. Not that she’d ever thought him dumb, but in less than twelve hours, he’d gone from being the enemy to something closer to an equal. Much closer. “My father was the first person to successfully implant an artificial heart in Ohio.”

Rebel stared at her with that pleased smile on his face. “A good doctor?”

“He was one of the best.”

“I should have known that.” The tone of his voice said he heard the was loud and clear. “And your mother?”

“Partner in her law firm. She was the top divorce lawyer in Columbus before she died. But she handled cases pro bono for a women’s shelter too. A lot of times, we’d serve Thanksgiving dinner there.”

“How old were you?”

“What, when she died?”

He nodded. The dusk was settling over them. In the light from the fire, his face took on an otherworldly look. He really did look like a medicine man. She swallowed. If she didn’t think about Mom, it didn’t hurt. Not much, anyway. She braced for the rush of emotion. “Nineteen. I was a sophomore.”

Mom had hidden her breast cancer diagnosis from Madeline until after she’d finished her finals so it wouldn’t impact her grades. Mom had died a month later. For a long time, the if-onlys had ruled Madeline. If only Dad had been an oncologist instead of a cardiologist. If only Mom’s regular doctor had ordered the mammogram sooner. If only Madeline had been older, farther along in her studies.

If only Mom had lived.

But instead of the wave of emotions she always tried to block out with more work, something strange happened. The predictable sorrow mixed with the guilt didn’t come. Instead, she just felt a sense of peace. It was unsettling.

Silently, Rebel set his bowl aside and stoked the fire until the glow surrounded them. Staring into the flame was like being hypnotized. That sorrow-and-guilt slush was there, but she could see it was old, tired. It needed to rest. It was ready for her to let go of it.

“Did you get to say goodbye?”

“Yes—to her.” Mom had come home one last time. Mellie had been scared, terrified by nightmares, but Madeline had been the strong one. Mom had needed her to be there and hold her hand. And Madeline had needed to be there. But the moment her chest had stopped rising, stopped falling, the if-onlys had started.