For the Sake of Warwick Mountain (Harlequin Heartwarming) (12 page)

As hard as she tried, however, she couldn’t picture the Matt she knew living the freewheeling, irresponsible life the magazine article had painted of a man flitting from woman to woman like a worker bee through a flower garden. Had he been grossly misrepresented by his interviewer, or had the soft spot for him in Becca’s heart generated a corresponding soft spot in her brain?

She gave herself a mental shake. The true state of Matt’s character was immaterial. Even if he lived as celibate as a monk, the gulf between them was inseparable. He was a man apparently addicted to fun and fame with the money to gratify his every whim. Becca, on the other hand, believed in hard work, frugality, and helping her neighbors. They had nothing in common.

No matter. In three weeks, he would be gone.

And, she realized with an uncomfortable jolt, she was going to miss him more than she wanted to admit.

All the more reason to keep her distance and forget the summer fling she’d briefly contemplated. But the sight of him on the playing field with her daughter made her resolutions hard to keep.

Matt knelt beside Emily, tying the little girl’s leg to his with cotton strips for the three-legged race. Whatever he was saying was making her giggle, and her face shone as if she’d already won first place.

Whatever his other faults, Becca thought with a sigh, he was wonderful with children. Too bad he hadn’t chosen pediatrics as his specialty.

The participants for the age ten-and-under father-daughter three-legged race assembled at the starting line, and a crowd of mothers, relatives and other supporters gathered at the sidelines. Matt held Emily firmly by the hand. When the official gave the starting signal, Matt released her, and, as if they’d prearranged the maneuver, she wrapped her arms around his leg that was tied to hers.

Five-year-old Lucy Ledbetter and her father, Art, immediately took the lead among the six pairs of contestants.

Becca noted that Lizzie McClain stood on the sidelines, not competing in her age bracket. Her lack of participation was no surprise. The child rarely engaged in any activity that drew attention to herself. Becca felt a surge of resentment toward the McClains and their prejudice against Matt that prevented Lizzie from receiving the surgery she needed. Becca yearned for the day that Lizzie could interact with the other children without feelings of inferiority or embarrassment.

Her resentment was soon overtaken by excitement when Matt and Emily left the other teams behind and gained on Art and Lucy Ledbetter. Emily’s face was red with the attempt to run as fast as she could, and Matt’s face showed his strain, probably reflecting his efforts to temper his superior strength and speed to match Emily’s.

The noise of the crowd thundered around Becca as the people cheered on their favorites. Susie Ledbetter’s screech of excitement almost burst Becca’s eardrum.

“Go, Emily,” Becca yelled. “Run, Matt!”

Emily glanced toward her and stumbled, but Matt kept her from falling.

They gained on the Ledbetters, and for a moment Becca thought they would pull ahead to win, but both pairs crossed the finish line at the same time.

“A tie!” the official announced.

Matt tugged loose the strips that bound Emily to him, scooped her in his arms and twirled her around. Becca rushed to join them.

“We won!” Emily screamed with delight. “Mama, we won.”

“We won, too,” Lucy said, beaming with pleasure.

“Congratulations.” Matt extended his hand to Art Ledbetter. “A good race.”

Art shook Matt’s hand with polite reserve. “Thought for a minute there you were going to beat us.”

Matt shook his head and grinned. “You had too good a lead for that.”

The official awarded both pairs a blue ribbon, and Matt pinned theirs to the front of Emily’s T-shirt.

“I never won anything before,” Emily said. “Thanks, Matt.”

“Don’t thank me,” Matt said. “I couldn’t have entered the race without you. You were a great partner.”

“Can I show Aunt Delilah?” Emily asked.

Becca nodded. “And wait at the tables for me. It’s time to eat.”

Emily ran on ahead, and Becca stayed behind with Matt as the crowd dispersed from the field and wandered toward the picnic tables.

“You made her day,” Becca said. “Thank you.”

“I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun,” Matt said with obvious sincerity. He looked like a kid himself with his face flushed with victory, his hair tousled, his eyes shining. “Emily’s a great little trooper. I had no idea she could move so fast.”

“You two were great together. Toward the end, I thought you were going to beat Art and Lucy.”

A guilty look scudded across Matt’s face.

Becca cocked her head and considered him. “You could have won, couldn’t you?”

“Was it that evident?”

She shook her head. “Only because I was watching you and Emily so closely. Did you hold back?”

He nodded.

“Why?” she insisted.

“I knew the locals wouldn’t think kindly of a stranger horning in on their glory. There’s enough animosity toward me already.”

Becca felt her temper flare. “But what about Emily? She had her heart set on winning that race.”

“And she did, didn’t she?” He grinned, and her anger fizzled. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have let her down. When I realized we could tie with the Ledbetters, I decided a draw was the best solution for everybody.”

Becca sighed and shook her head again. “I don’t know whether I should hug you or hit you.”

Matt’s grin broadened. “One would definitely be worth the other.”

Becca had to admit, if only to herself, that she was tempted. “How about I feed you instead?”

“I could eat a horse.” His smile transformed into an apprehensive look. “That’s not a Southern delicacy, by any chance?”

Becca bristled at the comment, then caught the mischief dancing in his eyes. She laughed and swatted him playfully on the arm. “Behave yourself.”

His reciprocating grin warmed her to her toes. “Did you bring fried chicken?”

“Can’t have a picnic without it.”

“I plan to eat myself into a coma.”

“What a thing for a doctor to say.”

“What a way to go is how I look at it.”

As they approached the picnic tables, Lyla Dickens met them. “Have you seen Jimmy?”

“Not since before the race,” Becca said.

Susie Ledbetter joined them. “I can’t find Lucy. She was here a minute ago.”

The entire group turned at the sound of a scream emanating from the hickory grove. Jimmy Dickens burst through the trees, running as fast as his short legs would carry him and shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Lucy fell in the quarry. She’s drowning!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“We went to find my pocketknife I dropped,” Jimmy howled. “I told Lucy not to go near the edge, but she didn’t listen.”

Matt caught Susie Ledbetter as her knees sagged beneath her and thrust the woman toward Becca and Lyla.

“Call the paramedics,” he said, “and have someone bring rope to the quarry. Lots of it.”

Without a backward glance, he set off at a run, his legs eating up the distance, his mind working furiously, trying to gauge how long he would take to reach the girl, trying not to think of the short time without oxygen before her brain would be damaged. Or how her lungs would fill with water—

He pushed himself harder, oblivious to the clamor of voices and activity behind him. Slowing only when he reached the quarry’s edge, he jerked off his shoes while he scanned the surface for Lucy. Sunlight glinted off golden curls briefly before they disappeared beneath the cold, dark water.

Matt pushed off from the edge in a dive that brought him as close to where the child had been as possible without landing on her. The frigid water shocked his system and took his breath away, but all he could think of was the frightened little girl who couldn’t swim, who, even if she could reach the water’s edge, would never be able to climb the perpendicular twenty-foot walls to escape the quarry.

He treaded water and with a twist of his neck, slung his wet hair away from his face.

“Lucy!” he screamed.

The child was nowhere in sight.

Desperate to find her, Matt dived beneath the surface only to realize he could see nothing in the water’s dark depths.

* * *

B
ECCA
HANDED
S
USIE
L
EDBETTER
to Lyla Dickens, yelled to Aunt Delilah to watch Emily and took off after Matt. From the corner of her eye, she could see Uncle Jake and several other men running toward their trucks. She hoped someone would have the rope Matt had demanded.

On the other side of the grounds, the preacher sprinted for the church and the telephone in the office to call the rescue squad.

Matt had run so fast, Becca lost sight of him until she broke through the trees. She caught only a short glimpse of him on the edge of the high cliff before he catapulted over the quarry’s edge.

Her heart in her throat, she raced to the rim. Neither Matt nor Lucy was anywhere in sight, and only a slight ripple on the serene water indicated either had been there.

Becca considered jumping in to help, but her own swimming lessons had been limited to navigating the length of the pool in her college physical-education class. In spite of her good intentions, with her inexperience, she might end up simply another victim needing rescue.

“Where is she?” Art Ledbetter spoke behind her. “I can’t see her.”

The agony in his voice cut through Becca like a sword, making her thank her stars that Emily wasn’t lost in the lake. She closed her eyes and hoped against hope that Lucy and Matt would survive.

She turned from her anxious scan of the water to identify the bustle of activity behind her. Uncle Jake and several of his friends had arrived, carrying several lengths of rope. With skillful hands, they knotted the various strands together into one long piece with a loop at the end.

Becca turned back to the water, searching frantically for life. The wait seemed endless, the silence deafening, and knowing that everyone watching felt as desperate and helpless as she did. Afraid to witness his pain, she couldn’t force herself to look at Art Ledbetter, but she couldn’t ignore the tortured gasp of his breathing, the only sound on the still air.

Suddenly, like an orca whale ascending from the depths at a Sea World attraction, Matt broke the surface, gasping for air. When the crowd spotted the golden-haired bundle in his arms, a cheer rang out, reverberating against the surrounding peaks.

“Toss that rope down there,” Uncle Jake ordered.

Someone heaved the rope over the edge, and Matt, with Lucy in tow, swam toward it. He slipped the noose over his head and under his arms.

“Not you, Tyler!” Art yelled. “Send up the girl first!”

Matt, treading water while supporting Lucy, shouted back, “She’ll be battered against the rock wall if she comes up alone. Pull me out with her, and I can protect her.”

Uncle Jake apparently saw immediately the sense of Matt’s plan and organized a team of men to haul on the rope. Matt swam to the foot of the rock cliff, positioned Lucy in his arms, and, as the men above him pulled, braced his feet against the rock for the treacherous twenty-foot climb.

Becca watched, unaware she was holding her breath. Matt grasped the girl firmly, holding her away from the jagged wall. She could see the muscles of his legs working as he painstakingly walked his way up the wall, held almost perpendicular to the rock face by the tension of the rope from above.

When he neared the rim, Uncle Jake, Art and several others hauled him over the side. Tears streaming down his face, Art grabbed Lucy from Matt’s arms.

“Oh, God!” The father’s cry of agony stopped everyone short. “She’s dead!”

* * *

“I
S
L
UCY
IN
HEAVEN
with Granny?” Emily asked that night when her mother tucked her into bed.

Becca swallowed hard against the grief welling up in her throat. How could she explain the death of a child to another child when she couldn’t wrap her mind around the concept herself?

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Becca promised, hoping by then to find some way to clarify the inexplicable.

Art Ledbetter’s anguished cry still rang in her head, tore at her heart. Matt, exhausted as he’d been, had sprung immediately into action and begun CPR with reassuring calmness and authority. He’d worked without ceasing, continuing even once the rescue squad arrived. She hadn’t had a chance to speak with him because he’d continued his ministrations all the way to the ambulance. Once they’d reached it, he’d climbed inside with Lucy without missing a beat in his resuscitation efforts for the ride to the hospital in town.

The picnic had ended. No one had the heart left for food or fun, and everyone had scattered, returning home to wait for the final news on little Lucy Ledbetter. Becca still hadn’t heard. She’d called the hospital twice, but both times the woman at the nurses’ station had been professionally noncommittal, which Becca had taken as a bad sign.

Knowing she couldn’t sleep, Becca wandered into the kitchen to fill the kettle and put it on to boil. She’d brew a cup of Granny’s special herbal tea, the one that calmed nerves and induced sleep, and hope it would make her rest.

She kept seeing Matt in her mind’s eye, tenderly cradling Lucy’s body to protect her from the jagged rocks, absorbing the buffeting and resulting cuts and scrapes with his own body as the men pulled the dripping pair from the quarry. He had worked like a madman to restore the child’s breathing, refusing to break his concentration even when Becca had placed a blanket around his wet, shivering shoulders.

Becca’s dream had been to bring a doctor to Warwick Mountain, a healer who would keep her friends and neighbors safe, so people wouldn’t die before their time as Granny had. Now, she realized with a sob, that a doctor couldn’t always save his patients, even when he wanted to so desperately, as Matt obviously had while he wrestled with death to breathe life into Lucy.

A knock at the front door broke through her thoughts and filled her with icy dread. Even though Becca was expecting the worst, until she actually heard the final news, she could always hope that Lucy had somehow, miraculously, survived.

With leaden feet, she trudged to the entryway and flipped on the porch light. The dim glow illuminated Matt, wearing rumpled green hospital scrubs in place of his formerly sodden clothes, his face grim, weariness apparent in his stance. She opened the door.

“Sorry to bother you so late.” Fatigue weighted his voice. “But I couldn’t face returning to the feed store alone just yet.”

Becca stood aside to let him in. “Come back to the kitchen. I was just fixing a cup of tea.”

She closed the door behind him, turned off the porch light and forced herself to ask, “Lucy?”

The weariness in his face transformed into a smile unlike any she’d ever witnessed, and his shoulders straightened as if he’d thrown off his exhaustion. “We think she’s going to make it.”

Unable to believe what she’d heard, Becca sank onto the deacon’s bench before her legs gave way. “But I thought...Art said she was dead.”

“She’d stopped breathing, but not long enough to cause brain damage.” He rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, reminding Becca of the strain his muscles must have taken from his climb out of the quarry. “If she makes it through the next twenty-four hours—and her prognosis is good—she should be fine.”

Joy and relief flooded her. Lucy had been like her own child, a neighbor since birth, a student in her preschool, her daughter’s friend, her friends’ daughter. She leaped to her feet, wrapped her arms around Matt and hugged him with all her might.

“Dr. Tyler, you
are
wonderful!”

Matt pulled her close, gripped her tightly, and then pulled back far enough to see her face. “It wasn’t me. The entire staff of doctors was waiting at the hospital when we arrived.”

Becca shook her head. “You’re too modest. You pulled her from the quarry. You performed CPR. Without you, the other doctors would have been useless.”

“I was the logical choice,” Matt said. “After what you’d told me earlier, I realized I was probably the only one at the picnic who could swim.”

“You deserve a medal,” Becca said, dizzy with relief and happiness, drunk with gratitude and admiration. “A statue in the town square.”

A disarming grin crooked the corner of his mouth. “Warwick Mountain doesn’t have a town square.”

“Then we’ll have to think of something else.” With her arms still around him, her face inches from him, Becca pretended to concentrate, but his closeness proved too distracting.

“I’ve thought of something else already,” he said.

She didn’t have to ask.

Granny’s voice rang in her head.
Haven’t you had enough heartache in one short life without setting yourself up for more?

He saved Lucy’s life,
Becca argued silently.

And he’ll ruin yours.

Not if I don’t let him.

Matt kissed her, drowning out Granny’s warnings, obliterating Becca’s ability to think.

With a jolt, she realized she was feeling more than just attraction.

She loved this man.

Loved his intelligence, his sense of humor, his willingness to risk his life for a little girl he barely knew, his generosity in abandoning his exotic vacation to fill in for a friend and help a community of strangers, his clear affection for her daughter.

Loved the way he made her feel when his arms wrapped around her. Loved the way his smile made happiness zing through her as if she’d drunk too much blackberry wine.

A shrill, insistent warning shrieked suddenly in her ears, and she jerked away from him.

But the alarm continued.

Disoriented, she gazed at him in confusion.

“Your kettle’s boiling.” His voice was as breathless as she felt.

He had her mind so scrambled, she hadn’t recognized the sound. “I’d better stop it before it wakes Emily.”

But she couldn’t tear herself away from the disquieting comfort of his arms.

He released her and gave her a gentle nudge down the hall. Like a sleepwalker, she wandered into the kitchen, removed the kettle from the burner and turned off the stove.

The shrill whistling ceased, and the quiet was overwhelming. Becca stood in front of the refrigerator and placed her burning forehead against the smooth, cool surface of the door.

Had she lost her mind?

As much as she loved and admired Matt Tyler, the prospect of a life with him held no more permanence than the presence of the summer lightning bugs that flitted outside the kitchen window. In the greater scheme of things, he was merely a blip on her radar screen, a temporary distraction, a man who would walk out of her life as quickly as he had entered, with no looking back, no possibility of ever becoming anything more than a haunting memory.

And what was she to him?

Just another in a long line of women who had passed in and out of Dr. Wonderful’s existence like travelers catching a connecting flight at an airport. Matt Tyler was a way station, not a destination.

Steeling herself, she turned, only to bump against Matt, who had come in behind her.

“You okay, Becca?”

His arms went around her again, and try as she might, she didn’t have the strength or will to push away. She shook her head against his chest and forced herself to speak. “I can’t do this.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders, held her at arm’s length, and lifted her chin until their gazes met. “I love you, Becca.”

Without success, she attempted to stifle the joy his words brought her. Forcing herself to recall every salient detail of the magazine article she’d read about him, she twisted her mouth into an ironic grimace and accused him with narrowed eyes. “How many women have you said that to?”

“None.” The piercing gaze of his remarkable brown eyes didn’t waver. “You’re the only one.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?” Much as she wanted to, she didn’t dare. She couldn’t risk the hurt if he was lying.

“It’s the truth.” He hesitated then, as if remembering.

Her heart sank. There
had
been others. She was nothing special. Just another in an endless stream of conquests.

“If you don’t count my mother,” he added. “Although, I never told her often enough.”

“Oh, Matt, I want to believe you—”

“But you are definitely the only woman I’ve ever asked to marry me.”

His proposal took her breath away, and for a moment, she thought for sure she’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”

He pulled her closer, nestling her chin in the hollow of his neck, resting his cheek on her hair. “I want you to marry me, Becca.”