Nightingale Way: An Eternity Springs Novel (14 page)

“You deserve to hurt after that remark.”

“What did I say? Jack, help me out here.”

“You’re on your own, buddy.”

Cam grabbed for Sarah’s hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing the back of it. “Not anymore, I’m not. I found me a beautiful mermaid.”

“Sucking up won’t work, Murphy,” Sarah said.

“Sure it will. I have magic lips.” He made fish lips with his mouth.

Sarah snorted and Jack observed, “That’s not what she told me when I kissed her. I distinctly remember …”

“Ja-ack,” she protested.

Cam scowled blackly at him. “And I thought the sharks off Australia were bad.”

Jack felt better than he had in days. He rested his head against the side of the pool, closed his eyes, and steeped in the soothing heat of the mineral springs, contributing occasionally as the conversation drifted to topics related to Eternity Springs.

Then he looked up and saw Cat walking from her cottage to Cavanaugh House, her hips rolling with her long-legged stride, and he was glad to be wearing sunglasses. He could stare and no one was the wiser.

Or so he hoped.

So intent was he upon Cat, he didn’t notice Celeste’s
arrival until she spoke. “Sarah, Lori called up to Cavanaugh House looking for you. She said there’s nothing wrong, but she’s been trying to call you all morning and you’re not answering the phone so she’s worried.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. My phone has been ringing nonstop with wedding vendors and I left it home to get a little peace and quiet.” Sarah lifted her gaze to the heavens. “Exactly when did I switch roles with my daughter?”

“It’s separation anxiety,” Cam said.

“She’s an adult!”

“Only when she wants to be. I know she’s happy that we’re getting married, but a part of her is still a little girl who is accustomed to having her mommy’s undivided attention.”

Celeste greeted a family of four, guests of Angel’s Rest from Kansas, who arrived for a soak in the hot springs. Jack had met the two boys earlier while he was fishing with Gabe, and they’d asked if they could take Fred for a walk. They called his name and a hello. He waved back.

“I guess I should go call Lori,” Sarah said, standing.

Cam started to rise, too, and she said, “Why don’t you stay here and help Jack back to his cottage? I’ll meet you at home later.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but you need help getting out of the pool.”

“My knee is sore, not broken,” Jack grumbled. “I can do it myself.”

Cam snorted with disgust. “Why are you so hardheaded? It doesn’t hurt anything to let someone help you for a change.”

The arrival of a group of chatty teenagers wearing matching T-shirts advertising a Denver church group caused Jack to decide that he’d had enough of mineral springs, and of company. “All right, all right. You can
help me out now. This was a good idea and I’m glad you suggested it, but I feel a nap coming on.”

After exiting the pool, they rinsed off beneath the outdoor showers. Cam and Sarah headed toward their car while Celeste asked if Jack minded if she walked back with him to Cougar’s Lair Cottage. “I haven’t met your Fred yet, and I need to leave something next door for Catherine.”

Jack wondered if the elderly woman thought he needed her help navigating crutches. Maybe his bruises looked worse than he’d thought.

Celeste didn’t betray any sign of helpfulness as they walked the path back to the cottages, though, and for that he was grateful. Instead, she asked if he was comfortable in the cottage and if he needed any supplies. She was talking about Gabe and Nic’s boxer, Clarence, when the path took a turn and his cabin came into view. She broke off in midsentence, saying, “Looks like you have visitors, Jack.”

He frowned as he watched Mac and Ali Timberlake step up onto his front porch. Mac knocked on his door. “Now what?” Jack muttered, casting a suspicious glance toward Celeste. “What’s going on here?”

Her expression was the picture of angelic innocence. “Pardon me? Whatever do you mean?”

“How is it almost everyone I know in Eternity Springs just happens to show up on my doorstep today?”

She touched him gently on the arm and offered him a smile so warm and sweet that he felt it clear to his soul. “Jack Davenport, you have friends here. When darkness threatens your world, friends can be beams of sunshine if only you’ll let them.”

The Timberlakes carted him off to lunch at Ali’s restaurant, after which she conned him into showing her how he prepared his one specialty dish—chili. When he finally tore free of Mac and Ali, Colt Rafferty waylaid
him, looking for somewhere to watch the Rockies game since the quilt group was throwing his wife a surprise baby shower out at their house on Hummingbird Lake. Jack never did get his nap. When he finally crawled into bed that night, sore and weary from a day filled with friendship, Celeste’s words echoed through his mind:
Friends can be beams of sunshine if only you’ll let them
.

Maybe that was true, but they could also be pains in the ass. Nevertheless, when he finally fell asleep, he did so with a smile on his face, and Fred on the foot of his bed.

Even in the middle of summer, the nighttime air in the mountains could be downright chilly. Cat loved it. She kept her bedroom window cracked open and added another blanket to her bed. She’d always been a light sleeper, and since Jack slept with his window open wide, she didn’t worry that she wouldn’t hear if he called her or if Fred barked out a warning.

She’d been a busy little mountain beaver today and loved every minute of it. She’d written her article for the newspaper about the town hall meeting, then did research for an article she wanted to write about the Silver Miracle strike and Eternity Springs’s three founders, Daniel Murphy, Harry Cavanaugh, and Lucien Davenport.

Lucien Davenport. Jack had told her he had an ancestor named Lucien before they got married. If Lauren had been a boy, she’d wanted to name him Lucien.

After spending two hours in the town library and one in the library at Angel’s Rest, Cat was more intrigued than ever about her ex-husband’s ancestor. Lucien Davenport had been a British remittance man when he went into the Rocky Mountains with friends he’d made in a Denver saloon and hit the vein of silver that had provided the basis of Jack’s fortune today. Whereas Daniel
Murphy and Harry Cavanaugh had settled in Eternity Springs, Lucien Davenport had returned to England when he’d unexpectedly inherited a title upon the accidental deaths of his brothers. The Davenport fortune grew even bigger.

It had been fascinating reading. Jack had seldom spoken about his family. She knew his parents had died, but he’d never said how, and he’d never shared the fact that an ancestor was an English earl. Over the years Cat had been tempted to investigate the death of his parents, but early in their relationship when she’d quizzed him on the subject, he’d asked her not to do it. She’d given her word and she’d kept it.

She didn’t figure that exploring Lucien Davenport’s life counted against that promise.

She drifted off to sleep imagining Jack dressed in Victorian evening clothes leading her onto the dance floor in a glittering ballroom to the music of a string quartet.

Cat awoke to the sound of Fred’s bark, Jack’s hushed “Quiet,” and the squeaky hinges of Cougar’s Lair’s front door.

He must be letting Fred out to do his business, she thought, and glanced at the red numerals of the clock beside her bed. Two forty-five a.m. She lay in bed waiting to hear the sound of man and dog returning inside, but didn’t.

Groaning aloud, Cat reached for the white terry cloth robe she’d left draped over the foot of her bed. She rose and shoved her feet into her favorite slippers—the dog’s head slippers she’d won as a prize at the rescue group’s casino night earlier this year. They were soft and silly with dangling floppy ears, and she loved them. Quietly, Cat opened the door of Nightingale Cottage and stepped into the night.

A sickle moon and a million stars lit the night sky, but left the grounds of Angel’s Rest in shadows. She couldn’t
see Jack and his boxer, but she could hear the scrunch of his crutches against the gravel path and Fred’s soft whine from inside Cougar’s Lair. Jack was moving away from the row of cottages, away from Cavanaugh House, and he’d left Fred shut inside. Where was he hobbling off to?

She’d better follow him. These were the hours of the night where the monsters lived. No telling what foolish idea he had running through his head now.

She stepped on a sharp rock and scowled. Had she known she’d be hiking, she’d have chosen shoes instead of doggie slippers. The night was dark and he’d gone off the lighted pathways. Cat followed, almost calling out to him twice, but instinct stopped her both times. He wouldn’t like knowing she’d followed him. As long as his midnight mission wasn’t leading to harm, she’d allow him his privacy. He would never have to know she was there.

Cat was cold. They’d walked almost the length of the estate, and her puppy slippers were soaked with dew. He hobbled to the northernmost section of Angel’s Rest where the natural hot springs had been diverted into pools designed by the town’s resident landscape architect, Gabe Callahan. Once she realized his intent, she scowled. He was going for a late night soak in the hot springs, while on crutches and at risk of a fall. Great.

She couldn’t return to her cottage and her nice warm bed. Not until he returned to his.

“You might as well join me, Catherine,” Jack called out over his shoulder. “You’ll be cold otherwise.”

Cat gave an exasperated sigh. “I was quiet as a mouse. How did you know I was here?”

“I learned how to listen when listening meant the difference between life and death.”

Ah, yes. His job. Always the job. It was what he was born to do.

She approached the steaming pools, dimly lit by discreet
lights placed for safety’s sake, she thought, rather than illumination. She wrinkled her nose at the sulfur smell. “I’ve never seen the appeal of soaking in water that smells like rotten eggs.”

He had a towel draped over one shoulder and he wore gym shorts and sandals. Propping one crutch against a rock wall, he pulled off the towel and dropped it beside a pool. When his thumbs went to the waistband on his shorts, Cat quickly said, “Wait. It might be the middle of the night, but this is still a public place.”

“It’s dark. Nobody’s here. I’m not wearing sopping shorts back to my cabin. Did that once today already and I’m not doing it again.” He stripped off his shorts and carefully lowered himself into the steaming pool, completely naked.

Cat swallowed a lump in her throat. His relieved sigh whispered across the night. “Feels good, Cat. You should join me.”

“It stinks.”

“You get used to it. Just takes a couple of minutes.” When she continued to stand back, he added, “It’s stupid to stand out there and freeze.”

“Why are you doing this now, anyway?”

“My bones ache. I soaked this morning and it helped. Humans have soaked in mineral springs to ease their aches for thousands of years.”

“In the daytime, surely. You couldn’t wait until daylight?”

“I ache now. Go back to bed, Cat. I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Maybe not, but I won’t be able to sleep because I’ll be imaging how your crutch will slip and you’ll fall and need help.”

“Then get in the water. It will relax you and keep you warm.”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against
the edge of the pool. It looked as if he’d dismissed her completely from his mind. Cat debated silently another minute, until the stir of a breeze chilled her.
Oh, what could it hurt?

She passed Jack, thinking she’d sit in one of the pools behind him. In a low voice, he observed, “I’m not a shark. I don’t bite. Or are you afraid you won’t be able to keep your hands off me if you share my pool?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He arched a brow, the look in his eyes clearly challenging. Cat couldn’t resist the silent dare.

At least she wasn’t naked, she thought gratefully as she loosened the belt on her robe. Beneath it she wore an oversized satin sleep shirt. With quick, efficient movements, she slipped off her robe and hung it on a nearby hook where it would remain dry. Then she stepped into the hot, smelly pool with her ex.

“I’ve never understood the appeal of mineral baths,” she observed. Yet even as she voiced the words, a luxurious heat permeated her body.

Jack submerged his shoulders completely beneath the water and his head rested back against the side of the pool, his eyes closed. “There is a five-star resort in Costa Rica that has the most amazing natural hot springs and waterfalls. It’s lush and extravagant. You’d enjoy it.”

“It’s your favorite?”

“No.”

“What is?”

A full minute passed before he responded. “My favorite would be the hot springs I stumbled across quite by accident in … well, let’s just say another country. The temperature had been freezing the whole week that our team had been there. Finally, we found what we went for, but circumstances changed and we had to hike out to a secondary rendezvous spot. We were crossing a valley when we saw steam rising and investigated. An old
man sitting naked in a mineral pool invited us to join him. We were so cold that we couldn’t resist. It was amazing. We soaked for twenty minutes, and I felt like a million dollars the rest of the day.”

Cat wiggled her fingers and toes beneath the water. It felt thicker than regular water, she thought. Heavier. Definitely stinkier. Yet the gag factor was fading. Jack had been right about that much.

“So what did you do today?” he asked, just as the light nearest the pool flickered and went out, deepening the already inky shadows.

Cat regretted not grabbing a flashlight before she left the cottage. “Yesterday,” she corrected. “I’m going to help out at the local newspaper while I’m here. I wrote a summary article about the town hall meeting Monday night. I guess you heard all about Cam Murphy Day?”

He chuckled and nodded, and she continued. “I also started researching an article about the discovery of the Silver Miracle Mine.”

“Local color and a history piece? That’s not your usual beat as a reporter.”