Mountain Song (5 page)

Andy idly pushed
against his desk, spinning his chair in a gentle arc. He’d been abused enough
for one day, both by his most challenging patient and by the fates, who’d sent
Claudia bursting back into his life. He wasn’t in any mood to tolerate any more
ribbing from Rick.

“Women know what they’re
getting from me,” he said. “I don’t see any point in setting up unrealistic
expectations. Of course, being Mr. Romance, that’s probably a difficult concept
for you.”

Rick spread his hands
wide and ducked his chin in a parody of modesty. “The ladies love me,” he said.
“It’s true. I think at my very core I must have a powerful magnetism, some sort
of cluster of negative ions that reacts with the female chemistry—”

Despite himself, Andy
laughed. “You learn that at nursing school?”

“Naw, it’s my own
personal theory.”

“Yeah, well, since you
chose your profession specifically because you thought it might increase your
prospects of meeting women, I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.”

“I’m wounded.” Rick
assumed his famous pout, and Andy rolled his eyes. The act was wasted on him,
but Rick’s boisterous mood helped. A little. Despite Rick’s never-flagging
passion for women, he was a good nurse, and a good friend, too.

“Well, if I can’t talk
you into that beer—”

“Another time.”

“And you’re sure you
don’t want to tell me more about Miss Trust Fund.”

“Claudia. Her name is
Claudia Canfield, all right?”

“Claudia Canfield.” Rick
tested it, rolling the name with slow relish. “That sounds about right. Has
that Grace Kelly sort of ring to it.”

“For God’s sake,
Martinez, she’s a normal person. She has a job, goes to work like the rest of
us, no doubt puts her pants on one leg at a time...” Andy paused, arrested by
the sudden mental image of Claudia skimming her pants over her long legs. An
image from the past, tight ski pants in a rich shade of berry, an endless
expanse of smooth skin from her ankle to the tantalizing edge of her lace
panties...

Where the hell had
that come from?

“Yeah. Well, seeing as
you’re not interested in her, mind if I take a shot?”

Andy whipped his head
up so fast it sent a thunder crack of pain through his pounding temples. But
Rick was just grinning at him, the twin dimples giving him away.

“Aw, keep your shirt
on, man, I was just giving you a hard time. I know better than to tread into
your territory.”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” Andy mumbled, standing up and shoving his chair under the desk
a little harder than necessary. “And I don’t much give a damn what you do.”

But that wasn’t
entirely true, he realized as he snapped off the light and followed his friend
back into the hospital’s busy corridor..

When it came to
Claudia, he was beginning to realize, he still minded.

Quite a bit more than
he should.

“Ow!”

Claudia reached for
her shin, touching the skin gingerly. At least nothing seemed to be bleeding or
broken, as far as she could tell. With considerably more caution she edged to
the right, hands stretched out in the dark, fumbling to avoid whatever she’d
cracked her leg against.

The phone kept
ringing, its strident note old-fashioned, impossibly loud in the pitch
darkness. Bea refused to carry a cell phone; Claudia wouldn’t be surprised if
she had hung on to that old black rotary-dial number. Where the heck had she
kept it? Claudia squeezed her eyes shut—kind of ridiculous in the total
darkness—and tried to visualize the room as she’d left it four years
before.

That little oak table.
The one with the stained glass cabinet panel, over by the window...

“Ow!”

...right behind that
massive mission-style wooden chair. The one that she had just managed to bark
her other shin on. Bea’s rooms were so crammed with treasures accumulated over
the decades, it was hard enough to navigate with the benefit of being able to
see where one was going.

Falling to her hands
and knees, Claudia closed the gap between her and the source of the endless
ringing by groping and crawling between the objects in her path. When the
ringing seemed to be coming from right above her, she fumbled along the legs of
the old table until she found the phone.

“Hello?”

“What took you so
long?”

Claudia froze, then
slowly inched her hand across the rug, until she found the leg of a familiar
brocade chair. She managed to lever herself into it without any further injury.

She really should just
hang up. The day had been too long already. It hardly seemed fair that she
should have to contend with Andy again now.

“Claudia? You still
there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Sitting
in the dark. Do you have any idea why none of the lights in this place seem to
be working?”

There was a pause, on
his end this time. A long one. Claudia was sure she could hear Andy breathing.

“No idea. Tell you
what though, let me come take a look in the morning. I have a key.”

“You...have a key?”

“Yeah. I like to, you
know, look in on her once in a while.”

“You and she seem to
have gotten pretty chummy.” Claudia regretted the proprietary note in her
voice. “Look, what can I do for you, anyway?”

“I don’t suppose she
told you, ah, much more after I left.”

“Much more about what?
What exactly is it you two are holding out on me?”

“Look, Claudia, I’m no
happier to have to discuss this with you than you are to hear it from me, I’m
sure—”

“I didn’t mean it that
way. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it any way at all, it’s just been about the
longest day of my life—”

“Why don’t you wait
for me there in the morning,” Andy said, cutting her off. “I’ll come over
before work. We can talk then.”

Setting the heavy
receiver slowly down in the cradle, Claudia thought for a moment.

She knew that tone,
could almost picture the way his jaw set when he had his mind made up about
something, the way he clenched his teeth together when he was frustrated. He
sounded like a man who would rather face a herd of angry buffalo than deal with
her in the morning, but who was damn sure going to do it anyway.

Like a man who was
hell-bent on walking into disaster.

CHAPTER THREE

Claudia opened the
door before Andy decided for certain to raise his hand and knock.

He had been half
tempted to climb back in his Blazer and retreat to the safety of his hectic
hospital routine. It would have been easy enough to find an excuse, that case
of suspected toxemia that had come in the night before, or the food poisoning
victims. Two entire families afflicted, parents, children, all of them
miserable.

Join the club.

“I saw you drive up,”
Claudia said, biting her lip.

She was a mess. Dressed
in an ill-fitting flannel shirt and canvas gardening pants, she stood in the
door frame with a small but tightly fisted hand perched on one hip, absently
pushing stray blonde strands away from her wide eyes with the other. Her
makeshift ponytail was in danger of spilling free of its elastic, and her
scrubbed face was decorated only by a long charcoal smudge on one cheek.

A smudge that Andy had
a sudden urge to reach out and gently wipe away. Even as he pushed the thought
down, his fingertips twitched with anticipation at the feel of her creamy skin,
a few freckles already dotting her nose and cheeks as if in preparation for the
summer to come.

“Can I come in?”

She hesitated, then
stood aside, the heavy plank door creaking as it swung open.

“I’d offer you coffee,”
Claudia said, her tone flat and tired. “But I have no idea where Bea keeps the
coffee maker these days, and there’s no electricity anyway, and even if there
was I’m afraid to open the refrigerator, what with the power having been out
for who knows how long...”

“I took care of that,”
Andy said, slowly surveying the condition of the place. How long had it been
since he’d been here? A few weeks? A month, tops. But things had managed to
slide even further down hill. “It’ll be back on by noon. It’s only been off
since yesterday morning so the fridge shouldn’t be too bad, though we’ll have
to throw a lot of the perishable things out, I suppose.”

“It wasn’t a power
outage? I don’t understand. You mean Bea had her electricity cut off?”

The confusion in
Claudia’s eyes slowed him down a bit. So she genuinely had no idea. Andy let
his gaze continue around the room, pausing to take the thick layer of dust
covering the furniture.

The faint rotten smell
from the kitchen. That, evidently, was where Claudia had spent her morning. The
table, counters and cabinets had been scoured clean, and the floor gleamed from
a fresh coat of wax.

“She didn’t have it
cut off,” he said, sighing. “At least, not on purpose.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s what I’m here
to talk to you about. Look, why don’t we drive into town, get a cup of coffee—”

“I’m fine here.” Again
those fists, as Claudia backed up to lean against the back of a sofa, fixing
her gaze somewhere between his chin and his Adam’s apple.

Determined, she was,
and fiercely protective. And maybe just a little bit more frightened than she
wanted to admit.

Andy suddenly wanted
to reach out for her, pull her into his arms and hold her, tell her everything
would be all right.

Not a good idea.

“Fine.” A shrug. Accommodating,
but professional. “Can we at least sit down?”

“If you don’t mind the
dust,” Claudia said, edging around the sofa without turning away from him, then
gingerly patting the cushions as though she expected something unpleasant to
spring from their depths. She settled primly in the center of the sofa, and
Andy picked an overstuffed chair.

“Bea’s condition is
considerably more serious than she apparently wants you to think,” he said.

“But her fractures—”

“It’s not just her
fractures.”

A pause, while Claudia
waited for him to continue. A tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed
her nervousness. He took a deep breath and dove in.

“Bea’s osteoarthritis
is advanced. She has terrible pain in her hips. Debilitating pain. She can no
longer walk up stairs or drive her car, and even walking more than a short
distance hurts. It amazes me that she didn’t break her hips when she fell,
although I suppose she used her arm to cushion the fall and absorbed the shock
there.”

He watched Claudia
carefully. He knew her range of expression well; she’d never been any good at
concealing her thoughts. Her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly as she
struggled to understand what he was saying.

This was the part he
hated the most, when the bad news was out on the table, and he had nothing more
to offer. Some physicians walked away after telling the patients and their
families, leaving them to sort through their emotions. Andy had never quite
been able to bring himself to do that. He stayed out of obligation or misplaced
concern, only adding to their anxiety.

“She’s never mentioned
any pain,” Bea finally said brokenly.

“When did she last
visit?”

“Two...no, a little
over two years ago. In the summer, for Dad’s birthday.”

“And you didn’t think
it was strange that she hasn’t come back again?”

“I...she...” He could
see the thoughts tumbling across Claudia’s face, read the growing upset and the
seeds of guilt forming in her eyes. “She always had things come up. Last summer
she said she didn’t want to miss any of the summer theater series. And then she
said she didn’t want to travel with the crowds over the holidays. I mean, we
were surprised, but...Damn it, I should have come out here.” Claudia’s mouth
tugged down at the corners and her brows knit together.

Guilt. Andy knew it
well.

“Don’t beat yourself
up over this,” Andy said. He knew that Claudia never came out to Lake Tahoe
anymore to visit Bea. And he thought he knew why. That was a subject best left
untouched. “Back to her pain, though,” he said, “You say she never mentioned
it?”

Claudia shrugged,
impatience Andy would wager she was directing at herself. “She said she was
stiff. Made it sound like just another little annoying part of old age.”

“She’s a tough woman,”
Andy said softly. He’d had patients complain of agonizing pain whose condition
had not progressed nearly as far as Bea’s. “She wouldn’t admit to me how bad it
had gotten, but I saw things. She’d adjusted her gait, and when she thinks no
one is looking...”