Saving Gideon (3 page)

Gideon stayed up all through the night, stoking the fire and rousing his little pixie every hour. She didn’t seem to mind, even asking him his name, though he doubted in the morning she would be able to remember waking much less anything they had talked about.

She dozed while he kept watch, sitting up in the hard-backed rocking chair. At the first light of dawn, he allowed himself a nap. And this time, thankfully, he didn’t dream of Miriam and Jamie and the guilt that haunted him, but of a violet-eyed pixie and the little dog she carried around with her in a purse.

Blinding white-blue sunlight hit Avery square in the face, but she refused to open her eyes. Her head hurt . . . bad. The light turned red behind her eyelids, making her head pound as the blood throbbed through her veins. She should’ve had those blackout shades installed no matter what her father—or rather her father’s decorator—said about the matter. This was ridiculous.

Unable to take the brutal light a minute longer, she tried to turn over, but every bone and muscle protested. Had she been hit by a bus? Then last night returned—Jack, the motel, the back roads of a small Oklahoma town, her car, and then . . .

Louie inched closer to her side, rose up, and licked her hand. Sweet Louie V., fine and whole despite the tumble he must have taken.

Avery winced as she stroked his silky fur. With much effort she forced her eyes open and took note of her surroundings. She was in a house. A very small house.

There didn’t seem to be much more to it than the space where she lay. The room led into an open kitchen with a large rectangular table and sturdy-looking chairs. The fireplace had a thick, wooden mantel, and an odd-looking stove squatted in one corner. There was something strange about the house, but she couldn’t figure out what. Maybe because there were no pictures on the walls or trinkets sitting about, just a china hutch full of dishes and a large box containing wood for the fire. Or maybe it was the lack of care. The furniture would have been beautiful if not covered with a thick layer of dust and neglect.

How did she get here? She squinted, straining to remember. Then it came back to her—the snow, losing control of her car, and then a warm fire and gentle hands washing her face. A man had awakened her several times during the night.

Avery turned her chin, and there he was, head resting at an odd angle, propped up in the rocking chair near her. His hair, dark like rich morning coffee, had just enough curl to make it interesting. It was cut close to his face, almost as if someone had plopped a bowl on his head and trimmed all that stuck out underneath. His skin held the first hint of a tan, a golden glow with just the slightest trace of pink high on his cheeks accented by the vague shadow of morning beard growth.

She had wispy memories of him waking her up in the night, asking if she knew the date, the year, the president’s name, and how many fingers he held up. As if sensing her gaze upon him, he opened his eyes. They were a smoky moss green, clouded and troubled. Once he realized she was awake, his expression changed, his eyes turning hooded and guarded. It happened so quickly she wondered if she had imagined that vulnerable expression at all.

“You’re awake.” His voice sounded rusty.

“So are you,” she said in return, but her crack at humor made her head pound anew. She reached up a hand to find a tender knot near her eyebrow.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little.” She attempted a smile. “A lot.”

“That’s a nasty bump. I don’t have anything but Tylenol. Or I can give you some of the tea Clara Beachy brews up when, well, it’s said to be good for pains.”

If she wasn’t mistaken, he blushed at his own words. And tea? What in the world did tea have to do with pain?

“I’ll get it for you.” He stood and Avery noticed his commanding size. He was tall and broad and yet his shirt hung on him as if it had been made for someone else. Thinking about it made her head throb, so she quit and lay back on the pillows, closing her eyes. She just wanted to rest. To lie here on this lumpy old sofa and just continue to lie there until she felt better. Or died. Whichever came first.

She listened to him putter around the kitchen. At her father’s house the kitchen was off-limits, off the main foyer and practically in a different county, so the sounds were foreign to her. A clunk here, a swoosh there, and then the whistle of the tea kettle. The splash of water, the clink of a spoon, and sure and steady footsteps across the wooden floor.

His body blocked the sun, casting her into shadows. “Here.” He held out a brown earthenware mug filled to the brim with steaming hot tea. “I added honey,” he said, “to cut the bitter, but I can still get you that Tylenol if’n you want.”

Gingerly, she pushed herself up to take the mug from him. “This is fine.” She blew across the top then took a tentative sip. It tasted like burnt grass and cloves.

Somehow she managed to drink all of the . . . tea. Mostly because he stood over her and made sure she downed every last drop.

She forced a smile and handed him the mug, then eased back against the pillows and pulled the covers to her chin. It wasn’t modesty, but heat she needed. Despite the warmth the tea had infused to her system, the tiny little house was cold, and her tiny little dress was, well, tiny.

The big man walked to the fireplace and stirred the ashes, adding more wood from the box. In no time, the orange blaze roared, warming Avery from all the way across the room.

She so desperately wanted to just lie there and forget the world, enjoy the warmth rolling off the flames, but she couldn’t. Not yet anyway.

“My car,” she asked after he turned around.

“Well,” he drawled as if choosing his words very carefully, “I’m no expert, but it looked purty bad to me. Course’n it was dark last night. And snowin’.”

Avery wanted to nod, but she managed only a single dip of her head before the simple movement sent waves of dizziness crashing all around her.

“Steady now.” He moved to her side.

“Yes,” Avery murmured. She closed her eyes against the spinning, but that only seemed to make it worse, so she opened them again.

“Maybe in a day or two we can head out and take a look at the damage, but—”

“A day or two?” She dared not raise her voice much over a whisper.

“The snow will be gone this afternoon, maybe tomorrow. As soon as the ground dries up a little, we should be able to get over there.”

“Oh.”

“Course’n we’ll go on foot. It’ll be at least three or four days before I can get the buggy out. Molly and Kate do not like so much havin’ mud on their feet.”

“Molly and Kate?”

“My horses.”

Then it clicked into place. The simple way he dressed, the lack of modern appliances, the beautiful handmade quilts that made up her bed. “You’re Amish?”

“
Jah
.” He nodded. “I am Plain.”

Tall and handsome, with slashing dimples and those haunting green eyes, the man was anything but
plain
. His answer charmed her, but she hid her smile not wanting him to think she was laughing at him.

Oh, the irony. Jack had come here to find the Amish, but instead he found . . . a new lover. She had come out here to find Jack and had instead found the Amish.

“I am thinkin’ you should rest now,” he said.

“Yes.” She snuggled down under the beautiful handmade quilts, their colors exquisite, each stitch perfect, and she wondered about the woman who had made them. Maybe his mother or sister? Or wife.

She peeked at him again. Didn’t Amish men have beards?

“Thank you for saving me,” she said, her eyelids growing heavy despite the fact she had just woken up. Being cheated on and then knocked in the head could do that to a person. Or maybe there was something to that tea after all . . .

He stared at her blankly. “You already thanked me.”

Avery closed her eyes. “Mmm-hmm. Tell me your name again.”

“Gideon,” he replied. “Gideon Fisher.”

Biblical . . . suited him. “Avery,” she murmured in return. “Avery Ann Hamilton.”

Then she drifted off to sleep.

When Avery woke again, it was late afternoon, and she was alone. Through the window, the blue bowl of a sky had turned a pale shade of lavender that would deepen to purple and eventually black. From somewhere outside came an unfamiliar
whack, whack, whack
that had both rhythm and unpredictability. It was a soothing sound.

The tea must have done the trick. Not only did her head feel significantly better,
she
felt significantly better.

Louie V. lay sprawled on a bed of scraps in front of the hearth looking all the more like the spoiled and catered-to canine that he was. The crackling fire cast flickering shadows over his black and tan fur, making Avery realize Gideon hadn’t been out of the room for long. The fire still licked at the logs in long, orange strokes, sending smoke up the chimney, but not the sweet scent of burning wood.

Surprisingly enough, Avery found the odor pleasing. Each of the six fireplaces in her father’s home had its own set of gas logs that flickered and put on a grand show, but never actually burned. This, she decided, was so much better.

She eased herself into a sitting position, a spring poking her in the backside. She shifted her weight and got another poke—this time from a different spring.

When she stood, her bare feet sank into the soft wool of the rug that lay in front of the couch. The air was warm but not enough so, and she shifted the quilt to drape across her shoulders. She was sore, but it wasn’t unbearable. Thankfully nothing was broken—not even her heart. She’d gotten away lucky.

At the creak of the couch, Louie lifted his head. When he caught sight of her, awake and standing, he wagged his little stump of a tail, then laid his head back down on his front paws. With a shuddering doggie sigh, he was asleep once again.

“Good to see you so worried about me,” Avery said.

“I was very worried.” The deep, masculine voice came from the doorway. Gideon stood there, a load of wood in his arms, black round-brimmed hat on his head.

Two things registered in her mind: The whacking she had heard earlier had been Gideon chopping wood, and she stood in his living room wearing practically nothing.

She wasn’t exactly indecent, but she did feel exposed standing there in a dress small enough to fit into a cereal bowl. The quilt hung over her shoulders but offered her no real modesty. She had worn dresses like this her entire adult life, but now all of a sudden, it felt less than appropriate.

Avery wrapped the ends of the quilt across her, folding her arms at her middle and covering herself as nonchalantly and as best she could. Gideon turned away, removing his hat to hang it on the peg just inside the door. Crossing the room, he placed the wood in the box close to the fireplace, not looking at her even when he had finished his task.

“You’re up.” He glanced around at everything but her—the floor, the ceiling, the fire, out the window.

“So are you,” Avery said, hoping her flippancy hid her embarrassment. What must he think of her, a man so devoted to God that he had none of the creature comforts the rest of the world enjoyed? No electricity, no car, no running water.

Surely he had running water. He’d made tea earlier, but she hadn’t looked to see where he’d gotten the water.

Avery let out a pent-up breath. She came from a world of the wealthy and privileged. Some of her friends drank from the time they got up in the afternoon till they dropped into bed in the wee hours of the morning. Some gambled, raced cars, jetted all over the world for the tiniest flight of fancy. But that had never really been her style. She had always wanted a home, a husband, and a yard full of kids. The few friends she had confessed this dream to had laughed and called her hokey. But standing there in Gideon’s house, she felt no different than the jet-set crowd that called her friend.

She pulled the edges of the quilt tighter around her, protection from her thoughts and not from the cold.

“Is there . . . I mean, where’s the bathroom?” She hoped there was one, and that it was inside the house. She knew the Amish held an aversion to electricity; she just didn’t know how they felt about indoor plumbing.