Love in Bloom Read Online Free PDF Page A

studied Clay's hands.  They were large.  She could still remember their warm grip when he'd helped her away from her car, as he held her when they danced.  She could imagine him in a canoe, his strong arms paddling.
    Clay asked, "When's your day off?"
    "I don't have office hours Thursdays or Sundays, but I usually go to the hospital and see my patients in the morning.  Then I'm free."
    Doc shut the toolbox.  "I thawed out those chicken breasts like you said.  Want me to start the grill?"
    "Sure.  Clay, have you had supper yet?"
    He slid back a foot from the mower.  "No.  I'm going to grab something on the way home."
    "You're welcome to stay."
    "Believe me, son, it'll be good for you.  Paige keeps me on a strict diet."
    Clay climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on the towel on the mower's seat.  "I don't want to impose."
    "It's no imposition."  As she crossed to the door, her heart sped up at the idea of spending more time with Clay.  "You'll keep Doc and me from talking shop."
    Clay watched through the doorway as Paige's slim legs took her to the house.  "Does she ever slow down?"
    "Afraid to is my guess."
    That gave Clay pause.  "Afraid of what?"
    "Afraid of what she might find out about herself if she does."
    ****
    Clay stood inside the sliding glass doors in the dining room.  The cedar deck extended from the dining room on stilts.  The ground underneath was rocky and uneven.  Doc had decided not to landscape it, to keep it natural.  The steps descended to an uneven packed-earth walk that led into the woods.
    Paige stood at the grill against the back of the house and basted the chicken.  Clay knew he shouldn't have invited her to go for a canoe ride on the lake, but it would have been rude not to.  He could picture too easily how she'd look with the moon on her hair and the intimacy of darkness settling around them, an intimacy that opened the door to exchanging confidences.  She'd tell him why she'd come to Langley; he'd explain...
    No.  If he took her for a canoe ride, it would be in broad daylight with other boaters around.  He wasn't trading secrets with Paige Conrad.
    He opened the sliding door and stepped outside.  "Ron Murphy called and said the committee meeting is eight o'clock next Tuesday.  You going?" Clay asked.
    Paige glanced at him, then back down at the grill.  "I said I would."
    He bet she was the type of person who always followed through on her promises.  "Where did you grow up?  You have a unique accent."
    She smiled.  "I never noticed."
    He smiled back.  Some of her words were enunciated too precisely, sometimes the rhythm seemed unusual.  "How long have you been away from the States?"
    "Most of my life.  Half anyway."
    "Where have you lived?"
    "We lived in western Pennsylvania till I was three.  Then we went to Central America.  When I was ten, my parents sent me to a boarding school in England.  At sixteen I went to be with them to Africa.  I came back here for college and med school in Ohio.  When I finished my residency, I joined my mother in Africa again."
    She'd given him her rundown dispassionately, as if she'd had to do it often.  "Just your mother?"
    She hesitated, and her eyes clouded.  "My father died when I was doing my residency."
    Now that was a subject she wasn't dispassionate about.  Her sadness touched him.  "I'm sorry."
    Paige turned away.  After a moment, she asked, "What about you?  Is your family here?"
    "In Reisterstown.  I moved here seven years ago when I heard the store I now own was up for sale."
    "Do you see them often?"
    "My sister, I do."
    "I always wondered what a normal family would be like."
    The wistfulness in her voice intrigued him.  "What do you call normal?"
    She stared into the treetops as if she could envision it exactly.  "Living in one place for years, building friendships, going to a regular school."
    He wished he could remember if his childhood had been "normal."  His family said it had.  "You were lonely?"