“Why aren't you in school today?” Sarah asked as she unloaded first aid supplies from her arms onto the pine harvest table in the sunny, spacious kitchen.
Jacob jumped back from the counter where he had been fingering the trigger of the shiny chrome four-slot toaster. “Our teacher has the croup so we don't have no school.”
“You haven't any school,” Sarah corrected.
“Nope.”
“What? No substitute teacher?” Matt asked, motioning Jacob to have a seat on the table.
“There is only one teacher in our Amish school,” Sarah explained. “We have none in reserve.”
“And I suppose this is a one-room school-house with privies out back,” Matt said, half-joking.
Sarah gave him a cool look, her chin lifting. “Of course.”
Embarrassed, Matt wished he could disappear into the linoleum. But seeing no graceful way out of his blunder, he simply ignored it, clearing his throat and turning attention to Jacob once again. He cleaned the boys scrape, his touch as delicate as he could keep it as he worked out the bits of tree bark and dried leaf.
Sarah hovered at his elbow, looking ready to throw herself between them at the first sign of any real pain from her brother. Every time Jacob winced, Sarah flinched and sucked in a little gasp. For every stray tear that squeezed its way out of Jacobs eyes, Sarah shed two. Matt watched her out of the corner of his eye, torn between amusement, sympathy, and annoyance.
“I'm just cleaning it and applying a dressing,” he said. “This isn't an amputation we're talking about here. And I assure you, I know what I'm doing. I'll have you know I graduated fourth in my class from the University of Minnesota med school.”
“How many was in it?” Sarah asked, not quite joking.
Matt gave her a look. “Very funny. Why don't you sit down before you pass out? Or better yet, get started on that breakfast you promised me.
She cast an anxious glance at Jacob, who was more interested in playing with the dispenser of adhesive tape. She forced herself to back away, step by agonizing step, gnawing on her lip and blinking back tears.
“Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” Matt said sarcastically. “Take some comfort in knowing I can't run away from you. If I screw up, you can pummel me to a bloody pulp with the bludgeon of your choice.” He turned to Jacob and made a face. “Girls. You'd think she'd never seen anything gross before.”
Jacob sniffled and giggled and swung his feet over the table edge.
While Sarah set to work on the breakfast, Matt and Jacob settled themselves at the table and discussed things of interest to boys. Mostly Jacob told Matt everything he knew about farming, how good the corn crop looked, how they were getting ready to harvest, and how he was going to help. He talked a steady blue streak, and Matt looked grave and nodded at appropriate intervals. Sarah watched them out of the corner of her eye, thinking Matt was awfully sweet for listening and asking questions. He probably didn't give a hoot about how dry the corn was, but he paid attention as if it were of great importance to him.
What a good father he would make, she thought, wishing she could ignore the sweet pang of longing in her breast. She set Matt s breakfast down in front of him, along with a steaming cup of coffee, trying not to think about the comfortable domesticity of the scene.
“Does Mom know you are here?” Sarah asked Jacob as she handed him a glass of milk and set a plate of oatmeal-raisin cookies on the kitchen table.
Jacob eyed the cookies like a starving creature, reaching slowly for the biggest one even though he hadn't asked permission. “Ya,” he said. “I had done my chores and Pop said for me to come visit with you.”
“Did he?” Sarah murmured more to herself than to Jacob. She couldn't stop the little rush of temper that spurted up inside her. Isaac hadn't sent his youngest son to merely keep her company or to keep him out of the way on the farm. He had been sent as an unwitting observer. Jacob would eagerly relate all he had seen at the English inn. Sarah would never ask him not to. Her job was her own. She did nothing here to be ashamed of.
Her glance darted to Matt, and guilt slapped splashes of color high across her cheeks. They had kissed. She'd sat right on his bed and let him kiss her.
And Jacob had been scrambling up the tree just outside the window.
“Why were you climbing that tree?” she asked.
Her brother's eyes were round and innocent. He shrugged and talked around a mouthful of cookie. “Because it was there.”
“The perfect reason,” Matt said with a grin.
With the enthusiasm of a lumberjack, he ate the breakfast Sarah had fixed him. It had been ages since he'd had a big, calorie-laden, homemade breakfast. He usually took no time for breakfast, grabbing a peanut butter sandwich or a bagel on his way to the hospital. With his strength at low tide, however, he had no trouble convincing himself that he needed something more substantial. The eggs and fried potatoes and toast went down nicely.
He reached for a cookie and shook it at his new little compadre. “You'll have to be a little more careful next time, pal. Climbing trees is a lot of fun, but it's a long way down and there isn't always a pile of leaves handy to land on.”
Jacob nodded as he drank, some milk sloshing out to dribble down his chin. He wiped it off with his good arm and chomped another bite out of his cookie.
Sarah settled herself in her chair and set herself to the task of mending the tear in her brother's jacket sleeve.
“How far up were you?” she asked, feeling like a weasel for trying to wheedle information out of him. She was no better than her father was for sending him here. Poor Jacob.
“Not far.”
“This is not the place for you to be climbing trees,” she scolded, more cross with herself than with her brother. “The Woods often have guests here who would not appreciate looking out their windows to see little Amish boys staring in at them.”
So that was what the interrogation was all about, Matt mused, chewing thoughtfully on his cookie. Sarah was afraid her brother might have caught them kissing. Strange. She was a grown woman. She'd been married for heav-ens sake. What difference would it make if someone saw them kissing?
He watched her as she worked the needle and thread through the fabric of the coat with vicious stabs and jerks that betrayed her inner agitation. Several strands of silky brown hair had escaped the stranglehold of the bun at the back of her head and drifted down along her cheek into her line of sight. She tucked them back up under her kapp without looking up. She looked like a living work of art—“Study of a Nineteenth-century Woman.” A nineteenth-century woman with nineteenth-century sensibilities.
That was it. She was shy, reserved. The idea appealed to Matt in a way he wouldn't have expected. He was used to women who knew the score, women who moved at a nineteen-nineties pace, women who often as not took the lead in a physical relationship. Compared to them, Sarah was untouched, untried, innocent. Once again he felt a strong surge of pro-tectiveness swell inside him, and tenderness … and desire.
He wasn't going to be able to act on any of those impulses at the moment, however, he re alized with no small amount of regret. Ordinarily, he was relentless in his pursuit of something he wanted—especially when that something was a lady. But his exertions that morning had drained him. Fatigue weighed down on him like an anvil, pressing on his throbbing head, causing the muscles in his shoulders to tense. His ribs were aching, and the wound in his thigh was burning. He needed to lie down before he simply fell out of his chair and sprawled unconscious on the kitchen floor.