grave.
“No frozen dinners. At least not the ones bought in the store.” She turned to face her dad. “What I should do is spend all day Sunday cooking, make some casseroles that we could freeze and you could just take one out and put in the oven when I’m late.”
“Did you have plans for Sunday?”
She didn’t have specific plans for Sunday. She’d just been looking forward to a day off, a day of rest, a day to catch up with her sister and her niece and nephews, maybe go for a walk along the river now that the weather was turning nicer. Maybe go cycling again.
Instead of telling her dad about her hopes, she gave him a smile and answered, “No plans. I’ll fill the freezer so we don’t have to worry about meals for a couple of weeks.”
He gave her a sly smile. “When you go to the store tomorrow, don’t buy any more broccoli, okay?”
“No more broccoli,” she agreed and started loading the dishwasher, exhausted, eager to go to bed so that she could get up early tomorrow morning to get grocery shopping out of the way and spend a couple of hours in the garden before she did laundry and the other household chores.
Isobel basked in the sun’s warmth, digging her hands into the ground, making another hole for a Gerber daisy. It was the last of the six, a beautiful peachy-pink color she’d never seen before. She’d have to cover the flowers at night for a little while, but it would be worth the extra bother.
A shadow suddenly fell over her.
“Miss Suarez?”
She knew the voice without turning around to see who it belonged to, the voice she was so familiar with after just one meeting. She knew its timbre and depth and edge. It was Neil Kane’s voice.
In some ways she wished she could just disappear into a hole in the ground. She was wearing a crop-sleeved T-shirt that came to her waist and old jeans that were grubby at the knees and too tight across her rear. She had no doubt she’d brushed peat moss across her cheek and her hands were covered with dirt.
Sitting back on her haunches, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then looked over her shoulder.
“Mr. Kane. To what do I owe this pleasure on my weekend off? It’s supposed to be wild and fun and free.” She couldn’t help being a little bit sarcastic. He was making everyone’s lives at the hospital miserable. Did he have to chase them down at their homes, too?
“If you don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”
His sandy hair blew in the breeze. He was dressed in a tan-and-black striped Henley shirt and wore khakis. She spotted the sandy chest hair at the top button of his shirt. His three-quarter- length sleeves were snug enough that she noticed muscles underneath. His eyes were taking her in, not as if she were a grubby Little Orphan Annie, but as if she were Miss USA! Was there interest there? Couldn’t be. She felt mesmerized for a moment, hot and cold and just sort of mushy inside.
Feeling defenseless on the ground with him looking down on her, she put one hand on the grass to lever herself to her feet.
He offered her his hand. “Let me help.”
She would have snatched her hand away, but she probably would have tumbled back down to the ground in a very unladylike position.
His hand was large, his fingers enveloping and she felt like a tongue-tied naive teenager with a crush on a football player.
As soon as she was balanced on her feet, she pulled out of his grasp and saw his hand was now covered with dirt. “I’m so sorry.” She caught a towel from her gardening basket and handed it to him.
He just wiped his hands together. “I’m fine. But I can see I’m interrupting you. Can you take a break?”
Actually she was finished but she didn’t know if she wanted to tell him that. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?”
“I didn’t like the way our meeting ended. You were upset and I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I wasn’t upset,” she protested.
“Okay, not upset, angry. Everyone seems to be angry—if not downright hostile. We’re not going to get anywhere like that. I know I’m asking pointed questions, but I have to get to the bottom of the rumors and complaints. If there is insurance fraud, don’t you want to know? If you cooperate, wouldn’t that be better for both of us?”
“I am cooperating.”
The corners of his mouth definitely twitched up in a semblance of a smile. “If that was cooperation, I’d like to see resistance.”
She felt her face getting hot, and not from the midday sun. “I feel as if you’re trying to entrap me or the staff. As if you want to catch us in some little discrepancy—”
“I want the truth.”
There was something about Neil Kane besides his sex appeal that got to her. Maybe it was the resolve in his eyes that told her he was sincere.
“I stopped by today to see if we could discuss everything more calmly over lunch.”
“You’re asking everyone you question to lunch?”
This time, a dark ruddiness crept into his cheeks. “No, but I don’t get the feeling you’re hiding anything. You seem to want to be careful so no one gets hurt. I understand that.”
“In other words, you think I’m a pushover.”
He laughed and it was such a masculine sound, her tummy seemed to tip over.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he explained. “Although you try, you really don’t watch every word you say. I get the feeling you’re a straight shooter. So am I. I thought we could make some progress together.”
Having lunch with the enemy wasn’t a terrific idea. On the other hand, Neil Kane wasn’t going to go away until he was satisfied with the answers he got. No one would have to know she was talking to him and maybe, just maybe, she could do some convincing of her own.
“I found a place I like,” he coaxed. “You can probably go like that if you want.”
At first she thought he was laughing at her, but then she realized he wasn’t. He was serious. Where was he going to take her—to a hot-dog stand?
“I’d like to change and wash the dirt off my face.” She crouched down, gathered her gloves with the small gardening tools and plopped them into her basket.
Neil picked up a hoe and a rake lying beside the garden.
“You don’t have to—” she began.
“Someone could trip over them.” Now he was smiling at her.
She couldn’t help but smile back. “You can just leave them on the porch.”
“I can wait there.”
“That’s silly. No, come on in. My dad’s watching TV. He might ignore you,
