honest poverty. Well, she’d make it honest. Eventually.
She crammed the sunglasses, with the tag still dangling from the earpiece, onto her nose, and marched out of the store with her chin up.
All that remained was to park her Mercedes convertible in an inconspicuous space in the crowded Wal-Mart lot, stuff her hair under the nondescript hat she’d just bought and call for a taxi.
Investment account, converted to cash.
Plane ticket, bought under an assumed name.
Mrs. Stuart Hayden Crestwood, vanished into thin air.
CHAPTER ONE
Four years later, fifty miles deep in the remote Kootenai National Forest of northwestern Montana
“THIS MAN IS IMPOSSIBLE.” Sylvia Summers, the nursing supervisor at Mountain Home Health Care, complained as she stood putting together a copy of a patient’s chart for Laura. “Even over the phone he comes across as brooding, wants everything his own way, including the exact timing of our visits. Can you imagine how hard it is to time our trips up to the Yakk River and then along that Sixteen Mile…cowpath to the exact hour? Why he chooses to live out there—”
“Even with all that money,” one of the field nurses interrupted as she scooted past Laura’s desk, “he lives an austere existence on the side of the mountain. Doesn’t even have a TV.”
“The man’s a hermit, who hardly speaks except to snap my nurses’ heads off,” Sylvia continued. “And he’s already run off two other physical therapists. Now it’s your turn.” She handed Laura the chart.
Another nurse peeked around the supply shelves and chimed in. “That chart should be labeled P.I.A., because if ever there was one, that guy’s a genuine pain in the—”
“I’ve handled P.I.A.’s before,” Laura answered quietly as she walked to her desk. And I’m an expert on rich, demanding men, she added to herself as she thought of Stuart Crestwood for the first time in ages. “Difficult patients don’t bother me. Remember Mr. Buchanan? Wouldn’t even get out of bed at first.” She sat down and pushed her glasses up on her nose, trying to focus her mind on the chart, in spite of the nurses’ discouraging verbal barrage.
“Ho! Ho! Ho! Hon-nee child!” another nurse hooted. “Mr. Scott makes old man Buchanan seem like a sweet cuddly teddy bear.”
The others muttered their agreement.
Sylvia raised a palm. “Okay, girls. We’ve scared her enough.” She crossed to Laura’s desk.
“Listen, Laura, this is a tough case. No one wants to deal with this man, much less stay up on that mountain and do the hours of therapy necessary to—”
“You told me all that,” she put in, “and about the car accident.” She flipped back a page in the chart. “It says here he’s a widower. Was his wife killed in the accident?”
“Yes.” Sylvia sighed and ran a hand through her short-cropped frosted hair. “A terrible accident. Anyway, you’ll be taking this on as a private contract, with no supervisory visits. In other words you’re totally on your own. And once you and Mr. Scott sign that contract, I hope you’ll stay to finish the therapy regimen.”
Laura flipped more pages. Fractured scapula and humerus. Severe rotator-cuff tear, avulsed muscles, some nerve damage, adhesive capsulitis…. “This man’s surgery was almost a year ago. Why are we just now doing joint mobilization?”
“He shut himself off from people when he left the hospital. But now, all of a sudden, he wants full use of his shoulder back. It wasn’t happening fast enough to suit him with only two visits a week.”
Laura nodded and closed the chart. “I’m going to do joint mobilization once every day, assisted exercises twice a day, ice packs after each treatment.”
“Sounds good.” Sylvia glanced at her watch. “You’d better get going. As I said, Adam Scott demands punctuality.” Frowning, Sylvia bent her head, and said confidentially, “You know, you’re a brave girl to accept this assignment.”
Bravery has nothing to do with it, Laura thought as she lugged the heavy portable massage table and arm bike out to her old Toyota. The obscene amount of money this patient was willing to pay for a private full-time physical therapist for six weeks was her sole motivation.
When Laura had first taken off with Stuart’s money, she hadn’t realized how much she would change. Over the past four years, as she’d finished her education and forced herself to mature and grow, she’d come to realize that she wouldn’t really be free until she paid Stuart back every cent. The salary Adam Scott was offering would go a long way toward getting rid of her debt.
But the nurses’ descriptions of her new patient kept ringing through her mind as she steered her little car along the narrow gravel road that skirted the sheer wall of rock high above Sixteen Mile Creek.
When at last the road ended, she felt as if she’d traveled back in time. A weathered log cabin squatted in an open glade like an old hen brooding on a nest. Two quaint dormer windows twinkled in the September sunshine, and a sturdy native-rock chimney buttressed one side of the steep blue roof. A deep porch across the entire front seemed like the perfect spot for enjoying mountain vistas, but it didn’t have a stick of furniture on it.
And there, on that porch, stood Adam Scott, waiting for her.
His face was hidden in the shadows, but his long muscular legs, clad in worn jeans and hiking boots, were crossed causally at the ankle. He leaned one shoulder—not the bad one, she noticed—against the rough-hewn door frame.
His body looked so…young. So strong!
The relaxed powerful figure leaning against that door certainly didn’t fit the picture of the lame bitter recluse her colleagues had conjured up.
She peered through her windshield. He didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Well, he was close enough at thirty-eight, but somehow she hadn’t expected him to be such a…hunk.
Laura fumbled on the floor for her satchel and tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.
She glanced back up at him. He wasn’t leaning against the door frame anymore, and now his stance and folded arms radiated impatience.
She opened the car door and drew a deep breath. She climbed out, then carefully closed the door and walked up the path with what she hoped was self-assurance.
He came forward, scowling from under thick dark eyebrows, and the lump in her throat doubled in size, because now that he was in the sun, she could see that not only was he young and fit, he was extremely handsome.
He looked like a younger version of—who was that actor who’d played Marshall Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke?—James Arness. This guy had the same strong jaw. The same big hands. All of which kept him from seeming too perfect, too pretty.
His thick dark hair looked wild and untrimmed, with a few silvery strands sprigging at the temples.
His whole presence seemed unreal. As if he’d been plunked into this rustic setting by some visionary movie director: All
