sister.
Aubrey thought she noticed a bit of tension in the lines around Gage’s mouth. She remembered Mr. Raintree as being a somewhat hard and inflexible man, on par with her own father. She and Gage always shared that commonality. If Mr. Raintree was laid up, he probably depended on Gage and Hannah to run the ranch. The work was constant and difficult, she knew firsthand from her brief residence there.
“Are you sure?” her grandmother asked. “I don’t want to be the cause of any…discord.”
“Forget it.” He dismissed her worries with a casual shrug. “I’d be here helping even if you hadn’t advertised for a handyman.”
Aubrey believed him. Gage adored her grandmother, and she him. But, as Aubrey watched their exchange, she couldn’t help feeling something was amiss in the Raintree family.
“Dad’s just being his usual grumpy self,” Gage went on.
Her grandmother nodded in understanding. “Gout is no picnic.”
“Probably less painful than a broken hip.” He shifted his weight to his other foot, looking quite at home and in no hurry to start the renovations.
“It’s been tough going so far,” Grandma Rose said, smiling, “but I expect to improve rapidly now that my granddaughter is here. I couldn’t ask for a better nurse.”
Gage toasted Aubrey with his coffee. “Here’s to granddaughters.”
Bringing her mug to her lips, she drained the last bit of coffee. “Grandma, we should probably get a move on.”
Her grandmother’s appointment wasn’t until early afternoon, but Aubrey wanted Gage out of the house. The three of them sitting around the kitchen having a friendly chat reminded her too much of days gone by.
“Where you headed?” he asked, not taking the hint and not moving an inch.
“Physical therapy,” Grandma Rose told him.
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s hard work,” Aubrey corrected him.
“I don’t doubt it.” Unfazed by her brusque tone, Gage polished off his coffee, rinsed out his mug and placed it in the dishwasher. “And speaking of hard work, I should get cracking.”
Aubrey blew out a huge sigh when she heard the front door shut behind him. How long, she wondered, would it take to build the wheelchair ramp? More importantly, how long until she could comfortably share the same air space with him?
Getting Grandma Rose ready for their trip to Pineville didn’t take long. She obviously wished to be self-sufficient eventually and would do whatever was required of her to achieve that status. Because morale played an important part in the recovery of someone in her grandmother’s condition, Aubrey encouraged her.
Afterward, she helped her grandmother into the recliner so that she could watch her favorite soap opera. During the show, Aubrey showered and dressed. When she finished, they still had a good half hour to kill before they had to leave for the rehabilitation center in Pineville.
“Wheel me out onto the porch, dear,” Grandma Rose said, using the remote to shut off the TV, “so I can see how Gage is doing with the ramp.”
Aubrey tried to come up with a valid argument. “Are you sure? You have a big afternoon ahead of you and don’t want to overdo it.”
“I’d like to know how I can overdo it by just sitting.”
“It’s warm out there.”
“Nonsense.” Grandma Rose leaned forward and braced her hands on the armrests. “I can tolerate a little heat.”
Aubrey reluctantly complied with the request, the wheelchair bumping as it rolled over the threshold and onto the porch. She thought about asking Gage if he could replace the threshold with a flatter one, then caught herself. Asking one of the other guys might be a better approach.
The first sight to greet her as she stepped outside was Gage’s pickup truck parked in the driveway. The emblem on the door, she now noted, was some kind of flame with initials in the center. He’d lowered the tailgate and was using it as a makeshift workbench. The second sight to greet her was Gage. He stood with his back to them, bent over a circular saw and cutting wooden planks. She tried not to notice him, but her eyes kept darting across the yard to where he worked.
His shoulders were broader than she remembered, the muscles more defined and prominent. He might have grown another inch or two. Then again, maybe he just stood straighter and taller. Either way, maturity agreed with him. Were he another man, Aubrey might find the changes appealing.
When the plank Gage was cutting split neatly into two pieces, he shut off the saw and looked up. “Hey, there.” Removing his ball cap, he ran fingers through sweat-dampened hair, then flung it onto the tailgate as he came toward them. “Need a hand?”
“No, I—”
“Good heavens, Gage,” Grandma Rose interrupted. “You must be dying of thirst. Get him a glass of lemonade, will you, Aubrey?”
Setting the brake on the wheelchair, she gratefully retreated into the house. Maybe by the time she came back with his lemonade, he’d be working again.
No such luck.
He was sitting in the chair closest to Grandma Rose when Aubrey stepped outside.
“Thanks,” he said, as he shot to his feet and reached for the plastic tumbler she carried.
She gave it to him and when he’d sat back down, she inched toward the door. “I have a few things to do around the house before we leave for Pineville.”
“There’s nothing that can’t wait until later,” Grandma Rose said, motioning with her hand. “Sit down and visit for a while.”
Gage grabbed one of the other chairs and dragged it over next to his. Flashing his trademark sexy grin, he patted the seat. “You heard your grandmother. Sit and visit for a while.”
To a casual observer, the invitation appeared innocuous enough. Aubrey knew better.
He drank half the lemonade in one long swallow. “Whew! That hit the spot.” He then lifted the plastic tumbler to his forehead and rested it there. “Awfully hot for June.”
“Do you remember the day you and Gage first met?” Grandma Rose didn’t wait for a response and just prattled on. “It was at Sunday school. You were about four and Gage must have been, oh, five or six. You had on that pretty pink dress I liked with the big white sash. We had such a time with your hair, trying to make it look nice.” She made a tsking noise. “A few weeks before arriving here, you and your sister decided to play beauty parlor. Annie, the little dickens, cut a huge chunk of hair out of the left side of your head. Your poor mother cried for days.”
Aubrey had no desire whatsoever to walk down memory lane. Gage clearly didn’t share her sentiment and enthusiastically participated in the discussion, bringing up one youthful indiscretion after the other.
Crossing and uncrossing her legs, Aubrey endured the small talk. Because of Gage, she’d lived exclusively for the summer when she and Annie would stay in Blue Ridge. For nine straight weeks, their parents visited various hospitals across the country where their father would demonstrate the latest medical advance he’d made in the field of cardiovascular surgery.
Their mother, Carol May Stuart, had been raised in Blue Ridge, having met their father at college. They both liked the idea of their daughters being exposed to the same grassroots upbringing she experienced. The girls loved Blue Ridge; their grandparents loved having them stay. It had been a perfect arrangement. Until the summer after Aubrey’s freshman year at the University of Arizona when everything went to hell in a handbasket.
“Do you remember the day you came home and announced you’d eloped?” Grandma Rose’s smile turned sentimental. “I was so happy for you both.”
If