to Hope’s family.
The good thing about the whole situation, Carly thought, was that it gave her a break from Bax and diffused his effect on her. And at that point she was glad for any small favors.
They spent until nearly eight o’clock visiting with everyone before Bax finally cleared the room to examine Hope and the baby. When he had, he, Evie Lee and Carly headed for home again, leaving Hope with her company.
By then Carly had had a long while to lecture herself about how silly she was being over Bax McDermot, and she was convinced she could stop her vulnerability to him if she just put her mind to it.
But putting her mind to it was a whole lot easier when he was at a distance and they were both surrounded by other people than it was when she was sitting at the table in the kitchen of her family home, watching him make mile-high sandwiches for their dinner.
“Nice people,” he was saying about the townsfolk he’d just encountered. “I’ll bet this whole place is filled with more like them.”
“It is,” she confirmed, trying not to stare at the best rear end she’d ever seen as he stood at the counter.
“Your sister and the baby are doing well. I told her she could go home tomorrow.”
Carly laughed. “She’d probably rather not. There are three more boys waiting for her there, so her rest will be over.”
“True enough,” Bax agreed, laughing with her in a deep, rich chuckle that sluiced over the surface of her skin like warm honey.
He brought three plates to the table, complete with sandwiches, chips, pickles and olives, then hollered for Evie Lee to join them as he poured milk for his daughter and iced tea for himself and Carly.
Evie Lee must have been on her way to the kitchen even before the bellow because she popped through the swinging door right then.
“Know what?” she asked her father, her tone full of excitement. “There’s a bedroom way up high with pictures all over the walls of castles and mountains and all kinds of stuff. Could it be my room instead of that other one?”
Bax looked to Carly, questioning her with his expression.
“It was my room up until a year or so ago,” she explained. “It’s in the attic. There’s travel posters on the walls.”
“Ah,” Bax said, nodding. “Is it off-limits?”
“No. Evie Lee can use it if she wants. And if you don’t mind having her that far away from you.”
“It’s not far away,” Evie Lee countered. “If I leave the door open, you could still hear me if I called you.”
“If it’s all right with Carly, it’s all right with me.”
“Oh goody! Can I eat my dinner up there now? It’ll be like a picnic.”
“Okay, but you’ll have to be careful with your milk. Come on, you carry your plate and I’ll take the glass,” he instructed before excusing himself from Carly for a moment.
She spent the time he was gone working on her self-control yet again, looking around the warm, familiar country kitchen awash in blue and white, trying to get her bearings. To ground herself.
But then Bax came back and sat across from her at the round mahogany table.
And that was all it took for her to notice the color of his eyes as if for the first time, turning her to mush once more.
“That room is nearly wallpapered in posters,” he said, referring to her old bedroom as he settled in to eat. “Are any of those places where you’re headed?”
Carly swallowed a bite of sandwich she’d taken to camouflage her latest response to him. “All of them, with any luck.”
“Looks like you’ve been planning it for a long time.”
“It seems like forever. Since I wasn’t much older than Evie Lee.”
“And just when you were about to leave, this happens.” He nodded in the direction of her ankle.
“It’s only a minor setback.”
They both ate some sandwich before Carly picked up the conversational ball and got it rolling again. “Have you traveled at all?”
His eyebrows arched and he nodded as he finished his bite. Then he said, “Some. My brothers and I did a summer-long trip through Europe after I graduated college. I saw most of what you have posters of upstairs and then some. Then I came back here, went to medical school and did a stint in the Peace Corps afterward. Saw Africa that way.”
“Wow. And now you want to be in Elk Creek?”
He laughed again. “Don’t sound so shocked. I’ve seen enough to know a small town like this one is still the best place to put down roots, to raise a family. But it’s good to go out into the world and have a look at it all before you make that decision if you’ve a mind to. Helps you to know what’s right for you and what’s not.”
Okay, it was ridiculous, but there was a part of Carly that wasn’t happy that he was so in favor of her leaving. She couldn’t help feeling as if he were trying to get rid of her.
Or maybe she just would have preferred him trying to convince her to stay.
One way or the other, this whole day since she’d met him had been the strangest of her life.
And she was more than ready to put an end to it.
She’d finished her sandwich, so she pushed the plate away. “I should get going,” she announced, even though it seemed as if they’d just started to actually talk to each other and she was cutting that short.
But Bax merely nodded, putting no effort into stopping her from leaving the house, either.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right out in the cottage?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she answered. “Better that than those stairs.”
“So, we’ll just leave the back door open and you can come and go as you need to use the kitchen—is that how we’re doing this?”
“That’ll work fine. I shouldn’t need anything else—especially upstairs—so you won’t have to worry about my being in the hallway when you come out of the shower the way I was today.”
He grinned at her, dimpling up again. “That wasn’t any big deal. With a daughter in the house I have to be careful about how I walk around anyway.”
“Still…” she said, remembering all too vividly the sight of his naked chest and feeling all over again what she’d felt then.
Carly pushed herself to her good foot and put a crutch under each arm.
“So, tomorrow you’ll show me my office?” he asked, confirming what they’d mentioned at the medical building when he’d declined the tour of the place.
“Sure.”
Bax stood then, too, and went ahead of her to the back door to open it for her. “I sleep with the window open, so if you need me during the night, just call,” he said as she started to pass through the door.
Needs she was certain were nothing like what he was referring to sprang to the forefront of her mind once more. But all Carly said was, “I think I’ll be fine.”
And then she did something catastrophic.
She glanced up at him as she passed in front of him to get through the door. Close in front of him. And an intense image of him kissing her good-night flooded through her.
This really had been the most bizarre day she’d ever spent.
“See you tomorrow,” she said in a hurry, forcing herself to look down at the ground instead of up at him and moving the rest of the way out of the house.
But