Instant Gratification

Her father began to work his way down toward her while Stone stayed with the kids. Stone’s faded gray t-shirt was snug across his broad shoulders, loose around his waist, gaping out enough to reveal a tanned, sleek back. He was no longer wearing bandages over all the road rash, and she could see his injuries were healing quite fast and well as he moved along with easy grace.

Yeah, that’s why she was staring at him, to make sure he’d healed properly.

Her father hopped to the ground. “Emma.” He smiled at her, light and welcoming. “Nice surprise. Nobody needing you at the Urgent Care then?”

“No.” With baited breath, she watched the group of five kids work the rock safely with Stone’s quiet reassurances. “Who are they?”

“A group of local foster kids. Stone takes them out of their element and on mini-expeditions.”

She’d already heard from Missy that he did this but it became real when she saw it firsthand. It was yet another layer of Stone revealed. Hard to keep picturing him as nothing but a mountain bum when he kept unraveling like a damn onion.

“He’s big on making sure the kids don’t fall through the cracks,” her dad said. “Like he and his brothers did.”

Tilting her head up, she watched Stone give each kid a fist bump as they got to the top. Hard to imagine him as a little boy, much less a vulnerable one.

“Anyway.” Her father slid off his baseball cap. His gray hair was wild as always. “Today is rock climbing day, as you can see. We’re rafting next week.”

“We.”

“I help with the kids when I can, which is more often now.”

Ironic, she thought. He was there for those kids, when he’d never been there for his own.

The kids were preparing for their descent. She wanted to point out how dangerous this sort of thing was, but hell, the teens in New York faced their own daily dangers, and if there was someone to steer them through surviving out here, so much the better.

But that it was Stone…Yeah, it really put a dent in the whole ski bum rep.

“You’re doing okay at the clinic?”

She looked at her father. “I accepted three more casseroles and two gossip sessions today. I had a case of poison ivy, a wicked toe infection, and…nothing. Nothing else. I’m not sure how I managed to handle it all.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Different pace here, yeah?”

“You could say that. Dad…” She’d given up so much to be here, so damn much, and he was rock climbing. “What are you doing?”

“Well, Stone here and I will make dinner for the kids, and then—”

“I mean…” She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “How is it that you can rock climb and not work?”

“Oh.” He moved toward his front porch with a surprising spryness for a sixty-one-year-old heart-attack victim, minor or otherwise. “Yeah. About that.”

“You’re improved enough to come back to work,” she said.

Her father scratched his head. “Well…”

“Frankly, I think it’s rude of you not to tell me so.” They were on his porch now, separate enough from the others that they could have some privacy. “I’ve been asking to see your chart, to help you monitor your recovery, but you’ve chosen not to involve me. Fine, I get it, you have your life. But I have mine, too, Dad. A busy one, and I need to get back to it.”

Her father’s smile slipped some. “I didn’t involve you in my care because it can be disconcerting to read the medical records of a close family member.”

“As I buried mom only six months ago, I think I can handle it. Actually, I can handle anything. The bottom line is that I came to help you, and clearly you don’t need it. I would have appreciated knowing that, as this hasn’t exactly been a vacation for me.”

“I didn’t think so, Emma.”

“Well, what did you think? That I’d appreciate, after all this time of no contact, having to drop everything and come do your work for you?”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“I need to be in New York,” she said quietly.

“Putting in eighty hour work weeks.”

Minimum. With her mom gone, her stepdad gallivanting around the world, and nothing else going on, what did it matter? “I like the work.”

“There’s more to life than work.”

“Dad.” She rubbed a weary hand over her eyes. “It’s a little late for the fatherisms, okay? If you’re better, I just want to know.”

He was quiet, and after looking at him, waiting, she turned away and nearly ran right smack into Stone, who’d climbed down the rock and come up onto the porch without a sound. The kids were in the yard, kicking a ball around. Stone’s usual smile was nowhere in place. “He’s not ready to go back to work, Emma. He’s—”

But her father put his hand on Stone’s arm, and whatever else he’d planned to say never left his lips.

Men. Stoic and silent and stupid. “I have three casseroles in the damn truck,” she said, giving up. “I brought them to you so you’d have food.” She stalked back to the vehicle; stacking the dishes up together when the skin at the nape of her neck did that prickle thing, a phenomenon which had never happened to her before Stone.

Not something she wanted to think about.

But damn him.

She whirled around and yep, there he was. Funny how fast the guy could move when he wanted to, like a cat, she thought, looking up, up, up into his eyes, which for the first time were closed off to her. A big, tough, wild leopard. Or a tiger. Something surprisingly silent and edgy and dangerous in worn jeans, his t-shirt molding to his broad shoulders and chest and abs. His wayward surfer hair was spiky today, as if he’d used his fingers instead of a comb. His face—“Hey.” She ran her finger over his temple. “Your stitches.”