The Summerhouse Read online

  So for the rest of the day, Madison listened to Thomas talk about where he’d been in the world and what he’d seen. And she never gave her feet a thought. But as the sun set, Thomas pulled the raft to the side of the river, saying that they could camp there, and when Madison stepped out, pain shot up her legs.

  Thomas saw her wince, and saw her limp. He told her to sit down on a flat rock, pulled her foot onto his lap and untied her shoe. “I should have noticed that your hiking boots were really worn out,” he said, his scowl more pronounced than usual. “Look at that!” Holding up her foot, he showed her the blisters on her heel and her toes. “Do you know that these could become infected?”

  “They’re just blisters,” she said.

  “A former president’s son died from a blister he got while playing tennis,” was Thomas’s answer as he put her foot down, then opened his pack to remove a first aid package in a plastic bag.

  Madison couldn’t help but laugh. “Haven’t we made some medical advances in the last few years?”

  Thomas didn’t laugh as he poured clean water on sterile gauze, then cleaned the blood from the ruptured blisters. “Not really. In fact, I’ve just seen in England that they’re going back to using leeches.”

  “Tell me,” Madison said eagerly, then listened intently as Thomas described how leeches were being used to drain the excess blood from such things as amputated fingers that had been reattached.

  When he’d finished his description, which Madison found to be fascinating, Thomas said, “Have you ever thought of doing something in the medical world?”

  “You mean like becoming a nurse?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of your becoming a doctor,” he said quietly as he began to bandage her foot.

  “Me? A doctor?” she said, her voice telling him what she thought of that idea.

  Thomas frowned. “You’ve doctored two people. Why not more?”

  “One of my patients died, and the other . . .” She lowered her voice. “Roger hates me for what I did to him. He says my nursing skills are as subtle as a stone baseball bat.”

  Thomas snorted. “Roger is jealous of you.”

  “Of me?” Madison said, laughter in her voice.

  “Of course. He reeks with it, like a fish left out in the sun for a week.”

  Madison smiled. “You make me feel good. Smart, I mean.”

  “You don’t need that from me. Roger knows that you’re smarter than he is, as well as better looking and a better person. How can he compete with someone like you?”

  “Someone like me,” she said softly. “‘A Montana cowgirl.’”

  Thomas didn’t respond to what she’d said, nor did he apologize for having called her that before he’d met her. Instead, when she looked down at the top of his head, at his thick, black hair, she thought that he was taking an extraordinarily long time bandaging her second foot. As for her, she thought that he could go on holding her foot—or touching any part of her—forever.

  It was growing darker by the minute, and they were so very alone, with nothing but the water to one side of them, high rocks to the other.

  She was looking down at him hard. What would she do if he made a movement toward her? If he, say, ran his hand up her leg under her trousers? She’d never been touched in that way by any man except Roger, and she had never felt with him as she did with this man right now. Every pore in her body seemed to be alive.

  It was Thomas who broke the spell. Abruptly, he dropped her foot, stood up, then looked down at her. “We only have one tent for the two of us. Two sleeping bags but one tent. If we sleep in the same room, so to speak, are you going to try to take my virtue?”

  The way he said it made her laugh. “Depends on what color your underwear is,” she said as she stood up.

  “Red,” he said instantly.

  “Nope, does nothing for me.”

  “Sorry. I forgot. It’s black.”

  Madison laughed again. “No. Nothing.”

  “Green?” he asked hopefully.

  She smiled. “So what are you serving me for dinner? I could eat a horse.”

  “Ah, now I remember. My underwear is made of that pony fabric. You know, white with big brown spots. Makes me look like a horse. Dead ringer.”

  Madison laughed hard. “Go away. Get me something to eat. And where can I . . . You know?”

  “I’ll take you,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “What happened to ‘No romance’?”

  “That was before I liked you so much,” he said, smiling at her.

  For a moment she looked at him. “I bet you had some interesting encounters with women while you were traveling. All you had to do was look at them without your scowl and they’d—” She broke off because Thomas was looking at her with a wide smile. His scowl was gone, so his eyes were round, not narrow slits, and his lips were soft and full.

  It was in that moment that Madison knew that if—a big, big if—there was ever to be anything between them in the future, then she must, absolutely, positively, must not allow anything to happen on this trip. For all his leering and teasing, her intuition told her that she had to keep this whole trip light.

  “Well, I like you too,” she said as though to a little boy, “but there’s a matter of previous ownership.” With that, she headed for the bushes.

  “Sharing,” Thomas called after her. “People should share. The world would be a better place if people shared their toys.”

  Madison’s laugh echoed off the overhanging rocks.

  Eleven

  “I like him,” Leslie said as she finished the last of the pizza.

  Ellie was staring at the ceiling and thinking. “I could see how it would have been easier after the two of you acknowledged that you had the hots for each other,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” Madison agreed as she lit another cigarette. “It did. But we also seemed to have made a rule between us that we weren’t to act on our inclinations.”

  “That must have been difficult,” Leslie said, looking over her glass of cola at Madison. “I’d think that in a setting like that, alone as you were, that it would have been nearly impossible to keep your hands off each other.”

  “Probably,” Madison said. “Actually, I don’t think we could have. If we’d stayed alone, that is. We spent that first night in the tent together, and I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t fallen asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. I’m sure I would have stayed awake all night lusting after Thomas.”

  “I would have,” Ellie said. “But you fell asleep? What kind of heroine are you?”

  “At that time I was a very tired one,” Madison said. “You can’t imagine what it was like nursing Roger around-the-clock.”

  “I’ve had two kids,” Leslie said. “And my daughter—” She cut herself off. “Trust me, Roger couldn’t have been more demanding than Rebecca was—and is.”

  “You said ‘if we’d stayed alone.’” Ellie said. “You didn’t?”

  “No. The next morning we met some friends of Thomas’s on the river. His family had lived in the area for generations, so I should have expected that he knew everyone.” Madison stubbed out her cigarette. “But, you know, I think I had a better time when the others were around than Thomas and I would have had alone.”

  “Right,” Ellie said.

  “No, I mean it. What were Thomas and I to do? After just a few hours alone together we had trouble keeping our hands off each other, so did we go to bed together and later—if something emotional did happen between us—did we have adultery hanging over our heads?”

  “Montana is in the U.S., isn’t it?” Ellie asked Leslie. “This whole country is in bed with everyone else, but you had a husband you couldn’t stand, you were alone with a man you were mad about, yet you worried about having sex with him.”

  Looking at Ellie through a cloud of smoke, Madison said, “Now, tell me again how many times you were unfaithful to your husband? The one you couldn’t sta