she said gently, her voice trembling as much as her hands as she reached out toward him.
“I&m not a baby,” Jacob snapped. He twisted away from her, more out of fear of pain than defiance. “It's just a scrape is all.”
“How about letting me be the judge of that?” Matt suggested.
He was winded and pale, half-dizzy from trying to descend the stairs faster than was prudent for a man in his condition. But he managed what he thought would pass for a brave face and gratefully sank to his knees in the cushion of the leaf pile.
Jacob stared at him with owl eyes. “Who are you?”
“My name is Matt. I'm a doctor.”
“You're English.”
“If that means I'm not Amish, then I guess you're right. Is that okay with you?” Matt struggled to maintain a sober face as he asked. The boy was adorable, maybe seven or eight with yellow hair and a dusting of freckles across his impudent nose. The smile he gave Matt was a smaller version of Sarah's, but his eyes gleamed with sudden excitement rather than dry amusement.
“Ya, sure,” Jacob said, looking Matt up and down with wonder. “You ain't wearing no trousers,” the boy observed.
“Jacob! Your manners!” Sarah hissed, her sense of propriety all mixed up amongst her fears. Her heart was still going a hundred miles an hour at the idea of her baby falling from a tree. She had been the one to look after Jacob most of his young life. Their mother had taken ill after his birth, and Sarah, who had no baby of her own, had gladly seen to Jacobs care. She had never grown out of thinking of him more as a son than a brother.
Matt took no offense at the boy's lack of manners. He scooted a little nearer Jacob. “Nope. These are my lucky running shorts. Want to know why they're lucky?”
The blond head bobbed.
“Because I used to wear them all the time back in college when I ran in races.”
“What is this college? Is it a town?”
The question knocked Matt speechless for an instant, until it occurred to him that the Amish probably didn't go in for higher education. “It's the kind of school a guy has to go to if he wants to become a doctor,” he explained.
“And did you win the races?” Jacob asked, typically unconcerned with the idea of school. Races, however, were of great interest. He stared up at Matt, waiting for his response, unconsciously relaxing his hold on his injured arm.
“Sometimes,” Matt said, slowly reaching out. “Let's have a look at this. So you like to climb trees, do you? I used to be the champion tree climber on my block when I was a kid. The second best tree climber was a girl. Can you believe that?”
“No.” Jacob pulled back a litde as Mart's fingers closed around his wrist, but he slowly relaxed and straightened out the arm. “I don't know any girls can climb trees except for Sarah.”
“Is that a fact?” Matt shot Sarah a surprised grin and chuckled at the blush that crept across her cheeks. “I'd like to see that.”
“Jonah Voder is the best tree climber I know,” Jacob went on, warming to the topic, forgetting all about Matt examining his arm. “He's ten and he can climb like a squirrel. I can climb pretty good, but sometimes my reach is not far enough. I'm only eight and I'm not so big as Jonah Yoder is.”
Sarah leaned in to get a look at the scrape, her expression worried. “Is it broken?”
“Heck no, it's just a scrape,” Matt said, rolling his eyes at Jacob. “Girls.”
“Girls,” Jacob parroted derisively. He gave his sister a superior look. “Heck no, Sarah. It's not broke.”
“It's a doozy of a scrape, though,” Matt said. “Really gross.”
“What is this gross?” the boy asked.
“Gross is like
Jacob eyed his wound with new delight. “Gross,” he said, obviously liking the way the new word sat on his tongue. He looked up at Matt and they both grinned.
“Radically gross!”
Jacob giggled. “Rad-ic-cally gross!”
“Well have to clean it up and put some goop on it,” Matt said, sobering.
The boy looked up at him, suddenly not so brave. “Will it hurt so very much?”
“Nothing a champion tree climber like you can't handle. At least you won't need stitches, like I did,” Matt said, showing off the line on his chin.
Jacobs eyes widened in a horrified awe. “Did you get that falling out of a tree?”
“No. I had a little accident at work.”
Sarah helped her brother up, clucking at him and muttering in German as she dusted the leaves off him and herself. She scooped up his wide-brimmed felt hat and clamped it on his head. Matt struggled to his feet and leaned heavily against his cane for a moment as the world swayed around him.
“Maybe we can get Sarah to whip us up some breakfast while you and I get that arm taken care of.”
Sarah glanced up, her stomach clenching at the sight of Matt, pale and wobbly. “Run along into the kitchen, Jacob. Sit at the table and wait for us, and no playing with the toaster.” As the boy scampered off, she took a step toward Matt. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” he said, forcing a weak version of his sexy grin. “I'm still a little light-headed from that kiss is all.”
She looked at him as if he'd just insulted her, turned on her heel, and hurried off toward the house with a rustle of skirts.
Matt watched her go, bemused. Flight wasn't the usual effect he had on women. He scratched his throbbing head and frowned down at Blossom, who had come to root through the leaves like a hog sniffing for truffles. The kiss he had shared with Sarah had stunned him. It had been the lightest of kisses, almost chaste, but the electricity had darn near knocked his socks off. She had to have felt it too.
Well, he was feeling too weak to think about the mysteries of the female mind just now, let alone try to subjugate them. And there was an injury to tend to. Dredging up the last of his energy reserves, he started toward the house, almost tripping over the basset hound that had settled herself on his feet.
“Why aren't you in school today?” Sarah asked as she unloaded first aid supplies from her arms onto the pine harvest table in the sunny, spacious kitchen.
Jacob jumped back from the counter where he had been fingering the trigger of the shiny chrome four-slot toaster. “Our teacher has the croup so we don't have no school.”
“You haven't any school,” Sarah corrected.
“Nope.”
“What? No substitute teacher?” Matt asked, motioning Jacob to have a seat on the table.
“There is only one teacher in our Amish school,” Sarah explained. “We have none in reserve.”
“And I suppose this is a one-room school-house with privies out back,” Matt said, half-joking.
Sarah gave him a cool look, her chin lifting. “Of course.”
Embarrassed, Matt wished he could disappear into the linoleum. But seeing no graceful way out of his blunder, he simply ignored it, clearing his throat and turning attention to Jacob once again. He cleaned the boys scrape, his touch as delicate as he could keep it as he worked out the bits of tree bark and dried leaf.
Sarah hovered at his elbow, looking ready to throw herself between them at the first sign of any real pain from her brother. Every time Jacob winced, Sarah flinched and sucked in a little gasp. For every stray tear that squeezed its way out of Jacobs eyes, Sarah shed two. Matt watched her out of the corner of his eye, torn between amusement, sympathy, and annoyance.
“I'm just cleaning it and applying a dressing,” he said. “This isn't an amputation we're talking about here. And I assure you, I know what I'm doing. I'll have you know I graduated fourth in my class from the University of Minnesota med school.”
“How many was in it?” Sarah asked, not quite joking.
Matt gave her a look. “Very funny. Why don't you sit down before you pass out? Or better yet, get started on
