Erik. It’d been a long time since she’d looked at another man with interest, with the heart-pounding interest that Erik Lindstrom had awoken in her today. Come to think of it, it’d been a long time since a man looked at her the way Erik looked at her in her new apartment, sparks practically flying between them. She couldn’t ever remember her body feeling so hot, so aware, so finely tuned to someone else.
She grinned, feeling more confident, feeling young again after months of heaviness. Erik looked at her in a way that made her believe that maybe she was still pretty enough, sexy enough, good enough to find someone new. Thank you, Erik Lindstrom, for looking at me like I’m worth something, like someone might want me someday, even if he’s not you…
Her cell phone vibrated next to her on the bed, and she jumped, feeling around for it, gasping as her heartbeat picked up wildly.
I said play doctor, not play house.
Every man.
Söndag, Älskling
-M
Sunday. A little shiver of pleasure made the hairs on her arm stand up as she stared at the short, hot text.
…then again, never say never.
Chapter 5
The next Sunday, Katrin sat on the steps of the porch with the sunshine on her face and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply, feeling content.
It wouldn’t be honest to say that she had shaken her fears entirely. The sound of a car driving past her window slowly in the darkness might still make her shiver for a moment, wondering if Wade had found her. She would wake up with a start if Gabrielle got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Dreams still plagued her, full of Wade’s anger and threats, and she’d wake up in a cold sweat, before she remembered where she was. As soon as she did, she felt better. Being in Skidoo Bay hadn’t erased her worries, but it had certainly helped her feel safer and more comfortable than she had in months.
The days had gone by quickly, filled to the brim with supply runs, learning the new office computer system and refreshing her basic triage nursing skills after two years spent exclusively working in maternity.
The contractor would start on the building interiors only after it was free of garbage, so José hired some migrant workers, but Katrin and Gabrielle also lent a hand, and he had been right, many hands made light work. What had seemed impossible on Monday was completed by Sunday; the old building was now a tidy, empty space ready for a build-in.
The builders would start tomorrow, and while they spent the upcoming weeks re-wiring, updating plumbing, carpeting, patching, and painting, Katrin and Gabrielle would continue familiarizing themselves with the clinic’s operating system, while José headed into Kalispell for start-up medical supplies and obtained the necessary permits for them to open their doors in about two weeks.
Gabrielle was nothing like Katrin had imagined. After hearing she had spent time in the service, she expected someone stern and older, but Gabrielle was a lot like Ingrid. Young and attractive, she had served her requisite ten years after nursing school and then retired from the Army Medical Corps last year when she turned thirty.
Tall and dark, with springy black hair and deep brown eyes, she spoke with the lilting Jamaican accent of her birth country and peppered her speech with patois. As they broke sweats of frustration helping to pull water-stained, filthy carpet out of every corner of every room, Gabrielle would call out “We a’steady working now, dumplin’.”
In her new life, Katrin was Dumplin’, and Gabrielle was Paca, a nickname bestowed upon her many years ago by José when they worked together in Germany. Katrin couldn’t help but feel, sometimes, that she was missing something between them; they spoke in a mixture of patois, Spanish and English, a personalized shorthand only they seemed to understand, and more than once, Katrin caught Gabrielle gazing at José before she would look away, as if fighting some internal battle.
After a few days, Katrin was too curious to keep her questions to herself, and she tried to ask Gabrielle casually about their history.
“Paca, were you and José ever…” She let the question dangle there suggestively while Gabrielle turned her head to Katrin, her expression severe.
“You don’t know half, dumplin’.”
“You two were together?”
Gabrielle had looked away, mumbling from across the room. “What you think you see between him and me?”
“I don’t know. It just feels like maybe there’s some…history there.”
“History. Mmm. I like that, dumplin’. Maybe a little history.”
“Bad timing?”
Gabrielle retied the bandana she wore over her head during work hours, which kept her riotous black springs under control. She called it her bandu. “No. It never happen for me and José, Katrin. Now, dat’s all ‘bout dat.”
For José’s part, he treated both of his employees with cheerful enthusiasm for their work. They were a good team, working long hours and swapping stories over beers on the porch at the end of fruitful days. Katrin greatly appreciated the camaraderie, a change from her previous hospital position where she’d been treated with nothing more than professional civility.
José would tease them each in turn, and occasionally tell a story about Gabrielle from their days in Germany, especially the early days when she was newly deployed and missing home.
“Paca, you remember the first Christmas? Oooo-eee, this Jamaican girl was missing Nueva York. And if me memba right, José, you was missing your
