Mountain Mystic by Debra Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

architectural unity. Other houses, hidden in little hollows beside the road, were no more than a rooftop peeking over the edge of the asphalt paving. Almost all the wooden houses had a porch enclosed with a picket-fence railing.
    Some of the towns they passed through were only wide spots in the road—a collection of buildings around a stop sign or railroad tracks. Victoria couldn’t imagine living less than twenty feet from an active train route, and wondered why the houses hadn’t shaken apart over the years. A few dead coal mines also dotted the landscape, their chutes and works rusted with age and idleness. The mines looked like ugly tentacled creatures hunkered down in the midst of a gorgeous panorama.
    The leaves were beginning to turn color, but foliage still sheltered much of the road from sunlight. Patches of light dappled the shade as she negotiated the serpentine road and hairpin curves that would have nauseated her if she hadn’t been driving.
    “Slow down,” Joshua advised.
    “But I’m only doing thirty!”
    “The road drops out from under you around the next curve.”
    “Oh.”
    She glued her eyes on the road where it disappeared around the mountain, and Joshua kept his eyes on her, noticing the way her hands clutched the steering wheel. “Nervous?”
    “About what?”
    “About your first patient.”
    “Oh. No, I’ve had lots of patients. It’s the road and all that talk about it dropping out from under me. Why don’t you people have guardrails?”
    “We do. In some places.”
    Victoria shot him a sour look. “Not in enough places.”
    Ignoring her displeasure, Joshua asked, “How can you have had a lot of patients? This is your first practice.”
    “I’m new but not untried, for heaven’s sake. I’ve done more clinical course work than I care to remember. They don’t give us a book exam and turn us loose on the unsuspecting public!”
    “Well, what do they do? I mean, you can’t exactly call up Acme Midwife School.”
    “Actually you can. There are about forty nurse-midwifery programs, but my bachelor of fine arts degree didn’t qualify me. So I went to nursing school to get my R.N., much to the horror of Richard, my ex-husband. After the divorce I got my midwifery certificationand a master’s degree from Columbia University.”
    “Why’d your husband object to nursing school?” Joshua asked as he pointed out another sharp curve.
    With her attention split between the road and the conversation, she answered the question more honestly than she intended. “Wives don’t work; they dress well, volunteer, and entertain. A really good wife can do all three simultaneously.”
    “I take it that wasn’t enough for you.”
    Victoria hesitated. The truth was that Richard wanted a business arrangement with bedroom privileges, not a real marriage. Unfortunately, he hadn’t let her in on the secret until he slipped the ring on her finger and announced his agenda for success, expecting her to fall in line like the well-connected society debutante he’d thought he’d married.
    Instead of telling Joshua the truth, she gave him the same flip, easy explanation that satisfied most people. “Midwifery beats wallpapering hands down as the acid test for a relationship.”
    “But you weren’t a midwife when you were married to Richard,” Joshua objected astutely. “You didn’t get into the midwifery program until after the divorce.”
    Abruptly, she asked, “How much farther?”
    Joshua’s eyebrows shot up. He got the message loud and clear. Victoria’s failed marriage was not open for discussion. Fair enough. He didn’t want to have to drag all the details of his past into this relationship either.
Relationship?
He thought he’d settled that questionthis morning.
Then why are you nosing around in her past?
Because I never could resist nosing around in the past, he admitted honestly.
    “How much farther?” she asked again.
    “Not very far. A couple of miles up the road you’ll see a