"What else did Colin say about me?"

"Just that he was worried that you were going to die. Uncle Tris said that if Uncle Colin didn't sit down and shut up he was going to give him some happy drugs."

Gemma smiled. "What's your name?"

"Nell Sandlin. My daddy is in Iraq."

"Oh," Gemma said and offered up a silent prayer for the man's safe return.

"When he comes home, Momma says we'll move back to Detroit-unless she can get Daddy to stay here in Edilean."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want my daddy to come home. We can live in an igloo, I don't care. Just so my daddy is with us."

Gemma would never tell the girl so, but she'd felt the same way when her father was taken away in an ambulance. But he'd never returned.

They heard voices outside the door.

"Uh oh," Nell said. "I promised I'd tell Uncle Tris when you woke up."

There was a clock on the table by the chair. It was ten minutes after four, which meant that Gemma had been out for hours. "Maybe you should tell Dr. Tris that I'd like to see him."

"Sure." Nell went to the door but paused with her hand on the k.n.o.b. "Do you think you'll fall in love with my uncle?"

"I'll do my best not to," Gemma said, repressing a smile. "Unless you want me to."

Nell took a moment to consider this. "Momma says Uncle Tris is in love with an 'impossible dream' and that's why he doesn't fall for real women. But maybe you are that dream."

"I doubt that, but I'll consider it. I think-" She didn't finish because the door opened and an extraordinarily handsome man came in. He was wearing a doctor's white coat, a stethoscope hanging out of a pocket. He had black hair, blue eyes, and a jawline that could have been sculpted out of marble.

Gemma could see why there was talk of falling for the man, and she waited for her own temperature to rise-but it didn't.

Dr. Tris looked around the door at his niece. "I thought you and Landy were going to play nurse and tell me when my patient woke up." His voice was very pleasant.

"Landy fell asleep," Nell said. "And his necklace was blinking so . . ." She shrugged.

"I want you and Landy to go next door and tell Uncle Colin that Gemma woke up."

Nell's face was serious. "Should I tell him you found a brain tumor?"

"Out!" Tristan said as she ran past him, giggling. "And if you frighten Colin I'll sue you for malpractice," he called after her. Shaking his head as he shut the door, he turned to Gemma. "Sorry about that. My niece is much too knowledgeable for her own good. I blame it on TV. Or the Internet. I haven't decided which."

He paused at the foot of the bed and stared down at her. Gemma wasn't sure, but she thought he might be trying to ascertain if she was going to . . . well, probably start flirting with him.

But beautiful as he was, Gemma wasn't attracted to him. She couldn't explain it, but there was a faraway look in his eyes that almost made her feel as though he wasn't really there.

What the doctor saw seemed to relieve him and he let out his breath. "I'm Tristan Aldredge." He held out his hand to shake hers.

"Gemma Ranford."

He walked around the side of the bed. "I've heard about you from Colin. That was some feat you two pulled off this morning." He folded back the cover and lifted her gown to look at her bandaged side.

"What happened to me?"

"When the branch broke, it hit you and cut you along the rib cage. It wasn't too deep. The st.i.tches I used will dissolve in a few days. You'll be sore for a while, so you shouldn't go dancing-or climbing on Colin-for a week or two."

"Did I pa.s.s out?"

"Yes, but I think you mostly had an overload of adrenaline. I hear you got a job you really wanted, then you were subjected to Colin's driving, then you climbed up and rescued a little boy. It's been a hectic couple of days. I suggest you rest for a day or two and you'll be fine."

"Has everything really been posted on YouTube?"

"Every second of it." Tristan smiled. "Tom has suspended Carl, but the rescue is on the Web. There's a second where you and the boy are standing in midair and some kid's already selling posters of it."

Gemma frowned. "It doesn't look bad, does it?

"Bad?" He was checking her pulse.

"I mean I wouldn't want to cause any problems for Colin. Or with any of the Fraziers."

Still holding her wrist, Tris looked at her. "Afraid of losing your job?"

"Yes."

"The Fraziers would never fire you just because you-"

He broke off when the door flew back and Colin burst in-and Gemma's face dissolved into a smile. As pretty as Dr. Tris was, to her eyes, he looked small and insignificant next to Colin.

"How do you feel?" Colin asked. "Sore? In pain? Weak?"

"Hungry," Gemma said.

Colin grinned at her. "We can fix that." He looked at Tris. "When can we leave?"

"As soon as she's dressed."

When both men kept standing at the foot of the bed and staring at her, Gemma said, "Could I have some privacy please?"

"Sure," Tris said. "Mrs. Frazier sent some of your clothes over, and they're in the closet. Take your time."

She watched the two men leave, then slowly got out of bed.

Outside in the waiting room, Colin looked at Tristan. "You're sure she's okay? Nell said something about a brain tumor."

Tris cut his niece a look, and she m.u.f.fled a giggle. "Gemma is fine. That was a scary thing she went through and that combined with the cut made her faint."

"Then Uncle Tris gave her narcotics," Nell said. "So Gemma slept for hours."

Colin shook his head at her. "You're already an Aldredge. What medical school are you going to?"

"None. I'm going to be a ballerina," Nell said as she got off the chair. "Could I have five dollars?" she asked her uncle.

"How about two?" he said, getting out his wallet. "And where are you planning to go?"

"You know Mr. Lang is picking me up." She looked at Colin. "He has puppies, and I'm going to get one."

They saw out the window that Brewster Lang's old truck had stopped in front of the office.

"Go!" Tris ordered. "Or he'll start blowing his horn."

Holding tight to her bear, Nell ran out the door.

"When did that start?" Colin asked.

"The last time Sara and Mike were home, Nell spent the afternoon at the farm with them, and she and Lang hit it off." Tris shrugged. "Yet another thing I don't understand about that child. I don't even get that weird bear. Anyway, Mike and Sara got in last night, and they invited Nell over to see the puppies. Lang picked her up."

Colin was barely listening. "You're sure Gemma's okay?"

Tris put his hand on Colin's big shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "She's fine. Very healthy. It looks like she works out some."

"Yeah, she does. And she's smart and curious and remembers things. She's a good sport and easy to be with, and-" He broke off.

Tris was behind the counter in the room where his secretary usually worked. She wasn't there today, as his office was closed. If the people of Edilean had any medical problems on Tris's days off, they had to go to Williamsburg-which was why Colin's sister, Ariel, was planning to work with him when she finished her residency. But Tris had come in at Colin's call.

"You seem to like Gemma," Tris said, his head down.

"Yeah, I do."

"So ask her out," Tris said.

"Gemma and I just met. And I need to finish some things first."

"I guess that means Jean. Too bad. Looks like that leaves me free to ask Gemma out."

"You mean on a date?"

"Yeah. Dinner and a movie. Hey! I know. Mike and Sara invited me to their barbecue. I'll ask Gemma if she'd like to go with me. I bet she'll love Merlin's Farm. She and Sara can talk about architecture until the sun comes up."

Colin was staring at him. "Gemma was injured. I don't know if she's ready to go-"

"I'm her doctor. Of course she can go."

"Go where?" Gemma asked from the doorway.

Tristan stepped forward. "I have been invited to a barbecue in a couple of weeks and I wondered if you'd like to go with me."

Gemma was pleased with the invitation. She needed to meet more people in Edilean besides the Fraziers. As it was, she'd already spent too much time with Colin.

"I'd love to go," she said, smiling at him.

8.

GEMMA AND COLIN were in his Jeep and driving back to the Frazier house.

"Gemma," Colin began, "I'm really sorry that you were hurt. I shouldn't have involved you in my job."

"It was one of the most exciting moments of my life," she said.

"Yeah? Are you just being nice?"

"No, really. I spend most of my life dealing with books and papers, so being able to help rescue a child was great."

"What about your athletic students?" She was covered up again, but he remembered the shape of her. "Didn't they help you do more than just read?"

Gemma smiled in memory. "They changed my life in a big way." She glanced at Colin, and he gave a nod to encourage her to continue. "When I started tutoring, the boys kept falling asleep in my sessions and I was really annoyed. I worked hard to make the lessons interesting, but they were ignoring me. One day I touched one of the sleeping football players on the shoulder and he . . ." She shook her head. "He grabbed me about the waist, picked me up, and started running. He said he'd been dreaming and thought I was a football."

Colin didn't laugh. "You could have been hurt."

"If we'd been alone I might have been. But in the first month of tutoring one of the guys made a pa.s.s at me, so I never again had one boy at a time. On the day the guy grabbed me, there were four other boys there, and the others rescued me before anything bad happened. I'm still glad the kid wasn't a shot-putter and didn't try to throw me over a pole."

Colin was frowning. "Did you do something to prevent things like that from happening again?" His tone and formality were that of a law enforcement officer.

"Yes, I did. The truth is, it all scared me."

"Rightfully so."

"But when I told the guys I'd have to report the incident, they said it looked like I could teach, but I couldn't learn. I had no idea what they were talking about."

"The fatigue that comes from training for a sport," Colin said softly.

"You're right. One of the boys angrily said that if I did what they did, I wouldn't be able to stay awake to study either."

As Colin pulled into the driveway of his parents' house, he was listening intently to her. "What did you do?"

"I couldn't resist a challenge like that one. I wanted to prove them wrong." She laughed. "And I was sure I'd succeed. I was young, healthy, and I kept in shape by rushing around the campus while carrying a heavy load of books. And I've never smoked and I rarely drink."

Colin was smiling. "How long did you last?"

"Three days. They had me doing cardio, weights, stretching, then I had to repeat it all again. And you know what? They were right. I was too tired to think, much less to learn anything. At the end of the week, I sat down with the original boys and had a serious talk with them. I patiently explained that while their job was athletic, mine was cerebral, so I couldn't continue with their very strenuous program."

"And how did that work out?" He was grinning.