Hummingbird Lake Page 0,13
Nic Callahan’s obstetrician and delivered her twin daughters, but after keeping your cool throughout, you fell apart. That makes you interesting, Sage. Fascinating.”
“I don’t talk about it,” Sage said, knowing she should move but not quite ready to do so.
“That’s okay. Puzzle solving is more fun when you discover clues all on your own.” With that, he put his fingers beneath her chin, tilted up her face, and kissed her.
She tasted minty fresh and surprised. Okay, make that shocked, he revised after she broke speed records scrambling off his lap.
“I’m not a puzzle,” she snapped. “I’m a … a …”
“Doctor?” he suggested.
Her mouth moved, but no words came out.
“Artist who craves blue ribbons?”
Her chin came up. “I’m a woman.”
He grinned. “Yes, you are definitely a woman. A beautiful, intriguing puzzle of a woman—who I suspect hasn’t been kissed in far too long.”
Satisfaction washed through Colt as her pale complexion flooded with color and her limp, weary posture grew straight and strong. “Bite me, Rafferty.”
His laughter followed her out of the door.
Colt didn’t see Sage Anderson again before he departed Eternity Springs the next day. But in the days and weeks that followed, he thought of her often.
He truly did love puzzles.
FOUR
December
Fat, white snowflakes floated down from the night sky and iced the gingerbread on the Victorian-era storefronts and houses in downtown Eternity Springs. At just after three in the morning, the temperature hovered around zero and the streets of the small mountain town lay silent and empty but for the three inches of new snow that had fallen since midnight. Out at her cottage on Hummingbird Lake, Sage dreamed she was back in Africa.
The flatbed truck roared into the small village and stopped outside the plain mud-brick structure that today served as a medical clinic. Sage glanced up from the child whose leg wound she’d just cleaned and stitched as a half dozen Zaraguinas jumped down from the truck and marched inside brandishing guns. One of the rebel gang members shifted his gaze between Sage and her fiancé, Dr. Peter Gates, and barked out a demand in Sangho. “Which is Dr. Sage?”
Peter shot her a warning glance as he stepped forward. “I’m Dr. Sage.”
The Zaraguina frowned, then put his gun barrel against a toddler’s head and asked her mother, “Is he Sage?”
The mother trembled, her eyes wide with fear. “No. She is.”
As the rebel shifted his gun toward Peter, Sage stepped forward. “No! Hurt him and you might as well kill me, too. I won’t help you if you harm him. What do you need?”
Tension shimmered in the air like heat waves. “You are a surgeon?”
“Yes.”
“So am I,” Peter lied, drawing the rebel’s attention back to him and making Sage want to kill him herself. “I can do anything she can do. I’ll go with you willingly if you need assistance. Guns aren’t necessary. We are with the Doctors Without Borders organization. It’s part of our mission to provide independent and impartial medical aid. Politics don’t matter.”
The rebel’s gaze went flat and cold. Sage’s knees turned to Jell-O. He rolled his tongue around his mouth, then spat on the floor. “The woman comes with us.”
“That would be a mistake.” Peter lifted a hand and took a step forward. “I’m a better doctor—”
As happened more and more often, the echo of the gunshot jerked Sage out of her nightmare. She lay in her bed breathing hard, her pulse pounding, actually smelling the stink of gunpowder, until terror dissipated, reality returned, and exhaustion and despair overwhelmed her.
She hadn’t managed five hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time in months. And to think that prior to the Callahan girls’ births, she’d believed that she’d almost defeated her monsters. She’d believed that her spirit was healing.
How wrong she had been. All it had taken was the delivery of two beautiful little girls who would grow up happy and healthy and loved and the demons came roaring back. Ever since that day, she’d spent most of her nights painting.
Purging.
Tonight would be no different. After tossing and turning, then considering and rejecting the temptation of sleeping pills—she’d been down that road before after her father died, and it wasn’t a healthy route for her to take—she finally admitted that additional sleep was beyond her reach. Climbing from her bed, Sage pulled on her warmest robe and slippers, then padded to her studio, where she switched on the lights and placed a blank canvas on her easel. In keeping with her mood, she painted only in shades