“You're shameless,” Sarah grumbled, snapping a rein to her gelding's bit.

“I hate to be immodest,” Matt said, “but I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of. Do you?”

The pink crept back into her cheeks as the picture of him flashed again in her mind. He was a beautifully made man. He certainly didn't have anything to be ashamed of.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said cajolingly, stepping a little closer and gently taking hold of her arm. He turned her toward him, but she refused to look at him. “You were a married lady. You've seen a naked man before.”

“That was different.” Lord, please don't let him ask how different, she thought. As different as day and night. She had scarcely seen Samuel completely undressed and when she had, she hadn't been inspired to feel the wild emotions that had careened around inside her when she'd seen Matt. Guilt pressed down on her, but she shooed it away. It wasn't her fault Samuel had been slight of build and Matt Thorne was … not.

“I&m sorry I laughed,' Matt whispered, his breath fanning her ear, his voice an almosttangible caress to her senses. His fingers were gentle on her arm, stroking lightly through the fabric of her black cape. “You were just so cute all flabbergasted.”

Sarah wasn't sure how to respond, if she was expected to respond at all. Flattery was a foreign concept to her. She stepped back from the horse and out of Matt's grasp, deciding that to dismiss the topic was probably the smartest thing she could do. “Are you sure you are up to riding? It's three miles to town.”

Matt eyed the boxy black buggy and the old horse hitched to it. It wouldn't have been his transportation of choice, but if it meant getting to sit beside Sarah, looking at her and smelling the clean soap-scent of her, and possibly brushing up against her every now and again, he was willing to settle.

“I can handle it. Too bad Ingrid didn't arrange to have my car brought down,” he said, helping Sarah up into the buggy. “It's a Jag,” he added proudly.

“What's a Jag?”

He eased him self onto the thinly padded bench seat, staring at her incredulously. “What's a Jag? A Jaguar XJ6. Only one of the finest automobiles known to man. Leather interior, digital CD player, all-aluminum fuel-injected four-liter twenty-four valve inline-six. Two hundred and twenty-three horses under the hood,'

There. Let her scoff at that, Matt thought. Women never failed to be impressed by his car, even if they didn't know what he was talking about. They always had sense enough to know all that jargon meant great things.

Sarah gave him a crooked little smile that clearly said she thought he was one brick short of a full load. She slapped the reins against the geldings back and said, “Two hundred and twenty-three horses? One has always done just fine for me.”

“Very funny.” He reached into his hip pocket and pulled his wallet out. “I have a picture of it. Want to see?”

She arched a brow in disbelief. “You carry a photograph of your car?”

“Well … sure,” he said defensively, pouting a little.

Sarah gave him a long, amused look and burst into laughter.

The ride into Jesse was surprisingly pleasant for them both. Sarahs embarrassment subsided and she relaxed enough to enjoy Matts company. He was nothing short of gentlemanly, chatting with her about her family, ask ing questions about the horse and buggy and listening with genuine interest as she told him about the quiet simplicity of Amish life. She pointed out the farms of family Mends—Jon Schrock the carpenter, Jake Yoder and his wife, Katie, who made beautiful baskets and sold them in Jesse at the folk-art center. She told him the names of the big Belgian horses Martin Lapp was working through his cornfield.

For Matt the ride was one of his first forays into fresh air and sunshine since his hospital-ization. He felt much better than he had the day before. He especially felt better since he was near Sarah, and he decided she was a much greater tonic than any medication he had been prescribed.

He listened to her describe her people and her way of life, so very different from the life he was used to, slower and so peaceful. He watched the way she handled the reins, her small, unadorned hands sure and steady. She was dressed in what he had come to think of as her “uniform”—heavy dark hose, black shoes, blue dress with a black “cape” or bodice covering, and apron pinned in place. Over this she had put a heavy black woolen cloak that tied at the throat. Instead of the small white cap he had grown used to seeing on her, she wore a larger, more concealing black bonnet, the brim of which hid most of her profile like the blinkers on Otis s bridle. It was garb he might have found quaint on some anonymous Amish woman. On Sarah he found it annoying. He wanted to see more of her. She was a lovely young woman. It was frustrating to only catch glimpses of that loveliness.

He tried to picture her in his minds eye in jeans and a sweatshirt, but he couldn't do it. He could see her in a flowing flowered skirt and a dainty blouse with a lace collar. Something feminine and pretty with her hair tumbling in a thick, magnificent wave down her back. Yes, he thought with a smile, he could picture that quite easily, almost as easily as he could picture her wearing nothing at all.

He sat back and enjoyed the ride, enjoyed the scenery, enjoyed the quiet of the countryside. It had bothered him his first couple of days here. He was used to the noise of a busy city. But now, as he sat relaxed beside Sarah, he absorbed the peace of it. A cornfield stood on one side of the road, tall beige stalks dry and ready for picking. On the other side cattle grazed in a tree-dotted pasture, the trees in full fall color. It was beautiful rolling countryside. So peaceful, so far removed from the gritty reality of the inner city. There were no gang wars here, no endless parade of junkies and bums and drunks. There was still order and sanity in a place like Jesse.

In all fairness, there was still order and san ity in most of the TWin Cities area too. The level of urban squalor wasn't nearly so depressing as it was in most cities, but the decline in the poorer areas was steady and disheartening and spreading slowly into the near suburbs like creeping rot. In most respects the metropolitan area was a great place to live—clean, pretty, culturally active, artistically aware—and most of its inhabitants probably didn't give much thought to the prospects of decay and rising crime rates and crumbling morality, but these were things Matt saw on a daily basis. Knowing all those problems were not just a couple hundred miles away from Jesse, but a whole state of mind away, was a relief for him.

The town of Jesse looked like something out of Norman Rockwell's imagination, tree-lined streets and prominent church steeples, brick shop-fronts and tubs of chrysanthemums on the street corners. A tour bus was unloading in front of the chamber of commerce building, and tourists turned with cameras in hand to snap photos of Sarah s horse and buggy.

“You're a celebrity,” Matt said with a grin.

“I'm an oddity.” There was a bitterness in her voice she didn't usually feel, and she realized that while she didn't much care what the tourists thought of her, she suddenly cared very much that Matt Thome not think of her as a curiosity. He didn't say anything, poor man. What could he say? Of course she was an oddity to him. He was a hotshot doctor from the big city. It was a sure bet his life was not crowded with Amish.

“I have to go to the drugstore and the fabric shop and to the grocer's and the dime store,” she said, pulling off onto a side street and up to an honest-to-goodness hitching rail.

Matt was amazed. A town with hitching rails! He hadn't imagined anything like it existed except on reruns of Gunsmoke, Sarah, of course, didn't think it strange at all. She wasn't the oddity here, he thought, he was. He was the alien invading her territory and so were the tourists.

“Is there anyplace in particular you'd like to go?” she asked.

“Ah, well, I thought I'd pay a call on the local doctor, get my dressing changed, have him pull the stitches out of my chin, talk shop.”

“The ride didn't injure you, did it?” Sarah asked, turning her face up to him. Her eyes looked even bigger, widened by concern and framed by the stiff brim of her bonnet.

Matt felt a little bubble of warmth in his chest. He smiled at her and reached a finger out to skim down her nose. He was pretty sure the buggy ride had jarred his teeth loose, but Otis wasn't going to be able to drag that information out of him, not when Sarah was looking up at him that way. “No. I'm fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Sure,” she said, giving him her teasing smile. “That's just my way of seeing if you're fit to help carry the grocery bags.”

They both chuckled at that, then time just caught and held, frozen in the air like a snow-flake as their gazes met.

I wish he would kiss me again, Sarah thought, knowing she shouldn't want it, but wanting it just the same.

I want to lean down and kiss her, Matt thought, the magnetic force of desire tugging at him, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer as his gaze focused on the vulnerable curve of her mouth. He wanted to taste her again, her sweetness, her innocence. Then a gaggle of tourists rounded the corner, cackling and waddling along the sidewalk like a band of roaming geese, and the moment was gone.

They agreed on a time to meet back at the buggy. Sarah pointed Matt toward Dr. Cos-well's office, then went her own way.

At the fabric shop she purchased sturdy blue cloth to make two new shirts for Jacob because it seemed he was growing faster than her mother could sew for him and because she simply enjoyed doing it. Doing things for Jacob helped to ease the ache of not having children of her own.