“So, is all this peace and quiet driving you bonkers yet?”

“No,” Matt answered truthfully. A part of him had expected it to; he was, after all, a city boy born and bred. He was used to the sights and sounds and smells and the tension in the air of a vibrant metropolitan area. He was used to the nerve-racking pace of the ER. The first couple of days he had been here the quiet had irritated him, but at the moment he couldn't say that he missed any of it.

Julia made no comment. She chewed her lower lip and looked pensive, as if she took his contentment as a bad sign. Matt glanced at her and looked back out at the front yard. It was a gorgeous Indian summer morning, unseasonably warm. The air was dotted with ladybugs flying aimlessly around. The chains of the porch swing squeaked.

“So how are you—really?”

“Better. As you can see, my face no longer looks like an overripe melon. The ribs are healing. The leg … I don't know. Do you think women would find a slight limp sexy?”

“They would if you were the one limping.”

Matt reached over and tweaked her cheek. He enjoyed the easy camaraderie that existed between himself and Julia. They had been lovers once, but it had been a disastrous affair and in the end both had admitted to treasuring their friendship too much to spoil it just for the sake of fabulous sex.

“What about you?” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” she asked, feigning surprise. “Never been better.”

Matt wasn't fooled for an instant. “Have you heard from him?” He didn't use a name because he couldn't bring himself to say it. He hadn't liked quarterback “Storm” Dalton the few times he had met him, and had never thought him good enough for Julia. It gave him no pleasure to know he'd been right all along.

“No,” she said, picking at a scab of paint on the arm of the swing, giving her attention to the task as if it held some earth-shattering importance. “I don't expect to. He's playing for Kansas City now. He doesn't owe any loyalty to an old Vikings fan, does he?” She shot Matt a look. “Don't answer that. And don't say you told me so.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“Good,” she said, forcing a smile. “Because I didn't come all the way down here to talk about me. I came to talk about you.”

“What's up in the ER?”

“Same old stuff. The names and the faces change, but the score stays the same. We're outnumbered. We could use our top dog back. When are you going to be ready?”

Matt took a long time in answering. A lot of feelings surfaced at the thought of going back, some of them pleasant, most of them not. The truth was the top dog was feeling old and cynical and he couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to lie. “I don't know.”

Julia pulled herself up, the seriousness of the topic demanding a more aggressive posture. “Matt, what happened—”

“This isn't about me getting shot, Julia. It's about trying and caring too much and not being able to make a difference.”

“You make a difference! I've lost count of the lives you've saved.”

“And I've lost count of the ones who came back shot or knifed or OD'd or with a gun in their hand so they could robe the drug cabinet.”

“Those aren't the ones you're supposed to count.”

“Aren't they?”

“Come on, Matt, you thrive on the action. It's only natural for you to feel a little depressed now, but that will wear off. You just need to get back in harness again. You need to get back to the city, back to reality. Look around you. This isn't reality. This is … is …” She looked around as if an appropriate word might pop out at her, finally shrugging. “This is a cornfield.”

Matt looked around. He saw the bleached stalks of corn, heard them rustling in the wind. He watched an Amish buggy pass. He saw the sky as a bowl of electric blue, unmanned by high-rise buildings. A dragonfly investigated the pot of yellow mums that sat on the porch step, and Blossom sat like a sentinel at the end of the driveway with a shoe in her mouth.

Julia pushed the swing into motion again with the toes of her boots, her hands dangling between her knees, her gaze drifting to the feu-side of the yard where Sarah had come out to rake leaves. “So what's the story on you and Laura Ingalls Wilder?”

“I'm not ready to talk about it.”

Julia gave a low whistle. “That serious, huh?”

Matt said nothing. He just gave her a long steady look with his dark eyes, letting her read what she would there.

Julia shook her head and heaved a sigh, her anger showing through her normally placid manner. “Will you look at what you're doing here?”

“I'm recuperating.”

“You're hiding. You're retreating—not only from the city but from this century! Matt, you're too good a doctor to just burn out and fade away!”

He couldn't think of anything worth saying. Propping his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward and rubbed the back of his neck. Julia slumped back against the bench, spearing her fingers into her thick hair and smoothing it back from her face.

“Want to take a drive into town?” Matt asked. “They have a real old-fashioned soda fountain at the drugstore.”

“No, thanks.” Julia shook her head wearily and checked the man's watch she wore on her wrist. “I should head back. I told Devers I'd work her shift.”

Matt pushed himself up from the swing and followed her to the porch steps, catching her by the sleeve of her bomber jacket when she was two steps below him. “You can't bury yourself in work forever”

She pressed her lips into a long thin line as she avoided his gaze. “I guess we all have our ways of compensating, don't we?”

Matt took the hint. He thought she was hiding; she thought he was hiding. He wasn't going to let her in on all of his feelings; she wasn't going to let him in on hers. Standoff. “Ill walk you to your car.”

At the door of her Firebird she turned around and hugged him fiercely, then pulled back and swiped her hair out of her eyes. “Look, I know you're going through a rough spot right now. Just do me a favor and hang on, will you?”

He nodded, his gaze holding hers. “You too.”

She managed a tired smile that didn't get anywhere near her eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

Matt leaned against Lisbeth Parker's white Cadillac and watched Julia drive off, his mind resolutely shutting out the things she had said. As the Firebird disappeared down the road, he redirected his attention, catching Sarah looking at him.

Sarah dodged his gaze, focusing on her raking. She scraped the bamboo tines of the broad rake against the ground with more zeal than was required, sweeping the fallen maple leaves into an ankle-deep pile. It didn't matter to her that Matt had old girlfriends calling on him. Scrape, scrape, scrape. It didn't matter to her that Julia McCaiver was beautiful. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

“Trying to rake your way to China?”

She stopped just short of raking over the sneakers that had come into her limited field of vision. “Any job worth doing is worth doing well.”

She started to turn away from him, but he caught her by the shoulders. Still, she refused to look up at him. Tears had gathered behind her eyes and were pressing for release.

“Julia is an old friend of mine,” Matt said sofdy. “There's nothing romantic between us. There hasn't been for a long time. She came to prod me about going back to work.”

“It is no concern of mine,” Sarah said primly.

“I'd like to think it is. Come on, Sarah,” he said in his soft, cajoling tone. “Look at me. Please.”

The please did her in. He sounded so sincere. She was being silly anyway, wasting what time they had together on pointless jealousy. She gave him a weak version of her crooked smile.

“That's better,” he said, tracing his thumb over the line of her mouth. A chuckle worked its way up out of his chest. “My little pacifist. You looked ready to tear Julia s hair out by the roots when she kissed me!”

“Make jokes,” Sarah said, trying to look stern. “You bring out the dickens in me, Matt Thome. You should be ashamed.”

“Should I?” he asked softly. Suddenly the fresh fall air was charged with energy humming tight around them. Matt brought his hands up to frame her face, his thumbs brushing under the loose ties of her kapp. “I think I make you feel alive. I know that's how you make me feel. I think I bring that fire you keep buried inside you a little closer to the surface.”

“Matt …” She breathed his name like a sigh, invoked it like a prayer. She tilted her chin up, offering her mouth to him, and her whole body jolted as he kissed her, as if he'd infused her with a sudden burst of electricity. Alive. That was exactly what he made her feel, beautifully, achingly alive.

When he lifted his head, he had that look of wonder in his eyes again and he smiled. “I never would have believed love could happen so fast,” he murmured.

He slid his hands back from her face, tugging her kapp off and loosing the moorings of her bun all in one motion. Hairpins scattered, and her long chestnut tresses tumbled free, the wind catching at strands and fluttering them like ribbons. It felt wonderful and free—like her spirit.

She made a face at him. “Now, look what you've done. I'll have to put it all back up again. You're worse than a little boy tugging braids.”

Matt laughed, unrepentant. He felt, if not like a little boy, certainly younger than he had in a long time. “Oh, yeah?” he said, rising to the bait. “In that case, I belt you can't get this away from me.” He extended his arm above his head with Sarah's fine white kapp perched on the ends of his fingers.

Sarah made a jump for it. Matt snatched it back and twisted away from her. They played a laughing game of keep-away, eyes dancing, bodies dodging and feinting, leaves crunching beneath their feet. Matt was able to move at only about half speed. To compensate, Sarah didn't try as hard as she might have to win. The object wasn't in getting her kapp back, but in prolonging the game. They laughed and chased each other, touching and tickling. And as always, they became so absorbed in each other, the rest of the world faded into the far background. They scarcely noticed the sun that warmed them or the breeze or the dog that came to bark at their foolishness or the Amish farm wagon that rumbled past.