Anywhere You Are Read Free Page B

you have time for this?” she asked, her tone arch.
    “Yes,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her subtext. “My appointment is in an hour.”
    “My place would have been faster.” She’d tried—and failed—to convince Marc to join her at her house, away from prying eyes and anyone who might recognize her.
    “But this place is closer to where I ultimately need to be.” He glanced around, as if looking for someone—the server, maybe?—and then focused his gaze back on her. “I still don’t know how you managed to get out of urgent care that quickly,” he said, his gray eyes sharp behind his glasses, as if he already knew all her secrets. “There must have been forty people waiting to be seen before us.”
    Grace shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. My injuries weren’t that serious. Bruising and a tendon tear, but no broken bones. They say everything should heal up in a month or so if I wear the supportive braces and use the crutches they gave me.”
    Truth was, the triage nurse had known exactly who she was and had insisted she be seen more quickly—
to avoid any security issues,
she’d said. Given that everything about Marc screamed
order,
Grace guessed that telling him about skipping the line wouldn’t go over so well.
    “Is your leg feeling better with the braces on?” he asked, his voice surprisingly gentle.
    She nodded. “Yes.”
    He made a little noise of approval in his throat. “Good.”
    Forget stiff. He was warm when he wanted to be. And he was real, too. Case in point: almost everyone else around them had their noses buried in their cellphones, whereas Marc looked her straight in the eye when he talked to her. He’d done that in the hospital waiting room, too. Kept the focus on her when she was there, and read a newspaper—an actual, physical newspaper—when she’d gone back to get checked out by the doctor.
    Guilt suddenly swamped her. She’d ruined his hike, disrupted his whole day, and here he was, sitting here, about to eat lunch with her—a lunch he probably didn’t even want.
    “I’m so sorry for all of…well,
this,
” she told him. “I know you’re anxious to get to your meeting, so please take off. I’ll be fine. I can easily get a cab home from here.”
    “Absolutely not,” he said with a frown. “I promised you lunch and a ride home, and that’s what you’re going to get.”
    “I really appreciate you helping me,” she said softly. “I don’t know how I would have made it out of the woods otherwise.”
    For a moment, he looked as though he were going to say something else. Then he shook his head ever so slightly. “Your friends know where you are, right?”
    She nodded. “Yes. I called them when you stepped out to take that phone call. We’re cool.” Okay, not really. They’d freaked out, but that was a mess she’d have to fix later with lots of apologies and even more wine.
    The hike with Carolyn and Jane Pringle was supposed to have been fun, the kind of normal thing friends did with one another on a summer weekend. She’d met the two women by chance at Jane’s bakery last month, and they’d hit it off immediately. And they hadn’t been judgy or weird—not even when they found out who she was.
    Now they’d probably think she was certifiable.
    “Do you go on hikes often?” he asked.
    “I’m in the woods a lot for work, but no, I don’t go on formal hikes. Today was my first in a while, hence the new shoes and the tripping.”
    “What do you do that your work is in the woods?”
    “I’m an artist,” she told him, waiting for his reaction.
    He didn’t even blink. “Fascinating. What medium?”
    “Painting,” she said, shocked that he even knew what kind of question to ask. “Oil and watercolor, mostly. I just completed a set of ten prints for an article on plants of New England for
Nature
and I’m currently doing a series of local fauna for the Audubon Society. I’m also starting work on a new project—a book about endangered birds in