“No, Matt,” Ingrid said, her voice pleasant enough, but there was a glint of steel in her gaze that made him frown. “Stay with me. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
He settied back into his chair and watched as Ingrid put Blossom down and casually went to the window to look out at Sarah crossing the yard.
“I had a chat with your local doctor—I use the term loosely,” he said. “I can't believe people actually line up to put their lives in his hands.”
“They don't have a choice,” Ingrid said, returning to her chair. “The next nearest doctor is thirty miles away.”
“That's frightening.”
“You don't know the half of it. Matt, good doctors don't want to locate in rural areas like this and you can well imagine why. The money isn't great, the hours stink, there's no prestige, no fancy country club to join, nothing to aspire to.”
“Who wants to be a general practitioner when he can specialize and pull down twice the bucks.”
“You said it, not me. Consequently, towns like Jesse end up with doctors like Coswell.”
“I wouldn't send Blossom to that guy.”
“Neither would I. Thankfully, since this is prime farm country, our veterinarians are excellent.”
Matt shook his head at the shame of it—a town where the people would have been better off being treated by the horse doctor. He nibbled thoughtfully on a chocolate chip cookie.
“I think you know what I want to talk to you about,” Ingrid said quietly, her manner instantly changing the tone of the conversation. Her fingers toyed with a small envelope, turning it around and around in her hands, but her attention was solely on her brother.
Matt could feel her gaze on him, but he didn't look up. He loved his sister, but he didn't much care for being made to feel like he was twelve all over again. He put his cookie down and crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “What?”
“Sarah.”
“What about her?”
“I'm not blind, Matt. She looks at you like you can walk on water.”
He turned toward her then, his gaze calm and clear. “This is none of your business, Ingrid.” His tone was soft and level, but the warning was unmistakable.
“Isn't it?” Ingrid put the envelope down and leaned forward over the table. “Sarah is my friend as well as my employee. I care about what happens to her. I don't want to see her get hurt, Matt.”
“What makes you think I intend to hurt her?”
“I don't think you intend to hurt her, but that's what's going to happen. I know you, Matt. Your head is easily turned. You've been cooped up in this house with only Sarah for company. She's a bright, sweet, pretty girl—”
“She's a woman, Ingrid, not some kid in pigtails,” he interrupted, resenting the implication that he would take advantage of an innocent child, even though innocent was a word he had used himself to describe Sarah.
“Be that as it may,” Ingrid said, not backing down in the least. “She's not the kind of woman you're used to. She's not someone you can just play with, Matt.”
Matt gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “Boy, you certainly have a high opinion of me all of a sudden!”
Ingrid closed her eyes briefly, sighed, then tried again. “I'm not being critical. I know your career comes first with you and that's fine. The women you've been involved with know it too. I just don't think Sarah will understand those kinds of rules.”
“Well maybe I'm not just playing with her. Has that thought occurred to you, Ingrid?” he said in a voice low and rough with emotion. He stared his sister in the eye and made what was probably the biggest confession of his life. “Maybe I'm in love with her.”
Ingrid looked at him long and hard, trying to judge just how serious his “maybe” was. Her look softened, and she reached for his hand. He snatched it away from her and pushed himself out of his chair, going to stare out the back window.
“You've known each other only a matter of days,” she said gently.
“Excuse me. Did I say this made sense?” he asked sardonically, his brows lifting in exaggerated question. “I don't recall saying that, but as long as we're on the subject, how long did you know John before you were certain you wanted to marry him?”
Ingrid sighed, planting her elbows on the table and rubbing two fingers to each temple. Everyone who knew her knew the story of how she and John had met on a casual double date while paired up with other people. She swore up and down she had known by the time they left the restaurant John Wood was the man she wanted to marry. “Point taken,” she said wearily.
“Maybe you don't think I'm capable of that kind of depth of feeling,” Matt said, continuing on the defensive, his tone particularly cutting because the doubts he was expressing on his sisters behalf were doubts he'd had about himself. “Maybe you think I was just going to go through my whole life married to my career, fooling around on the side with women who didn't expect any kind of commitment from me.”
Ingrid gave him a furious look and slapped her hand down on the table. “Stop it!” she snapped. “Will you just listen to me for two minutes?”
He checked his watch just to needle her and gazed off into the middle distance, waiting.
“Matt, she's Amish. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“She dresses funny and drives a horse.”
“Don't be smart. Do you know anything about the Amish way of Hfe?”
He gave a belligerent shrug. “Its Sarah's religion. That's fine. It doesn't matter. I don't care. We can work around that.”
“It does matter,” Ingrid insisted. “The Amish here are from the Old Order. They're veiy strict in their beliefs, particularly as separatists. Sarah is walking a fine line just by working here. Do you know what would happen to her if they found out she was involved with a Yankee?”
“I'm sure you're going to teU me,” he said, making clear that he didn't want to hear it.
Ingrid went on just the same, bound by a duty to her friend and her brother. “It's called the Meidung. Unless she repented publicly, she would be ostracized, shunned by her people. They wouldn't be allowed to acknowledge her in any way. They wouldn't be able to speak to her or take something from her hand or sit at a dinner table with her. She would lose everything—her faith, her family.”
“You're making this up,” Matt said angrily, knowing he sounded utterly childish.
“I'm not,” Ingrid replied calmly.
“That's barbaric.”
“It's their way, and they have their reasons for it.”
Matt leaned against the window frame and stared out at the farmyard cast in bronze by the late afternoon sun. Sarah was bent over by the barn door, pouring out milk for an assortment of cats. He thought of the way she had spoken of her family, the love that had lit her eyes. He thought of her relationship with little Jacob. Would she be willing to give all that up? Did he have the right to ask her? Was he insane to even consider it?
They'd only known each other a matter of days. But now he'd fallen in love with her in those few days. He'd never felt anything like it. It was powerful and consuming and he couldn't imagine it ever burning out. And it wasn't just lust. He knew lust. Lust didn't have anything to do with the way he felt when he watched Sarah open a book and become in stantly absorbed in the process of learning. Lust didn't make him want to protect her and defend her. It wasn't lust that ached when he saw her tears. This was love, the real McCoy. Just because it had struck like a bolt of lightning out of the blue didn't make it any less real.
He was in love with Sarah Troyer. And now Ingrid was telling him it was against the rules, rules he hadn't even known existed. The sudden knowledge of the stakes and the penalties sent him reeling.