inutes.
He turned off his phone and went to his car.
Chapter 9
Jamie watched Nate lower the Olympic bar, the multiple forty-five-pound plates making it bow. He’d been quiet since his cousin arrived, but then, it hadn’t taken much to see that Nate needed to talk.
Yesterday, Della Kissel had come to Jamie’s office. She was Kyle’s patient but she’d demanded a second opinion, which in Summer Hill meant seeing Dr. Jamie. He’d been told by Kyle that her tests in Richmond showed that there was nothing wrong with her. “The woman will live to be a thousand,” Dr. Kyle had said. “Unless someone gets sick of her gossiping and offs her.”
Della had wanted to be alone with Jamie so she could tell him about Nate and Terri. “I promised Brody I wouldn’t say anything to anyone, but you’re a relative so I think you should know. Did you know that your cousin is engaged to that lovely Stacy Hartman? Did you know that her father is the mayor? Have you heard that she dropped dear Bob Alderson for your cousin? It was the scandal of the year! Why would she want a bear of a man like Nathaniel Taggert when she could have an elegant gentleman like Bob? Although I must say that when Nathaniel was at my house with me in my nightclothes it was quite, quite intimate—if you know what I mean. Does your cousin make passes at all women?”
Jamie put his stethoscope away. Della’s heart rate was rising with each question. “No,” he said, smiling. “He only comes on to the very pretty ones.”
That had pleased her so much that he was able to get her to talk about people other than his cousin.
The visit had warned Jamie that something was going on with Nate. But then his wife, Hallie, had figured that out. The first two days Nate had been in Summer Hill he’d practically lived with them, but then Terri Rayburn returned to town and they’d not seen him since.
Nate did another dead lift. Sumo style, legs wide, one hand outward, the other back. He moved slowly, never jerking the weight, the knurled bar scraping his shins. Like all dedicated lifters, his shins were scarred from years of dragging a heavy bar up over them.
Jamie, sitting on a bench, wiping sweat off his face, was waiting. There were rigid, unbreakable rules in a gym. Don’t drop the weights. Put what you use away—don’t leave it for someone else. Grunting at machines was for girls. Only free weights made a man exert to the max. Don’t talk to someone who’s lifting.
He and Nate were at the gym at Tattwell, a restored plantation just outside Summer Hill that was owned by a distant relative. The wide doors were open and the breeze kept the air cool.
“It’s just that I feel like my life is being taken over,” Nate said. “Where I live and work. How I live. It’s all being decided for me. I’m beginning to feel that it’s a play that’s already been written and I’ve been cast in the role.”
“Did you and Stacy talk about this before you got here?”
“I thought we did.” Nate ran a towel over his face and neck, then picked up a fifty-pound dumbbell and started doing preacher curls. He was so angry he did twelve reps. For a lifter, if he could do a full twelve, that meant the weight was too light. He picked up a fifty-five-pound dumbbell. “I needed to get away from where Kit dumped me in the middle of a bunch of desk jockeys with all their blasted paperwork. I thought I was going to go insane. Then Stacy was there and she wanted to live in this little town and—” He broke off to do eight reps. Slow, using as much force to lower the weight as to lift it.
“Summer Hill. Where Kit had moved.”
Nate gave Jamie a hard look. “Don’t start playing psychologist on me. Kit being here is a coincidence.”
Jamie wasn’t about to challenge Nate when there was so much anger in his eyes. “I’d be a psychiatrist. Medical degree, remember?”
Nate didn’t smile, but did another eight reps. When he finished, he looked at Jamie. “I love the girl but I’m not liking the life that’s been planned out for me. And I can’t stand her parents.”
Nate seemed to be in danger of not saying another word, so Jamie decided to encourage him. Misery does love company! “Whatever you have to say about in-laws, I can top it. You should meet Hallie’s sister! She’s a tall, skinny, shapeless blonde who truly believes that every man in the world wants her. She manipulates her poor husband like he’s her toy—and the guy seems to love it. When she’s around Hallie, I have to watch her every minute in case she decides to do or say something hateful. Right now she’s jealous because Hallie is expecting and she isn’t. She thought that because I’m a doctor I could give her a shot of some miracle drug and tomorrow she’d be knocked up. Vain girl!”
Nate put down the single dumbbell and picked up a set of forty-pounders and Jamie knew he was going to do flyes. That Nate wasn’t sticking to a single body part and working it to exhaustion was a sign of how upset he was. They’d been taught by their fathers, and they knew to structure their workouts around a body part. Back, chest, legs. But today Nate was all over the place. He was doing squats and bench presses in the same day. Not what they’d been taught!
Jamie stood up to spot Nate on the incline bench with the flyes. If an arm gave way—a common occurrence—the dumbbell could come down on a face. Or a pec muscle could be pulled away from his chest. With Nate’s anger and as heavy as he was lifting today, all manner of bad could happen.
“At least you wouldn’t be living around the corner from them. Mayor Hartman is giving Stacy and me the old Stanton house as a wedding present.”
That so shocked Jamie that he almost let Nate’s arms go out too far on his next rep. The house was an eyesore, but worse, it was at the crossroads of town. “You’d never be able to step out of your house without people seeing you. You wouldn’t like it there.”
“I know, but Bob said Stacy loves the house. Did you know that she was nearly engaged to Bob Alderson?”
Jamie wasn’t going to tell him that Della Kissel had filled his ear. “I’ve heard rumors.”
Nate put the weights on the floor and sat up on the bench. “Stacy never told me a word about him.” He stretched out on another bench, this time under a bar loaded with forty-five-pound plates.
At least he’s sticking with chest for two exercises, Jamie thought but didn’t say. “So what’s it like living at the lake? I hear you’re friends with the manager’s daughter.” Jamie watched as Nate’s whole body changed. His face relaxed so much he almost smiled. “What’s she like?”
When Nate did a mere five reps with the heavy bar, Jamie thought that just the mention of the name had softened Nate so much that he couldn’t do a full set.
Nate sat up. “You know Cameron Diaz’s legs?”