Nightingale Way: An Eternity Springs Novel by Emily March

missing that in her life. “Thank you. What’s my first assignment?”
    “We have a town meeting tonight I’d love to take a pass on. The guy I’ve been dating moved away last month and he’s here for a visit.”
    “Tell me when and where.”
    “The school auditorium at seven o’clock. I’ve been told there’s to be a special presentation.”
    “Seven at the school. I’ll be there.”
    Cat was so happy that she decided to stop by the Trading Post grocery store to buy a brand-new notebook. After that, she figured she might as well indulge in something sweet from Sarah Reese’s bakery, Fresh. While choosing between a strawberry pinwheel cookie and an oatmeal apple raisin cookie, she overheard a discussion about some new handmade items being offeredfor sale in the quilt shop on Spruce Street, and she decided to take a look. There she fell in love with a double wedding ring quilt made of satin and silk—not the usual quilting fabrics. A discussion with the shop owner, LaNelle Harrison, led to an invitation to attend the next quilting bee. Walking back to Angel’s Rest, Cat came across Sage and her little dog, Snowdrop. They talked dogs for a few minutes, then Sage invited Cat to come out to her house on Hummingbird Lake to see paintings Sage had done of the little white bichon frisé that had been a gift from her husband, Colt, when they were dating.
    Cat rode one of the bicycles available to Angel’s Rest guests out to the lake. She thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and returned to town more relaxed and lighthearted than she’d been in weeks. That feeling ended when she braked at a stop sign and saw a scowling Gabe Callahan circle his car to help someone out of the passenger seat in front of the Eternity Springs Medical Clinic. Cat did a double-take. A woman in a white physician’s coat hurried out the clinic door pushing a wheelchair as Gabe escorted the bloodied and battered figure of a man.
    “Jack!”
    “Dammit, Callahan!” Jack snapped, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of Colt Rafferty’s motorcycle as it pulled up behind Gabe’s car. “I can walk by myself.”
    “Sure you can,” Gabe fired back, ignoring Jack’s protest and putting the injured man’s arm over his shoulder to help support his weight. “After all, you are Mr. Invincible, aren’t you?”
    “What happened?” Colt’s sister-in-law and the clinic’s physician, Rose Anderson, locked the wheels of the wheelchair and motioned for Gabe to help Jack sit.
    “I don’t need a wheelchair.”
    Colt ignored his protest. “He called this morning wanting company on a motorcycle ride on the Alpine Trail. We’ve done that ride before, but this time, the idiot rode like a drunken grizzly. Flat-out reckless. He went too fast and took a turn too wide. I thought he was going off the side of the mountain, but he managed to put the bike down instead. He kept himself on the road. His bike is at the bottom of a hundred-foot drop.”
    “I’m okay,” Jack said. “Just scraped up a bit.”
    “He’s banged up his knee,” Gabe told Rose. “Can’t put weight on it.”
    “Yes, I can.” It was his arm that he suspected might be fractured.
    “We’ll X-ray it just to be sure,” Rose said, her voice crisp and professional.
    Jack’s day grew even more splendiferous after they’d entered the clinic and he heard a door open behind them and his ex-wife exclaim, “What happened to Jack? Is he okay?”
    “I’m fine.”
    Colt did his best to make a liar of Jack by explaining, once again, his version of what had happened, complete with his drunken grizzly nonsense. Rose asked Colt to help Jack up onto an exam table just as Jack’s cousin strode into the clinic and demanded, “So what’s this I hear about putting down your bike to keep from flying off a mountain when you weren’t wearing a helmet? You dumb-ass.”
    “Wait a minute.” Cat whirled on Cam. “Are you saying that he rode a motorcycle, he
wrecked
a motorcycle, and the