Mother's Promise (20 page)

“Zeke?” Rachel blinked as she looked back at Zeke, who caught her glance and raised a questioning eyebrow.

Darcy moved farther away from the doorway. She deliberately positioned herself so that Rachel's back was to Zeke. “Yes,
that
man in there with children, some of whom have compromised immune systems. This is exactly what I feared when we hired you, Rachel. You have never worked in a true hospital setting—oh, I know you were a school nurse in some little rural school system back in Ohio but that is not the same thing, not at all.”

Rachel took all of this in her usual pious and serene way. She offered no apology or excuse, just waited there with her hands folded in front of her, her eyes meeting Darcy's without flinching. And that only irritated Darcy more.

“Did Paul Cox authorize this?”

“Pastor Paul and I discussed offering some outside entertainment for the children,” Rachel said.

“But did he authorize
this
?” She pointed directly at Zeke.

“No. I invited Mr. Shepherd after observing him playing at a friend's house.”

Darcy hesitated. Wondering if the friend had been Sharon and Malcolm Shepherd. “Well, I will be speaking to Paul Cox about this. Clearly he has overestimated your ability to choose appropriate avenues for working with the children.” She glanced past Rachel to where Zeke was finishing another song. “Let him finish this song and then send him on his way.”

“All right.” Rachel turned and started back toward the activity room. Her refusal to debate the point with Darcy made it imperative that Darcy have the final word.

“And, Rachel?” The Mennonite woman turned to face her. “Understand that this incident will be part of your file and probationary review.”

“I know.” Once again she turned to go and then turned back. “You should know, then, that Zeke was quite adamant about being properly bathed and groomed before coming here. My friends, John and Hester Steiner, lent him their facilities as well as new clean clothes and shoes for him to wear. And at his request both he and the children—as you can see—are wearing masks.”

“That's all well and good, but germs travel and germs thrive wherever they remain once the person carrying them leaves the premises,” Darcy replied. She was pleased to see that this time Rachel Kaufmann kept walking.

Darcy watched her end the sing-along by asking the children to give Zeke a round of applause, and then the few parents and a couple of nursing assistants that Darcy had not noticed sitting in the back of the room slowly wheeled or walked the patients back to their rooms.

On the one hand, she could see that the escape from their treatment had done wonders for the children. They were talking excitedly and smiling as they left the activity room. But on the other, this was a hospital—
her
hospital in the sense that if anything went wrong she would be the one called upon to answer for it.

“Can I leave or did you want to call security and have me escorted out?”

Darcy wheeled around and found herself face-to-face with Zeke Shepherd. The mask was gone, and he was actually grinning at her. And she couldn't help but notice that it was not a smirk, but an honest-to-goodness and surprisingly good-looking grin at that. His smile made his deep-set dark eyes sparkle. Flustered that it was possible for her to feel any remote semblance of an attraction to this man, Darcy walked past him into the activity room where Rachel was putting away some supplies.

“I'll take that as no security necessary, then,” Zeke called out to her after waiting a beat. Then she heard the man actually chuckling as he strolled down the hall, his guitar slung over his back.

Chapter 12

B
en had a problem, and it had nothing to do with his work. In the two weeks that had passed since their pizza date, he and Darcy Meekins had fallen into the habit of grabbing something to eat or reviewing their day with other singles from the hospital over a cold beer at the tiki bar by the bay. Afterward the two of them had twice gone back to his condo to watch a movie. When he'd mentioned that he planned to participate in a charity five-kilometer run, she had laughed and commented that he wasn't exactly prepared for that distance, especially in September when the humidity and temperature could still be real factors.

“I work out regularly,” he'd protested.

“But you aren't a runner,” she'd pointed out. “If you think you can keep up with me, I could get you ready in the next couple of weeks.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Ben had started meeting her at the park closer to her condo early in the mornings. They would run together and then go back to her place for breakfast. After they ate, he would head for the hospital and the doctors' lounge to shower and change, promising to see her later. On one of those mornings, after his sister had presented him with two tickets to a ball for one of the charities that she and Malcolm supported, Ben had told Darcy about the tickets.

“Are you going?” Darcy asked as they jogged alongside each other for their cooldown lap.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Well, yeah. You're a big boy.”

“I know. It's just that charity balls are not exactly my thing, but this event is very important to Sharon. Agreeing to co-chair was the first real sign that she was ready to start living
her
life instead of living only for Sally. So for no other reason than that it will please Sharon, I'll do it. Wanna come?”

“Gee. I don't know. You make it sound like the world's most boring evening.”

“Come on. There'll be great food, dancing, a silent art auction—the usual stuff. If things get too unbearable one of us can fake a headache.”

“That would be me, I presume?”

“Well, yeah. What kind of guy would I be if I let you go home alone?”

Darcy had laughed. “All right. I'll come, but you are going to owe me big-time, buster.” She'd taken off then, running with those long graceful strides that Ben had come to admire.

“Pick anything you want from the auction,” he'd called out as he ran to catch up to her. “My treat.”

Darcy had grinned. “Okay, you're on.”

She's a good friend,
he had thought.

When he told Sharon that he was bringing Darcy, she had beamed her matchmaker smile. “I knew it. This whole ‘we're just friends' thing has been a cover.”

“We
are
just friends,” Ben protested.

“Really? I've never known you to spend this much time with any other friend—drinks by the bay, movies at your place, breakfast at her place.” She actually pinched his cheek. “Come on, big brother, admit it. Finally someone has found her way around that science experiment that passes for a heart in you.”

Ben did not begin to know how to protest Sharon's multiple assumptions. “First of all, I am all heart and you know it. Did I not turn to absolute mush when Sally was born? And as for Darcy …”

“It's okay, Ben. If you're not ready to go public with this, I get it. But once the two of you show up together at that ball tongues will wag.”

Later that night, after he and Darcy had shared a late supper at a restaurant near the hospital, he was walking her back to her car. He had been about to tell her of Sharon's ridiculous assumption when she'd said, “I bought a gown for the ball today.”

Half a dozen responses shot through his mind, but what came out was a noncommittal, “Really?”

Apparently that was all the encouragement she needed to provide details. By the time they reached her car in the mostly deserted parking garage, she was twirling around as if modeling the gown for him and laughing like a schoolgirl.

“Oh Ben, this is going to be so much fun,” she gushed and pirouetted straight into his arms.

Their faces were inches apart, and her expression turned from girlish exuberance to grown-up serious. She ran her fingers across his lips. In all the time they had spent together these past weeks, they had kissed only twice—a quick peck both times when she left his place after they'd watched the movies.

“Kiss me, Ben,” she whispered now, and before he could find words to say … whatever he might come up with to explain that he didn't see her that way, she kissed him.

Darcy was one gorgeous woman. And there was no doubt that she was bright and funny and had all the qualities most men would find attractive. But for Ben something was missing. Still, she was a good kisser, and he ignored his feeling of guilt when his natural instincts to return her passionate kiss kicked in. After a moment he was the one to pull away.

And there was the problem. Her kiss told him that she was 100 percent on the same page as his sister was. For Darcy this was no casual friendship—she wanted more. No, she thought it already
was
more.

“Wow,” he said for lack of anything else to offer to break the moment.

She grinned. “Yeah, wow indeed.” She failed to notice his hesitation. Instead she spun out of his arms and got into her car. “See you in the morning. I'll have the coffee ready.”

The charity run was coming up on Saturday morning, the same day as the ball. He had two more days to train, and certainly he could use every lap he took around the track at the park. But the need to put the brakes on whatever this was with Darcy took priority.

“Can't tomorrow. I have an early meeting at Memorial, and Friday's my last day there before I move over to Gulf Coast full-time, so …”

“It's going to be so great working in the same hospital—seeing each other every day.” She grinned. “All right, I guess you can miss two days of training. I'll pick you up on Saturday morning.”

He'd begun to notice that Darcy spoke in declarative sentences, not questions. She simply assumed he would expect her to stop by his condo and they would go to the run together. And the reality was that there was no way around that. His place was less than a block from the starting line for the run. “Sounds like a plan.”

She backed out of her parking space and waved as she drove away.

Wondering what on earth he had gotten himself into and how he was going to fix it, Ben stood rooted to the cement floor of the parking garage. It wasn't as if he could simply sit Darcy down and make it clear that they had a great friendship with lots of interests in common, but that was as far as it went. No, he had to work with this woman, serve on committees to make hospital policy with her, attend the same hospital functions as she did. And the main issue was that he didn't want to hurt her. “How come you've never married?” she'd asked him one night as she prepared a cold supper of sushi at his place before settling in to watch a movie.

He had shrugged. “Medical school took all my time.”

“You've been out of med school for years.”

“Married to my work, then. How about you?”

She'd been facing away from him when he'd asked it, but there was no question that she had gone very still. “I came close,” she said after a moment and then turned to him with a smile. “I actually got left at the altar, or almost. Two days before the wedding the guy sent me a ‘Dear Darcy' letter and left town.”

Ben hadn't known what to say, but she had saved him by waving off his expression of sympathy. “Not a big deal. I realize now the jerk did me a real favor. The truth is that I think my mother was more upset than I was. She worried for weeks over how this would play with her friends—refused to leave the house for days because she was so mortified.”

Again not knowing what to say, Ben had offered the first thing that came to mind. “Well, any guy who would leave you must be a jerk.”

Now he realized how a woman who clearly had romantic feelings for him would have interpreted such a statement. He groaned, and the sound echoed in the deserted parking structure as he walked to his car. Saturday was going to be a long day.