The M.D. Courts His Nurse (3 page)

Illogical? It was worse than that—Hazel knew Rebecca O'Reilly and John Saville might be her most challenging match yet. But at age seventy-five she was one of the last true mavericks in the American West. Oil money had subdued most of the cattle hierarchy, but the Lazy M brand had survived, even thrived, under her astute management.

And
she
thrived on a challenge—life was too flat without long shots and lost causes.

She wound through a curve, swooped across a little stone bridge, and now came in sight of the white-painted fence where her land gave way on its east border to John Saville's recently purchased property. She still thought of it as the Papenhagen place even though Tilly's husband had passed away last year and she had sold out, moving to South Florida to join the condo-and-blue-rinse set.

Hazel had always liked the big fieldstone house with its indestructible slate roof and windows with leaded panes.
The place is too big, though, for a bachelor, she thought yet again. It needed a wife, some dogs and cats, a few or a bunch of kids. If there were too many, she'd gladly handle the overflow, for Hazel missed having young neighbors around all the time as Rebecca and her school friends used to be, bless their hearts. If only kids wouldn't grow up so fast.

Seeing the house reminded her: Rebecca was wrong about the young surgeon's personality. Hazel was sure of that already, despite the fact he was not one to volunteer much about his past.

But she also knew that telling Rebecca about her mistake would be pointless. The girl was too headstrong, too young and independent. She would need to make the discovery on her own—with some guidance, of course, Hazel admitted to herself, from the area's best matchmaking operative. For she was nearly convinced, even this early on, that newcomer John Saville and hometown girl Rebecca were an ideal match. If only each could survive the mutual shell shock of their first impressions.

“Lord,” Hazel said under her breath, “I'd be a hypocrite if I called matchmaking my burden. It's too much fun. I've never been bashful about meddling.”

After all, she had some right to meddle. Her ancestors had been the first to settle in Mystery Valley; now she was determined to save as much of its traditional character as she could. That meant the careful pairing of natives with outsiders, forming bonds of real community. Bonds of real love.

John Saville's classic Alfa Romeo Gran Sport, painted bloodred in the Italian racing tradition, sat in his reserved spot beside the clinic. The very sight of it stirred Hazel's blood, for it had all the grace and power of a fine Thoroughbred. She parked in the spot beside it, admiring the
graceful roadster body with its tan leather driver's seat mounted almost over the rear axle.

Not the car of choice for an “old sobersides,” she thought as she followed a cobblestone walk toward the glassed-in foyer.

“Sorry if I'm late, ladies,” Hazel announced as she entered the waiting room. “I spent too much time gawking at the tourists downtown. My land,
where
do they learn to dress like they do? They must have one of those whatchamajiggers, a chat room for it on the Internet.”

All three of them usually poked harmless fun at the warm-weather influx of visitors, which grew larger every year. This morning, however, only Lois laughed with her. Rebecca was in one of her little snits that Hazel recognized well. Her pretty smile was in place, as usual, dazzling enough to fool most people. But the normally gentle and pleasing brow was now furled from pent-up anger. And that vein in her temple was pulsing, a sure sign.

Sensing Rebecca's mood, Lois took over. “Hi, Hazel. You can come right on back if you want. I've got Becky's station set up.”

Instead of heading right to examination room A, Hazel paused between the two women's desks. “You and your new boss getting along any better?” she inquired bluntly of Rebecca.

“Oh, hey, better watch what you say,” she replied in a sarcastic warning tone. “The walls have ears, you know. Maybe even bugs planted in them.”

“I take it that's a no?”

“A big, loud, resounding no. Frankly, I think there're some people who took their toilet training
way
too seriously.”

“Takes one to know one,” Hazel suggested sweetly.

“I'll pretend you didn't say that. You'll see. Don't be surprised if I'm reading the Help Wanted ads soon. I'm
glad this guy doesn't wear a ring or we'd all have to kiss it.”

“Ahh-hemm.” Lois, busy opening mail, cleared her throat, warning Rebecca to hold her voice down. But she was still smarting from her earlier encounter with the doctor and didn't much care what he overheard. Besides, in her mind Hazel was family, not a patient.

Hazel knew this headstrong side of her friend, had even encouraged it after a fashion when she saw how her mother's death left the poor girl faltering in her self-confidence. So Hazel also knew that the only way to handle the lass was with reverse psychology.

In short, she decided with a perverse little grin, maybe Becky needed a date from hell to remind the haughty princess what it's like “out there.” And then John Saville might start to look a tad better to her.

“What are you smiling about?” Rebecca challenged her as she led her patient into the examination room.

“Oh, I'm just building castles in the air,” Hazel confessed as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. “And even populating them.”

“Hmm,” was Rebecca's only comment. Anger still distracted her.

She checked Hazel's blood pressure and heart rate and recorded them on the chart in her clipboard. Next she took her temperature, then weighed her on the same old but reliable triple-beam scale Doc Winthrop had used for decades.

“Hazel,” she remarked, impressed as usual, “you never vary by an ounce, do you?”

“Wouldn't know,” Hazel admitted. “We McCallums never kept a scale around. What for? Your horse is the only one needs to worry about your weight.”

A moment later John Saville appeared in the doorway, trim and handsome in gray slacks and a light-blue dress
shirt with a navy rep tie, loosened but not sloppy. Rebecca handed him the clipboard and then stepped out, closing the door behind her and never once meeting his eyes.

“How've you been doing, Hazel?” he greeted her, friendly but somewhat distracted in his manner—just as Rebecca had been.

They've been at each other's throats, all right, the matriarch mused. No good romance should have bland beginnings.

“Feisty as ever,” she assured him, “thanks to my talented young surgeon.”

John pinched the creases of his trousers and tugged them up a fraction, taking over Rebecca's still-warm chair.

Before he could ask her anything else, Hazel demanded, “What year's your Alfa? I'm guessing it's a '27?”

His face changed immediately, the stern features softening, and enthusiasm lifted his tone. “Hey, you're pretty close. Nineteen twenty-five Gran Sport 1750,” he boasted like a proud papa. “It's a classic and then some. That model won every road race of its day. She's got a super-charged motor, all original. Even today I can push her up close to ninety-five.”

“A 1925, huh?” Hazel winked at him. “Made the same year I was born.”

He glanced briefly at her chart, then smiled. “Yeah, right. And both of you appear to be in excellent running order,” he remarked, holding those intensely blue eyes steady on her—more curious than suspicious, she decided. “I see you take only one medication?”

She nodded. “Nitroglycerin tablets. I only take them occasionally for mild angina pain.”

“But didn't you mention to Miss O'Reilly—”

Her laugh cut him off. “Is it too hard to say Rebecca?”

“—to Rebecca that you had some questions about your diet since the surgery? Has there been some problem?”

“You know, I recall that I did mention something like that,” she confessed, “but here's a better question just popped into my head—have you ever watched a cat sitting beside a gopher hole?”

The crease between his eyebrows deepened in a surprised frown. “Can't say that I have. I was a military brat, lived all over the world. Including near gopher holes. Don't remember any cats sitting beside them, though.”

“Well, come on out to my place sometime, I've got cats
and
gopher holes,” she assured him. “It's well worth watching. You'll soon learn that the cat's patience is surpassed only by one thing—its confidence that the wait is worth it.”

He met her sparkling gaze for at least five seconds, and he suddenly realized, full force, that he was in the company of an extraordinarily perceptive person.

“There's a lesson for me in that, right?”

Indeed there was, but Hazel knew she had to give the good doctor his medicine in doses. He wouldn't admit it yet because he was still in the throes of denial. But he was “gone” on Rebecca, all right. Or not yet gone, she corrected herself, but he was going, going…and soon
would
be gone.

Right now he was still too irritated at her, baffled by her, his confidence thwarted because she was new to his experience. So during this visit, Hazel settled for merely planting a seed. She could water it later. Her secret garden of love.

“A lesson?” she finally responded, her tone innocent of any guile. “Why, Dr. Saville, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but no one ever has much trouble getting my point, if you'll excuse the pun. Well, my goodness!”

She glanced at her watch, then stood up.

John Saville hastily rose, too.

“I've got yard work to do,” she explained. “The trees are still winter mulched, can you believe my lazy bones? And today I have to help pick out breed stock. Thanks for the wonderful advice.”

“What advice? I didn't give you any.”

“Well had you, I'm sure it would have been excellent advice.”

“But, Hazel, we still haven't—”

“Toodle-oo,” she called as she stepped quickly into the hallway. But she had more medicine to dispense before she left.

She deliberately left the door wide open so the doctor could hear her.

“Becky, hon,” she called, her tone making it sound like a mere afterthought. “Do you remember Rick Collins, my accountant, Larry's, kid brother?”

Rebecca, busy taking inventory in the medical supply room, poked her head out into the hallway. She gave Hazel a little frown as she tried to recall. “Have I met him?”

“Not exactly, I don't believe. You saw him waiting in Larry's car one day in my driveway. Remember? You asked me who the cute guy was?”

Rebecca kept the blank expression as memory failed her. “I'm not sure I remember…”

“You said he had a nice smile. Sure you did. So I gave him your phone number,” Hazel supplied in an offhand tone. “Suggested he give you a call soon. And I warned him not to put it off too long or he'd end up on the waiting list.”

“Hazel,” she protested, “I really don't remember—”

“Oh, Larry says he's loads of fun,” Hazel said, cutting her off, already letting herself out. “He reads a lot, and you've always liked guys who read.”

“Hazel, I can't—”

“I'll send a check when I get home,” Hazel commented
to Lois as she closed the door behind her. Her last glimpse showed John Saville in the hallway, watching Rebecca with the same hard expression he usually wore around her.

Let not your hearts be troubled, youngsters, she reflected as she walked to her car. True love always finds a way.

Or at least a good agent, she added, and sheer deviltry sparkled in her Prussian-blue eyes.

R
ick Collins must have followed Hazel's advice about not wasting time, for he called later that very day. The phone rang only minutes after Rebecca had returned to her studio apartment, located just south of Mystery on Bluebush Road. Her place was only minutes from Valley General Hospital, where she'd worked as a surgical-recovery nurse briefly before Dr. Winthrop hired her, impressed by colleagues' reports about her work.

Her very first telephone impression of Rick had been favorable. A nice voice, decidedly masculine but not macho, and he identified himself immediately. No cute little guessing games like some guys played. He simply skipped any preliminaries and politely asked her to dinner the coming weekend at the Hathaway House.

He was a bit businesslike and direct about it, but she sort of liked his confident, why-don't-we-close-a-deal manner, so she accepted. He was friendly without sounding desper
ate or nervous in the way of men who placed
too
much importance on a date. And the Hathaway House in nearby Summerfield, while no leader in trendy cuisine, was generally considered the best restaurant in Mystery Valley—respectable but hardly formidable, appropriate for a safe first date.

She had hung up the phone feeling better than she usually did after making a blind date. Well, not actually a
totally
blind date, she reminded herself while she washed and rinsed a few dirty plates and set them in the drainer. After all, she finally remembered who the guy was. She'd gotten a good look at Rick once a few months ago from Hazel's kitchen window.

She recalled his collar-length blond hair and the gorgeous, sexy smile he'd flashed at her when he caught her scoping him out from the window. But Rick had been at least four or five years ahead of her in school, so she'd never met him and knew little about him except that he was still single and worked for a manufacturing company located about fifteen miles from Mystery.

She was perhaps a little bothered by his by-the-book manner. She liked to flirt a little, but he had passed up the opportunities she had given him over the phone.

God forbid that he'd turn out to be another John Saville—just a good-looking vinyl boy who reserved his charm for debutantes and Vassar grads.

Something else bothered her about the brief conversation. Hazel had implied that she knew Rick well. Yet he admitted on the phone he hardly knew her. But so what if Hazel was being a little pushy. The old girl had always seen herself as a crusader in the cause of romance. Had some notable successes at it, too.

Romance… Rebecca rinsed her hands, then used her wet fingers to comb back a few rebellious strands of chestnut hair that had escaped the barrettes. Suddenly the old ru
mination came to her again: for too long now she'd been wondering what “doing it” was really like. She'd been close a few times with Brian, but something had always stopped her—some inner sense that the time just wasn't right. In Brian's case, it was the commitment that wasn't right; she saw that now. She only hoped that the next time she had the opportunity to take the plunge, her instincts would go away. So far they'd only prevailed in keeping her from making any move. And she was tired of her virginity, and getting cynical.

If she couldn't find love, then she at least wanted to pretend she knew about it.

Unbidden, an image of John Saville's intense cobalt eyes, raking over her like fingers, filled the screen of her mind, and a restless yearning stirred low in her stomach, quickening her pulse.

That's just great, she chided herself—a cute guy just asked you out, and here you are fantasizing about some self-loving, elitist snob who wouldn't be caught dead with you in public.

Another doctor in her life might send her screaming for the nunnery. So she erased the unwanted image of John Saville from her mind and returned to drying the dishes.

 

Surprisingly, the rest of the week went by smoothly at the clinic, as if John Saville were on his best behavior. Late on Friday afternoon he came up front from his private office.

“Ladies,” he announced in his stilted, formal manner, “I've finished reviewing Dr. Winthrop's financial books. I see that neither of you has received a raise in almost two years now.”

His fiercely blue eyes lingered on Rebecca, seeming to dwell on the spots where a snug cashmere pullover, despite her bra, clearly marked her nipples. He cleared his throat.

“So I've informed our bookkeeper,” he continued, “that retroactive from the day I took over, you both are to receive a 10 percent raise. Also three more paid personal-leave days.”

Rebecca was too pleasantly surprised to speak.

Lois, however, quickly thanked him on behalf of them both. They received a second shock when John Saville actually flashed a quick and very charming smile—nothing imperious about it.

“Nonsense, both of you earn your salaries,” he insisted.

He left, taking some mail with him back to his office.

Lois looked at Rebecca, then fanned herself with the folder in her hand, as if bringing down her temperature.

“Sexy smile. And does that man look good in herring-bone dress slacks? Especially from the
rear.
”

But a moment later she added, “A pox on myself for such adulterous thoughts. And me the property of the Gang of Four.” The Gang of Four was Lois's name for her husband, Merrill, and their three sons, who ran Brubaker and Sons Automotive in nearby Colfax.

She looked at Rebecca before adding, “Besides, he was putting the eye on
you,
Miss O'Reilly. Oo-la-la.”

Rebecca was unimpressed. “I wouldn't alert the media if I were you, because I doubt that. Unless the doctor had a brief fantasy about slumming with the scullery help.”

“You ingrate. The man just padded our pay envelopes. And you saw how sweet he was about it.”

“I appreciate the raise,” she told Lois. “But he's right, we are due for one, girlfriend.”

“Not to mention well worth it,” Lois conceded. “Lutheran Hospital has been wooing you ever since you did your nursing practicum there. And I'll have my business degree in another year—I know for a fact Bruce Everett wants to hire me to manage his new dude ranch.”

Rebecca only half heard her friend, thinking about John
Saville. “If you ask me,” she speculated, lowering her voice, “he's one of these big carrot-and-stick commandos. This raise is a carrot meant to bring us—
me,
actually—into line.”

“And when he gets that uptight look like somebody's giving him a wedgie,” Lois giggled, “that's one of the sticks.”

They enjoyed a rebellious laugh. Their goof-off mood inspired Rebecca to suddenly pucker her face in an exaggerated scowl.

“‘Having fun, Miss O'Reilly,'” she lectured, making her voice as deep and disapproving as she could, “‘isn't the point of this clinic.'”

They were safe, for he was well out of earshot at the rear of the building. However, the sudden sound of his steps in the hallway caught them before they could quite suppress their mood of bubbling mirth.

“Shush, woman,” Lois hissed melodramatically. “We just got a raise, don't get him mad.”

But that last smart crack was one joke too many, and badly timed. She had to swivel sideways in her chair, and Lois barely managed to compose her face before the doctor appeared in the doorway, several X-rays in his left hand.

“Miss O'Reilly, has the lab got back with us yet on Bernie Decker's blood-and-urine workups?”

His request was polite and straightforward, similar to dozens he made each day.

Rebecca never would have foolishly lost it if she hadn't made the dumb mistake of making eye contact with Lois so soon after they'd just been goofing around.

It was the “Miss O'Reilly” that did it—it was like a spark to a powder keg.

“Yes, Doctor,” was all she managed before she lost her composure and broke into giggles that set Lois off, too.

For a few moments after their adolescent outburst, he
was caught completely off guard. Rebecca watched a perplexed smile draw his lips apart. At first he seemed to think something else was causing their mirth. Then she saw a quick glimmer of realization in his eyes that
he
was the butt of the joke. Then his face registered some deeper emotion—hurt, she realized with a sudden stab of guilt. They were only being immature and laughing at his stuffy formality, but he couldn't know that.

An indrawn, bitter look came over him, and the handsome, angry face closed against both of them.

“All right,” he replied, still under control but so mad that his jaw muscles bunched tightly. “I guess I'll get that lab report later, when you two've gotten over your private joke.”

 

Guilt gnawed at Rebecca for the rest of the day. It wasn't just her childish behavior and the raise thing—she thought of John Saville's brief but charming smile, the hurt deep in his eyes before anger took over. She also thought about how his gaze had seemed to linger on her body. Not that she cared. No doubt the lover within him was as uptight and calculating as the physician. Being with him wouldn't be worth the enormous effort she'd have to put forth just to have some fun.

However, all her guilt was whisked away like a feather in a gust the moment she tried to apologize right before quitting time at 5:00 p.m.

He cut her off in midsentence with almost the same caustic retort she had recently flung at him. “I doubt it will leave me a broken man.”

And to think she had wasted time feeling sorry for such an overbearing brute. The absolute creep, she fumed as she drove home in the aging but reliable Bronco her father had turned over to her as a high school graduation present. He
was so like Brian. His spitting image exactly, she told herself, self-justification in every word.

Even thoughts of her upcoming date tonight with Rick Collins could not crowd irksome images of John Saville from her mind.

By the time she finished a long and relaxing bath, the light of late afternoon was taking on the mellow richness just before sunset. Wearing a snug terry cloth robe, her long hair wrapped in a towel, she watched the copper blaze of sunset from her bedroom window.

Feeling calmer, she dressed in a hunter green merino wool skirt and a black silk blouse, digging a good pair of black leather pumps out of her closet. She left her hair unrestrained, just combing it out and spritzing it back a little in front, letting it cascade down her back and over her shoulders.

“A very sexy little package,” she approved as she checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. “Play your cards right, Mr. Collins, and who knows? This girl is
in the mood.
”

She hummed pop tunes while she added a finishing touch, a pair of delicate cameo pierced earrings that had belonged to her mother. But while she slipped the delicate French wires through her ears, again she saw John Saville's face closing against her, the intense cobalt eyes accusing.

A little guilt, and plenty of anger, knotted her stomach, already pinched with hunger.

He was the last man she wanted on her mind tonight.

Noticing it was almost seven o'clock, she quickly opened her compact and lightly brushed her cheeks with blush, trying to get in the right mindset to enjoy a date, John Saville be damned.

 

Rick Collins rang her doorbell at 7:00 p.m., prompt as a wake-up call and looking quite dapper in a dark evening
suit. His blond hair was shorter and neater than she recalled, and he was a little stouter than she had imagined him. Nonetheless, he made a good first impression when Rebecca opened the door.

The smile was still as sexy as she remembered it being. Definitely movie-star teeth.

She was a little put off, however, when he escorted her out to his vehicle: a glittering gold SUV that rode incredibly high off the ground on huge, oversize tires.

“Not quite a monster truck.” Rick seemed to apologize as he helped her in.

She felt as if she was climbing up into a military assault vehicle. This is Montana, she reminded herself. People drive weird trucks out here.

But from that point on, the date rapidly became a fiasco.

During the drive to the restaurant, he rebuffed her every attempt at conversation because, as she quickly learned, he was obsessed with reciting trivial facts. Batting averages, team mascots, per capita consumption of chocolate, the cures for diphtheria in Colonial America, an endless, random recitation of pointless facts proving he had a photographic memory but no other apparent intelligence. Hazel was right to call him a big reader, but she failed to mention he read nothing but books on trivia.

Before long she had also noticed something quite irritating about Rick's “pleasant voice”—it was oddly uniform in tone, seldom varying much. He might as well be reading out loud from a phone book to pass time. The monotony of it had quickly begun to grate on her.

The date officially tanked by the time the Hathaway House loomed into view. She was practically clawing at her window to escape. He hadn't shut up once.

“No kidding,” his monotone voice droned on like a weed-eater idling, “Charles Bronson was actually named Charles Buchinsky before he changed his name.”

“Is that right?” she muttered.

“Yeah, and John Denver was Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. And you know what Eric Clapton's real name was?”

“You tell me.”

He laughed for the first time. “Eric Clap. No kidding, it really was.”

When she said nothing, he pressed on. “Don't you get—”

“I get it,” she answered, wondering how she was going to get through the interminable two hours of dinner.

 

The modern exterior of the Hathaway House, with its elegant marble walls, seemed a deliberate contrast to the old-time intimacy of the interior. Candles burned in sconces along the walls, and two-branched gilt candlesticks illuminated each table.