Trading Secrets

by Christine Flynn

  Pushing her ponytail back over her shoulder, Rhonda waited by the ancient printer. A geriatric tortoise moved faster than the page inching its way toward the tray.

  “Do you think that’s what’s wrong with him lately?” she ventured. “That he just has a lot on his mind with moving and all? He gets a lot of those big envelopes from that law office,” she mentioned, crossing her arms high over the bulge beneath her scrub smock. Her prepregnancy work uniforms were folded in a sack under the desk for Jenny to borrow. Jenny would swim in the bottoms, but she could wear the scrub jackets over her slacks and tops until she could order her own. “I bet he’s working out details of his new partnership. He has a lot to tie up here, too.

  “On top of that,” Rhonda continued, all but tapping her foot at the lumbering printer, “he’s probably getting anxious to spend more time with his girlfriend. I don’t think he sees her but once a month, and lack of sex does tend to make a man cranky.”

  At Rhonda’s unexpected conclusion, Jenny stifled a startled smile.

  Bess gave her co-worker a look of benign reproach. She looked as if she might well agree. She just didn’t think the conversation appropriate. At least not on their new co-worker’s first day on the job.

  “The doctor’s love life is his business, Rhonda. But you’re probably right about the rest of it. I hadn’t given any thought to what might be on his mind the past few months. I don’t tend to think about much beyond what needs to be done around here and at home.”

  What needed to be done at the moment was for her to gather the files she would need for her rural rounds that afternoon. Several of the patients the clinic served in the villages and communities around Maple Mountain were elderly and housebound and needed ongoing care, along with a little socializing to make sure their basic needs were being met. Bess’s day for those rounds was Tuesday. The doctor, as Bess always referred to Greg, had rural rounds on Thursday—which was important for Jenny to know so she wouldn’t schedule clinic appointments for him then. On Friday the clinic closed at two.

  Jenny did her best to pay attention, to absorb all she could as quickly as possible from the two women inundating her with information—especially since Rhonda was staying through her lunch hour when she looked like what she really needed was to put up her swelling feet and rest. Or, better still, have her baby. She had confided to Jenny that she’d only planned to take six weeks off, had wanted six months, but now that Jenny was there, would love to stay home for a year.

  Jenny had assured her that a year would be no problem. Yet, beneath her relief over having a year’s worth of full-time employment, her growing list of questions about procedures and her politely masked dismay at the office’s antiquated equipment, she felt strangely let down.

  Logically she knew that the concern Greg had shown for her when he’d thought she might be in trouble didn’t mean anything special to him. After all, helping people was what he did. Bess had even said so. But it had meant a lot to her. The way he’d put her at ease right off this morning had meant a lot to her, too. She’d been in the break room where Rhonda had been showing her where to find coffee supplies when he’d come in and asked her to please always make the first pot extra strong.

  “Think double espresso,” he’d said, smiling as if he knew she would be familiar with what the traditionalists in Maple Mountain either hadn’t heard of, or called coffee “with muscles.” He’d then added that it was in everyone’s best interests that he be conscious and coherent when the first patient arrived.

  She wasn’t surprised that he was leaving. As little as she’d thought there was for her in Maple Mountain, she was sure that a man of his education and experience would find far less. He’d gone to Harvard. He’d been to Paris. His significant other was a Cambridge pediatrician. From what Bess had said, it sounded as if he might even be from Cambridge himself. Of course he’d go back.

  It never occurred to her to question her conclusion. Within two days, however, she began to question Rhonda’s diagnosis about the restiveness she was beginning to see in him herself.

  The clinic stayed comfortably busy. Since school would start in a few weeks, a steady stream of five-to seventeen-year-olds showed up for immunizations, which Bess took, and athletic exams, which Greg did. The schedule was full of more of the same for the rest of the week and most of the next. In between were the occasional tourist complaints of mosquito bites, stomach upsets, a couple of bad sunburns and an allergic reaction to the berries someone had gathered out by the old grist mill.

  As busy as she was herself, she saw little of Greg other than to hand him his next patient’s file, and the only time she saw him alone was if he happened to be in his office when she took in his mail or picked up the dictation tapes from his out-box. His only comments to her were “Thanks” and to ask how the training was coming. She told him that if Rhonda’s baby could hang on for another day or two, she’d be fine. The archaic systems were slow but basic.

  He told her she could use his laptop computer if it would help.

  If he was interested in anything else about her, he gave no indication at all. He was clearly preoccupied with his patients, which she would expect any good doctor to be. At least, that was what she chalked his preoccupation up to until the next morning when she walked in with his next patient’s chart and found him standing at his desk.

  He was staring at his laptop opened to e-mail. His jaw seemed to be locked tight enough to shatter his teeth before he disgustedly closed whatever he’d been reading and looked up.

  Suddenly cautious, she set the file on his desk. “Toby McNeff is in exam room two. Do you want me to tell him you’ll be a few minutes?”

  “No. No,” he repeated, visibly dismissing whatever it was that had so agitated his thoughts. Ignoring the question in her eyes, he took a deep breath and reached for the file. “He’s waited all summer to see if his knee has healed enough to play football. There’s no need to make him wait any longer.”

  The same tension she’d seen in him that morning resurrected itself a few hours later when she walked in with the day’s mail. She’d stacked the tests results and correspondence she’d clipped to the appropriate files atop a thick manila envelope from the Boston law firm of Brawly, Cohen and Schmidt. Because of what Rhonda had concluded, Jenny thought the bulkier piece of mail might have something to do with his new partnership, so she’d turned it to make the return address label visible in his in-box.

  The moment he noticed it, a muscle in his jaw jerked. After letting his jaw work for a moment, he visibly checked his odd reaction, thanked her and dropped the envelope, unopened, into his bottom desk drawer.

  She had no chance then to wonder what was going on with him. The phone, which had been busy all day, started ringing out front. Since Rhonda was in the bathroom again, Jenny had to hurry to answer it.

  She had plenty of time to speculate that evening, though, as she scrubbed the walls and cabinets in her kitchen while the woodstove overheated the room and took its time heating the water for her bath. She’d been a morning shower person, but the ability to adapt had become a necessity.

  She knew good stress from bad stress. She knew that even good stress could make a person feel pressured and snappish. But good stress was underlayered with anticipation and a certain eagerness.

  There was no anticipation in Greg.

  She didn’t know what he’d been like before she’d met him, but she now understood what Bess had meant about him getting more uptight every day. She didn’t doubt for a moment that something was disturbing him. But she’d be willing to bet the only possessions she had left, that it was something more deep-seated than missing his girlfriend or lack of sex.

  Her last thought brought a too-vivid mental image of his rock-hard chest. He had a beautiful body. A very compelling, very male and amazingly powerful body. A woman would feel very protected in such strong arms.

  There were some things she really wished she didn’t know about him.

  With a sigh,
she dropped her brush into the bucket of water and disinfectant. Turning her back to the cabinet she’d just washed, she sagged against the wall and slowly slid to the floor. She had to wash the cabinets before she could paint them, but before she could finish washing them she needed sleep. As she had for weeks, she felt tired to the bone and wished for nothing more than for her mind to go blank.

  She glanced around the room, taking in her little makeshift bed in the corner and the boxes that served as her dresser. She didn’t want to think about all she had to do to make the place livable. She didn’t want to think about a man she had no business feeling so drawn to. More than anything else just then, she didn’t want to think about how disappointed she felt knowing he was leaving.

  She thought about all of it, anyway. Alone, she had only her thoughts for company. It was easier to distract herself during the day when there were others around.

  It was easiest of all at the diner. Working there after finishing at the clinic the next afternoon, she just hadn’t considered that Greg would be there, too.

  Chapter Five

  Dora’s Diner occupied an old dormered house on Main street a block up from the clinic. Dora Schaeffer, a widow for nearly twenty years, had converted the downstairs into a welcoming space of maple tables and chairs and shelves displaying local artists’ pottery. At the back of the wainscoted room, a display case of cookies and the best pies in town angled the long counter where Greg often had coffee and Dora’s incredible pancakes on weekend mornings. The place could comfortably seat twenty, often held thirty and was the best place around for coffee and conversation.

  The din of conversation greeted Greg even before he pulled open the green screen door, pushed open the blue door behind it and breathed in the smell of good old-fashioned home cooking. It was home cooking as far as people in the area were concerned, anyway. Where he’d grown up, meals prepared by his father’s chef had come in courses on imported china or were served to him in the kitchen with the staff.

  He didn’t feel much like visiting tonight. His shoulder still ached. He’d just spent ten hours making a hundred-mile round of house calls which would have been far easier had he not had his arm in a sling. He still had dictation on those rounds to do tonight. And he was starving. But cooking for himself was a task that bordered between awkward and downright dangerous with the use of only one hand.

  He figured he’d get takeout from Dora and eat at home while he went through the day’s files. At least, that was his plan as he nodded to the couple nodding at him from the middle of the room and lifted his hand to the half-dozen other people he recognized. Most of the diners tonight seemed to be strangers escaping the city for a long weekend and eating at the only place in town that served something other than hamburgers.

  Dora waved at him through the service window over the counter. She wore her silver-streaked blond braids the same way she had for years, woven into a tight figure eight at the back of her head. Her cheeks were rosy from heat. Her green eyes sparkled with good humor, and her ample body spoke of a certain appreciation of her own cooking.

  It was Jenny who held most of his attention, however.

  She had her focus on the two heaped plates she carried to a table by the counter. The last time he’d seen her, a blue scrub smock had mercifully camouflaged the soft curves of her breasts, her small waist, the gentle roundness of her hips. Now, she wore a white apron over a white blouse and black skirt that accentuated everything soft and feminine about her. The skirt was plain, knee-length and very similar to the ones Lorna Bagley and her sister wore when they worked for Doris, only the style did a whole lot more for her legs than the style did for the Bagley girls. Maybe it was because he could see how shapely they were. Or, maybe, he thought, as his glance skimmed her slender frame, he just seemed to notice more about her than he should.

  Thinking about her body never seemed wise to him. Thinking about it while surrounded by people who might wonder why he was watching her so closely didn’t seem terribly smart, either.

  He hadn’t expected to see her working there.

  Charlie Moorehouse turned from the table beside where he’d stopped. “Say, Doc. How’s the truck runnin’?”

  “It’s doing just great, Charlie. I couldn’t have made rounds today without it. Thanks again.”

  The older man gave a thoughtful nod. “You let me know if it gives you any trouble. Hear?” His silver hair had spiked up in back when he’d pulled off his cap. The spike swayed as he nodded again. “I know it’s darn near new, but they don’t make things the way they used to.”

  As far as Charlie and his cronies were concerned, there hadn’t been a decent car made since 1955. His white-haired wife adjusted her bifocals as she smiled in benign agreement.

  “I’ll do that.” The table for two behind Charlie and his wife was vacant. Deciding he could order takeout just as easily from there, he pulled out the chair, more conscious than he wanted to be of the woman setting down plates in front of a couple he didn’t recognize.

  “How’s the tree thinning going out at the Larkin place?” he asked Charlie.

  “’Bout done,” the older man replied. “Say,” he said again.

  He poked his fork toward Jenny as she looked up to see who had just come in. The moment she saw him, she hesitated and smiled.

  “Jenny over there. Didn’t I hear she’s workin’ for you?”

  Over the clatter of silverware and muffled conversations, Jenny heard the retired maple farmer’s friendly question. She just didn’t hear Greg’s response as she turned her attention back to her customers and asked if she could get them anything else. She hadn’t yet mentioned to Greg that she intended to keep her job there. She had meant to. There just hadn’t been time the past couple of days. There hadn’t been time that morning, either. He’d been in the clinic only long enough to collect the files and supplies he needed for the rural rounds that had taken him all day.

  Taking a second job had been grounds for dismissal at the brokerage. The huge company wanted nothing less than 110 percent of their employees’ loyalty, and outside employment was regarded as squandering energy the company could use. When Greg had offered her the position at the clinic, he’d made a point of mentioning that by taking it, she wouldn’t have to work at The Dig or the diner.

  He hadn’t given her the sense that he employed the Machiavellian method of business management, but she didn’t know him all that well, either. Even if he hadn’t held her best employment prospects in his very capable hands, he knew far too much about her to not have him on her good side.

  Pulling an order pad from the pocket of her apron, she skimmed a smile past her old third-grade teacher and headed toward her new boss.

  “How did your rounds go?” she asked, stopping beside to his table.

  She’d taken to wearing a much smaller bandage than the one Bess had first applied. The edge of white was barely visible beneath her cap of shining dark hair, and the little bruises along her jaw were hardly noticeable at all under the makeup she’d dabbed over them. He noticed both, anyway. Mostly he noticed her expression.

  It looked a little uneasy.

  “Good,” he replied, more aware of that uncertainty than the restlessness that had accompanied him inside. “How were things at the clinic?”

  “Good,” she echoed. “Rhonda and Bess both thought it was kind of quiet.”

  “Rhonda still hasn’t gone into labor?”

  “She hadn’t as of five o’clock.”

  “So, what time did you start here?”

  He’d asked merely out of curiosity. Yet, the way her glance quickly faltered made her look even more uncertain.

  “Five-fifteen,” she quietly said, lining up the salt-and-pepper shakers with the napkin holder on the table. With her back to the rest of the room, she caught his eye, her expression part plea, part promise as her voice dropped. “I can do both jobs,” she all but whispered. “Honest.”

  Greg felt himself frown. It seemed she was afraid he wo
uld disagree. It seemed equally clear that she felt concerned about saying anything that might draw attention. Can we talk later? she seemed to silently beg.

  He truly hadn’t expected to see her there, but that didn’t mean he was surprised by what she was doing. The sooner she could pay off the debt to her lawyer, the sooner she could put the past behind her. The diner just wasn’t the place to tell her that no one knew better than he did how the need to be free of an obligation could weigh on a person.

  All she’d been through was wearing on her, too. He could see it. The faint circles beneath her eyes were new.

  There was no need to talk later. He could put her mind at ease now.

  “I take it the house needs more work than you thought?” he asked. He knew from Bess that Jenny was scrubbing walls in the evenings. He also knew her house was the perfect reason for everyone else to think she’d taken the extra job. Anyone who’d seen the place would know fixing it would cost a fortune.

  Caution slipped into her eyes. “Much more.”

  “Are you going to replace those steps?”

  “I’m…as soon as I can.”

  “What about that sagging roof?”

  “Definitely. At least the sagging part,” she amended, caution giving way to relief. He was not only telling her he had no objection to what she was doing, he was providing the perfect excuse for her to be moonlighting. “But first I need the wiring checked so I can get the power on.”

  Charlie wiped his mouth with his napkin as he leaned his head toward her. “Talk to Amos Calder’s boy about that,” he suggested. “He’s an electrician by trade. He’s over in West Pond.”

  “Or, Edna Farber’s son-in-law,” his wife piped in ever so helpfully. “He’s looking to buy him a new tractor.”

  “Old one blew pulling out a stump,” Charlie explained.

  “He can use the work,” Mrs. Moorehouse continued. “Best get on it soon, though, dear. It’s only a month now before the rains set in. Month after that, could be snow.”