She’d done it again, said something to put them both on edge. What was it about the man? She could usually get along with almost anyone. And she couldn’t blame it solely on his alpha-male tendencies. Being an alpha personality was practically a prerequisite in the medical profession.
She found she was staring and decided it would be best to concentrate on something besides the way he moved, all harnessed strength and quiet efficiency. She gazed out the window. A couple of middle-aged guys in a high-end bass boat were casting lures just a few yards from the tethered wooden raft she’d played on as a kid. She wondered if Ginger let Becca and Brandon play on it as she had back in the day. Ginger didn’t seem like a helicopter parent who would consider jumping off an anchored wooden raft too dangerous, but Callie wasn’t sure.
As she watched out the window, two hummingbirds arrived simultaneously to argue over possession of the feeder she’d hung from a hook above the porch railing, swooping and dive-bombing each other. It amazed her how much noise the tiny birds could make. The sound of their wings was the buzzing of a hundred bees. They chattered like angry little squirrels as each of the two females attempted to gain control of the feeder for herself.
“Want a refill?” Zach asked, returning to the table. The movement behind the glass startled the hummers and they took off for the pine trees down the shore, continuing their rivalry in an aerial dogfight that would have impressed a WWI flying ace.
“Thanks, no. I’ve had two. That’s enough for me.”
“Suit yourself.” He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, not khaki colored today, but a warm coppery shade that picked up the highlights of the same hue in his blond hair and the day-old stubble of beard on his chin. A faded scar sliced across his left calf.
Callie suppressed a shiver. The scar came from a bullet wound. She’d seen enough of them working her emergency-medicine rotation. Was that the source of the Purple Heart listed on his service record? She’d come across his résumé while making sure the employee files hadn’t been damaged in the office flood, and she couldn’t resist taking a peek. When had it happened? How? She wondered if they would ever be comfortable enough with each other for her to ask or for him to tell her.
“I really am sorry for that remark about overfed tourists,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m a PA, remember. I can’t go out and practice medicine on my own. I have to go along to get along. I’m used to dealing with M.D.s and their God complexes.”
“I suppose you are.” There was no use denying the truth of what he said. Physician’s assistants were required to be affiliated with an M.D. or a hospital to practice their profession. “Regardless, I don’t care to think of myself as one of those God creatures. It still doesn’t make it right.”
“If had to guess, I’d say I struck a nerve. Playing doctor on a cruise ship? Is it what you really want to do?”
His question startled her into an honest answer. “I’m considering it. I have some time to decide.”
“You realize the committee will probably ask you to stay on. They’d be fools not to. You’re a good doctor. But if you’re determined to go, it will influence the patients I assign to you. I can work with just about any M.D. I get handed, but some of our patients aren’t as flexible. They’re older. They don’t adapt well to change. They’ve already lost Gail, and she was the physician here almost from the day the clinic opened.”
“Everyone is aware I’m only here temporarily.”
“It won’t stop them from being upset when you leave.”
“I understand. I’ll try not to get too close.”
He blew out a breath. “That’s not what I was getting at.”
“Wasn’t it? It doesn’t matter. It’s a good reminder. I’ll keep you informed of my plans.” She pulled her laptop in front of her and opened the lid. “We should get started. I’m ready when you are.”
He hesitated a moment, staring down at his coffee mug before raising his eyes to her face. “Okay. We might as well get this out of the way up front. I would appreciate it if you take...a few...of my more...”
“Difficult patients?”
“You could call them that.”
“More specifically, your difficult female patients,” she finished for him.
“Yes.” He pushed his coffee mug aside and picked up a pencil, twirling it between his fingers as he avoided her gaze. She had been prepared to stand her ground when the subject came up, but she found the sudden look of discomfiture on his face and the slight reddening of the skin of his throat disarming. “The, um, the ones of a...certain—”
Good heavens, he was blushing. Zach Gibson, uncomfortable, embarrassed, knocked off his stride. She felt sorry for him but it was difficult to keep a smile from sneaking onto her face. Her mother had been right. He was being...sexually harassed was probably too strong a term...but certainly he was uncomfortable in at least a few patient relationships. “Premenopausal? Hormonally challenged?”
“You’re enjoying this,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together above those incredibly blue eyes. The color was hard to describe—twilight on a summer day just before moonrise, maybe? Oh, man, what had gotten into her? She sounded as besotted as the women they were discussing. That was not acceptable. “It isn’t only women doctors who find themselves in uncomfortable situations with patients. Let’s just say a couple of them have...boundary issues...”
“Bonnie stays with you in the exam room, doesn’t she?”
“Of course, but let’s just say they’re inventive. I suspect they check her schedule, have emergencies on her day off, that kind of thing.”
“I see,” Callie said.
“In different circumstances I’d refer them to a women’s clinic or an ob-gyn, but that’s not what you do in a rural practice. We’re here to make health care more accessible, not more difficult. And that’s not a dig at your cruise-line offer. It’s the truth, plain and simple.”
She hadn’t considered what they were doing in precisely those terms, but Zach had summed up their specialty very well in a single sentence. “I’ll be happy to take over any patients you believe would be better off under my care, no questions asked.” She sat up a little straighter in her chair and stared fixedly at her laptop. “Want to give me their names?”
He spelled out four names and she dutifully typed them in. Two of them were almost old enough to be his mother, if she remembered them correctly. No wonder he was uncomfortable treating them. “Anyone else?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll inform you if anything else comes up.” He seemed relieved and picked up a dog-eared notebook. No laptop for him but she’d noticed his cell phone was state-of-the-art. “Okay, let’s move on to your other patients. Shall we start with the A’s?” Twenty minutes later she had several pages of names and personality sketches, idiosyncrasies, phobias, and likes and dislikes to add to the patient histories she’d find in their charts. A little thrill of excitement danced across her nerve endings. It was as if she had her own well-run practice.
“Now, as far as the acute cases and walk-ins,” he said, breaking into her mental celebration. “I imagine you’ll be handling most of those since your schedule isn’t going to be as full as mine, for the next few weeks, at least.”
“Well, yes, I suppose I will.” She wondered if he really wanted those cases for himself. Deep down inside she couldn’t blame him if he did. He had been trained to cope with situations beyond anything she had ever experienced. He must grow weary some days of encountering nothing more interesting than routine blood pressure and cholesterol checks, but nothing of the kind showed on his face.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. He was good at taking things as they came. She wished she was better at it. It would make her life easier all around.
“Bonnie’s a rock when it comes to emergencies. She’s seen it all, and Leola is no slouch at tria
ge. If she says someone has walked in complaining of chest pain and she thinks it’s an MI, you can be darned sure it’s a heart attack, not indigestion from the all-you-can-eat fish fry at the White Pine.” He paused, waiting to see how she would handle that little zinger he’d tacked on to the end of his sentence, but she was ready for him and didn’t react.
“I’ll remember that.” She relaxed her shoulders and smiled.
* * *
WHAM! IT HIT Zach right in the gut, that quick, incandescent smile. It nearly took his breath away. He recovered enough to ask, “Any other questions, Dr. Layman?”
“Not right now. If I have any later, I’ll send you a text.”
He found himself trying to find something witty to say that would make her smile again. He hadn’t been this fixated on getting a girl to smile since eighth grade. He couldn’t remember that girl’s name anymore after so many years, but she had been his first real crush. He might have actually gotten up the nerve to ask her out if he hadn’t been shuffled to yet another foster home halfway through the school year. After that he hadn’t put too much effort into attracting girls, instead concentrating on sports and fantasizing about owning his own car. By the time he was sixteen, he found they were starting to come after him, anyway. That was pretty much how he’d operated in the romance department ever since. Nothing serious. Nothing permanent.
But he suspected Callie Layman didn’t fit into the category of women who were no more into long-term than he was. He’d better watch himself. And if none of those rationalizations helped when she turned that fabulous smile on him, the cold, hard fact that she was his boss should do the trick.
“We should be able to hit the ground running Monday morning, then,” he said.
“A week behind schedule, but who’s counting?”
“But what a week. You have to admit it hasn’t been boring.”
“It certainly has not.” Another quick smile, but he was ready for it and avoided the punched-in-the-gut wallop the last one had produced.
They’d made some progress today. Sure, she was still as prickly as a cactus, always standing on her dignity, but heck, he’d dealt with newly minted M.D.s a lot pricklier than Callie Layman.
He couldn’t fault her for considering the cruise-line job. She hadn’t figured out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life like he had. And a chance to work on a cruise ship would be hard for anyone to refuse. It would be a real temptation for anyone who hadn’t already found the one place on earth he wanted to be for the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry for oversleeping this morning and getting us off to a late start. Did it ruin your plans to go fishing?” she asked as she powered down her laptop and closed the lid. Everything she did was precise, but still somehow completely feminine and underscored by a quiet strength he wondered if she even knew she possessed.
She’d overslept and he’d had to knock to wake her up; still, when she reappeared a half hour later, apologizing and offering Mac’s incredible chocolate cookies and coffee as a very good peace offering, she’d looked as cool and composed as always. He wondered how she did it.
“I don’t have a choice.” He grinned. “I’ve got an order for three pounds of bluegill fillets from Mac. Last night I let those fish believe they were getting a free lunch. Today they’re going on the stringer, and tonight some lucky guy from Detroit will be dining like a king at the White Pine.”
She laughed and the sound was silvery and cool—raindrops on birch leaves—and even more enticing than her smile.
Zach stood up and walked the few feet to the tiny kitchen area and set his coffee mug in the sink. The bathroom was only three feet away. The door was half-open. A shampoo bottle sat on the shelf right in his line of vision. A field of purple flowers graced the label. Lavender. One of his foster mothers had been an avid gardener. She had raised lavender, and whenever he smelled it, he recalled sunlight and summer days. But no longer; now he would always associate the scent with Callie.
He stopped himself. Definitely letting his thoughts get too personal. Not good. Not good at all. So though he wanted to add Want to come along? he didn’t.
She had stood up when he did but didn’t move away from the table, keeping it between them. Okay, he got it: Don’t come any closer. Don’t get any more personal. Just as he’d been warning himself not ten seconds earlier.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
Man, why couldn’t he just say Thanks and head out the door? Maybe because today he hoped they’d taken a step forward in their relationship and for once had avoided the “two steps back” portion of the routine? Or maybe he just wanted her to smile again and know he had something to do with it.
“I’m meeting a friend for lunch and to ooh and ah over her new baby. Gerry Forrester. I mean, Gerry Seamann. We grew up together. We’ve been friends since preschool.” She grinned and he suspected her sense of humor could hold a very sly edge. “She and Kayla, her little one, and her other three children are patients you won’t be seeing while I’m here, even if I did forget to mention their names earlier.”
Her words jiggled his memory bank. There was something he’d forgotten to tell her about the patient list also, but he couldn’t remember what it was. She went on talking and the thought drifted away.
“And then I’m going to drop by the White Pine and visit with Mac during her afternoon break.”
“She’ll probably put you to work.”
“I don’t mind. I like cooking. I just never get much chance to do any. You know how it is when you live alone.”
“And have a sixty-hour workweek.”
“Closer to seventy these last eighteen months. I imagine it was the same for you in the military.”
He stiffened. It wasn’t sixty or seventy or even eighty hours a week when you were in a war zone. It was 24/7/365. With death and dying coming at any moment of the day or night. “Yeah,” he said shortly. “It could be a bitch. Well, I have to be going.”
“Zach...I...I’m sorry. I was just making small talk. I didn’t mean to pry—”
“Not your fault,” he said, wishing he could keep the tightness out of his voice, but he couldn’t seem to do that, either. “Just not a place I want to go.”
“Of course, I understand.” She glanced down at her laptop. “Well, I won’t keep you.”
“The sun’s getting up there. If I want to get Mac’s order filled, I should get out on the water. I’ll—” He’d started say I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning, but of course, he’d probably run into her half a dozen times before then. “I’ll see you later,” he finished lamely.
“I’m sorry I brought up the subject of the war,” she said softly as he headed for the door.
“Let’s just say I didn’t make the best choice. ‘Join the Navy and See the World.’ It didn’t happen that way. Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. I spent some time in all those places. The Middle East’s a long way from home. Long way from the water. Just a lot of war and suffering and pain and dying.” He snapped his mouth shut before he said any more. Before she heard the demons he kept mostly locked away these days fighting to get out. He didn’t want her to diagnose him as unstable...although, once in a while—but not too often anymore, thankfully—he still worried he might be.
“But in the end that decision led you to your career in medicine. It brought you to White Pine Lake.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It did do that.” He felt a small measure of serenity return.
Her expression was stricken. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t mention Afghanistan again.” She’d tried to reach out and he’d slammed the door in her face. It was a warning to him. He was attracted to her but she was a healer, same as he was. She would push to find the cause of his pain, his misery, and he didn’t go there. Not now. Not ever.
He should have said It’s a
ll right. It was no big deal. I’ll get over it.
Instead he nodded his head and walked out the door.
Two steps back... And this time it was no one’s fault but his.
CHAPTER SIX
“HI, GINGER. HOW are you today?” Callie lowered herself onto the desk chair positioned alongside the narrow counter in the newly refurbished exam room. Three weeks ago when she arrived in town, it had been a cool, sterile blue, the floor awash in floodwater. Today it was a creamy buff color, which contrasted nicely with the off-white counter and the shiny new simulated-hickory laminate floor. The new decor was a collaborative effort between the female staff—with input from Rudy, Zach and her father on what type of flooring surface and paint finishes would wear best. Maybe her dad and Rudy being there had helped keep the sessions upbeat and not too serious, or maybe they were all beginning to learn to function as a real team. She hoped so. She was doing her best to make it happen.
Over the past week, Rudy Koslowski and his crew had labored tirelessly to get the clinic back in shape. The electrical upgrades had been accomplished without a hitch, and three members of the White Pine Physician’s Committee had volunteered their evenings to help paint. Callie had even managed to find time to help wallpaper the children’s corner of the waiting room.
The committee members on the wallpaper crew had been gracious in accepting her help, and since only one of them had known her as a child— the straight-A student voted most likely to succeed, the girl whose mother had walked out on her family to join a hippie commune in Oregon—the evening had passed pleasantly enough. Gerry Seamann’s mother-in-law, Doris, had donated a set of almost-new colorful plastic child-size table and chairs she’d found at a thrift shop in Petoskey. And as quickly as that, there was a bright, cheerful place for little ones to stay occupied while they waited to see the doctor.
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