Private Practice

by Samanthe Beck

  She put the book aside and started to stand, but he put his hands on her shoulders to stop her. “No, no, don’t get up.” If she hugged him, hell, if she pressed herself against him in any way, shape, or form, he was a goner.

  Thankfully, she sank back down to the bed. “All right.” Polite as a schoolgirl remembering her manners, she added, “Thank you for dinner.”

  He laughed and, giving in to impulse, bent down and kissed her—quick and hard—then released her before he got any closer to chucking his plan. “Sweet dreams, Sparky. I’ll see myself out.”

  “Don’t call me Sparky,” she called after him.

  …

  “Hey, Sparky, wait up!”

  Ellie winced as her nickname reverberated across the town square, but when she turned to see Roger jogging up, all traces of irritation vanished.

  “Hi, Roger.” Thank God she’d dressed for the office today, she thought as she ran her hands over her tan pencil skirt. He, on the other hand, looked uncharacteristically…rugged. His normally perfect hair needed a comb and, if her eyes didn’t deceive her, contained flecks of sawdust. The high humidity index alone didn’t explain his sweat-dampened T-shirt or the wrinkles in his tan cargo shorts. “What on earth have you been up to?”

  He looked down at himself and grimaced. “I was over in Ashland all day building a Habitat house.”

  She shook her head. “A Habitat house?”

  “Habitat for Humanity,” he explained as he fell in step beside her. “It’s a charity dedicated to putting roofs over peoples’ heads. I recently began volunteering. My chance to play Bob the Builder for a day.”

  Could he be more perfect? Handsome, intelligent, and charitable. “That’s wonderful, lending your talents to a good cause.”

  “Well, I don’t know about talents. Mostly I’m a strong back and two unskilled hands. But every able body helps. We made a lot of progress today. Unfortunately”—he held out one hand, heel up—“sometimes progress comes at a cost.”

  She took his smooth, well-manicured hand in hers and examined the splinter wedged into the pad of flesh below his thumb. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. Stubborn little bugger. I spent the last half hour going after it with a pair of tweezers, but I think I only worked it in deeper. Then I called Melody, because…well…old habits, I guess, plus I figured she’d enjoy stabbing at me for a while, but she told me you went to the office today and suggested I give you a call. I was about to do that when I spotted you.”

  Of course he’d call Melody first, she told herself, swallowing disappointment. They’d been a couple forever, and were still close. What mattered was that he sought her out now. He needed her. “Good timing. You just caught me. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll take care of you.”

  “Thanks Ellie, I appreciate it.” His dazzling smile heated her cheeks.

  “No problem.” She floated back to her office and led him into an exam room.

  While she probed with her tweezers for the end of the splinter, she asked, as casually as possible, “Do you have big plans for your Saturday night?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Nothing major. A friend of mine from New York is in Lexington. I’m driving over and meeting him for dinner. We might hit a club or something afterward.”

  For one fanciful second, she imagined Roger and her as a couple, spending the evening in Lexington with his out-of-town friend. It sounded a million times better than her actual plan— the weekly check-in with Frank. Drop off groceries, test his blood sugar, and issue another lecture on proper diet and diabetes management, which would once again fall on deaf ears. Hopefully be on her way before either of them ran out of patience.

  “Sounds fun,” she said with what she hoped was casual enthusiasm.

  Roger offered her a surprisingly wistful smile. “Yeah, it will be. Doug’s a great guy. I wish we could hang out more often, but he’s in Manhattan, and Bluelick isn’t exactly a subway stop away, so…”

  His voice held a note of something she worried might be nostalgia. Did he prefer big-city life, with his big-city friends? Were his days in Bluelick numbered? She shook off a wave of alarm. “So, tonight you’ll enjoy catching up with an old friend, and I’m pleased to say you’ll do it splinter-free.” Holding up the tweezers, she showed him the sliver of extracted wood.

  “Wow. You’ve got a gentle touch. I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Maybe you’ve got nerves of steel. Should we test the theory with a tetanus shot?”

  An adorable little furrow appeared between his brows. “I had one about three weeks ago, when I stepped on a nail on another project. Do I need one again so soon?”

  “No. You’re fine. You may want to consider another way of contributing to the cause, though. Sounds like building houses is hazardous to your health.”

  Roger stood and laughed. “You might be right, but I could never bail on Tyler.”

  “What’s Tyler got to do with it?” Even as she asked the question, something toppled from the archives of her memory and drifted to the front of her mind. Last night, when he’d left her place pleading an early-morning commitment, had he mentioned Ashland?

  “He’s our foreman. He donates time and money to several Habitat projects a year. His construction firm does well, and this is his way of giving back. I figure the least I can do is show up and lend a hand.”

  “In that case, better add work gloves and some steel-shank boots to your Christmas list.”

  He grinned. “Right. See you later. Thanks for dealing with my code red.”

  She watched him go, mind reeling with the new information. Shame on her, assuming Tyler cut their…uh…date short in order to pursue some testosterone-fueled blood sport. Then again, he hadn’t said anything about what he was doing, so how could she have known?

  She locked up and walked to her car, assimilating what she’d learned about Tyler, and came to the conclusion she needed to adjust her opinion of him. He wasn’t an adult version of the hell-raising, trouble-hungry rebel she remembered. He excelled professionally, looked out for his employees and their families—if his loyalty to Junior served as any indication—and did charity work in his spare time. For a man who’d arrived on her doorstep in the wee hours of the morning with a lipstick smear on his shirt and a jealous drunk’s bullet in his butt, Tyler Longfoot turned out to be a lot more complex than she expected.

  Thirty minutes later she pulled into her father’s driveway and noted some things remained exactly as expected. The garbage bin at the curb overflowed with empty beer bottles and fast food cartons. Not the recommended diabetic diet.

  Stifling a sigh, she hauled two bags of groceries up the same sagging porch steps she’d spent her younger years imagining led to an enchanted palace, or a lost city or, most fanciful of all, a happy home where two loving parents eagerly awaited her arrival. Adult Ellie harbored no such illusions.

  She balanced the bags in one arm and rapped on the screen door, silently cursing the humidity when a bead of sweat trickled into her eye. She muttered a not-so-silent curse when her knock yielded no response. Frank was home. His pickup sat in the cracked asphalt driveway and the TV blared from the other side of the door. She twisted the knob and shoved the door open.

  Hot, stale air slapped her as soon as she walked in. She left the door open, hoping to get a breeze flowing despite the thick air outside. Her father lay sprawled on the faded plaid living room sofa, napping or passed out, with one thin arm flung over his forehead, the other bent across his thickening middle. He looked like he’d slept more than once in his stained wifebeater and rumpled pajama bottoms.

  Time hadn’t been kind to him. His hair, once the same dark brown she saw in her mirror, was matted and shot with gray. Even in rest, deep lines carved their way across his face. Broken capillaries bloomed around his nose.

  How he could sleep with the TV loud enough to be heard in the next galaxy, she didn’t know. No, wait, she did know. Six beer bottles littered the cheap wood-grain coffee table.

  Because she had
a strong impulse to kick the table and send the empties flying, she stomped to the kitchen. She dropped the grocery bags on the chipped and yellowed Formica counter and put the contents away, using the mundane activity to settle her temper. Then she strode back to the living room and turned the TV off. Silence rushed in with deafening intensity.

  “Wha’ the…?” Frank jerked awake and his bloodshot eyes fixed on her. Good. At least he could still hear. “Hey. I was watching the game.”

  She tossed the remote toward him. “Really? It kind of looked like you were sleeping. Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, picking up the remote.

  “Beer doesn’t count. I brought groceries. I can make you something.”

  “I told you, I ate.” Not looking at her, he turned the TV on again. Then he lifted his unfinished beer and drank.

  “What’s your glucose today?” The volume of the game forced her to yell the question. Typical. One way or another, he made communicating impossible.

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Where’s your meter? It logs every test.”

  He ignored the question. She reached over and grabbed the beer. He held on. Unwilling to forfeit the ridiculous tug-of-war, she pulled harder.

  The bottle popped out of his hand and the sudden, unopposed momentum sent it smacking into her forehead, showering her with beer in the process.

  “Damn it, Frank!” She mopped her face with shaking hands. “You can’t drink like this on your meds. It’s a fast track to liver failure.”

  “Jesus, stop lecturing me. If you were any kind of a woman, you’d have found a man to hassle by now and leave me alone. Your mother was married with a kid by your age.”

  And dead by the time she was thirty. But I’m still here. If you’d pull your stubborn head out of your ass and notice I’m here, trying to be your daughter, maybe I wouldn’t have to force myself to visit once a week. Rather than voice thoughts he wouldn’t know what to do with anyway, she returned to the kitchen and rummaged around in the junk drawer for his glucose meter.

  There was no point letting his attitude upset her. Years ago a sharp truth had lodged in the soft underbelly of her heart. Frank had never been interested in fatherhood. Her mom had wanted a child and he’d relented. But after she died, his bitterness over the loss left no room for anyone else, including his own grieving daughter.

  Her father’s diabetes had been a major factor in her decision to return home to open her practice. She’d harbored a hope that by being here as an adult, helping him, she’d magically break through his barriers and turn them into a real family. But the last couple weeks had driven home a harsh fact. A grown daughter didn’t interest Frank either. If she wanted a happy, loving family, her best shot involved turning herself into Roger’s dream girl, and then showing him they were made for each other.

  Her fingers finally closed over the glucose meter. Reviewing the log didn’t take long— one test today, one yesterday, and a handful over the past week. The numbers were high, but not horrible. She opened the kitchen cabinet and checked his supply of meds. He seemed to be taking them as directed.

  She spent another five minutes using some of the fresh vegetables she’d bought to make a large salad and placed it in the nearly empty fridge, beside the diabetic-friendly Dijon vinaigrette. Considering her duty done, she washed up and headed to the front room. Her chances of getting so much as a thank-you from her father were nonexistent, but still, she paused at the open door. “I made you a salad. It’s in the fridge.”

  “I hope you brought beer. I’m low.”

  She pushed open the screen door. “Bye, Frank.”

  The rickety metal door slammed shut behind her.

  Back in her car, she pumped the air-conditioning as high as it would go and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her flushed, sweaty reflection stared back, bitter eyes shimmering with unshed tears. A snippet from one of her favorite daydreams flashed through her mind. Roger, running behind a downy-haired Roger III astride a little red bicycle, cheering enthusiastically as the boy pedaled with all his might and slipped free of his father’s steadying hands for a first solo ride down the sidewalk.

  She closed her eyes and tried to put herself in the picture somewhere, but the image kept fading. She didn’t subscribe to fate or destiny, but nonetheless wondered if her inability to visualize herself in her ideal future meant she wasn’t destined to be part of such an idyllic family scene. Sure, Roger was the man of her dreams, but if she didn’t get her lessons back on schedule, he’d be scooped up by some naturally sexy woman before she mastered chapter 3, much less the whole array of skills necessary to turn her into the woman of his dreams.

  Cool air from the vent blasted her face hard enough to blow her hair off her forehead, revealing a raised red bump near her hairline. Terrific. A memento from the beer bottle.

  No good deed went unpunished.

  She finger-combed her hair so a frizzy wave covered the ugly spot. Then she backed out of her father’s driveway, turned onto the main road, and considered her meager options for Saturday night. Pay bills, catch up on her medical journals, or maybe indulge in her secret guilty pleasure—snuggling in with her DVR and watching the cute host of the home improvement show she recorded religiously? All her choices sounded pathetic. What she really wanted was a drink, but imbibing alone at home in front of the TV seemed a little too much like Frank for comfort.

  Just then, the barrel-shaped sign for Rawley’s Pub came into view, and before her brain completely vetted the impulse, she pulled into the parking lot.

  Chapter Eight

  Tyler followed Junior into Rawley’s on Saturday night, ready to faithfully execute his role as wingman. Hopefully in the process, he’d get his brain off Ellie. She’d been taking up headspace ever since she’d unleashed her proposition on him. Not surprising. When an intelligent, attractive woman bartered with him for sex education, turns out he gave the arrangement some passing thought. But since yesterday evening, his thoughts weren’t just passing. They took a very specific path—namely, how many days, hours, and minutes until their next session. A week seemed way too long to wait.

  This disturbed him for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that in her mind, their relationship had a specific purpose and timeline. Although she hadn’t admitted it, he still felt sure she aimed to impress someone particular with her new tricks. Who, he couldn’t say, but it wasn’t him. She’d selected him as her teacher, not her target. Both the timeline, and the fact that she had her sights set on someone else, rubbed him wrong.

  They shouldn’t have. A friggin’ fantasy had dropped right into his lap—weeks of wild, five-star sex with a woman who could make his cock harder than reinforced steel simply by flashing her dimples at him. Nothing could be more straightforward. Easy in, easy out. He liked easy. He liked straightforward. Why overcomplicate this scenario with pride or some stupid notion about taking himself, and his relationships, more seriously?

  Before he could start chewing on the question again, Junior drew up short and slapped his shoulder.

  “There she is. Think she’s still pissed at me?”

  He followed Junior’s sight line to the center table where tall, stacked Lou Ann held court in a low-cut black tank top that showed off the double-Ds like nobody’s business. Her eyes narrowed dangerously at the sight of Junior. Melody sat to Lou Ann’s left, wearing a peach sundress, looking calm, cool, and bored out of her mind. Flame-haired Ginny occupied the chair on Lou Ann’s right, predatory eyes flashing with interest.

  He glanced over at Junior, a tugboat of a guy in a Wildcats jersey and baggy jeans. “I’m not still pissed at you, and you shot me. Talking Lou Ann out of her mad ought to be simple in comparison.”

  “Right. You’re right.” Junior inhaled and let the breath out slowly. “Okay. I’m going in. Cover me.”

  “I’ll be in the corner.” Self-preservation had him hanging back at his end of the bar as Ginny slid off her chair and
headed toward him. Her tight, copper-colored cropped top and low-slung jeans advertised frighteningly toned abs. The little redhead was as pretty as a shiny new penny, but her reputation as a turbo gossip always turned him off—even more so now that he was trying to show Bluelick Savings and Loan what a responsible, respectable citizen he was. He turned to the bar and tried to make himself invisible, wondering for the billionth time what Ellie was up to tonight.

  A throaty voice ambushed him. “Hey Tyler, what’s up?”

  Resigned, he forced his shoulders to relax and turned back around. “Hey. Not much.”

  The redhead’s grin turned conspiratorial and she tipped her head toward the table behind her. “Check it out. Melody’s back in circulation. You heard she and Roger called the engagement off, right?”

  He nodded and signaled to Jeb Rawley behind the bar. “Yeah, I heard.”

  Ginny reminded him of a cat—irresistibly drawn to those who showed the least interest. This maybe accounted for why, somewhere in his reply, she heard a request for details.

  “But do you know why?” Before he could tell her he didn’t much care, she linked arms with him, snuggled in close and continued, “Roger and Melody were, shall we say, sexually incompatible.”

  Damn him, but that caught his attention. For a girl born and bred to the prom queen crown, Melody was actually a nice person. Same went for star pitcher, star quarterback, star center Roger. Superficially, they made the perfect blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-American couple, but the way their engagement had dragged out over ten years? The cynical voice in his head had called the wedding off a long time ago. “You don’t say.”

  Jeb paused in front of them long enough to deliver Tyler’s regular order—a beer. Ginny waited until Jeb walked away and then dished up more dirt.

  “I do,” she nodded solemnly, but her eyes practically danced with glee at the prospect of revealing someone else’s intimate secrets. “All those years Roger spent away turned him into some kind of wild, insatiable sex maniac. Melody told me he’s into a bunch of stuff she flat-out refuses to do. So she wished him luck finding his perfect nymphomaniac soul mate and they went their separate ways—far as any two people can in a town this size.”