The Knight, the Waitress and the Toddler

by Arlene James

  Parker grinned. “You could always marry her. Not even psychoanalysis gives you insight into another human being like marriage does.”

  “Oh, that’s very funny,” Edward said sarcastically. “Just the kind of solution I might have expected from you.” He meant it to be pithy. It wasn’t. He put his head in his hands, elbows on the tabletop. “Oh, it’s impossible. I can’t find a solution because there isn’t one.”

  “Maybe there is,” Kendra said thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. “Yes, I think it just might work.”

  Edward looked at Parker, hoping for some insight into this possible solution of Kendra’s, but Parker just shook his head, shrugging. Finally he took pity on Edward and gripped Kendra’s hand where it lay next to her teacup. “Come on, honey. Let’s hear this plan of yours. Ed’s biting his nails over here.”

  Kendra sat forward suddenly, targeting Ed with her gaze. “Are you on friendly enough terms with the woman to invite her to a private dinner?”

  Edward stroked his mustache consideringly. He’d already invited “the woman” out to dinner and that had ended in unmitigated disaster, the scope and particulars of which he had no intention of divulging. Would she go out with him again? Would a heartfelt apology and an honest explanation have any influence? On the other hand, what the hell was an honest explanation for what had happened in the front seat of that car? He rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted, and sighed. “I don’t know.”

  He missed the look shared by Parker and his wife, missed the slight lift of a brow, the biting of a full lower lip, the thoughtful decisiveness with which Kendra pressed him.

  “Listen, you’ve got to bring this Laurel Miller here to dinner.”

  “Here?” Edward echoed in surprise.

  “That’s right. We’re having a dinner party, and I’m going to invite a certain friend of mine from the hospital.”

  Parker snapped his fingers. “David Greenlea! You brilliant little schemer you.”

  Edward cocked his head. David Greenlea? Why did that sound familiar? A picture flashed before Edward’s mind’s eye—a lean, longish face wearing a perpetual smile and golden blond curls blowing about broad, tan shoulders. Suddenly the picture bled into a scenario, and he frowned. “You’re not talking about that kooky guy I found sleeping on your living room floor back about five years ago, are you?”

  “David’s not kooky,” Kendra said, laughing. “He never was. You just thought so because he used to wear his hair long, and he only slept on my living room floor for a night or two.”

  “You never did explain that,” Edward reminded her, conveniently forgetting that she hadn’t been obligated to do so.

  Kendra complied with an airy wave of her hand. “It was no big deal. His residency and his apartment lease ended at about the same time. He wanted to take a trip out West to visit relatives before establishing his practice here, but you know how relentlessly they work residents. He needed someplace to rest up before he started driving.”

  “So you just naturally booked him into the Kendra motel,” Edward scoffed, shaking his head.

  Parker winked at his wife, grinning, and said, “David himself tells me that he slept around the clock for two solid days and was so sore when he got up off that floor, he could hardly walk.”

  Edward grunted noncommittally, unconvinced and yet as certain as ever that Kendra never had and never would indulge in anything the least “improper.” But that was beside the point. “So what’s any of this got to do with Laurel?”

  “Think about it,” Kendra instructed. “David is a psychiatrist…and a friend. “ When it didn’t immediately click together in Edward’s mind, Kendra rolled her eyes. “He owes me a favor, Edward.” When that didn’t penetrate, she threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, for pity’s sake! You don’t want to ask her to submit to a formal psychiatric evaluation, so you invite her here. We invite David. Then we just let the two of them alone together and afterward David can tell you in private what he thinks.”

  For a moment, Edward could only marvel—and disapprovethat Kendra had devised such a plan all on her own. But then he began to see the benefits of it. Laurel would never have to know. He’d have a professional opinion. He could make a reasonable, unemotional decision about the case.

  “It won’t be the same as a thorough evaluation,” Kendra was saying, “but I’ll tell David everything you’ve told us, and if we leave them alone long enough, that ought to at least give him some idea about her stability.”

  Edward was beginning to see flaws in the plan now. How did he know that he could trust David Greenlea? Would it be fair to stake Laurel’s future—and that’s what he’d be doing—on a dinner party conversation? On the other hand, what option did he have? He couldn’t trust his own judgment where Laurel Miller was concerned. He understood that much now. He shook himself in confusion, ordering his thoughts.

  “Ken, I respect your judgment,” he said, “but how do I know I can trust Greenlea?”

  “I trust him,” she said simply.

  “The hospital trusts him,” Parker added, “enough to make him acting chief of psychiatry when the old chief left unexpectedly earlier this year.”

  Not bad five years out of residency, Edward privately admitted, but the lawyer in him pressed for hidden weakness. “Why acting chief? Why not just chief of psychiatry?”

  Kendra laughed. “He’s a junior staffer, Ed. Can you imagine how many senior staffers would resign if they picked him as permanent head of the department? I mean, everybody knows he deserves it, but those other doctors have families to support and careers to foster. The official line is that David got the, quote, thankless, unquote, job as acting chief because he has no family.”

  “No family?”

  “No immediate family,” Parker clarified. “No one to make demands on his time.”

  “He’s never married,” Kendra explained further. “I think he’d like to. Guess he just never met the right woman. Anyway, the last chief was a widower with grown children, and he said he quit because the job took too much time and energy. I think he was just getting on in years, you know? Didn’t have the energy to keep up things anymore. But it gave the hospital board a good excuse to tap David for the interim. I expect their search for a permanent chief to go very slowly.”

  “Yeah,” Parker added, “David might be the senior staffer by the time they officially decide that they just can’t do any better than him.”

  Edward was hung up on the notion that blond, good-looking David Greenlea was not married. “Hasn’t he got anyone?” he asked. “You know, a fiancée, a girlfriend?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Kendra said.

  For some reason that he couldn’t quite pinpoint, Edward didn’t feel comfortable with that. He scratched his chin and said, “He’s not gay, is he?”

  Parker and Kendra looked at one another and burst out laughing. After a moment, Parker cleared his throat. “Definitely not gay.”

  Kendra leaned forward to foster an air of confidentiality. “Actually, he had a torrid affair with a nurse on my floor last year. Everyone was talking about it. I don’t know what happened, but there was an audit and some things came up missing. It could be coincidence, but soon after the nurse in question was escorted out of the building by security, and we’ve not seen her since. I asked David if he ever saw her, and he said that he didn’t but that it was too painful to go into further. And that was that”

  “Personally, I feel sorry for the guy,” Parker said. “If he did find out that his lover was a thief, that had to be pretty hard to take.”

  Edward nodded. “It doesn’t say much for his judgment, though, does it?”

  “On the contrary,” Kendra said. “Rumor has it that he turned her in.”

  Edward lifted his eyebrows at that. A man with that much integrity might indeed have a difficult time in the romance department. His gaze strayed to Kendra. A man with high standards seemed to have an extremely narrow field from which to choose. But none of that
mattered, really. The only relevant question was whether or not David Greenlea could truly help him make a decision about Laurel’s case. Finally, he had to admit that there were no hard and fast answers, and he was left with that one tricky source of judgment: his instinct. And instinct told him that he couldn’t trust himself to see Laurel clearly. He wasn’t sure why; he wasn’t even certain that he wanted to know why. He shook his head, telling himself that he was getting off track again. Once more, he missed a shared look of deep speculation between his friends.

  “Okay,” he said on sigh. “Let’s see if we can make it happen.”

  Kendra glanced innocently at Parker and then fixed her gaze on the tea in her cup as she sipped from it. Edward picked up on the silent signal this time, however. He just didn’t know what it meant. Thankfully, Parker seemed to be trying to let him in on it with his next words.

  “Think two weeks will give you the time to turn her up sweet enough for this?”

  Edward remembered the slap and the argument that followed. For an instant, he wondered if Parker had somehow divined… But no, that was nonsense. No one but he and Laurel could know about those two kisses. So, the only thing he had to worry about was whether or not he could convince Laurel to forgive his previous actions and trust him enough to join him for dinner with friends.

  “Two weeks,” he agreed, wondering if two months would do it. “Make that two weeks from Sunday,” Kendra said, showing them both who had the final say around here.

  Parker chuckled. “Two weeks from Sunday then.”

  Two weeks and three days, Edward told himself, to accomplish the impossible.

  Chapter Seven

  Laurel balanced the five-gallon, plastic water bucket on her hip and stepped carefully onto the small metal stool. With her left hand, she lifted away the lid of the coffeemaker, while her right held the bucket against her hip. Slowly she laid aside the lid and shifted the bucket into both hands. Just as she lifted the sloshing three gallons of water, Fancy’s elbow slammed into her ribs.

  “Oof!” Water splashed onto the front of Laurel’s uniform. She swayed wildly, hugging the plastic bucket and wetting her arms. One foot slipped off the stool. “Oh-oh-oh!” She stepped down and back hard, sloshing water all down her front again.

  “Will you stop that!” Fancy hissed, oblivious to the fact that she had caused the mess.

  “I didn’t do anything, Fancy!” Laurel hissed back. “You nearly made me fall!”

  “He’s here!” Fancy whispered hoarsely, grasping her by the shoulders. Immediately diverted, she peered over the top of Laurel’s head. “Oh my gawd, is he looking sharp or what?”

  Laurel glanced over her shoulder, more concerned with her wet, limp uniform than whoever had come into the diner. She did a double take, at first disbelieving. There stood Edward White, his new haircut perfectly combed, his tall, powerful frame shown off to heart-stopping advantage in a double-breasted suit of roughly textured olive green silk. His shirt was a shade lighter, and his tie a smartly patterned combination of light and dark with a touch of vibrant blue, just enough to bring out the color of his eyes. She couldn’t have chosen better for him herself and felt a spurt of pride that he’d so obviously taken her advice to heart. Pain and shame quickly overwhelmed that one tiny spurt. She turned away.

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Now, honey,” Fancy crooned, calming her, “you know he’s your best hope.”

  Laurel shook her head, whispering, “I can’t see him, Fancy. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Well, I don’t see what you’ve got to be embarrassed about,” Fancy told her, the gleam in her eye saying only too obviously that she knew full well she hadn’t gotten the entire story behind that battle royal late last week. “Now you hold up your head and you go over there and you tell that big hunk of man you’ll forgive him if he still wants to take your case.” She took the water bucket out of Laurel’s arms, balanced it on one hip and waved her off with a flick of a wrist. “Go on now. Won’t do no good to try to hide back here. He’s already seen you anyway.”

  Laurel turned with heavy dread, knowing that Fancy was right. He stood just where she’d last seen him, looking terribly uncertain. Gulping, Laurel rubbed at her soaked uniform with a kitchen towel as’ she moved reluctantly around the counter to the narrow aisle between bar stools and booths. Edward stood his ground, moving neither forward nor back. Not until she got within a yard of him did his gaze drop pointedly to the huge wet spots on her uniform. Laurel cringed inwardly. “It’s, um, just water.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I saw what happened. You can blame me. Fancy was obviously as shocked to see me here as you are.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just stood there like a lump, twisting the kitchen towel in her hands. After a long, awkward moment, he put on a patently false smile and said too jovially, “What do you think? The tailor said you have a good eye. He, um, wondered if you might be interested in a job.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, so she merely shrugged. “I—I don’t know. I have friends here.”

  He nodded and looked away. “Um, could we sit down for a minute?”

  She immediately slid into an empty booth. It was the slow part of the afternoon, too late for lunch, too early for coffee breaks. He unbuttoned his suit coat and slid in opposite her. He seemed uncertain how to begin. Pricked by the awkwardness, Laurel launched into small talk. “You had lunch? I’ve got a tuna melt going to waste back there. Some guy got beeped and ran out without it. It’s paid for.”

  He didn’t even look at her, just laid his big hands atop the table and stared at them. “I don’t quite know how to apologize to you,” he said softly. “I’ve never done anything like that before.” He raised an agonized gaze to hers. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m not usually so…That is, I’ve never tried to undress a reluctant woman in a car before.”

  “I wasn’t reluctant.”

  He looked suddenly as if she’d slapped him. Again. Laurel sighed and tried to find the words. “I know, I know.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I didn’t slap you because I was unwilling and frightened you would force yourself on me. I did it because I was frightened by how quickly it happened, how quickly I let it happen.”

  He blinked at that, and then she watched the struggle of emotions mirrored upon his face: surprise, relief, confusion, even a trace of pleasure. “You seemed so angry,” he said finally.

  “I was angry,” she said, “but at myself as much as you, and I was also embarrassed.” She couldn’t say that and hold his gaze, especially considering what she had to be embarrassed about. She had let him begin taking her clothes off her! More than that, she had considered helping him do it. She’d behaved like some lovesick schoolgirl, like that needy teenager who’d convinced herself once before that an unattainable man loved and wanted her. She shook her head, feeling the quick burn of color in her cheeks again. “It was as much my fault as yours.”

  “No, I took advantage,” he argued softly. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Truly?”

  “I swear it won’t.”

  She attempted a smile and teasingly said, “Too bad.”

  His gaze zipped up to snag hers. “What did you say?”

  She almost groaned aloud. She had obviously shocked him again. “Never mind. I just…I, um, ought to be getting back to work. Was there something else?”

  He seemed to need a moment to compose himself. Then suddenly he began fishing in his pocket for a notepad and pen. “Yes, I wanted to ask you, first of all, if you’re aware that your ex has worked in a similar situation with Kennison before?”

  She frowned. “You mean, did I know that Kennison had used Bryce as a kind of caretaker/nurse before?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  She shrugged. “Of course. It was on the basis of that work and Kennison’s recommendation that Grandmother hired Bryce.”

  He seemed deflated by that bit of news. “Hu
mph. I see. Well, we might as well look into the possibility of any wrongdoing on those previous jobs, anyway. Also, I wanted to know the name of the doctor who championed you, the one who lost his job after he suggested your grandmother might be the one in need of counseling.”

  Distractedly, she gave him what he wanted. “That would be Eugene Iverson.”

  He wrote that down. “Would you know where I could find him if need be?”

  If need be. Her heart lurched hopefully. “Er, I think I heard he’d moved to Illinois, but that was a long time ago.”

  Edward nodded. “Fine. That’s fine.” He stowed the small notebook and pen. “I’ll let you get back to work now, but we’ll talk again soon, if that’s okay with you.”

  She nodded dazedly. “Does that mean you’re still considering my case?”

  He busied himself straightening his suit jacket. “Of course I’m still considering your case. Why wouldn’t I?”

  A feeling of such gratitude overwhelmed her that she reacted without thinking. She reached across the table and clasped his hand in hers. “Thank you. Oh, thank you.”

  He seemed terribly uncomfortable. He all but shook her off. “There’s no reason for you to thank me. I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “But you have! You let me into your office. You heard me out. You didn’t turn me down flat like everyone else, not even after I…Well, you know. And then you started an investigation, and you took me to dinner, and you even put Tyler May in his place, and you pretended to be my date.” Her heart was beating very hard, and she knew that she was taking a stupid step that could never lead her where she wanted to go, but she said it anyway. “And you kissed me and made me feel desirable and—”

  He rumbled something that sounded shockingly like a foul word, and Laurel blanched, knowing she’d gone too far. She instantly began backtracking, trying to find the right path.